Survival of Structures
Russell Stewart
: Phillip McGregor (asp...@sydney.DIALix.oz.au) wrote:
: : In a followup to my post about survival of information storage media, what
: : *man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
: : asteroid and nuclear war of modest proportions *as well as* and *Ice Age*)
: : in good enough condition to be recognisably human made?
: : The only things that I can think of are the Pyramids at Giza. Superhighways
: : may also survive ... but probably only as earth covered mounds of rubble -
: : not as recognisably man made.
: : Can anyone think of anything else that might?
: : Thanx,
: : Phil McGregor (asp...@sydney.dialix.oz.au)
: How about:
: Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral (unless the area is flooded
: at some point)
: NORAD headquarters at Cheyenne Mtn.
: Great Wall of China
: Major cities around the world (yes, they'll be mostly rubble, but they'll
: still be recognizable as cities, and that rubble might protect structures
: underneath from further damage)
All very good suggestions. What an interesting window into human civilization
that would make (assuming, of course, that they purposes could ever be
ascertained).
Let me also add that, since he didn't specify only Earth structures, many
of our interplanetary probes would survive for eons longer than anything
here on Earth. Particularly: Apollo landing sites, Viking, Voyagers &
Pioneers (these will be the longest-lasting by far, surviving even the
death of our sun), Probably Ulysses (what is it expected to do after it
completes its mission -- will it just keep circling the sun?), and anything
else we launch from now on. (Note: I didn't include Galileo because its
orbit will no doubt fall prey to tidal forces after a very short period of
time -- Jupiter is not a planet one wants to hang around when long-term
survival is imperative).
Also the earth's cloud of recognizably-artificial orbital debris will no
doubt be around for quite some time.
--
*********************************************************************
* Russell Stewart | "Is this a game of chance?" *
* dia...@rt66.com | "Not the way I play it, no." *
* Albuquerque, NM | -W.C. Fields *
*********************************************************************
Russell Stewart
[ Author was Phillip McGregor ]
[ Posted on Tue, 23 Aug 94 09:23:47 GMT ]
In a followup to my post about survival of information storage media, what
*man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
asteroid and nuclear war of modest proportions *as well as* and *Ice Age*)
in good enough condition to be recognisably human made?
The only things that I can think of are the Pyramids at Giza. Superhighways
may also survive ... but probably only as earth covered mounds of rubble -
not as recognisably man made.
Can anyone think of anything else that might?
Thanx,
Phil McGregor (asp...@sydney.dialix.oz.au)
--
Peter Kwangjun Suk
>[ Article crossposted from alt.history.what-if ]
>[ Author was Phillip McGregor ]
>[ Posted on Tue, 23 Aug 94 09:23:47 GMT ]
>In a followup to my post about survival of information storage media, what
>*man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
>asteroid and nuclear war of modest proportions *as well as* and *Ice Age*)
>in good enough condition to be recognisably human made?
>The only things that I can think of are the Pyramids at Giza. Superhighways
>may also survive ... but probably only as earth covered mounds of rubble -
>not as recognisably man made.
>Can anyone think of anything else that might?
>Thanx,
>Phil McGregor (asp...@sydney.dialix.oz.au)
There was an article in _The Smithsonian_ magazine on exactly this
subject about 8 years ago or so. The Pyramids at Giza will probably
outlast even modern structures simply because of location. (Hoover
and Grand Coulee Dam are very tough structures, but are located in
riverbeds.) The St. Louis Arch turns out to be incredibly tough. The
upper part is made of steel, and will eventually collapse, in part
because moisture will eventually find its way inside. But the
remaining pillars are stainless steel clad reinforced concrete. The
stainless steel cladding will protect the concrete from weather, and
reinforced concrete so protected is really stubborn.
(All IIRC.)
Good place for a time capsule.
But as far as survivng an ice age, put a time capsule on the moon.
