What artifacts will remain when the earth is destroyed by nuclear war

[undeterred]

or climate change? When our planet is discovered by some distant civilization on the other end of the galaxy, how will they make sense of what used to exist?

[POAS]

1. gop cockroaches

[Hand]

5. Dang! Ya nearly beat me to it!

See #3. :hi:

[Kingshakabobo]

Yikes! Now I have this nasty mental image of.......

.....a giant Karl Rove with antennae and wings.

[POAS]

22. Sorry

[SoCalDem]

38. Here's another mental image for ya.. (as they regress to roachville)

[Kingshakabobo]

48. LOL. nt

[John Gauger]

2. I surely don't know

It doesn't make any sense to me and I live in it.

[Hand]

3. Cockroaches. A lot of smug, fat cockroaches.

And I don't mean the Republican party... :nuke:

[babylonsister]

4. Ants and kudzu. nt

[Hand]

7. I'm bullish on kudzu! It's going places!

Oop... this ain't the Lounge. :rofl:

[babylonsister]

9. Considering how long kudzu lasted in the lounge, I thought it

would be appropriate here! It will never die-e-e-e!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lonestarnot]

40. What is kudzu?

Sounds like cruddy stew.

[bananas]

49. Kudzu is amazing!

It's a vine imported from Japan for erosion control.
Turns out it grows really well in America - too well.
It covers everything - trees, telephone poles, telephone wires, houses, fields.
It's really a beautiful sight - the way it covers everything you get a panorama of beatiful lush green.
Unfortunately this dense layer of leaves blocks any sunlight from getting to the trees and plants underneath, and they die.

Some good photos here: http://www.jjanthony.com/kudzu


Some shots of a telephone pole: http://www.pbase.com/jhuber123/kudzu

[lonestarnot]

50. ewwwwwwww! I love that stuff!

[raccoon]

55. It's in bloom now. Purple blossoms that smell like grapes. nt

[RandiRhodesArchives]

6. I'll semi-quote bill hicks on this one

"cocaroaches and Keith Richards"

[annabanana]

8. Keith Richards.. . . . . eom

[babylonsister]

11. ROFL! Good one! And maybe Art Buchwald! nt

[zonkers]

44. yeahhh hahahah. funneee

[Warpy]

10. Bakelite

doesn't biodegrade. They'll probably think all those black telephone bodies they keep digging up are religious artifacts.

[undeterred]

12. Of course anyone with batteries and duct tape will survive

won't they?

[POAS]

23. Don't forget the plastic sheeting

[mrfrapp]

13. The Egyptian Pyramids

The creations of modern civilisation would surely be pulverised but ancient structures that have already stood the test of time will most likely still remain.

[KittyWampus]

14. gold teeth caps

[Wiley50]

15. Cockroaches and the Gonorrhea Virus

Per Tom Robbins

But then the roaches get the Clap.
and there's no penicillin to save them

[MamaBear]

16. *A Republic of Insects and Grass*

That was a chapter title from Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, which was published in the mid-80s and serialized in The New Yorker, iirc.

In any event, Schell spoke at length of the immediate and lasting effects of one and/or many nuclear blasts. It still may be in print. If so, read it; but don't expect to sleep well for a while.

There was controversy about some of Schell's conclusions, and it's always hard to tell when those are coming from honest scientists and when they're from the wretched right.

He basically asserts that after a *major* nuclear exchange (that is, after the US and the then-USSR empty their silos, their bomber planes and their subs of warheads), and after nuclear winter has set in, the only life that will be able to exist (on land, at least) are insects, and grasses.

Edited to close a parenthetical that was left open.

[undeterred]

18. I have the book and read it years ago- I thought the book was older

but I doubt that the end result is any different now than it was then.

[MamaBear]

27. You may be right about the date.

It may have been the early '80s. It would have been 1980 or later, I think. In any event, the chapter detailing the chronology of events if a 1 megaton bomb were airburst 1 mile above the Empire State Building had New York buzzing for quite a while. It was very, very specific.

The closest I have seen to seeing the events protrayed on film was in The Day After an ABC made for TV film. The "drama" part of the film is strickly made-for-TV soap opera, but the sequence of the American midwest being nuked is quite long, quite detailed (and includes the effects of the electromagnetic pulse), and kept a whole bunch of people up nights.
Edit: typo

[DianeG5385]

25. Oil

Will still be here

[gkdmaths]

17. global warming

and a few million landfills.

nice legacy, huh?

[H2O Man]

19. Mine.

My artifacts will survive. I include those displayed below, along with my Peter Tosh LP collection.

[alfredo]

20. Peeps

[SmokingJacket]

21. Rubber tires, zip-loc baggies, and disposable diapers.

Maybe the tires are some kind of big shoe?

