Build Foundation/Shangri-la for Earth.

[Baffalo]

The problem I have with this is that a Lagrange point sounds nice, but if anything sweeps through with a high enough gravitational attraction (say, an asteroid), then it could potentially disrupt it.

Well yeah, nothing's perfect. It's more stable than planetary orbit to be sure, but no amount of foresight will protect against a large gamma ray burst or the passage of a black hole or something equally nasty. As far as protecting against the fall of civilization, putting data caches in stable orbits or on other worlds is pretty much as human-proof as you can get.

You know... I'd honestly make it fail. A planned failure is one that can lead to a resounding success. I'd place it in an orbit designed to decay after, say, 500 years. When 500 years rolls around, there will be one of two situations: either civilization will continue on, and thus can simply boost it back up to repeat the process, or it will have collapsed and it can decay to land in a spot, say, in the middle of Europe or the American Midwest. Near a place that would make a likely point for human civilization to begin grasping. That way, it's a delivery system that can be found by the locals and used to rebuild without making it impossible to obtain.

There are obvious flaws with this plan, such as what's to stop the people who find it from turning into dictators. But I think that's a genuine issue for just about any plan. You can't control the information forever, just hope that when it gets into someone's hands they use it for good and go from there.

[Darth Tanner]

Why not build it on the moon big enough you can see it with telescopes... would be great encouragement to get a space program going if there is a race to go get the ancients knowledge.

[Borgholio]

Sure that would be a great idea, but it would have to be huge. We're talking a big bulls-eye a couple hundred miles across. But if that can be accomplished, that'd be a great way to let people know there's something up there.

[InsaneTD]

2001 monolith anyone?

[FaxModem1]

So, no one would be in favor of a system of people coming back to the wasteland to rebuild civilization and bringing about peace, education and civilization after a fall, or making it accessible to those who want to flee whatever chaos is actually out there? I think, while establishing back-up repositories and databanks on the moon/satellites/whatever is a good practical goal, it most certainly means that mankind won't receive the benefits of all of history and knowledge until after it's no longer needed.

I guess we should hammer down whether or not we want to just be a safehouse for knowledge, or to also be some sort of school to help those afterwords.

[Ahriman238]

A very limited, if low-tech, version of this is available. It's called the Georgia Guidestones or occasionally American Stonehenge. Mind, I feel it will benefit future generations more as a 20th Century Rosetta Stone than as a meaningful guide to civilization, and AFAIK we don't know if they ever actually set the time capsule or what went in it.


There was a book, On the Beach, where the last survivors of the atomic wars were living out their last months in Australia. IIRC, a bunch of academians decided their time was best spent recording all human history and knowledge, coding the data onto some kind of glass or lexan bricks and building a massive pyramid on (Ayers Rock?) a large hill or mountain. The outermost layer had pictographs with some of the basics, like showing agriculture, and instructions on how to read the rest. The book was late 1950s, surely we could pull off the same today? Granted, we're under less of a time pressure and have less reason to make the project a priority.

[Balrog]

So, no one would be in favor of a system of people coming back to the wasteland to rebuild civilization and bringing about peace, education and civilization after a fall, or making it accessible to those who want to flee whatever chaos is actually out there? I think, while establishing back-up repositories and databanks on the moon/satellites/whatever is a good practical goal, it most certainly means that mankind won't receive the benefits of all of history and knowledge until after it's no longer needed.

I guess we should hammer down whether or not we want to just be a safehouse for knowledge, or to also be some sort of school to help those afterwords.

The problem in such a situation is, if the Vault of Ancient Knowledge is too accessible, then it's also more vulnerable to damage or destruction whether by natural or man-made causes. And really in the immediate aftermath of any post-apocalyptical scenario people are going to care more about their safety and well-being than whether that book they're burning to keep warm is the last copy of Shakespeare's collected works.

The ideal I believe would be as you said to construct a safehouse for knowledge, one which could eventually be relocated by a sufficiently advanced rebuilt society. Have various vaults built across the world in geologically stable regions, far enough underground that you couldn't accidentally stumble upon them but close enough that society could eventually dig them up. Have additional back-ups in orbit on satellites or the moon if you have the time/resources to accomplish this in time.

[Imperial528]

I would suggest building sites of monumental size at the tops of mountains. Not so high as say Everest, but places that most people just looking to survive would see and go "Fuck that" then go about their lives.

