LogFAQs > #885697791

helIy posted...

why are you so stuck on EMPs dude

that's like 1 of several million things that can happen in fifty thousand years

No, I responded to a post about that and you kept it going.

I think you are losing focus here;

The past is not a good measure if what is going to happen because there are about a billion different variables. Technology for preserving and sharing data is about 2,000 years more advanced than it was when the Great Library was burned to the ground.

Now, since books and data are so important to our society, anything that wipes us out, would probably effect said data storage methods. The idea that a paperback could survive 50,000 years is ludicrous, especially if the better part of those fifty millennium is spent without humans keeping it. Whether it's an EMP, or a global extinction, or anything else that leaves us with no one to steward copies of the book, it's pretty much impossible for them to survive in the elements.

Yes, 50,000 years is a long time and a lot can happen. But what do you think the chances are that we will be wiped out, our collective records of everything will be destroyed, but a few copies of a popular book from the 2,000's will be preserved in good enough condition to read?

Then, on top of that, you have a society of aliens or future humans, with 50,000 years since our version spoken or read English was used. They have a society that is advanced enough to decipher a language that is 50,000 years old (for reference, that is almost 10x as far separated as we are from ancient Semitic, do you speak ancient Semitic? Why not?) but they are stupid enough to mistake a melodramatic teen novel for a guide for ritual and prayer.

It's not as if primitive tribal aliens are going to evolve on the planet, find a pristine copy of a 50,000 year old paperback novel, read a 50,000 year old dialect of a probably extinct language, and suddenly believe that the book that has no absolutely no ritual, prayer, or divine aspects is the foundation of their new religion.

What part of that is so hard for you to understand?