Then write a message in the regolith in letters large enough to
be seen from Earth by the naked eye:
Hey! You lovers and dreamers
and all that! The time capsule
is *here!*
-------> x
Oh, and it's Russell's turn to do the impact statement ;-)
--PKS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's neither heaven nor hell -- Save that we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice -- Save what we grant each other.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Nicoll
Peter Kwangjun Suk <s...@usceast.cs.scarolina.edu> wrote:
>
>But as far as survivng an ice age, put a time capsule on the moon.
Context deleted in a major way
Ice sheets only reached as far south as Wisconsin, in North America.
Artifacts in equatorial regions shouldn't have to worry about damage directly
caused by glaciation.
What's large, durable and located in Australia? I don't think
they got glaciers in the last ice age.
James Nicoll
James Nicoll
--
"(The severed hand) drew a crowd real quick," Webber added. "Everybody
quit working. Pretty soon, I told them to put the hand back in the glove
box and go back to work. Then we got to thinking, maybe we better call
the police."
Henry Troup
>*man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
>asteroid and nuclear war of modest proportions *as well as* and *Ice Age*)
>in good enough condition to be recognisably human made?
Well, I've been in 50K year old structures. Europe has plenty of Neolithic
underground dwellings that were recognizeable to archeologists. I suspect
that there are lots of things that would be that recognizable.
Carved mountains and major mines, for sure. The nickel mines near
Sudbury in Canadian Shield rock for example. That rock is very stable,
and has already been scoured by several ice ages. Direct nuclear
strikes are probable (in a "spasm" scenario), but would only affect
the surface structures. Later miners would certainly realize that
they were hitting old tunnels, even collapsed ones.
They might find recognizable artifacts in mines, piles of rusted steel
with the odd aluminum and glass piece.
I'd think that the basements and pilings that support most skyscrapers
would be recognizable as artifacts after 25k years.
Strangely enough, crater glass from nuclear explosions is not too
likely as an artifact - the Trinity test site is apparently hard to
well from surrounding desert. And ground strikes are not in most
nuclear war scenarios.
Major mountain tunnels of railroads should be recognizable, even if
collapsed.
For fiction purposes, it depends if you mean savages recognize
"works of gods", early (medieval-level) civilizations recognize
"works of man" or 19th/20th C level recognizes "we are not first".
--
Henry Troup - H.T...@BNR.CA (Canada) - BNR owns but does not share my opinions
If God had meant us to think, he'd have given us brains. -- Nick Munn
Brian Pickrell
: [ Article crossposted from alt.history.what-if ]
: [ Author was Phillip McGregor ]
: [ Posted on Tue, 23 Aug 94 09:23:47 GMT ]
: In a followup to my post about survival of information storage media, what
: *man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
: asteroid and nuclear war of modest proportions *as well as* and *Ice Age*)
: in good enough condition to be recognisably human made?
: The only things that I can think of are the Pyramids at Giza. Superhighways
: may also survive ... but probably only as earth covered mounds of rubble -
: not as recognisably man made.
I think you're overestimatin the speed of weathering of stone or concrete
structures. Things can deteriorate fairly fast in a wet climate, but
for rock in fairly dry conditions to change significantly takes, uh,
geologic time.
Here's an example to form an estimate from. Devil's Tower is a huge
pillar of rock in Wyoming, surrounded by a field of huge chunks that
have broken off over the millions of years. I was told that the most
recent piece fell off 10,000 years ago.
Concrete won't last as long as hard stone, but a ruined building
can potentially stay recognizably a building for a very long time.
I suspect that there will be quite a number of old buildings still
there in the distant future, and most of them will be in dry
regions such as Australia or the southwest US.
Brian Pickrell
Andrew Raphael
> What's large, durable and located in Australia? I don't think
>they got glaciers in the last ice age.
Uluru (i.e. Ayers Rock). You can't bury things in Uluru, it's a sacred site.
Ditto the Olgas. There's a carved mountain, but they're carving it because
it's iron ore, not to honour heads of state. However, central Australia has
been flooded before, so it may be again.
