How to build something that lasts 10k years • Hacker News Board

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#121

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

rtkwe wrote: post #107

fencepost wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there recognized symbols for vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, weight loss reaching near skeletal stages and finally death? Along with some kind of indicators for passage of time that seems more useful at least for high exposure areas.

The issue with that is we can make 0 assumptions about the culture we are trying to communicate with so pictograms aren't a good medium to begin with but let's set that aside. Consider maybe they don't even read left to right or top to bottom so now without carefully making sure they know how time is represented your message can be interpreted as one of resurrection and healing maybe?

Some things, like the passage of the sun in the sky, should be universal. Literally every civilization on Earth is familiar with the concept of a day. Death is a universal concept too.

Of course there is no helping if the future people are especially dismissive of your warnings, but they should suffer from debilitating radiation sickness before they get too far away, so at least the leak would be somewhat contained.

Interesting story idea for a post-apocalyptic agrarian society where some guy wipes out his rival's towns by lightly burying preapocalyptic nuclear waste in the town square to kill off the inhabitants while preaching about curses and gods smiting the inhabitants for their sins.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#122

Post by rtkwe » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

bullen wrote: post #108

andrewla wrote: post #74

The only way to build something that lasts 10k years is to build hundreds of things designed to last 10k years, and maybe one or two of them will actually last. That's the only technique that's worked in the past.

I agree if it has to be hardware, otherwise you just build software.

Software is probably the worst example of something long lasting. You need the entire environment that it's designed to run in for it to be useful at all. Even trying to run software from 30 years ago is only easy where we've intentionally preserved or recreated the tools to run it, eg emulators or virtual machines.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#123

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #71

EForEndeavour wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Indiana-Jones-style death traps would successfully show trespassers that the site's builders were serious, or if this would only attract more curiosity.

Most of the best traps can only be sprung once, or at most a few times. So you get the first trespasser, but everyone after that just walks over it.

And honestly, Indiana Jones style traps would never survive 10 years of deferred maintenance, much less 10,000 years. Even simple traps like weak floors over spike filled pits would tend to rot and collapse over the years, especially if you need to build it lightly enough that a single person can trigger it unknowingly.

The only Egyptian tombs that survived to the modern era were the ones so well hidden that nobody had managed to stumble across them.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#124

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

TremendousJudge wrote: post #92

notfromhere wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the radiation is the death trap

I was thinking the same. However, the problem is not to avoid people from getting in and causing harm to themselves, but them getting the dangerous stuff out and causing harm to others who actually heeded the warnings. You'd need extremely strong radiation

If you're talking about 10,000 years in the future it may not matter so much since the radioactivity would be much less after so many half lives.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#125

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #78

andrewla wrote: post #74

The only way to build something that lasts 10k years is to build hundreds of things designed to last 10k years, and maybe one or two of them will actually last. That's the only technique that's worked in the past.

Some future archeologist is going to dig up a cell phone.

And it will be a Nokia 3310 that still works and has 30% battery life remaining.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#126

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:56 PM UTC

juanuys wrote: post #70

The best description of building something that lasts I've seen in recent fiction is Cixin Liu's Death's End [1] where he writes [2] about mankind's museum (a forever tombstone). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death%27s_End [2] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nUkoCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT539&lp...

The forever tombstone was destroyed when the universe was flattened.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#127

Post by jandrese » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

KboPAacDA3 wrote: post #69

It may be designed for 10,000 years, but it will fail at year 3000 because the gears will get clogged from the blood of human sacrifices.

I think "designed to last for 10,000 years" and "moving parts" are largely mutually exclusive.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#128

Post by TremendousJudge » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #124

TremendousJudge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking the same. However, the problem is not to avoid people from getting in and causing harm to themselves, but them getting the dangerous stuff out and causing harm to others who actually heeded the warnings. You'd need extremely strong radiation

If you're talking about 10,000 years in the future it may not matter so much since the radioactivity would be much less after so many half lives.

Exactly. You can't rely on the radiation itself as a deterrent.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#129

Post by Retra » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #57

phito wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages ...pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger. The danger is in a particular location... it i…

Funny thing is, if we discovered some ancient tomb or burial site with these messages we'd write it off as superstition and open it up anyway. I'm not sure some future civilization would be any different.

But is that better than leaving things lying around in unmarked caves? People's curiosity might kill them, but the best you can do is warn them.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#130

Post by Retra » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #99

Tade0 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about actual corpses arranged so that they look as if they died violently? Not the exact message, but definitely should give pause to anybody visiting the place in the far future.

"Somebody made that place super dangerous to get into. There must be something really valuable in there!"

Then don't make the place inaccessible. If you're warning people about a threat, you need to show them where the threat is, not hide it.