Carve as much basic information as possible on the outside of large stone, metal or concrete monuments that will be situated near bunkers that can only be easily opened by someone with a grasp of the world, perhaps design puzzle-lock based on math or physics, the stars maybe.

Make anything exposed be very simple, but clearly artificial. Giant tapered prisms or pyramids, built in solid pieces (or as practically solid as possible) so that they won't be torn down easily for materials. Put them in plain view of locations likely to house civilization, like on the tops of scenic mountains. Thus, any future person with a desire to explore and seek knowledge would be easily intrigued and drawn to them.

For the bunkers built underneath these monuments I'd design them in sections so that you can only proceed if you have understanding of the one you're in. Technological progress is great but if it goes too fast the future societies may become vulnerable to either outside forces or social unrest caused by a rapidly changing world.

This probably isn't foolproof, but it's worked before, if not for the same purposes, in cases such as the Pyramids or Stonehenge. Give people something simple and hard to break and they probably won't succeed in destroying it, if they even try.

[Ahriman238]

Is there any good reason not to put together a sort of short term care package, say some small seed stock, steel tools, a guide to civilization in every common language, in a big time capsule and wherever you bury it, raise a big obelisk saying "In case of apocalypse/collapse of civilization, dig here?"

I mean, why design it specifically to be inaccessible during the early days and the scramble for survival? Shouldn't that be when our hypothetical descendents will need help the most?

[Zeropoint]

Well, that would be good in addition to more comprehensive and harder-to-access vaults, but we (here on the board at least) seem to be worried about people trashing the vaults for short-term gain, and are thinking about how to restrict access to people with a little more foresight than that.

[Balrog]

Is there any good reason not to put together a sort of short term care package, say some small seed stock, steel tools, a guide to civilization in every common language, in a big time capsule and wherever you bury it, raise a big obelisk saying "In case of apocalypse/collapse of civilization, dig here?"

I mean, why design it specifically to be inaccessible during the early days and the scramble for survival? Shouldn't that be when our hypothetical descendents will need help the most?

We already have those. They're called "preppers."

More seriously, while such things would make sense in addition to our Vault(s) of Ancient Knowledge, in many immediate post-apocalyptical events all that stuff (seeds, tools, etc.) will still be available, it'll just be a matter of scavenging them from amongst the wreckage. If not, then it's not likely the caches would survive either. You still run into the problem that if they are easily accessible then it would be easy, besides being destroyed during the event, of falling prey to pre-event corruption ("They're burying what into the ground way over there? That's shit I could use now, they won't mind if I head on over and borrow some...") There is also the possibility that any surviving caches could be conquered by would-be warlords who would then proceed to leverage this to their advantage, which I believe is something we'd like to prevent?

[Nephtys]

A much more reasonable alternative to 'grand, super-awesome location' is distribution.

Make them suitcase-sized packages, hardened and produced in the hundreds of thousands or more. Make them rugged, simple, and run off solar power or foot pumps or anything that can produce a small charge, perhaps dsiplaying say on e-paper. And from that, have the drives contain as much human knowledge as possible, indexed and searchable in a wide variety of languages.

Every few decades, issue out hundreds of thousands of new ones, or refurbishment/upgrade packs. It'll still be cheaper than any lagrange point space exercise.

Add a few supplies for growing crops, and we could give it a name. Perhaps 'General Educational Compendium Kit', or GECK...

[Zeropoint]

Your acronym is one letter away from an actual word.

<cracks open the dictionary to "O">

[Joun_Lord]

So, no one would be in favor of a system of people coming back to the wasteland to rebuild civilization and bringing about peace, education and civilization after a fall, or making it accessible to those who want to flee whatever chaos is actually out there? I think, while establishing back-up repositories and databanks on the moon/satellites/whatever is a good practical goal, it most certainly means that mankind won't receive the benefits of all of history and knowledge until after it's no longer needed.

I guess we should hammer down whether or not we want to just be a safehouse for knowledge, or to also be some sort of school to help those afterwords.

The problem is putting such things in the hands of savage people, technology and science, could potentially worsen the situation and prolong the anarchy. Some spikey haired gas station warlord getting his hands on a repository won't be interested in seeing the Mona Lisa or studying the antikythera analog computer. At best he will exploit the tech to build weapons to dominate his enemies (this could actually be a good thing in the long run by uniting people though the short term will be bad) but more likely he will use Lisa as firewood and scrap the computer to make bullets or spear points depending on his level of tech. Some vault containing all those items won't be seen as something to preserve, it will either be a treasure chest to plunder or a new house (any place that survived the apocalypse is going to make a great base).