Actually, Australia is a good visualisation tool for people who want
to know what something will look like in the far future. Want to know
what a rainforest looks like after the rainforest is gone? It looks
like Australia. Red soils halfway to aluminium ore. Want to know what
the Cascades will look like when eroded? Go to Coonabarrabran & climb
the Warrumbungles. They're volcanic plugs, what's left after the rest
of the mountain is gone.
--
Andrew Raphael <rap...@research.canon.oz.au>
"She's probably not what she seems, though she tries"
Ross Smith
>
> Ice sheets only reached as far south as Wisconsin, in North America.
>Artifacts in equatorial regions shouldn't have to worry about damage directly
>caused by glaciation.
>
> What's large, durable and located in Australia? I don't think
>they got glaciers in the last ice age.
Sydney Harbour Bridge, maybe? How long before it falls down, if it isn't
maintained?
--
... Ross Smith (Wanganui, New Zealand) ... al...@acheron.wanganui.gen.nz ...
Keeper of the FAQ for rec.aviation.military
"The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what 'fiction' means."
(Oscar Wilde)
Leonard Erickson
PKS> But as far as survivng an ice age, put a time capsule on the moon.
PKS> Then write a message in the regolith in letters large enough to
PKS> be seen from Earth by the naked eye:
PKS> Hey! You lovers and dreamers
PKS> and all that! The time capsule
PKS> is *here!*
PKS> -------> x
You need to take a look at the moon with the naked eye a bit more
often. You can't write *anything* readable that's visible to the naked
eye. Not more than 1-3 symbols *max*. The moon does *not* occupy that
much space in the sky.
... My other computer is a H.A.R.L.I.E.
David Patterson
I think PKS's suggestion was pretty good. Of course, "writing" is a
bit funny; it makes much more sense (as I'm sure PKS intended us to see)
to put the package at the center of some obviously non-random pattern.
Maybe concentric triangles? circles might be too easily explained by
some funny crater formation. Squares would work ok though.
This package can only reach a civilization with spaceflight as good as
ours is today (or sadly, better). How large objects can we see with
good telescopes on the moon? f it is less than 20 meters or so, maybe
we can paint the message itself on the moon.
Dave Patterson
hans f barsun
John L Redford <j...@world.std.com> wrote:
>>In a followup to my post about survival of information storage media, what
>>*man made* structures are likely to survive 25000 years (and an intervening
>
>- Carved mountains. There are several in the US (Rushmore being the
>most famous), and probably others around the world.
nope. rockfall and erosion will take care off these pretty quickly
-Hans
hans f barsun
Brian Pickrell <pick...@netcom.com> wrote:
>
>Here's an example to form an estimate from. Devil's Tower is a huge
>pillar of rock in Wyoming, surrounded by a field of huge chunks that
>have broken off over the millions of years. I was told that the most
>recent piece fell off 10,000 years ago.
>
It is not uncommon for large (1000+ ft tall) rock faces to shed blocks the
size of refrigerators, volkswagens or houses. The harsher the weather,
the more rockfall there will be.
Yeah, the face will still be around in 25K years, but will the features
on it?
-Hans
Brian Pickrell
: In article <pickrellC...@netcom.com>,
: Brian Pickrell <pick...@netcom.com> wrote:
: >
: >Here's an example to form an estimate from. Devil's Tower is a huge
: >pillar of rock in Wyoming, surrounded by a field of huge chunks that
: >have broken off over the millions of years. I was told that the most
: >recent piece fell off 10,000 years ago.
: >
: How big of a chunk are we talking about here?
I don't know, but the rubble I saw ranged from car- to house-sized.
: It is not uncommon for large (1000+ ft tall) rock faces to shed blocks the
: size of refrigerators, volkswagens or houses. The harsher the weather,
: the more rockfall there will be.
