Thousands is not that difficult. Paper lasts for thousands of years under the right conditions. Millions is a whole different game. That's significantly longer than humanity has existed It's not just about the material, it's also about not losing the ability to read the contents. There are texts less than 5000 years old whoch we cannot read anymore.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)
No Stupid Questions
43131 readers
753 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Paper lasts for thousands of years under the right conditions.
How do you maintain the right conditions for thousands of years?
Caves.
Pyramids too maybe. Disks in a lead or titanium chest in a pyramid.
Just make it binary representations of 3D, engraved in stone.
/j
Yes. It's called a stone tablet.
iPad 200 BC
Silica is expected to survive for thousands of years in nearly any temperature, humidity, and chemical environment
Thousands of years is very different than 1 million years.
There’s nothing that can stick around 1 million years.
The 3rd installment of the 3 body problem touches on this subject.
nothing that can stick around 1 million years
Universe: ehem
Explain
Even things that seem like they won’t ever change don’t last. Erosion, tectonic plate movement, natural decay of atoms.
Even giant letters written inside of a mountain won’t last.
Best you can do is create a simple structure that takes intelligence to create with the only purpose being to show that you once existed.
Giant letters on the face of the moon!
CHA
There’s nothing that can stick around 1 million years
See the sci tech link I posted
Unless you want to carve large holes in granite, your best shot at the moment is something like the Arctic World Archive.