1365
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Survivorship bias. The ancient stuff that survived to the modern day are not more durable than contemporary engineering, they're just the 0.1% of structures that managed to survive this long.

The problem isn't that we can't build something that will last a millennium, it's that we rarely, if ever, need things to last that long. Nuclear waste storage facilities are the only thing that comes to mind. Everything else would need to be torn down and renovated or brought up to code at some point.

[-] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago

These Late English signs seem to say the tomb is... cursed? They were trying to contain something evil. All the scouts we send in fall ill and die within days.

[-] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The ancient stuff that survived to the modern day are not more durable than contemporary engineering

Basically any stone structure made for any reason will vastly outlast any steel reinforced concrete structure. Although concrete might appear superficially stone-like and unchanging it is actually porous and chemically active. Within about 100 years the steel rebar inside a concrete structure will rust, expand, and crack the concrete apart. Freeze-thaw cycles and plant activity will reduce it to rubble shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile a piece of stone block was already about a billion years old before it was cut out of the ground. A stone structure might be destroyed by earthquakes or human activity, but it does not have a built-in self destruct sequence countdown timer like SRC does.

The problem isn’t that we can’t build something that will last a millennium, it’s that we rarely, if ever, need things to last that long.

We absolutely can and sometimes we do.

this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2024
1365 points (99.2% liked)

Funny: Home of the Haha

5525 readers
932 users here now

Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.

Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.


Other Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS