Ragnarok Proofing: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

If only one thing inexplicably survives, such as in a [[Time Travel]] or [[Earth All Along]] setting, it's known as [[The Constant]].

 

 

 

The History Channel produced a television special documentary film and TV series ''[[Life After People]]'' where scientists and other experts speculate about how the Earth might be like if, suddenly, humanity no longer existed.

* Averted in ''[[Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle]]'', where one universe features an entire world in ruins from acid rain and pollution, most buildings already starting to crumble from the carbonic acid and lack of human maintenance.

** A flashforward to a few centuries hence shows nothing but desert. The aversion is partially suspended for a single building, justified by its having a magic reservoir underneath it- and it was ''partially'' decayed.

** And when you consider the fact that the AI is not only increasingly self-aware but had managed to keep itself functioning for {{spoiler|''27 million years''}}, even as all its systems break down, it's could also be a case of [[And I Must Scream]].

* The supply hatches in ''[[7 Seeds]]''.

* ''[[Battlefield Earth]]'' is one of the worst offenders. The Earth has been taken over by aliens for a thousand years, and the characters escape into the ruins of Denver, Colorado. Not only are all of the buildings still standing, but books are still readable, computers still work, and military jets that should have crumbled into dust centuries ago are completely operational. And they have perfectly working jet fuel, which has a shelf life of 40 years. And as if that weren't bad enough, the characters even encounter an abandoned shopping mall where frozen chickens can still be found in the supermarkets.

** This is a major divergence from the book, wherein civilization was pretty much completely gone, buildings crumbling, machines rusted to junk, books decayed to the point of falling apart. Although the book has [[Doorstopper|other problems]].

** Well it's not like all that much time passed, the ruins being a result of an earthquake and the squalor fitting their "living down and dirty" philosophy (remember, they could all join in a life of boring comfort on the surface if they wanted).

* ''[[Waterworld]]'' is another major offender. It's been long enough for people to forget that there ever was dry land. The ruins of pre-cataclysm society have spent all this time ''underwater''. Despite this, <s> anyone</s> the Mariner can just swim down to a former city and come back up with perfectly working artifacts. The "smokers" have completely operational jet skis and sea planes, and even large stashes of cigarettes, which have a shelf life of a few weeks.

** The eggs were covered in a layer of "protective mist," which may have functioned as a stasis field. No explanation as to why the ancient beacon shuts itself off in the 57 years between Alien and Aliens, though...

* Justified in ''[[9|Nine]]'', as the stitchpunks evidently hadn't inherited the Earth all that long ago, and the extinction of life right down to bacteria would've averted biological forms of decay, leaving only slower forces like erosion to degrade humanity's leftovers.

* The film adaptation of ''[[The Road]],'' even though the exact timeframe is never specified, shows a rather grimy, realistic take, given that most ''everything'' has either broken down completely or on the verge of becoming so. Even the [[Survivalist Stash|only intact bomb shelter for miles]] that the protagonists find has lights functional enough to stay on for a few seconds.

* The film version of ''[[I Am Legend]]'' shows with [[Scenery Gorn|graphic realism]] what a {{spoiler|seemingly}} abandoned New York City would look like three years. Parts of the city are flooded, the power's long gone while decay and vegetation spread across the rest of it. The only signs and leftovers of civilization still functioning are pretty much those which Neville maintains.

* Marvin from [[Douglas Adams]]' ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy]]''. Thanks to [[Time Travel]], his subjective age is 37 times the lifespan of the universe, and the diodes on his left side were never replaced in all that time.

** This was [[Played for Laughs]] though. The diodes had been causing him pain since before he was first separated from his human companions so, given his [[The Eeyore|miserable outlook]] they would be the only thing on him that was never replaced.

* In the [[Ray Bradbury]] story ''There Will Come Soft Rains'', a futuristic house is shown with still working robot technology after a nuclear war has wiped out humanity, since it has been programmed to do a certain amount of self-maintenance. Too bad it runs out of water trying to put out a fire in itself, since there isn't any water service anymore, and its [[Failsafe Failure|backup systems]] don't prove effective enough.

** There's no indication how long ago the war took place. It's implied that it was recent, since the family dog, suffering from radiation sickness, is allowed to enter the house.

