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Ragnarok Proofing: Difference between revisions
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It is, understandably, common in post-apocalyptic fiction [[Ruins of the Modern Age|to show the ruins of society]]. However, many are set several decades, or even centuries or millennia [[After the End]], and the remains of [[The Beforetimes|the pre-cataclysm society]] are in remarkable condition. Buildings and objects will never fall apart due to neglect, and any [[Lost Technology|pre-cataclysm devices or vehicles]] that the characters find will work just fine.
In reality, time isn't so kind to abandoned modern technology. All but the simplest electronics will fail after decades of being unused. Electrolytic capacitors dry out (or succumb to the capacitor plague), batteries self-discharge and leak, flash memory very slowly fades away, and the chassis and contacts rust and corrode. Hard discs rot or degrade over the same time frame, and the skin of optical media such as Blu-Rays and DVDs corrodes, rendering the disc illegible (aka "CD rot").
Large scale structures fare no better. In many climates, wooden frame buildings will last about 50 years before falling apart thanks to termites and rotting. Metal, no matter how well protected, will eventually succumb to the elements. After about 75 years, cars will turn into almost unrecognizable piles of rust. Large bridges will collapse after only a century, and most skyscrapers will collapse around the 200-300 year mark. After 500 years, nearly all concrete structures still standing will crumble as their steel reinforcements corrode. See [[The History Channel]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBtHICMmDJk Life After People] for more information. And this is all assuming that a natural disaster like a tornado, earthquake, or hurricane doesn't destroy it all first. (How much of Florida would survive 10 years if people weren't around to board everything up each summer?) It also ignores the likelihood that whatever arises after the fall of society would knock it down/[[Disaster Scavengers|scavenge it themselves]] instead of just waiting for nature to do the job.
After a thousand years, the Earth will look much like it was before humans, and few obvious traces of civilization will be left. Some plastic types, if buried underground (away from UV radiation) will keep for a long time until something figures out how to properly eat them; anything made out of bronze is expected to last for millions of years (so cast your memoirs with it); major cities, being massive conglomeration of artificial rock on the scale of a coral reef or lava flow, will leave traces in the geological record discernible for several hundred million years; depleted uranium will remain detectably depleted for billions of years; -- but none of this will be visible to a casual observer, or even a medieval society, and little of it will be immediately recognizable to future visitors.
If only one thing inexplicably survives, such as in a [[Time Travel]] or [[Earth All Along]] setting, it's known as [[The Constant]].
This trope can be justified, in small doses, since there is an expensive way to render any metal rust-proof the same way that platinum is -- one could assume that these relics have survived because of a similar process and the chemicals used in it are breaking down, allowing the relics to decay in places where the treatment faded first. This trope is also justified when dealing with advanced alien technology, as such technology may not necessarily decay as the same rate as modern Earth technology.
Societies with [[Ragnarok Proofing]] will allow a [[Scavenger World]] to exist, using [[Schizo-Tech]] from many different time periods. [[Precursors]] frequently build like this -- though usually the main effect is limited to the collective awe of upstart civilizations stumbling on their artifacts long after they became extinct or moved on.
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* Averted in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Strata]]''. An artificial world has survived for several thousand years, maintained by a sophisticated AI and an army of robots that have managed to keep it and themselves in working order, but they can't keep it up forever; eventually there will just be too many worn-out parts for them to replace. ("What do you do when the robot that repairs the robot-repairing robots breaks down?") The protagonists arrive just as things are reaching that point and the world is on the verge of final breakdown.
** In fact it is revealed in the end that {{spoiler|they arrive ''because'' the world is on the verge of final breakdown and they've been brought there as a result of the central AI's desperate attempt to get outside help.}}
** Arguably a subversion. Some items built by the builders where still going strong after several thousand years {{spoiler|i.e. all the stars and planets.}} The artificial discworld (the precursor for THE discworld?) was deliberately inefficient {{spoiler|a message/signature.}}
** [[Larry Niven]]'s [[Ringworld]] is in a similar state of decline when discovered, due to centuries of not-so-competent management by {{spoiler|Bram}}.
* Discussed in [[Alastair Reynolds]]' ''[[Revelation Space]]'':
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** The whole point was to demonstrate just how ridiculously advanced they were. The archive of the Great Race was explicitly stated to have been built to last any cataclysms in the billions of years it'll remain unused, until they come back to reclaim it. None of the advanced technology of either species has survived, however.
** And Lovecraft was writing before [[Science Marches On|plate tectonics was accepted by geologists]], so the assumption that the cities (not to mention the continents they were built on) could've been patiently sitting there for hundreds of millions of years wasn't ''quite'' as preposterous then.
** Also, the Elder Thing city has "only" been abandoned for about 5 million years, and it's made of * insanely huge* stone blocks.