Yes, the rate of weathering varies widely. I was on Mount Rainier last year
and heard an almost incessant rumble of falling rocks. The largest amount
of damage is done by water melting, refreezing and expanding. My
optimistic view of how long things could last applies only to things
made of hard rock, in a dry environment where freezes are not common.
: Yeah, the face will still be around in 25K years, but will the features
: on it?
Features will erode away fastest on surfaces such as sandstone, limestone
(and cement). A hard rock such as granite shouldn't have this problem.
But, to be honest, I don't know how fast a granite surface will erode.
I think the real point of the example I gave above is that 25,000 years
is a very short time, geologically.
Brian Pickrell
Brian Pickrell
[...]
: Anything made out of gold and/or diamond will last basically
: forever.
If you want your monument to last, don't make it out of gold, diamond,
or anything valuable. And don't make it look as though there might
be something valuable inside it. If looters don't get it, archae-
ologists will. Anything that gets put into a museum 8000 years from
now will not be around 25,000 years from now.
The ideal permanent structure should be unreachable (in outer space),
immovable (Mount Rushmore), and/or intrinsically worthless (Peru's
Nazca lines, perhaps).
Brian Pickrell
Isaac Kuo
>Isaac Kuo (isaa...@lhasa.berkeley.edu) wrote:
>: Anything made out of gold and/or diamond will last basically
>: forever.
>If you want your monument to last, don't make it out of gold, diamond,
>or anything valuable. And don't make it look as though there might
>be something valuable inside it. If looters don't get it, archae-
The original poster had assumed that a nuclear war or other
disaster killed off all the humans, and that no special effort
was made specifically to make survivable structures. In other
words, he was asking what sort of stuff already around would
survive assuming all the humans were killed off.
--
_____ Isaac Kuo (isaa...@math.berkeley.edu)
__|_>o<_|__
/___________\ "Kunoo-chan, Kunoo-chan, kirai ja nai wa."
\=\>-----</=/ --Tendoo Nabiki
paul michael nolan
I would refer you to Robert A. Heinlein, The Man who Sold the Moon. Harriman
and Co. specifically used this idea as a ploy to obtain funding for their
private moonshot project. He was looking at the idea of a
logo (Hammer + Sickle etc.) and used this to get U.S. funds.
--
paul michael nolan
Arden Software Ltd.
Alan Braggins
In article <77807703...@jina.rain.com> Leonard....@f51.n105.z1.fidonet.org (Leonard Erickson) writes:
> -=> Quoting Peter Kwangjun Suk to All <=-
>
> PKS> But as far as survivng an ice age, put a time capsule on the moon.
> PKS> Then write a message in the regolith in letters large enough to
> PKS> be seen from Earth by the naked eye:
>
> PKS> Hey! You lovers and dreamers
> PKS> and all that! The time capsule
> PKS> is *here!*
> PKS> -------> x
[...]
L.RON HUBBARD goes on forever. His Church of Spiritual
Technology `has designed gas-filled, titanium time capsules to
hold Hubbard's teachings, and plans to place 10,500 of the
capsules in three vaults, two built to resist earthquakes or
nuclear attack.... Hubbard's writings will be preserved on 1.8
million stainless steel plates and his lectures on 187,000 nickel
records that could be played back with a stylus as crude as a
thorn in the event of some future cataclysm.... "[CST]" also
plans to place large, indestructible obelisks around the world
covered with pictographs explaining Scientology "so that even a
wandering savage will be able to understand and apply these
principles."' [AP via NR] Next, MISSION EARTH will reappear as
the first sf `megalithology' published on one million obelisks,
with truly frightening implications for the future of
remaindering.
[...]
Ansible 78 (c) Dave Langford, 1994. Thanks to Amanda Baker,
British Fantasy Soc Newsletter, Dave Clements, Jon Cowie, Neil
Gaiman, Gamma, Bruce Gillespie, John Grant, Steve Green, Rob
Hansen, Ken Lake, Catherine McAulay, Joseph Nicholas, Charles
Platt, Chris Priest, David Pringle, Nigel Rowe and Our Hero
Distributors.
