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I know this is a cute anecdote, but will you take yours with you when you get buried? And this is assuming that you live in a place where your gravesite won’t b
by devjab 3y ago
I know this is a cute anecdote, but will you take yours with you when you get buried? And this is assuming that you live in a place where your gravesite won’t be reused by someone else a few generations later. If not chances are it’ll either get burned by a garbage processing plant or end up in a landfill along with a lot of other fairly easy to identify as temporary fads like yo-yos and fidget spinners.
The only thing our society leaves, that can be found in a way similar to how we’ve dug out the old civilisations, is frankly nuclear waste. It’s about the only thing that isn’t processed in some way and mass stored along with other processed garbage. Maybe that’s a little more depressing than your cute little anecdote, but at least you can take comfort in the fact that if we don’t do something about our impact on climate change then nobody will be around to dig through our garbage in thousand of years. In part because people bought and sold silly useless stuff like this and shipped it around the globe.
Ok, maybe it’s time for my morning coffee.
- adhesive_wombat 3y ago> mass stored along with other processed garbage Middens[1] are pretty good archeological sources, though. That said, we'll probably end up mining and reprocessing landfills into raw materials before too long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden
- berkes 3y agoI suspect that in fifty million years, when an intelligent species start researching earth layers', they'll find one thick layer of plastics and concrete. Followed by t layers of ash and dead plant matter.
- alvarezbjm-hn 3y agoTo ease your worry, the baked clay will survive a second cook. Your heart will go on!
- bombcar 3y agoWhat is found archeologically is almost "random" out of what is made; things thrown away into a dump are more likely to be "recovered" at some point (if anyone bothers/cares) than things that are just disposed of randomly in the wilderness. And the chance it is discovered and wondered about goes up significantly if climate change wipes out 99% of human population and society; because archeological digs are only interesting when it's a previous "mysterious" society; otherwise we just have historical preservation.