[UltraTech] Layering protections on a nanostasis tank?

[DataPacRat]

Say that you've got a backup copy of your mind uploaded into a spare cyborg, stored in a nanostasis tank, and you'd like to keep that backup intact and ready to revive for a Very Long Time in an inhabited-but-mostly-automated, ringworld-like hab. With roughly TL10 resources and a good budget, what could you do with that particular backup to maximize the odds that it's still viable 10^n years in the future (where n>4)?

Going for the Big And Impressive Tomb approach seems unlikely to survive a broad variety of cultures passing by, some of which probably don't mind looting ancient ruins. And going for a Big And Humble tomb, ala "this is not a place of honour" nuclear-waste storage proposals, suffers similarly. My initial leanings are for something a "Valley of the Kings" tomb approach - select a reasonably random out-of-the-way place, and try to camouflage the place against as many lower-tech sensors and detection methods as possible, while still leaving at least one way for the backup to actually walk out of the place once their revival conditions are triggered. Balance as many layers of redundant protections against random incidents, such as ring-quakes or treasure-hunters, against making the place so big that it increases detectability, and call it a day.

(Naturally, this isn't going to be the only cold-storage backup site, or even the only backup method; it's just the one I want to pin some details down for.)

How many tricks might I be missing?

[Fred Brackin]

As near as I can actually tell, the nano in the nanostasis turns your old body into something like a block of plastic as it destructively uploads you into a data file a set of reassembly nano will turn back into a new copy of you.

Given those assumptions, there isn't actually any great need to store the data and the plastic together. Once the nano has gotten to it plastic is probably plastic and the reassembly nano would only need the same amount of raw carbon-based material to work with.

Hide the nano and the data files inside the walls and use the plastic (or just enough plastic) as an insulating layer. It's the data and the nano that's imprtant. The plastic material the old nano turned your old body into isn't really important. Keeping it all in one old you shaped chunk is only helping to preserve an illusion.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As near as I can actually tell, the nano in the nanostasis turns your old body into something like a block of plastic as it destructively uploads you into a data file a set of reassembly nano will turn back into a new copy of you.

Given those assumptions, there isn't actually any great need to store the data and the plastic together. Once the nano has gotten to it plastic is probably plastic and the reassembly nano would only need the same amount of raw carbon-based material to work with.

Hide the nano and the data files inside the walls and use the plastic (or just enough plastic) as an insulating layer. It's the data and the nano that's imprtant. The plastic material the old nano turned your old body into isn't really important. Keeping it all in one old you shaped chunk is only helping to preserve an illusion.

The revivee who'll be walking around is going to have a skull full of computronium running their uploaded self; I figure roughly ninefold redundancy of local backups of that upload should be sufficient for any particular hidden-revival site.

I'm also open to using a not-quite-a-Chrysalis-Machine to print out the meat parts of the cyborg as part of the revival process, which seems to closely approximate your suggestion.

Still, whether the core of what's being protected is an almost-ready-to-go cyborg who just needs the scaffolding removed from the cells, or a wet nanofab tank designed to whip up a body, it's still a lump that needs protection from the environment and other hazards. Anyone have suggestions on that end of things?

[Anthony]

How important is 'walk out'? Because, really, 10,000 year archival storage is going to involve storage in a location that is quite hostile to life (there's a reason the dead sea scrolls were found in the dead sea). At TL 10, that's decently likely to be an asteroid or cometary object.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Anthony

How important is 'walk out'? Because, really, 10,000 year archival storage is going to involve storage in a location that is quite hostile to life (there's a reason the dead sea scrolls were found in the dead sea). At TL 10, that's decently likely to be an asteroid or cometary object.

There are other backups such as that; this backup is focused on being ready to socially interact with whatever near-humans, trans-humans, or other derived-from-hominid-type people might have been left alone by some hostile entity that had a hate-on for non-biological AIs/robots/etc. (Or to be ready for whatever unexpectable circumstances called for having a relatively squishy avatar ready to go.)

With TL10 tech, even without superscience, it seems plausible to put in enough layers of airtight packaging to reduce through-wall molecular drift to a negligible level, minimizing how often the core package needs to be rebuilt. Plus, there could be something to be said for hiding a moderately complicated building-sized thingy amongst all the clutter of a Big Dumb Object.


On a meta-level, I'm throwing together whatever excuses I need to come up with to explain why a person from approximately-the-present happens to wake up in this setting's BDO and start walking around. Having arrangements for a wide variety of backups, including the one on the BDO, seems better than most explanations, so here we are. :)

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

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Still, whether the core of what's being protected is an almost-ready-to-go cyborg who just needs the scaffolding removed from the cells, or a wet nanofab tank designed to whip up a body, it's still a lump that needs protection from the environment and other hazards. Anyone have suggestions on that end of things?

That bit about scaffolding is part of what doesn't make any sense. Even if "nono scaffolding" (whatever that is) could absolutely stop cellular activity that wouldn't let you take bodies out of a nanostasis pod and store them like cargo. The body with stopped cells would still be meat. It'd just be dead meat and not particularly suitable for archival storage.

A "body" that you can store for 10,000 years is probably more inert than simple plastic.

So if you're not storing "people" virtually intact you only need space for nano, data files and raw materials. All of this can go at any of many possible locations that are not human accessible. Only the exit needs to be human/whatever friendly.

