This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: Apocalypse Prevents Decay: From YKTTW
Meta4: Ragnaroof? I thought it was Ragnarok.
Zephid: Maybe it's a pun I don't get.
Earnest: Well, I suggested it thinking of water proofing a roof, hence Ragnaroof Proofing.
Zephid: I don't know...Ragnarök Proofing probably would've worked.
Earnest: This is not directed at anyone, but considering the sparse to non-existent name suggestions before a YKTTW gets launched, is it any wonder? Heck, it's my name suggestion and I agree, Ragnarök Proofing would probably have worked better. However; I am lazy and will neither move nor set up redirects. ;p
Rissa: I am less lazy than Earnest. Ragnarök Proofing it is. [Note to people from the future: this discussion was moved from Ragnaroof Proofing.]
Ununnilium:
Granted, even titanium and clothes in a vacuum wouldn't last that long, but it's the thought that counts.
...how do you know?
Ununnilium:
However, there may be sewer mutants living there.
- Nope, the same episode establishes that the sewers said mutants live in are below the ruins (on the audio commentary for the episode the Word of God states that this is due to slopes and hills and stuff).
If It's Wrong, Take It Out.
Strangehouse: It occurs to me that an archeologist with a fear of skulls would be at a major career disadvantage.
Robert: Removed: For a detailed look at this sort of thing, read the book The World Without Us or watch the History channel special Life After People, or its National Geographic Channel spin-off, Aftermath: Population Zero.
Many of the books and TV programs on this subject have an agenda, to stress the impermanence of human works, so they neglect inconvenient facts. Ask your local paleontologist/geologist how we know there was no dinosaur civilisation, and you'll get a different answer. In principle, the dinosaurs could have burnt all their dead, but that wouldn't be enough. A civilisation like ours would have left scars in the rocks impossible to miss, and we could probably detect even an iron age civilisation.
Robert: Removed:
- It's pretty simple: pick a reasonably lush but hydrologically isolated site, and bury the waste in as high a concentration as possible. Anything written might be mis-interpreted, but a dead patch in the middle of a forest, surrounded by dying vegetation and large numbers of animal skeletons, is not somewere that any sane person would go.
- So the solution is to find someplace unspoiled by the hand of man and make a big pile of all the Low, Intermediate, High level and Transuranic waste (about 56,000 metric tons worth in the US as of April '08) until enough of the environment dies so people know to stay away? While in some strange way this plan may be effective, it lacks subtlety.
Radiactive waste simply would not produce any kind of instant death zone. Also, 56,0000 tons would fit comfortably in a 40 metre cube- since most things have a density of 1 metric ton per cubic metre (the density)of water). That's a pretty small cube, compared to the space available to keep it in.
Ununnilium:
Sadly, none of them include the skull, which is the nearly omni cultural symbol of lethality.
- As scary as the image of a skull is, it has NEVER stopped a single archaeologist in the history of the study of, well... history. In fact, tombs are regularly excavated despite containing real skulls, let alone a depiction of one. That's why this problem is such a head scracher.
- Of course, it also presupposes that our current culture will die out or somehow forget what's there, or even forget what radiation is.
- That is the entire point of this entry. Imagine you're the future man trying to understand someone from a thousand years ago. Even if they speak the antecedent to your language, with all the permutations and changes would you understand them? Could they effectively relay to you ideas or concepts that no one you've met have thought of in generations? Now imagine they don't speak your language. Maybe geographically they lived in the same place as you but war and migration have displaced them and there is no common ground to establish any kind of rapport. Increase the time between your cultures to 6563 years, which is the half-life of Plutonium-240 (If I put the half-life of Plutonium-244 you wouldn't believe me). If some caveman left you a note trying to tell you not to open a door because invisible rays of energy would fly out and melt your skin you'd assume it was some superstition and go about your business. That is the near hopeless task at hand.
- As scary as the image of a skull is, it has NEVER stopped a single archaeologist in the history of the study of, well... history. In fact, tombs are regularly excavated despite containing real skulls, let alone a depiction of one. That's why this problem is such a head scracher.
Conversation In The Main Page.
- In WALL-E, set over 800 years in the future, several appliances such as toasters, electric lights, car alarms, and even VHS tapes work more or less very well.
Nooooooooo. He occasionally found one that was working... out of millions and millions that weren't.
