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Comment by germandiago | Hacker News Reader

I wonder who thinks that in 100,000 years Sweden will exist or even if Swedish in 1,000 or 10,000 years would respect this decision, haha. Looks like an impossible for me: nothing is forever, and 100,000 years is a long time.

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Indeed, most pyramids are less than 5k years old. A 100k years means making the step from the first Egyptian dynasty to today 20 times. That’s an incredible timespan. I don’t think we can design rules and agreements around this type of storage and expect them to last that long. Statistically it’s unlikely the country you are living in still exists in just 10k years, let alone in a 100k years.

Yeah, that's a massive timescale in human history. As far as we know we've only had intentional agriculture for around 10,000 years.

What is the likelihood that some future civilization is going to just happen to dig up a nuclear waste repository stored deep underground? Furthermore, why does nuclear waste get so much attention when there's plenty of other hazardous waste sites [1]. Why aren't we concerned about a future civilization breaching a salt mine that's been pumped full of toxic chemicals?

1. https://www.epa.gov/hwpermitting/hazardous-waste-management-...

No one, obviously. Its an open question in the project how to e.g. communicate to a future civilization that the area is dangerous.

I'm wondering more if humanity will exist.

I think it will, still. But it is just a belief.

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