No, not to erase any signs, but to become rubble, just piles of broken concrete and rusted steel. For example, I think the island of Manhattan might take damned near forever to become a "natural" island ...there's just too much concrete and steel. And I'd say the same for most larger cities - they'd be just piles of rubble, but that might last for a long, long time. I'm still leaning towards 200 years for cities to literally fall into various stages of rubble. It seems like a reasonable time span for the weathering to cause collapse of major structures. But I also agree somewhat with your idea of 500 years ...I think it just depends on what we call "rubble", I guess. Baron Max
Hey, then you should be the one who can answer the question. What are the weak points in a building's construction? The connectors--nails, screws, welds, etc? What's the failure mode--expansion/contraction heat cycles loosening bonds, exposing rebar, allowing water seepage, etc.? For that matter, what is the service life of a modern building even if people stick around to perform maintenance? Can we stop it from deteriorating or will it eventually become unsafe? Obviously erosion will take its toll one day, but just how long will that take? Ancient constructions of natural stone seem to be more durable in many ways than the stuff we build, will they last as long as mountains and fail in the same gradual way: by becoming shorter? I've been told (without corroboration) that large trash dumps become so densely packed from the pressure that no aerobic processes can occur within them. If they can only decay from the surface inward, they may be the longest-lasting of our artifacts. The Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island has been accumulating New York City's garbage for fifty years and is now (by some accounts) the largest human construction in existence: two miles (3km) square and about 300 feet (95m) high, with no empty space within. It was closed down but they had to reopen it for the rubble from 9/11. Perhaps some day it will be all that's left of us.
Well, in one sense, you're right, Fraggle. As an architect, I should know those things ....but the truth is all the studies I've ever seen give methods for PREVENTION of the failures rather than standing around waiting for it to destroy your buildings! Thus, no one knows. Water infiltration is the main source of problems in building deterioration. If you can keep the water out, the theoretical life span is ...well, a damned long time! But, see, in this tread, I have to assume that storms would blow out some of the windows ...just a few would let in the water, then it would be like a fast-spreading cancer. Only with proper maintenance. It also depends on what type of stone. In many of the ancient stone structures that "survive", the construction is little more than big stones on top of one another. I don't call them structures so much as piles of rubble (or piles of big stones). Water, being the biggest factor in building deterioration, buildings in the dry regions of the world will last much longer. Hence, almost all of the ancient structures of the world are in dry regions. Baron Max
Quite possible. Although at least in Arizona most houses appear to be made of wood rather than concrete, so I guess they would rot away first. But for concrete buildings I would assume a longer time span than 100 years, unless e.g. water leaks in, gets into cracks, expands during freezing or something like that.
Alright, I'll admit it'd be difficult to supply definitive proof, so opinion only, but many people say the same thing. For a start, the timber framing is smaller dimensions; the source material not the same quality (no longer old-growth knot-free timber, often species that wouldn't have been used before); construction methods have changed (think mortice and tenon compared to nail gun, which tends to split the timber especially the local choice here- cypress is a poor choice although termite proof; the corro roofing is thinner gauge than it used to be only 20yrs ago; plastic facias and even windows. To me it all points to cost cutting, get it up faster for less cost and can only result in a poorer product.
Then aren't highways a good prototype for buildings with lapsed maintenance? They're out there exposed to the elements and they don't seem to hold up very well at all. Whoa, isn't it also because that's where most of them were built? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Stonehenge is one of the oldest surviving structures and it's on an island so damp they can't get wallpaper to stay up. And there's that Great Wall thingie.
British engineering - the best in the world Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ahem!
Nice try, but Stonehenge was built a thousand years before the Celts arrived on the island. There were no "British people." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Besides, the best description I've ever heard of British engineering is: "They'd rather spend their time gluing wood onto the dashboard, than getting the ignition to work."
Erm Frag - surely the picture of the worlds crappest car (until the H2) would have given you at least a hint that i wasn't being entirely serious
Hrm.. well I wouldn't call that a building, it's more like a rearrangement of boulders Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Also, I once saw a documentary about Stonehenge that said that it originally had woodwork and additional stones, all of which disappeared over the centuries, so it's not intact.
Sorry, except for Jaguar and Bentley and a few forty-year-old sportscars (and the new Mini-Cooper, if that doesn't count as a German car), British cars are not common in the USA. I can't tell one from another and had no idea that one is even worse than average. Besides, the crappiest car ever built was the Trabant. The day the Wall came down the East Germans switched their cars off in the middle of the road, tossed the keys in the ditch, and walked away. I don't know how much it cost the new government to haul them away. There's probably a pile of Trabants somewhere that's bigger than the Fresh Kills landfill. Perhaps that will be the construction that outlasts civilization.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
i orgionally thought that show was an australian one because the narrator, Simon Reeve but acording to wikipedia it was edited by channel 7 and the naration was overlayed
Given that the geological processes of Earth are constantly remoulding the surface, and thereby continuously eradicating anything in their way (as Nature does) I'd give an absolute upper limit of ca. 100,000 years for the continued existence of any Human artifact, or any sign of our presence on Earth. However, we could in future start building things on the Moon, or further afield on Mars, or any of the asteroids or smaller moons around the other planets. In that case--those places having no geological processes taking place--any Human settlement (particularly built underground) could effectively last indefinitely, with no natural processes to destroy them, and only weak gravity to pull them down. The only thing I'd be worried about on the smaller worlds would be meteorites.
did anyone who watched that doc concider it to be highly unlikly that given the extermination of the human race dogs and cats wouldnt be killed as well? I mean lets look at possable senarios for the end of man: war: if distructive enough to kill all of us its not going to leave our pets alone nukes: radiation kills all mamals equally disease: improbable that given the close contact between our pets and ourselves its unlikly that a disease virilant and deadly enough to kill ALL of us wouldnt make the species jump zombies: ok im just kiding with this one but again they would still eat our petsPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! evacuation of the planet: possable but i cant see us leaving our pets behind natural disaster: would have to be HUGE to kill us all and again i cant see it leaving the wild life, let alone our pets untouched
I dunno, maybe the ability to outbreed us? Assuming there's still a few humans and/or dogs/cats still around. And I sure wouldn't wanna be stuck with a spear against a pack of these (pic from aftermath of Katrina): Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! - N
I did see that show and thought it would be more about what could conceivably take place in an evolutionary sense, not just a material removal of mankind's existance. In that I was disappointed, very anthropocentric. The angle I was hoping for is more like "After Man: A zoology of the future", by Dougal Dixon. His couple of books are excellent IMHO. Cheers
I didn't see it, but judging by the descriptions I'd qualify it as magic realism. The essence of the technique is to change just one thing about reality and see what happens. Normally they leave the people there because the whole point is to hypothesize how people would behave in response to just one change in the world. In this case they wanted to hypothesize how the world would behave in response to one (rather major) change in people. The magic realism movement is generally credited to Latin America. Colombian Nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez is regarded as its dean. Science fiction would like to claim it, since Garcia Marquez has sold more books than Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury and Herbert combined. (Like probably a hundred times more.) Obviously, anything that could literally exterminate an entire species would be very unlikely to leave the earth so recognizable. Although I'm currently reading Frank Herbert's The White Plague, in which a madman does indeed develop a pathogen that will kill only humans and all humans--although I'm waiting to finish it and see if someone comes up with a cure before the last breeding pair dies. Herbert is famous for "Dune," a sci-fi classic, but this one seems to satisfy the definition of "magic realism."