[DianeG5385]

24. Ants and alligators

Hopefully, polar bears will make a comeback

[TheCowsCameHome]

26. Cheney's teeth and pacemaker.

[undeterred]

33. What will the aliens make of it?

[TheCowsCameHome]

34. Probably think he's one of their own. He's not one of us, for sure.

[mikelewis]

28. Quite a bit actually...

the nuclear blasts won't kill everyone instantly nor destroy every trace of our existence and the nuclear winter will preserve most of the artifacts for thousands of years. It will take the planet a few millennium to get back to a normal state but it will eventually... and someone someday may dig up a petrified patch of twinkies or even a human trapped in ice. Someone may even find the site where we now have the worlds largest ball of string and come to the conclusion that our people worshiped yarn. Of course they'll never understand who we were or the legacy we left... or maybe after viewing our own self-destruction, they will but I wonder if they'll heed the warning.

[knitter4democracy]

47. I worship yarn.

:D

Okay, it's not that bad, but if they find my stash, that's what they'll think. ;)

[Leopolds Ghost]

51. Children, The Evil Yarn-Worshipers Destroyed the Planet.

Anyone who uses Yarn must be banished to the Forbidden Zone.

[lumberjack_jeff]

54. Only the tallest mountains will project through the ice sheet

At the top of Everest, they'll find the remains of the people who were abandoned by their comrades - climbers intently focused on leaving their artifacts on the mountain, artifacts mostly comprised of empty oxygen bottles, preserved for eons in the bitterly-cold, dry, oxygen depleted atmosphere.

If I were the discoverer, judging from the evidence, I'd be glad that the extinct residents of the planet are no longer around to threaten galactic civilization.

[ComerPerro]

29. glowing, radioactive ones, probably

[Generic Other]

30. Cheney's bunker?

All those huge concrete re-inforced holes our government plans to occupy after the end of the world?

[newspeak]

57. yes, I have visions of bunkers filled

with those who think they're the best of natural selection, holed up. Visions of Morlocks come to mind. Ewww, can't get them out of my head!!!!

[bananas]

31. TV and radio signals

They will understand our civilization by watching "Baywatch" and "American Idol".

[HuffleClaw]

32. a lot of plastic

concrete foundations, the remnants of power line towers, crumbling highways and bridges, car hulks, tombstones...
i wonder what those aliens will think of things like the 'golden arches'

[LostInAnomie]

35. My gargantuan porn stash

Surely, it all won't be vaporized.

[Bucky]

36. Sworn to secrecy, so I can't tell you. But a hint: JimJones is still alive

It's all planned out--has been since he faked his death in '79. Harvey Milk got wind of his scheme and had to be eliminated. :tinfoil: But it goes deeper, all the way to the top. But I can't give you details. Suffice to say he's had plenty of time to grow a beard, dye his skin, establish a fake identity, set up a studio in an Afghan cave, and sew a giant turban that deflects radio tracking waves from HAARP. But I can't tell you the details. This whole war on terror thing... man, that's just what they want you to believe. Wheels within wheels, my friend, wheeeeels within wheels.

[Selatius]

37. M1 Abrams tanks

They will be blackened, but their metallic husks that are a foot thick in some places will remain for the longest time.

[1932]

39. GWB's Rock Skull

[Leopolds Ghost]

52. Future Schoolchildren will Rub It "For Luck".

[1932]

58. Future Skull & Bones pledges will _________ into it

(or whatever it is they do to Geronimo's skull).

[Jed Dilligan]

41. Toilets, almost to the exclusion

of all other artifacts. Ceramic can take a lot of punishment.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

42. Twinkies?

http://www.leftandrightfight.com/index.html

[zonkers]

43. AOL start up discs.... lots of em.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

45. Twinkies?

http://www.leftandrightfight.com/index.html

[Bluebear]

46. Pat Peale's dentures >>>>>>>>>

[Leopolds Ghost]

53. Coffee table books suggest that life would do quite nicely without us

Higher mammals would be killed off by the radiation or suffer mutations if they strayed into some of the more heavily nuked areas.

My uncle used to go diving in Bikini Atoll while on a geology research mission. He and his friends were fortunate to be carrying radiation meters, because the actual blast site (of many explosions) posed little threat, they stumbled upon a bunker of mysterious origin where the radiation was off the charts.

There was a coffee-table book published by a guy who went trespassing on the Hanford Nuclear Test site and took pictures of how nature had reclaimed the bomb craters. It was one of the few untouched pieces of forest (no humans) in the vicinity... lots and lots of birds and trees thanks to the (small but noticeable) radiation levels keeping away higher mammals...

Then there's the controversial website on Chernobyl ("Wormwood"), which is entombed by a giant sarcophagus surrounded by the "Red Wood", a patch of forest that glowed for weeks. The trees that glowed were cut down by bulldozers and burned; the people that burned them promptly died. It is still death to walk into the Red Wood. There are areas in the basement of the reactor that are death to even look at; some brave Soviet scientists decided they were old and nimble enough to run around inside, hide behind doorways and take photos to make sure there were no glowing fragments likely to produce a nuclear explosion.

In the long run, concentrated radioactive material which we already have in abundance on Earth is more harmful to Mother Nature than a brief cataclysmic extiction event.

[true_notes]

56. Rush Limbaugh

Will still have an apple on his mouth while spinning.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

59. Twinkies...trust me on this...

I set the street on fire and the twinkie was okay.

[undeterred]

60. ok, now I'm scared

Ding dongs too?