Second Doomsday Vault Goes Online

[Ben]

I really like the idea of these doomsday vaults. Given an actual doomsday event, it would be interesting to see how people would get to them, or just how many people might even know about them, especially after longer timeframes. It would make a great Science Fiction or post apocalypse book. :)

I'm not quite sure I understand how the preservation film is used or read. I wonder if they also have any duplicate data stored in digital format. Also it goes back to the fact that whoever accesses the data would need to have some understanding of how to read it. The sooner after an event, the more likely that would be IMO. Perhaps there are various detailed multilingual instructions that could be understood if someone stumbles across them in a couple of generations after an event. The original seed vault is probably more intuitive.

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-world-just-got-a-second-doomsday-vault-because-of-course-we-did

[wmenorr67]

I would imagine that there is a reading device that is stored with the artifacts as well as instructions.

Just hope that whatever is inhabiting the Earth thousands of years down the road will be able to understand the instructions in whatever language(s) are used.

But then again what do I care, I'll long be part of this Earth when that happens.

[RevDisk]

http://www.piql.com/

In case you want to start your own.

I would imagine that there is a reading device that is stored with the artifacts as well as instructions.

Just hope that whatever is inhabiting the Earth thousands of years down the road will be able to understand the instructions in whatever language(s) are used.

But then again what do I care, I'll long be part of this Earth when that happens.

It's optical. So you just need a camera to read the data. Interpreting it can be more tricky. Storing as ascii or bitmaps should be trivial decoding even if zero reference material is kept. More complex formats would indeed benefit from a reference chart or two.

[Hawkmoon]

The late sci-fi/fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey used this as a central theme in several of her books. She wrote a multi-book series that's loosely referred to as the Dragonriders of Pern series. The basis is that a group sent out from Earth to colonize a distant planet loses contact with Earth, and through a combination of time and natural disasters then loses its technology and reverts to a basically agrarian society at about the level of development of medieval Europe.

Until, millennia later, someone unearths a buried crypt that houses a super-intelligent computer, which they call "AIVAS" -- Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System. From the wonders revealed to them by AIVAS, they achieve near miraculous technological progress within the span of a single generation.

Its good reading. My favorite sci-fi series ever. I think I have all her books in the series. (After she died, her son started writing additional titles in the series. I have the first two -- I won't waste any money on anything else he writes.)

[Ben]

The late sci-fi/fantasy writer Anne McCaffrey used this as a central theme in several of her books. She wrote a multi-book series that's loosely referred to as the Dragonriders of Pern series. The basis is that a group sent out from Earth to colonize a distant planet loses contact with Earth, and through a combination of time and natural disasters then loses its technology and reverts to a basically agrarian society at about the level of development of medieval Europe.

Until, millennia later, someone unearths a buried crypt that houses a super-intelligent computer, which they call "AIVAS" -- Artificial Intelligence Voice Address System. From the wonders revealed to them by AIVAS, they achieve near miraculous technological progress within the span of a single generation.

Its good reading. My favorite sci-fi series ever. I think I have all her books in the series. (After she died, her son started writing additional titles in the series. I have the first two -- I won't waste any money on anything else he writes.)

Shoot, I think I only read one of the Dragonriders books when I was in High School. I don't remember AIVAS from it. Coincidentally I've just dug out some of my dead tree scifi from storage to reread - Laumer, Vance (Tschai series) and a couple of others. I'll have to add the Dragonriders series as well.

[Hawkmoon]

Shoot, I think I only read one of the Dragonriders books when I was in High School. I don't remember AIVAS from it. Coincidentally I've just dug out some of my dead tree scifi from storage to reread - Laumer, Vance (Tschai series) and a couple of others. I'll have to add the Dragonriders series as well.

The original three books are regarded as the seminal trilogy. The book introducing the AIVAS was around the fifth in the series, I think. Maybe sixth. (And that's not counting the Harper Hall trilogy, which are also set in Pern but form a parallel story line.)

AIVAS is introduced in Renegades of Pern, but is a focal plot element in All the Weyrs of Pern.