In 150,000 or 200,000 years what is someone going to think, coming across a nuclear waste dump? “What the fuck is this?” What thoughts will go through their mind, being aware that, 150,000 or 200,000 years prior, a few generations of Homo sapiens decided to leave this toxic shit around for the next hundreds of millenia?
Safety and emergency plans and preparations take into account maybe days or weeks, sometimes months, but rarely years or decades or centuries. People invest a high degree of confidence in the catastrophic not happening. There is an implicit assumption of a certain fundamental continuity into the future. Things will be more-or-less the same, the thinking goes. They might be a little different, a little worse, but in major ways it is assumed they will be the same.
Decisions have been and are being – or not being – made which have vast implications for future existence. And with the yen for which humans now have for creating all sorts of convenient gadgets and devices, why is not even a small fraction, a teeny, itsy fraction, devoted to the people who will live in 150,000 or 200,000 years? I think its pretty sad if the only thing left for them are dumps with signs which read “Danger” and “Stay away”.
I hope people can find a generosity not just for people of the present, but people of the distant future whose existences will be inevitably touched by those of this time. I leave it to readers’ imaginations to consider what types of things would be potentially useful to those who live in the far, far distant future. Even the process of beginning to think about what it would be like has benefits.
It cannot be assumed that there will be continuity. The manufacturing of devices, of electronic items, of machines powered by fuel – none of that is given. Given that fact, what might truly be helpful to
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