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Tombstones That Last?
Reality Master 101 asks: "Being an engineer, I've always been annoyed by the quality of the average tombstone. The typical marble kind only seem to last a maximum few hundred years before the lettering gets worn away. Old-school stone ones were better, but you still max out at about 500 years. This started me asking the question of what would I make one out of that would last 1000 years? 10,000 years? Clearly a solid gold or silver tombstone would last without corroding, but that would be uneconomical and would probably be stolen. What material would give the most bang for the buck for lasting power? What other factors come into play when you start talking Egyption timespans? I was also thinking that I should mount the tombstone to the casket so it doesn't fall over or otherwise wander away." It's odd the links to things that you can find over the internet, so when I read this question, I was reminded of one of Piro's recent rants on MegaTokyo that starts off with an odd discussion about this very issue. Might the information passed in the beginning of the rant be a reason why tombstones made today don't last very long? Do Tombstones need to last for over 500 years, anyways?
- A.P.
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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Oh really? And what makes you think that perpetual care will accually exist byond your time? Sure it will continue for a few years or so, but for how long? Stable goverments for more then 1000 years are rare. I'm not certian that any have made it that long. Future historians interested in the life of people from the 20th century (which will be interesting if they figgure out what we have done, even if it seems primitive by their standards), but they won't have much to go on. CDs hav been claimed to last 100 years, not 1000. Stone in a desert has been proven to last, but climates have been known to change. Indeed if you can find a way to make deserts grow odds are they will become argracultural areas. (Look at Chile, theyhave the dryest desert, no rain in over 500 years, but they irrigate it - who knows what this will do to your tombstone.
Personally I want to be burried in an unmarked grave in the middle of a field. I want my body to become fertialiser. When my soul (whatever you belive, you get the concept) no longer inhabbits my body I don't care what happens to it, if my body can be useful to others, then that is fine with me.
What sort of arrogance is it that could lead you to believe that anybody is going to care who you are and where you were buried 500 years from now? Sure, tombstones from 500 years ago are interesting to historians, but only because of the absense of other records about how people lived. I don't know if you've noticed, but we're pretty much a record keeping and artifact building culture now, not a bunch of rural peasants whose only impact on the land is wiped out by the next rain.
There are tons of grave yards that have been dug up and the tombstones placed on a wall somewhere because the land was needed for something else. And the pressure on land is only growing. I wouldn't give current grave yards a snowball's chance in hell of surviving out the next century without being paved over.
Do yourself and future generations a favour. Get cremated, have your ashes scattered somewhere that meant something to you, and build your legacy by having good children rather than a long-lived gravestone.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
What about stainless steel?
:)
Then electrify it so it doesn't get tampered with.
I'm not a materials engineer, but I remember seeing some demonstrations of ceramics in a class I took. They had hammers and engine componenents that were increadably strong and able to withstand extreme heat, etc. I'm not familiar with the corrosivity of ceramics, but they may hold the answer to your question. They look fairly nice too...
-Andy
The problem isn't that common materials don't last; it's that you're looking at marble.
Marble is metamorphosed limestone, and so will corrode like crazy in an acidic environment. Any reasonably sturdy oxide (quartz, granite, glass, ceramic, etc.) should last long enough for your purposes.
I have a Perl-related query that only you can solve (you'll understand once I explain, it's about a script you authored). In order to save this thread from something off-topic, I request your e-mail address so that I may further detail the extent of my plans.
Disposable account du jour: cthomas one two three four five at hotmail dot com
We could bury all of the people who have ever lived on the Earth, about 105 billion, in a space the size of the State of Kansas (82,000 square miles). That would give about 22 square feet for each grave.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Either find something that can tolerate the acid that falls downwind of our factories, or put your tombstone somewhere where they don't have acid rain.
There are stones with inscriptions that lasted thousands of years in Egypt, and then after being moved to New York, disappeared in a single century.
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First, I'd seriously consider granite. It is available from all regular sources and it doesn't noticably degrade over the 100 year timespan (I did a bit of 'field research' a few years back: comparing the apparant degradataion of tombstones of different materials in local graveyards) If you are really worried about long term readability, you could spend a bit extra for a larger monument with deeper inscriptions.
Another option, that you probably won't find at the regular sources, is glass. Tempered glass several inches thick is unlikely to be easily shattered and should resist acid rain fairly well. The inscription could be embeded beneath a clear outer layer to add some extra resistance to environmental damage. I haven't any idea where you would go to get a glass tombstone, or how much you would expect to pay.
