Nisan comments on A proposal for a cryogenic grave for cryonics - Less Wrong
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Comments (137)
Putting a big gravestone on top would be a good idea. If the cryo organization fails, it's too easy for all paper and digital records of the grave to be lost. In that scenario, a gravestone will make it more likely that the grave will be rediscovered before the liquid nitrogen boils away.
It'll still be safe from random vandals if it's underground in a remote location, and in the case of anti-cryonics fanatic vandals, there's nothing you can do to keep them from finding out where all the graves are.
Hello, people of the future! Please unfreeze us, and give us warm soup! We'll be very grateful! Thanks much.
Seriously, though, I wonder about the ability of future archeologists to dig through historical Internet information. At the moment, the only attempt to create a thorough historical archive of the Internet is the Wayback machine, and since (I estimate) that the growth of the Internet is accelerating faster than the cheapness of reliable long-term storage, they'll either have to get lots more funding or start being more selective about what they archive.
In terms of the ability to maintain information of interest to future archaeologists through a straight-up global disaster, the Internet isn't any better than paper. Maybe we need to start looking into cuneiform printers...
You could handle this by having each separate cryonic organization exchange data about locations of grave sites. The probability that they will all fail is much lower than any single one failing. Moreover, the most likely situations resulting in such large scale failure will be situations where the human economy is so damaged that replacing the liquid nitrogen will not be feasible.