* Semi-averted in George R. R. Martin's ''[[Tuf Voyaging]]'', where Tuf finds an EEC seed-ship which has been abandoned for over 1,000 years, which is somewhat functional as the original crew had shut it down for long term storage including automated repair robots, but which required significant repairs to make it fully operational. But only semi-averted, in that things like air lock door seals and handles still worked perfectly even after being exposed to vacuum for a millennium.

** Actually, that is literally the best possible way to store devices like that.

* 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.}}

'''Sajaki:''' From what I gathered on the surface there's very little in the fossil record to substantiate that.

'''Sylveste:''' But there wouldn't be, would there? Technological artefacts are inherently less durable than more primitive items. Pottery endures. Microcircuits crumble to dust. }}

* In ''Empire of the East'' by [[Fred Saberhagen]], set thousands of years [[After the End]], the heroes search for a magic metal elephant to help them in the war. The elephant turns out to be a <s> completely</s> mostly operational nuclear-powered battle tank from before the nuclear holocaust. The armament is dead and the chemical-protective gear crumbles when touched, but the controls still light up, the engine roars, and none of the drive mechanism is broken. This is rare enough on a tank that hasn't been maintained since last ''week''.

* [[H.P. Lovecraft]]'s Elder Things and the Great Race of Yith were said to have colonized the Earth about [[Ancient Astronauts|a billion years ago and 200 million years ago, respectively]]. Yet, there are remarkably intact ruins of their colonies on Earth discovered by humans ''much'' later on. ''The Shadow Out of Time'' even has the protagonist uncovering Yithian ''books'' from a millions-of-years-old ruins in the Australian desert. Then there's ''At the Mountains of Madness'' where an entire Elder Thing city is found relatively intact in Antarctica, along with exceedingly well-preserved Elder Thing bodies. May be [[Hand Wave|explained]] as the Elder Things and Yithians being very advanced aliens and possibly in possession of insanely durable materials construction and preservation technologies, but still...

* The Great Ship from [[Robert Reed]]'s ''Great Ship'' universe spent a couple billion years drifting towards the Milky Way. Aside from superficial damage to the exterior hull, all the on-board systems work perfectly fine with no damage.

* Averted with Antrax, the titular [[Big Bad]] of the second book in ''[[The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara]]''. Antrax is a [[Master Computer|sapient supercomputer]] guarding knowledge of the technological age that preceded the current [[Shannara]] 'verse, and its outpost's automated defenses still work after several hundred years. However, it's noted that Antrax is self-maintaining, and that it's reaching its limits despite this (particularly with its power supply).

 

 

** Played straight in "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit", where the ruins of a civilisation that imprisoned what could very well be Satan (as well as the prison itself) predating time itself and containing writing even [[Living Ship|the TARDIS]] [[Translator Microbes|is unable to translate]] still stand circa the 41st-42nd century.

* ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' has no end of functional artifacts and living creatures that seem to date back to around the time that Lister left the solar system, give or take a few centuries, including the eponymous ship itself. Given that the show takes place ''3 million'' years after he left, it's amazing they still work so well.

** Of course, with [[Red Dwarf]], minor details like continuity and the laws of physics are frequently discarded in favour of [[Rule of Cool]] and [[Rule of Funny]].

** Actually addressed in the show, for comic effect, Holly's IQ has degraded from 6000 to 6. And attempts to revert this do not go well.

** Probably Justified, as {{spoiler|Those Who Came Before}} are shown to have been incredibly advanced, to the point of being [[Clarke's Third Law|beyond human comprehension]].

* Justified/handwaved in ''[[The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind]]''. The abandoned Dwemer settlements, despite being deserted for thousands of years, are filled with running machinery and weapons and armour in perfect condition, however the Dwemer bent/changed the laws of physics to make their materials impervious to wear, tear and corrosion.

* You can't swing a sword in ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games without hitting a fully functional relic of a lost civilization:

** ''[[Final Fantasy I]]'' has the Sky Warriors, who built a fabulous Floating Castle, robots, and an [[Global Airship|Airship]] before being obliterated by the Fiends. The Castle was abandoned, the robots were left to fend for themselves in the ruins (one of them even fell from the sky and crashed near a waterfall) and the Airship was buried in a desert, and yet everything is in perfect working order by the time the Light Warriors need to use it.