*** And there was a perfectly good reason why the bodies they found were so "well-preserved"...
* In [[Timothy Zahn]]'s ''[[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]'' novel ''[[The Thrawn Trilogy|Dark Force Rising]]'', the characters come across a lost fleet of heavy cruisers which have been missing for <s>sixty</s> [[Retcon|forty]] years. The running lights and life support are still active on most of the ships, but other systems, including engines, weapons, and others are either broken or one use away from disintegrating. A few ancient maintenance droids still make their rounds in the ships, and the main computers seem to be online. One character notes that ships using "full slave rigging" were designed to last. And those were the few left over as bait for a trap since Thrawn had stolen the best ones [[You Are Too Late|before our heroes got there]].
** [[Mr. Exposition|For those who don't know]], "slave rigging" means that a ship designed to run with a crew of 16,000 is refitted to run for the rest of its useful life with a crew of 2,000 or so with a massive networked computer system, which turns out to be a huge problem if part of the living crew goes crazy from space disease.
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* Scott Westerfeld's [[Uglies]] series, set 500-ish years into the future, has the Rusty Ruins. They're what's left of a major US city, including the metal shells of skyscrapers and roller coasters, which the main character uses for magnet-based [[Hover Board|hoverboarding]].
** Subverted in that the Rusty Ruin's standing structures are rare in the series: the people in Tally's city sprayed them with something to preserve them as an example of a Rusties' city. There are other remains in the series that the characters hoverboard on (the iron from railroad tracks, mostly) but they're generally collapsed and rusted to pieces.
* In ''Across A Billion Years'' by [[Robert Silverberg]] the protagonist (who is a junior member of a mixed alien achaeological expedition) is off to a dig site containing artifacts of the High Ones, a race that existed over a BILLION years ago, give or take a hundred million years. All the technology found is in perfect working order including a large sphere that proves to be a holographic projector that sends them questing after the lost secrets of these ancient precurser beings. Think about that, the percentile error alone covers a span of geological time greater than the death of the dinosaurs all the way to now and the stuff works perfectly even advanced robots stored on asteroids in the depths of space. Even if something is 100.00 percent proof against rust, corrosion by oxygen, UV radiation, deterioration caused by plants taking root, and [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|inedible]], over that time scale you'd expect it to be engulfed in lava or hit by an asteroid.
* ''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'' had three abandoned town-sized colony ships orbiting without maintainance for two millenia or so, with [[Deflector Shields]] active, orbital corrections properly performed and [[Antimatter]] containment stable (which, of course, makes two previous points even more important). Granted, those were slow-ships made to hold well for a few centuries, while the nearest repair facility is several light years away and most of the crew are [[Human Popsicle|human popsicles]].
* In [[Terry Goodkind]]'s "[[The Sword of Truth]]" series, many of the items in the Wizard's Keep are thousands of years old. Granted, some are protected by magic, but apparently even clothes can last for three thousand years.
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* Justified in ''[[Exalted]]'': Most [[Lost Technology|First Age technology]] is self-maintaining, so even after hundreds of years of moldering in some forgotten ruin or other, they'll still work perfectly. Since Solars were the only ones who could obtain or create the materials and enchantments that make this possible, however, all [[Magitek]] made since the Usurpation requires periodic maintenance to remain operational.
* Anything from ''[[GURPS]]'': Ultra-Tech'' that is made from Living Metal will last forever because the material will automatically repair any damage that it incurs.
* [[BattleTech]]: The 'Mechs that are jockeyed around circa 3025 are already possibly hundreds of years old, passed down from generation to generation of pilot families. And they still work. Often times better than the new stuff. Many fans believe some of the absurdly heavy tonnages (you heard me) and large size of various electronic equipment and weapons is specifically ''because'' they're built to last.
** Also, presumably if you're planning to pass a [[Humongous Mecha]] off to you kids, you're going to keep it maintained. Same applies to [[Drop Ships]], which you don't exactly want to be held together by rusty bolts if you're coming down into an atmosphere at Mach 3 inside a ship that is about as aerodynamic as the Sydney Opera House. Unmaintained and poorly maintained [[BattleTech]] technology tends to fail miserably when pushed into combat.
* An old [[Traveller]] supplement detailed the Darrians, a minor human (space-elvish) offshoot in the Spinward Marches which had destroyed its own advanced ([[TL 16]]) civilization by accidentally triggering a solar flare and frying every microchip for parsecs. A few starships still remained operational from the ancient Darrian fleet; The expected number of modern Imperial Navy starships ([[TL 15]]) to be usable after several hundred years of disuse and no maintenance was exactly 0.