So inside the walls of some megastructure should be viable. Inside a mountain with an exit on the side would be another possibility.

The space-based equivalent of a mountain which is an asteroid might have issues. first many transhuman space survial schemes will rely on repairing damage from cosmic radiation as fast or faster than it occurs (DNA Repair Nano from Bio-tech). That wouldn't work in stasis.

Even if you have thick enough masses of asteroid that 10,000 years of cosmic rays is not an issue you still have to maintain an environment where your exitees can survive and functional vehicles that would let them go where they wanted. That palce is starting to look like an automated/self-sustaining space fortress and this significantly reduces your ability to hide.

So, you're on an Earth-like planet at a location with thick walls and where none of the locals even expect accessible spaces.

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So, you're on an Earth-like planet at a location with thick walls and where none of the locals even expect accessible spaces.

Which seems to bring us back to the Egyptian tomb approach, only less in the Valley of the Kings and more in the mountainous region of the south part of Sinai. (Well, kind of; I've looked over the place in Google Earth, and the place is covered in a surprising number of tracks, tourist routes, settled wadis/valleys, and other human-used lines.)

Hm... I wonder whether I should start by skimming UltraTech and jotting down anything useful in hiding and protecting the place; or take the more thematic approach of skimming D&D dungeon-delving adventure modules and Grimtooth's Traps books, and stealing any bits that can be made with tech instead of magic. :)

[johndallman]

I'd start by deciding how long this hideout is required to last. Designing for a thousand years is significantly different from designing for a million, and a billion is another problem again. Then you need some kind of concept for a power supply to last that long, and for sealing.

You have a significant advantage inside a BDO that nobody will come prospecting for mineral or oil resources, because there aren't any except for ones the builders put there deliberately. That's a downside of BDOs: once civilisation falls, it's hard to start it up again. Another downside is that they're kind of fragile compared to planets, but an upside is that there aren't any plate tectonics or volcanoes to worry about.

If we assume for the sake of plot that the hideout was aimed at 25,000 years, but hoped to last rather longer, then an RTG power supply is feasible, running off a long-lived isotope. Uranium-235 has a long half-life, is reasonably environmentally benign by the standards of useful isotopes, and has lots of uses at TL6-7. Giving your survivor some resources seems like a good idea in long-term planning, and making them useful along the way is sensible. The gold supply is useful for encapsulating the survival equipment, and the RTG within it: it's good radiation shielding.

Is this starting to make sense?

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'd start by deciding how long this hideout is required to last. Designing for a thousand years is significantly different from designing for a million, and a billion is another problem again.

As a first estimate, I'd hazard that the design for this backup might need to contain enough of a starter's kit of nano to be able to rebuild itself from scratch, every ten thousand years or so; just in case there turned out to be some flaw in the design that would prevent it from remaining stable any longer than that. (Sure, the designers would /hope/ that it could stay pat all on its own for a hundred thousand years, but they're not going to /rely/ on it being able to do so.)

Then you need some kind of concept for a power supply to last that long, and for sealing.

You have a significant advantage inside a BDO that nobody will come prospecting for mineral or oil resources, because there aren't any except for ones the builders put there deliberately. That's a downside of BDOs: once civilisation falls, it's hard to start it up again. Another downside is that they're kind of fragile compared to planets, but an upside is that there aren't any plate tectonics or volcanoes to worry about.

Standard designer's approach when faced with tradeoffs between such choices: "Why not both?", and hope that at least one combination of design-choices gets the job done.

If we assume for the sake of plot that the hideout was aimed at 25,000 years, but hoped to last rather longer, then an RTG power supply is feasible, running off a long-lived isotope. Uranium-235 has a long half-life, is reasonably environmentally benign by the standards of useful isotopes, and has lots of uses at TL6-7. Giving your survivor some resources seems like a good idea in long-term planning, and making them useful along the way is sensible. The gold supply is useful for encapsulating the survival equipment, and the RTG within it: it's good radiation shielding.

Is this starting to make sense?

'Tis; though I am hoping to keep the size of the cavities within the mountain reasonably small, in case some intermediate civilization happens to rise far enough to consider deep-scanning the mountain range a worthwhile project. (Though come to think of it, given the sizes of some natural caves, it might be worth considering having the sealed-off entrance to the techno-tomb being inside one, hiding its existence within the clutter of the existing voids... though some extra measures might need to be taken to handle any long-term water damage.)

I'm a little leery of relying on an ever-weakening RTG for power, but I can't think of too many good alternatives. We've found the occasional millennia-old jar of honey; are there any energy-dense petrochemicals or alcohols that might remain steady for similar durations? (Sure, burning stuff for power is kind of schizotech for a TL10 cache, but not every aspect of every solution has to be high-tech.)

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by DataPacRat

I'm a little leery of relying on an ever-weakening RTG for power, but I can't think of too many good alternatives.

That was one reason for picking U-235: half-life 703.8 million years. You're going to need a lot of it for your RTG, but it has plenty of other uses post-revival.

We've found the occasional millennia-old jar of honey; are there any energy-dense petrochemicals or alcohols that might remain steady for similar durations? (Sure, burning stuff for power is kind of schizotech for a TL10 cache, but not every aspect of every solution has to be high-tech.)

Coal, if kept thoroughly sealed from atmospheric oxygen.