* ''[[Portal 2]]'' takes place several hundred years after the end of the first game, with the protagonist having been trapped in the Enrichment Center in [[Human Popsicle|cryogenic stasis]]. It initially looks like an aversion, as the place is rather thoroughly wrecked, but the portal gun still works as do many of the center's mechanisms. In particular, GLaDOS is still around, and once you restore power, she rapidly goes about repairing the facility. Less explicable is how the {{spoiler|original Enrichment Center}}, four kilometers beneath the surface and abandoned before even the first game without the benefits of a caretaker AI, remains functional.

* The Xel'naga from [[Starcraft]] seem to have invested in some seriously heavy-duty Ragnarok Proofing. Despite being anywhere from several thousand to several million years old, their (frighteningly advanced) relics always seem to be in working order when they are inevitably dug up and reactivated.

 

 

* In ''[[Adventurers!]]'', temples are designed with [http://www.adventurers-comic.com/d/20030117.html thousand-year rustproofing].

* [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030808.html Invoked] then [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20030810.html subverted] in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' with a robot designed to play mentor to a hunter-gatherer civilization.

{{quote|'''Vore''': [[What Year Is This?]] How long was I in there?

'''Vanderbeam''': By our estimation, 1420 years.

** There's also the cryogenics lab where Fry and others throughout the series are frozen. It remains completely functional and undisturbed while the rest of New York appears to get destroyed several times.

*** Justified in that {{spoiler|The niblonians (specifically Nibbler) froze him on purpose and would be watching over him/protecting him so he can save the universe in the future.}}

* The ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "Hereafter" has the JL's orbital Watchtower's communication system still functional after 75 years in a jungle without maintainance. Prior to that, it spent nearly thirty thousand years in Earth orbit before falling. [[Memetic Badass|Even Batman]] can't build 'em ''that'' good. Vandal Savage even lampshades how absurdly well its held up.

* Lampshaded then subverted in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. An ancient, abandoned city is in pretty good shape, but then it turns out the inhabitants still live there, just in hiding. No proofing, just actual upkeep.

* [[wikipedia:Sword of Gou Jian|The Sword of Goujian]] was discovered in December, 1965, untarnished and still possessing a sharp edge, despite the tomb it was discovered in being soaked in water for over two thousand years. This exceptional state of preservation is believed to be due to the airtight scabbard in which the sword was found.

* Don't forget about the Incan ruins, which have lasted so long because they were built to withstand earthquakes.

* There's actually only one reason that everything we make isn't inherently Ragnarok Proof: economics. With our current technology level, we could use supercooled niobium for electrical storage, germanium as a semiconductor in place of silicon, tantalum for capacitors, iridium contacts and casings to resist corrosion, and that's just for simple electronic devices. If we did, they could all survive corrosion by water, air and living things for thousands if not millions of years, many times longer than what we actually use. The only problem is, no one wants to pay a million dollars for a wristwatch that'll outlive them by a million years, particularly when the march of technology, or fashion, ensures that it'll be obsolete long before their own death. Actually, even before our current level of technology, the majority of whatever current technology happens to be can usually be perfected into ultra-long-lasting versions. There are town clock towers still in service, with a bell that chimes every hour, that haven't needed maintenance in over a century; not bad for a craft that's probably only three centuries old. And then there's all of the old buildings mentioned above. If something is engineered to last, it will last; the only question is how long it's worth engineering it to last, since most people aren't too interested in how long something will last beyond their own lifetime. If you supposed that a society ever reached the point where there was no need to ever improve on a certain design and no market factors rationing raw materials, you'd probably find that those things would be built to last forever.

** There's also the matter of whether we actually WANT things to last that long for non-'not caring beyond our lifetime' reasons. A major archaeological 'resource' for telling things about the lives of Classical and pre-Classical people are shards of pottery and the remains of tools, containers and household objects in other words. While our modern day plastic bottles and powertools will probably be of great interest to archaeologists from the year 4000, we specifically recycle what we can and attempt to make what we can't biodegradable as much as possible not because we don't want to leave anything to future generations, but because we want to leave them resources in addition to useless, easily-replaced junk. And said future generations would probably appreciate our attempts to leave them a habitable, clean world rather than an ancient artefact-rich polluted wasteland.