* ''[[Rifts]]'' only uses this a little. Though the physical ruins of some cities and towns still stand a few centuries ''After'' [[After the End]], the chances of finding anything ''usable'' in them is pretty much nil. However, ever so often, a cache of military equipment from the previous age, specifically stated to be Ragnarok-Proofed, is found.
** This has been partially subverted recently, as it's been revealed that many of those caches are much more recent, and were deliberately left for people to find.
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* The [[wikipedia:Long Now Foundation|Long Now Foundation]] intends to build a clock capable of keeping time for 10000 years.
* Don't forget all the time capsules we've buried, some of which are intended to be opened thousands of years in the future, which are deliberately Ragnarok-proofed.
** Subverted in that for many time capsules, nobody bothered to write down where they were and everybody who knew ''oops'' died of old age.
** Turns out the ragnaroof-proofing on the car time capsule mentioned below wasn't sufficient enough (after only 50 or so years).
** Children's TV show ''[[Blue Peter]]'' dug up its 1971 time capsule in 2000. Half of its contents had turned to slush. Oops.
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* Any object tossed into the vacuum of space can be expected to last a ''long'' time, as there's nothing to erode it except temperature changes, vacuum effects, radiation and micrometeorites. Supposedly, footprints on the Moon could last as long as ten million years if undisturbed (needless to say, more solid things could presumably last a lot longer), and those of the Apollo astronauts are believed to still be there today. Many of our satellites crash from high atmospheric drag once they expend their stationkeeping propellant, but anything in a stable orbit could easily outlast any artifacts on Earth's surface by a long, long time.
** Depends what it's made of. Space conditions can be ''very'' harsh on some substances.
*** With that said, most of the junk currently orbiting the Earth in space can be reasonably expected to fall out of the sky in anywhere from 100-1000+ years. However, some stuff ''will'' stay up there unless disturbed by external forces.
* The book ''The World Without Us'', History Channel's copycat program, ''Life After People'', and National Geographic's adaptation, ''Aftermath: Population Zero'', very vividly and accurately illustrate what would happen to everything if humans suddenly disappeared, wrapped up in a big ol' theme of "[[You Suck|humans suck, yeah?]]". The digest version pretty much is what the main article of this trope says.
** Less "humans suck" and more "humans are utimately small, ephemeral things in the existence of this planet much less the universe." [[H.P. Lovecraft|Hm...]]
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** Provided they're [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7228180621602784407# handled carefully] or they will not last that long.
* Microfilm and microfiche are resilient information storage technologies, because all that's required to read them is light and a lens.
** Even then they need careful handling and storage as they use gelatin, the stuff used to cultivate moulds and bacteria in Petri dishes.
* [[Adolf Hitler]] expected the Third Reich to last for a thousand years, and specifically directed Nazi building projects to keep that in mind.
** Albert Speer, architect and [[Only Sane Man]] in Hitler's regime, pioneered the concept of "ruin value". Taking a note from ancient Greek and Roman buildings, he argued that future Reich buildings and monuments should be built to last and from appropriate materials so that, when they eventually degraded, they would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins like the Colosseum and the Parthenon. His plans for post-war Berlin, including a massive parliament building for the Reichstag; a completely reorganized capital center encompassing the new Reichstag, the old preserved building, and other government offices; a large processional road connecting the capital center to a triumphal arch easily five times the size of the Arc de Triumphe; and a stone stadium meant to be Germany's permanent Olympic home and capable of hosting nearly a half million people, were all quite remarkable. Unfortunately for fans of Speer's style (and the fact that [[Adolf Hitler]], [[Trope Codifier]] for every Evil Overlord stereotype in modern fiction, was his biggest fan should tell you all you need to know) but fortunately for everyone else, Germany [[You Should Know This Already|lost the war]]. The few peacetime projects that Speer had gotten off the ground ended up being made of conventional concrete and steel rather than his preferred materials, and most of those were eventually torn down or destroyed during the war. Today, his only architectural legacy in Berlin is a single lamppost along his planned triumphal road.
* In 2012, a time capsule that had been entombed for 100 years was removed from the cornerstone of a GE building in Cleveland, OH. In addition to documents and photographs, it contained five light bulbs, at least one of which [http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/03/general_electric_opens_time_ca.html worked fine].
* The 2011 winter brought us a snow-based roof collapse...of a roofing company. [[Sarcasm Mode|That raises the confidence]].
* Mount Rushmore. It is an an area that is geologically stable, and not prone to natural disaster. The granite facing erodes at a rate of roughly 1 inch per 10,000 years. It should be distinguishable as a non-natural construct for over 1 million years, and will exist for an estimated 7.2 million years.
** Assuming it doesn't get hit by an asteroid. And who knows what civilizations after our own might decide to do with it.
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[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Ragnarok Proofing]]
[[Category:Apocalyptic Index]]
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