preserving human knowledge in case of Extinction Level Event (ELE, ELE's)

TinderBox (UK)

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what would be the best way to safeguard the knowledge that the human race has strived to accumulate over thousands of years in case of an global disaster.

some sort of restart manual for the survivors to use if they had to start over again.

what do you think.
 
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HarryN

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

The best way to preserve knowledge is its widespread use in virtually all parts of the world. That is one reason it is so important to have engineering and manufacturing capability for any product in for ALL areas, not just select locations of the world.
 

TinderBox (UK)

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

what would happen if the sun emitted an massive solar flare, that blew out all electrical and electronic equipment at the same time.

Apart from books in library, we would be back to square one.

before long all information will be stored in electronic form instead of books.

what happens then without the written word to fall back on.

we need some secure way of storing knowledge.
 

mobile1

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

CDRom and DVDs are non magnetic storage medium, so everything saved there, such as your vacation photos should be fine...

:popcorn:
 

TinderBox (UK)

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

without something to play them on they are just frisbys.

any unshielded electronics would be toast.

that`s why we need special protected repositories.


mobile1 said:
CDRom and DVDs are non magnetic storage medium, so everything saved there, such as your vacation photos should be fine...

:popcorn:
 

TedTheLed

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

if all that knowledge leads to the destruction of the planet, why preserve it?



:thumbsdow
 

B@rt

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

Ted, if that were the case I'd agree, but we're talking about a non-human intervention event. ;)
 

TedTheLed

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

Br@t! what ? are you reading entire threads again? how could you..

I was kinda wonderin what "ELE" was while I was posting.. oh well, in fact, I've made this same point about the fragility of digital media often times meself..

(insert your favorite 'I'm an ignorant slut' smilie here)

(Thank you B@rt :) )
 

TinderBox (UK)

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

yes human being are strange creatures indeed.

would the world have been better of if we had never existed.

only time will tell.

edit: and ELE is not the presidents mistress.
 

TedTheLed

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

the strangest aspect of em I think is their inability to control their numbers..

..can't we even get one step up above the rats? (though I don't see the rats getting into any trouble due to over population..)

I keep mentioning it; 2000 years ago, there were 1,000,000 people on the planet..

now there's 8,000,000,000. :ohgeez:
 

drizzle

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

What is ELE? I know what EMP is and SHTF but ELE?

I think HarryN hit it. The next best thing would be books written on oiled paper.

Not that I think this would be ideal for a global disaster but the best way to permanently store digital information (aside from having zillions of copies) is on punched mylar tape. Unlike any electromagnetic or opto-crystal media it won't ever go bad as long as it is kept from getting hot enough to melt. I learned that one at Boeing where they used it as their master archive storage.
 

idleprocess

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

TinderBox (UK) said:
what would happen if the sun emitted an massive solar flare, that blew out all electrical and electronic equipment at the same time.

Highly unlikely that a flare could last long enough and be powerful enough to fry any signifigant percentage of the world's electronics. Anything on the dark side of the planet would benefit from a few thousands miles' worth of shielding from the planet itself.

Given that there are a number of communications satellites in orbit outside of the protection of the ionosphere that are routinely exposed to the worst solar flares, I don't think such a disaster is too likely.
 

TinderBox (UK)

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Re: preserving human knowledge in case of ELE.

I was only giving examples of things that might happen.

anyway whose to say the sun is only going to give out one solar flare.

they whole point of this thread is to discuss ways of protecting our knowledge from being lost.

idleprocess said:
Highly unlikely that a flare could last long enough and be powerful enough to fry any signifigant percentage of the world's electronics. Anything on the dark side of the planet would benefit from a few thousands miles' worth of shielding from the planet itself.

Given that there are a number of communications satellites in orbit outside of the protection of the ionosphere that are routinely exposed to the worst solar flares, I don't think such a disaster is too likely.
 

TedTheLed

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doesn't look likely to be dangerous to me

<image of "Elle" (MacPherson) deleted - link not working>

(oh, well, since 'ELE' turns out to be "Extinction Level Event," and only "Global Disaster" was mentioned ni the first post, I retract my "apology" :nana: )
 
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xochi

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If a real "ELE" were to occur it would be a long time before our knowledge would be of any use. The vast majority of our knowledge is available because population allows for an ever increasing specialization of the division of labour. If a community consists of only a few thousand people there just won't be enough people to build a powerplant and electrical distribution network let alone devices that can take advantage of it.

The crux isn't how we can preserve all the information but what information would be best to preserve? How do we insure access or discovery of that information?

I think that for at least several hundred or thousand years anything even close to the industrial age would be seriously wasted and what culture of people wants to go through thousands of years of developement as prescribed by our legacy only to make it to the point where we were destroyed? Just the basics would be best, just enough to get them started and a little secure and then let'em grow up the way they will.
 

Blindspot

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The solution is simple - strive to protect and preserve the person we collectively feel is the best of our citizenry. In our current time, this person is obviously George W. Bush. With George protected in an underground bunker, well prepared to emerge and spread his misunderestimated knowledge to the remaining citizenry of the world, what more could we ask or hope for the future of the human race? :whistle:
 

cerbie

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We are our combined knowledge. Moving our consciousnesses from our bodies (since they are too tied to the planet's subtleties), and making recordings of our DNA; moving both off-planet, would be the only real solution (the latter might be implicitly done as part of the forme's implementation). According to some, including the smartest guy in the world, it will be a necessity.
 
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