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Ask Slashdot: Storing Items In a Sealed Chest For 25 Years?
New submitter accet87 writes "We are celebrating the Silver Jubilee of our graduation next month and have come up with an idea where we will build an air-tight chest in which each of us will deposit something and will open the chest only on our Golden Jubilee, i.e. after another 25 years. I want to understand what kind of items can be safely stored for 25 years and what kind of precautions are required to be taken. I am sure things like paper, non-ferrous metallic objects, wood, etc., will hold up well. What about data storage electronically? I don't think CD/DVDs, etc., will be usable. Even if the data is retained, reading it in 2037 may be a challenge."
On my first day of class of Junior High school, my Mother packed a lunch for me, which include a Thermos full of milk.
I promptly threw it in my locker and forgot about it.
On my last day of class, I was cleaning out the locker and found the abandoned Thermos. I brought it home unopened.
My Mother made me take it out to the far end of the lot and open and empty it out there, which I did.
The moral of the story: Don't put milk in your sealed chest!
If I were storing stuff for a long time, I would consider using an airtight sealed case, oxygen absorber and a dessicant, making sure that if any liquid came out, it could not touch the protected device. I would separate out items just to be safe.
Some items, like SD media, I'd also consider using anti-static packaging just for peace of mind as well.
Just load all of your photos, videos, data, etc onto a retina macbook pro and toss it in the case.
Maybe by 2037 someone will have figured out how to change the battery.
If so, you've got your data and you're good to go.
No worries man, end of epoch isn't until 2038.
Be careful about your hermetic seals, water leakage has turned many time capsules into a soggy brown liquid. I suggest some silica gel (the kind you shouldn't eat) to absorb any latent water in the air when you seal it so you don't get condesation. Anything you seal inside should either be readable by normal human means or include the reader. Avoid batteries or other volatile chemicals as they will leak. Burned CDs are really just like polaroid photographs and fade in about 15 years on the outset depending on the burn speed and qualities of the dyes. Include black and white photos or 3 color separations so that it is easy to put back together. Same goes for 3d photos, the future is likely to use more stereo photography so take a picture with 2 cameras next to each other of the same type. I use two iphones and tap the shutters simultanously a few times to see if I can get a match. Make sure you deposit the item in a place unlikely to face future development or it will just be shoveled up onto a trash pile. There's a start, but think long term. A lot can happen in a quarter century. LONGNOW DOT ORG
What about an oil barrel? :D
You'll need it in 2037!
Plus, you could sell it for a few thousand dollars and buy vintage stuff from 2012
paper has been around for a LONG time. There is even paper that is made to last long. Bit more expensive, but it will last much longer.
For 25, just use normal paper. Write whatever you want. e.g. how you feel about people, politics, the future, your state of mind. Write about your dreams and your thoughts of now.
Once you have printed it, seal it in plastic. You can put a LOT of information on it and it will be very personal as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Make it a science project.
Put identical data on one of every type of storage technology and see which survives. In 25 years you will have a very interesting case study while being nostalgic about the data storage media used back when you were young.
If they all fail then laugh at how silly you were all those years ago and how you should have done x instead.
It is not a trivial request to ask how to make things survive a 25 year isolated containment, even if you solder or weld the outer container shut and it stays sealed.
Batteries, capacitors, wood, paint, plastics, bugs in the wood, polymer coatings can all outgas. Some plastics naturally keep changing very slowly as their molecular cross linking changes and plasticizers move to the surface.
Those outgassing chemicals can wind up interacting, or corroding if you wish, the other item's materials and you don't get what you think you will in 25 years.
If you actually put a battery in their you can get other reactions occurring very slowly as the battery discharges. Don't forget that many electronics use a milliamp or so to keep some functions ON all the time, even though the devices is supposed to be turned off. Batteries are notorious for having their liquids eventually leaking out.
When you handle all the items, getting ready to load the time capsule, there are going to be all sorts of finger oils and millions of bacteria that are on each piece you put in the container, plus what is on the inside of the container and its seal materials. Some bacteria are anaerobic, so just because there is no Oxygen (if you load the capsule with Nitrogen), doesn't mean there won't be live bacteria in there.
Lastly, if your container is totally sealed and outgassing raised the internal pressure, then chemical reactions can occur more rapidly.
It is not a format. CD's (and DVD's) you buy in the store are not made the same way as CD's you burn at home. Professionally made CD's have the disk image physically pressed into the media, whereas with home burning a laser is discoloring a dye to produce the same effect. Unfortunately, the dye will eventually fade and the disk will become unreadable. So, CD's are not the same as CD-R or CD-RW and the same holds true for DVD's.
Why store the data in only one format? Why not put one copy on USB Flash, one copy on DVD-R and possibly one copy on some other flash with a different interface like SD?
Unless its allot of data this should be fairly cheap and odds are good that at least one of the three mediums will survive and you will have tools to read it easily. Watch your file formats too, i'd stick with lowest common denominator very standard stuff like jpg images, mpeg2video (main mode) with either ac3 or mp2 audio for videos, and mp3 for just audio.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Pressed music CD's DVDs are not the same as the ones you use to burn. Pressed CDs/DVDs are not made of the same materials as those used for burning, and will last decades if properly taken care of.
For CDs/DVDs used for burning, the first couple generations of these (when you were paying 2-5$ A DISC) were made of much thicker material and most of the stuff I burnt in the 90s on these types of discs are still readable today. However, with cheap discs came cheap/slim material, which are greatly affected by disc rot. I have some CDs and DVDs that I burnt just 2-3 years ago that are unreadable due to disc rot. If you hold them up to a light you can see the holes.
That being said, you can buy archival DVDs & CDs. The companies claim they will last 100 years if stored properly. I use them to back up my pictures. Those should be sufficient for the time capsule. Burn 3 or more copies to ensure greater chances of being to read everything.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
The elephant in the room that nobody is discussing... what's your container going to be made of? How are you going to seal it and keep it sealed? These are non-trivial questions. Containers react with the materials inside and corrode both inside and out. Seals dry out. Etc... etc...
There's a lot more to this than just the items inside. The container has to maintain its integrity too.
1. Keep it low tech:
Assuming you graduated college at 21, you'll be around 71, you won't be that interested in figuring out high-tech stuff. It won't be long until the tech we have now is obsolete, because the rate of change continues to accelerate. Try finding a punch card reader these days.
Print stuff out on paper, regular paper works fine for only 25 years. Add a desiccant, and pump in nitrogen or argon if you can.
2. Redundancy:
Many of you will be dead and many will have lost their memory.
Print out a copy for everyone. Everybody gets one. Store in metal boxes clearly labeled on the outside so you don't have to keep opening it to see what it is.
3. Locators:
Include a list of everybody who gets a box in the box. Include personal identifiers (full names, DOBs) so you can track people down on the Internet (or whatever it is called 25 years from now.)
You may find 25 years from now that there are already records or copies of whatever you put in the box* but the greatest treasure will be locating your old buddies.
*Most people who open time capsules find old newspapers. The exact same newspapers which are also in storage in the newspaper office down the street. Probably when you open your box in 25 years you can find everything you put inside still on eBay.
Good luck!