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Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
The room, which has been welded shut, is a collection of thousands of items from so-called "modern civilization" in the 1930s and 40s, designed to showcase to a far future generation how that one lived.
It has everything sealed inside it, including old shows, radios, cartoons, record players and the original script from "Gone With The Wind," among other cultural artifacts. And that's just the start.
"A future civilization might know the literature of the 1930s and still have little idea what people kept in their homes, how they entertained themselves or what their voices sounded like. So the collection grew stranger.
Inside went a typewriter, a cash register, a radio and five television tubes. There were bird songs, a potato masher, a bull-shaped bar of soap, six Artie Shaw records, two mannequins and the contents of a woman’s purse.
The recordings were particularly eclectic. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Chamberlain and Roosevelt were represented, but so were Popeye and a champion hog caller."
The collection is located in a long forgotten swimming pool-turned-vault underneath Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. None of us will be here when it's opened, which is supposed to be on - mark your calendars - May 28, 8113 - some 6,117 years away.
We'll be sure to update the story then!
Sealed Behind a Welded Steel Door Since 1940, This Room Full of Everyday Objects Isn’t Meant to Be Opened Until the Year 8113
- Saul
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
8113 - that's blindly and resoundingly optimistic. They'll need duplicate backups to be located on other planets because this one, and ostensibly others, will almost certainly be ruined beyond repair. The Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler clips will provide sufficient context, and future generations should be smart enough to figure out the rest. Perhaps add an epilogue briefly explaining the 'before' and 'after' years - the industrial revolution, cold war, neoliberalism, climate change, and a glimpse at early 21st Century politics.
- g121
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
RadioActive wrote:
.. None of us will be here when it's opened, which is supposed to be on - mark your calendars - May 28, 8113 - some 6,117 years away. ..
& Keith Richards is booked to host the opening? ..
- Fitz
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
8113 - that's blindly and resoundingly optimistic. They'll need duplicate backups to be located on other planets because this one, and ostensibly others, will almost certainly be ruined beyond repair. The Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler clips will provide sufficient context, and future generations should be smart enough to figure out the rest. Perhaps add an epilogue briefly explaining the 'before' and 'after' years - the industrial revolution, cold war, neoliberalism, climate change, and a glimpse at early 21st Century politics.
You are probably correct bc of the dangers of the post industrial world and human nature but the ruins below from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey are over 10,000 years old and of course there are sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and China that are 5000 to 6000 year old. They are not here but we are so you never know:
Last edited by Fitz (November 9, 2026 11:43 am)
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- Saul
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
Fitz wrote: "You are probably correct bc of the dangers of the post industrial world and human nature but the ruins below from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey are over 10,000 years old and of course there are sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and China that are 5000 to 6000 year old. They are not here but we are so you never know."
Perhaps so. OTOH will the media be playable. And there's also the off-chance of a good dino-sized asteroid blast. Hey, I'm just being optimistic...
- Fitz
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
Fitz wrote: "You are probably correct bc of the dangers of the post industrial world and human nature but the ruins below from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey are over 10,000 years old and of course there are sites in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and China that are 5000 to 6000 year old. They are not here but we are so you never know."
Perhaps so. OTOH will the media be playable. And there's also the off-chance of a good dino-sized asteroid blast. Hey, I'm just being optimistic...
Saul you have reason to be optimistic. The chances of a dinosaur destroying type of asteroid is 1 in every 50 million or 1 in 100 million years.
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
OTOH will the media be playable
It will be if the guy who helped create the vault has his way. His name was Thomas Kimmwood Peters and he did his best ot make sure future generations would be able to see and hear everything that's in there. Provided, of course, it still works after all those centuries and anyone who finds it can figure out how it works.
"Peters had another problem to solve: how would anyone in the year 8113 use the material? He stocked the chamber with projectors and microfilm readers, along with equipment for playing the recordings. If the future had no electricity, there was a windmill-powered generator . For reading microfilm without machinery, he supplied a seven-power magnifying glass."
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Thread Starter- Saul
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
The beauty of it all is we'll almost certainly never find out what happens...
- mace
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Re: Sealed Room Hiding Old Media Won't Be Opened Until 8113
Leafs will still be searching for a Stanley Cup Championship and the Bills for a Super Bowl.