Engineer, eh? Napping during your materials science class? *grin*
Only corrodes in a monoatomic layer, so it never really "rusts" more than an atom or two thick. Dull finish, so it's not as enchanting as stainless steel (many of which still corrode). Might be recycled by someone, but I wouldn't exactly call that an insult. Now, if your stone tombstone were ground up and used for road construction.... Magnesium is in the same category, but, well, a bit tempting to ignite for those who can identify it.
The real problem with tombstones is that they are not acid-resistant. Not a problem a centuries ago, but with the advent of fossil fuels and acid rain, probably quartz would be a good choice. You can make your own by passing large amounts of current through things, and they're experimenting with this now as a way of permanently and intertly dealing with nasty chemicals. Maybe just cast yourself something in glass.
The problem here is that rain is mildly acidic (something like 5.6) even when clean and not polluted.
The solution? You need to become such a person among humanity that society will pick up the bill of maintaining your tombstone forever.
There are tons of grave yards that have been dug up and the tombstones placed on a wall somewhere because the land was needed for something else. And the pressure on land is only growing. I wouldn't give current grave yards a snowball's chance in hell of surviving out the next century without being paved over.
It's obvious you never get out of whatever big megalopolis you live in. There's lots of land out there. Next time you're flying somewhere more than an hour or two away, look down and you'll understand. Sure, graveyards in the middle of Manhattan might be in danger of being removed, but not the one in, say, Wallville, Oklahoma.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
For those interested in the challenges of really long term preservation, check out the Long Now Foundation, who are building a variety of interesting projects, including a 10,000-year clock (designed by ubergeek Danny Hillis) and an updated version of the Rosetta Stone. I've seen these pieces in person, and they're very cool.
For the clock, they mention they are using "Monel alloy, Invar alloy, tungsten carbide, metallic glass, and synthetic sapphire" in the prototype.
No, I wouldn't. I'd want to remember him/her for the positive things that happened. Not for where he/she left a nice blood stain.
Maybe if the markers designated the site of an honorable death, I might understand. 99.9% of the time, they don't. I gave a couple of examples. Here's another: There's a cluster of four crosses I pass on my daily commute. They mark the location where four people died pushing an out-of-gas vehicle, with no lights on, across a high-speed divided highway at 3AM. There is no cross at this location for the driver who hit their unlit vehicle on the dark highway at 3AM. I'm sure he has a nice headstone in the proper place, though.
I can't be certain, but I doubt there are Darwin Awards on the crosses. There probably could be.
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I certainly hope my surviving friends and family remember me for the smart things I did, and don't imortalize me for doing something stupid like riding a bicycle in the traffic lane of a highway.
A marker at a 'final resting place' is one thing. A marker reminding everyone of where doofus rearended a semi is a waste of time and space.
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Don't forget... The Egyptions had "modern" earth moving equipment too.
Perhaps you could make a tombstone out of the same kind of stone that statue was made of in Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandius?
That thing certainly lasted a long time, and was a fitting tribute to the sort of person who expects the world to remember him forever.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
heh, The idea that Piro's rant on cement landed on slashdot is unnerving to say the least ;)
-largo
In part, I think the Egyptians lucked out. They happened to be in a good climate for preserving material: the desert.
These days, isn't it acid rainfall that causes the majority of disintegration of stonework? If so, my advice would be to step up your personal campaign against pollution and acid rainfall, and then arrange to be burried somewhere in a really, really dry desert area that's likely to stay that way for the next thousand years or so. Try the Sahara or something.
Firstly, kudos to you for asking the most unusual question I've ever seen on Slashdot.
I was surprised, however, that you didn't mention the fact that gold (even if not stolen) would NOT be an ideal material for this sort of thing. True, it won't corrode, but a larger problem with gold is that it is so soft that the weather alone will probably destroy your beautiful creation.
Alas, we need to find a material that won't corrode (or otherwise get destroyed in all but the most severe of weather conditions). Perhaps the solution lies in redundancy. First, make a granite (not marble) tombstone and carve with all the details. That should last you a while.
After doing this, encase the entire thing in titanium. Carve again. The titanium shell should last you a few centuries, I believe, and even if it falls away you'll still have a few more centuries worth of granite to erode before it disappears.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.