By making it so people can only access the vaults or moon bases when they have the necessary tech means they will have worked to gain that tech and will be atleast somewhat civilized. They are more likely to not abuse the wonders and horrors we chucked in the vaults and be more likely to continue to preserve what we left behind rather then looting it.

Now maybe to help rebuild we don't only try to preserve our knowledge but some people as well. On that moonbase or in the vaults, we make them bigger so scientists, engineers, artists, and other people of not that could try to help preserve knowledge and pass it along to their descendants. These keepers of the lore of our world can be nice safe and sound while the world fries and when the dust and radiation settles can maybe go out and help try to rebuild.

Of course they probably won't be met with open arms by survivors and their descendants. People are going to look at thse technologically advanced people with envy, either kill them out or spite or try to torture the location of where they came from.

So these vaulters would probably not be coming out with books but guns, civilizing the wasteland by force.

You'd might wind up with a organization like the Enclave, willing to conquer and kill to bring back civilization. Some might consider that a good thing but others not so much. Even if they have the best intentions and actually mean to do good shit still alot of people and cultures might be harmed. But thats if they even plan to help out, they could be saying shit people want to hear but secretly planning on killing off all the dirty wasters like John Henry Eden, President of the Enclave, President of America, President... of your heart.

More likely we'd see a repeat of colonialism where powerful invaders exterminate or exploit less civilized people. It would be their "Learned Man's Burden" to liberate the planet from ignorant savages and either destroy the savages or "civilize" them by any means necessary.

Still helping people out would be good. Build a shitton of supply shelters that contain some supplies and some information. Only information that can't be used to easily create weapons. Medical knowledge, farming knowledge, survival tips, all would be great for survivors to..... well survive. Maybe etch them into the walls of the shelters in easy to understand pictographs so even if its pretty savages people finding the places they can probably figure out some stuff from the shelter.

But helping out people should not detract from the main goal, preserving not individual people but the whole of humanity and all it has built.

[Prannon]

My two cents on the subject...

I'm surprised no one has considered the idea of preserving the fact of our existence for future _species_, much less humans. I'm looking at this topic and thinking in terms of millions of years, and nothing that has been discussed is really destined to last that long.

I dunno. Can you imagine how profound it would be for us humans to discover evidence of an intelligent dinosaur species that was fried in the KT impact?

[biostem]

Could you create something like a ROM chip, encoded with gigabytes of information, (non-magnetic), stored in a water and air-tight stainless steel block?

[Balrog]

My two cents on the subject...

I'm surprised no one has considered the idea of preserving the fact of our existence for future _species_, much less humans. I'm looking at this topic and thinking in terms of millions of years, and nothing that has been discussed is really destined to last that long.

I dunno. Can you imagine how profound it would be for us humans to discover evidence of an intelligent dinosaur species that was fried in the KT impact?

Would it be even possible to build anything which could last that long? Forget anything complex like books or computer chips, at that timescale even something as large and extensive as the Great Wall of China would be subject to the forces of erosion and who-knows-what which could reduce it to something not even discernable from the rest of the natural features of this planet.

I think the only guarantee of making our existence known to future species millions of years from now is to simply build as much as possible in as many ways as possible and hope that one-in-a-million chance discovery is found.

[Borgholio]

Would it be even possible to build anything which could last that long?

I highly doubt that anything technological could be built...it would have to be something like a pyramid buried in a salt mine. Anything on the surface would suffer from erosion over millions of years. Only in a stable cave could something exist for that long.

[jwl]

My two cents on the subject...

I'm surprised no one has considered the idea of preserving the fact of our existence for future _species_, much less humans. I'm looking at this topic and thinking in terms of millions of years, and nothing that has been discussed is really destined to last that long.

I dunno. Can you imagine how profound it would be for us humans to discover evidence of an intelligent dinosaur species that was fried in the KT impact?

My idea would still work. The reason why I said it is that I remember a "world after humans" documentary where they mention that the longest thing that will last after people is the inscriptions on underwater gold bars.

Putting something on the moon would work, but there is more of a question of access.

[FaxModem1]

How safe would materials on the moon be, since there would be risk of the occasional asteroid, meteor or other space junk colliding into it without an atmosphere to help dwindle down the incoming object?

[jwl]

Only very occasionally though. I don't think there is that much risk.