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How to build something that lasts 10k years

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Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#81

Post by fencepost »

phito wrote: post #39
vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

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…

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.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#82

Post by notfromhere »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #62
smacktoward wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it doesn't, also because of psychology. The ancient Egyptians learned this the hard way. Many of their tombs were marked with graphic warnings threatening anyone who disturbed them with various horrible ends. But most of them were robbed regardless, and those that weren't were eventually cracked open by 19th and 20th century archaeologists. That wasn't because the people violating those tombs didn't understand…

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.

the radiation is the death trap

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#83

Post by jotm »

bambax wrote: post #30

> engineers are building a clock in the Texan desert that will last for 10,000 years Well, we don't know that. There is no way to know. Selling this to rich guys like Bezos is kind of like selling "after the rapture pet care"...

It wont last 10,000 years. Nothing more complicated than scribblings on a tough rock will, and even those will likely be indecipherable.

Seed banks are especially funny/sad. They need to constantly produce seeds, which means constant growth of male/female plants, under human supervision.

No seeds last more than a few years under ideal conditions. Even DNA is unrecoverable/unusable after a few centuries iiirc.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#85

Post by Mirioron »

tropdrop wrote: post #79
vincnetas wrote: post #10

Finland is building nuclear waste storage facility which is planned to last for 100.000 years. There are quite few interesting design decisions to be made taking this lifespan in to account, for example if current civilization will be wiped out, what symbols you should put on a door to discourage someone in future to opening the door. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo... https://www.youtube…

99 Percent Invisible has a great episode[1] discussing exactly this kind of facility in New Mexico and the consternation it caused for a committee of some of the greatest minds of the 20th century that was tasked with attempting to write the perfect 10,000 year message. My favorite part: "Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion, folklore,…

>Bastide and Fabbri came to the conclusion that the most durable thing that humanity has ever made is culture: religion, folklore, belief systems.

I'm not sure if I agree with this. I think that there is a ludicrous amount of survivorship bias at play with culture. How much do we know about ancient Egypt through culture and not the writings and structures that were left behind? How much do we know about some of the European cultures from ancient times? We really don't know much about ancient Estonia or Finland. We do know a lot about other ancient cultures, but that's because they dominated and continued to dominate for a long time. If our civilization dies off to the degree that people can't decipher simple messages about the danger of radiation, then I think that the cultural aspect of it has died too.

Edit: I understand that writings are culture, but I'm talking about cultural practices or values.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#86

Post by Mirioron »

mywittyname wrote: post #76
mc32 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t the best option in planning for regression be making it inaccessible and unreachable—really hard to get to without technology? Once people have technology back, then presumably they’d be able to detect radiation and avoid the contaminated location? In 100000 years the biggest threat is probably glaciation submerging very large areas of Finland.

Personally, I think you make it as dangerous as possible. So rather than shielding the waste, make it deadly in a matter of hours or minutes. This won't prevent people from trying to extract the contents, but it should prevent them for succeeding. I think a few dead grave robbers / explorers is preferable to the waste being extracted and sold back to civilization.

It has to go from safe to deadly very quickly so that people can more easily connect the dots too.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#87

Post by zardoz711 »

onion2k wrote: post #31
NotPaidToPost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. Any such project can only use engineering to provide assurance that the result should last that long _if_ no-one destroys it.

It's not possible to protect against destruction by human beings over these timescales, irrespective of whether people remember what the artefact means. I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to (reuse of scarce resources, ideological issues, etc). The challenge is getting something to last long enough for our inna…

>I think once something is more than a few hundred years old then humans will automatically try to preserve it unless there's a good reason not to

Would ISIS's destruction of a few World Heritage Sites, museums, art galleries, etc. fall under "ideological issues"

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/videos/world/2015/08/25/isis-destroy...

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#88

Post by Already__Taken »

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.

I thought someone was quoting halo at first.

Anyway, that's probably the reason that energy line is here. But you'd simply check everything you can measure at the time, conclude superstition and continue anyway.

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#89

Post by ninju »

The ROI for all the NASA investments

>Over 20 years ago when I started this project in researching bearings, we found the perfect solution: an all ceramic bearing created for use in satellites and spacecraft

>There was only one problem: when I first heard of these bearings, they cost tens of thousands of dollars and were only used in aerospace.

>...they have become more common and are now used in roller blades and fidget spinners and can cost as little as $10

Re: How to build something that lasts 10k years

#90

Post by Herrin »

erentz wrote: post #67
modernerd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The project's president has said that no symbols at all might be better than any universal warning symbol they could hope to produce, such as a skull and crossbones. Leaving the site unmarked could be less likely to encourage investigation and disturbance of it in the future. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2012/01/15/general/danger-...

That makes more sense to me. It’s not like these waste canisters are going to somehow float to the surface. The biggest problem would have to be sealing the entrance and descending tunnels in such a way to keep the site hidden. Is that possible? If you could do that then the only danger would be a sufficiently advanced culture for some reason trying to drill or dig in that area. And why would they do that if the geol…

I don't know about the one in Finland, but the one in New Mexico is in the Permian Basin[1]. There are oil and gas resources all over the place. There are also Potash mines right next to the New Mexico facility (and it itself is a salt mine). Leaving it unmarked poses a real risk that someone someone will drill or dig into it accidentally looking for resources.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian_Basin_(North_America)

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