6 Jan 94
--
Alan Braggins ar...@setanta.demon.co.uk abra...@cix.compulink.co.uk
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced"
Tony Buckland
>The original poster had assumed that a nuclear war or other
>disaster killed off all the humans, and that no special effort
>was made specifically to make survivable structures. In other
>words, he was asking what sort of stuff already around would
>survive assuming all the humans were killed off.
Addressing that issue, then: I'd bet on the Interstate Highway
System. Not as a usable collection of roads; but the _pattern_
is so enormous and covers so many diverse kinds of geology that
it should be discernible for a lot longer than 25K years.
Also, a lot of the bigger inland cities (unfortunately, a
minority of the great cities qualify, and the majority are all
too vulnerable to even minor sea level changes and the occasional
hurricane or tsunami) should similarly survive as evidence that
some big collection of technological people were there, because
of the sheer bulk of non-natural material in them.
Bruce Grubb
They are all on Antartica. These places are the various scientific research
baces that the counties of the set up there. Surprisingly not much snow
accumulates near the center of Antartica where the baces are located and was
does fall is blown away. Also remember that it took millions of years for
Antartica to built up it present ice sheet which means that whatever snow does
fall will likely not be deep enough to crush the structures.
The center area of Antartica is perfect for preservation: its cold {paper,
wood, etc will survive}, the glacers will not destroy structures {the center
is like a glacer hurricane-very little movement even in geologic time}, it is
remote enough that no one will loot the place, and it was not amoung the
targets for nukes.
It is unlikely that the Scott musuem will survive though, as it is on the edge
of the ice sheet where movement is the greatest and in any case the
accumulation of snow there would eventually crush it.
Something from the here and now that would likely survive the conditions set foreth.
Phillip McGregor
>There are several places that would survive a nuclear war and 25,000 years.
>They are all on Antartica. These places are the various scientific research
>baces that the counties of the set up there. Surprisingly not much snow
>accumulates near the center of Antartica where the baces are located and was
>does fall is blown away. Also remember that it took millions of years for
>Antartica to built up it present ice sheet which means that whatever snow does
>fall will likely not be deep enough to crush the structures.
Actually, remember that the *original* conditions *include* an Ice Age - now,
given that what you say about the centre of Antarctica may be true of normal
times, does it apply during a period when the mean solar output drops by 10%
or more (the minimum requirement, so I believe, for an Ice Age event)? The
research I did indicated that the coming of an Ice Age causes considerable
climatic change worldwide ... wind patterns, precipitation patterns, ocean
currents etc. (*At leastm, what I understood of it, I'm only a BA with a
History and Government major, and the Geology texts I was reading were often
written so obtusely that a mere layman like myself may well have misinterpreted
or downright misunderstood what they were saying*)
So, I presume that the extra snow/ice and changed weather patterns would make
the survival of the bases at the centre of the Antarctic moot. They *might*
still be there, but probably under scores, if not hundreds, of meters of ice.
In any case, access to the Antarctic centre requires more sophisticated
technology than the Bronze Age successor culture I was talking about finding
any surviving records/structures.
Thanx,
Phil McGregor
--
===============================================================================
Phil McGregor (asp...@sydney.dialix.oz.au) | Have Game Designer Will Travel
Tel: (02) 905-4986 (home) | (and he will, if he gets the $$)
1 Park Street, Harbord, NSW 2096 Australia, snail mail
Paul Dietz
One very obviously artificial class of structures that will leave an
imprint for geologic time are petroleum boreholes. These often go a
mile or more into rock, are lined with steel and cement, and (when
production is finished) are filled with cement. Even if the steel
oxidizes and the fill turns to clay, these things will stand out like
sore thumbs when the rock they are in uncovered by erosion. And
humanity has drilled millions of them (production wells are often
spaced very closely).
Paul