So I’ve developed an awesome super power… I can choose a length of time, and then enter suspended animation for that long. So I can say “100 years”, and then presto, it’s 100 years later (from my perspective).
So I have located an extremely seismically stable salt mine which geologists assure me will remain untouched for billions of years. I have constructed a chamber there. And I have decided to go into the future.
Trouble is… suspended animation makes me hungry and thirsty. So within a half hour or so of leaving suspended animation, I’ll need to eat a full meal’s worth of calories and drink a few cups of water.
Question is… what method of preserving quickly-edible food (and water) will let me travel furthest into the future?
Some clarifications:
(1) Please don’t fight the hypothetical. I can’t insert pouches of food inside my skin or anything of that sort
(2) Assume that when I emerge I will somehow be able to breathe and see and move around and not be atrophied and the chamber will be in good shape and so forth
(3) I presumably don’t have any way to keep, say, a freezer running for any unusual length of time. Although I’m curious how long frozen food would actually last, so I won’t object if the discussion wanders in that direction.
Water, suitably de-bugged, should keep indefinitely if sealed in a container. The best way to preserve food would surely be to dry it. You have water so it can be easily reconstituted.
Yep, dried is the way to go. Assuming no food will be available in the future world. You could stop along the way and get some Jetson-inspired food capsules to add to your dried stuff. And…be sure to eat well before you leave.
Dried is indeed the way to go. You could also try honey. If it’s well sealed against moisture it should still be good to eat pretty indefinitely.
Since you have access to salt you could try curing some meat and then vacuum packing it and if you did it properly that should last a century or two.
Seeds are still viable after almost any amount of time it seems. You could just eat them and plant what you don’t eat. Again, keeping them free from moisture would be the key.
Good news is, alcohol should last a good long time, so you’ll be able to have a party when you get there. Presenting your new robotic overlords with a case of 112-year-old single malt should be a good first step.
I’ve heard that soldiers in the War of 1812 were still (to some extent) eating rations left over from the French and Indian War, half a century prior. And that was with 18th-century food preservation technology. For modern food, properly canned, I don’t think there’s any known limit until the can rusts through, and if it’s dry, that’ll be centuries at least. Put the cans in a stone hollow and fill it with molten wax, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get millennia.
I don’t think people are properly appreciating the time frames I’m talking about here.
What kind of water container will function for, say, 500,000 years?
How long will dried food really last? Centuries? Millenia? I find it a bit hard to believe that honey will still be edible after 50 million years… but I also admit I have no real basis for that skepticism.
On the scale you are talking about, even though you don’t really like the idea, storing food, or some live animal to eat in body cavities (of needed) really starts to become a real option (shove a steak up your butt right before). Even consuming part of one’s own body, or perhaps induce a growth on the skin to cut off and consume.
There has been some food found in tombs in Egypt which IIRC was still edible, may be a place to start.
But not forever. Seals will eventually degrade and then any water inside will evaporate away. Double or triple sealing, using different sealing methods, may last longer, but eventually those will go too.
Wait a minute, in your OP you said 100 years. Now it’s 500,000 or even 50 million…at some point plate tectonics are going to come into play for even the most “stable” location, no?
I think seeds might last for 500,000 years if kept dry and away from pests. Perhaps in a sturdily constructed granite box with (handwaves) some way for you to remove the lid easily but that would defeat any rats who wandered into your salt mine. Or wouldn’t a thick-walled glass container do the trick for food as well as water? You could use a glass stopper; I seem to remember glass stoppered jars from chemistry class. Is there a chance the glass might fuse together after centuries?
Worse than changing the rules mid-game, you started with an unfair premise. Dried food and microbe-free water last indefinitely. That is to say, we have no definite expectancy less than forever, but we never say forever.
OK, now we have to worry about container. WHat’s wrong with whatever container is holding you in time stasis?
Naw see, I’ve missed the point, the O.P. is going to say – for this hypothetical, the subject travels to the future magically, with no error or failure. Now, come up with a food transport mechanism that isn’t magical, with no error or failure.
I don’t think I’ve missed the point by pointing out its a bad starting premise.
Okay, what about this: the water’s inside a glass jar. The jar is constructed with a narrow but sealed spout (sealed with molten glass).
Also nearby is a fine wire mesh screen inside a sealed glass container from which the air has been removed.
Wake up, use a rock to knock off the end of the spout and to liberate the mesh screen. Pour water from the container through the mesh screen (to remove any glass fragments) into a granite cup.
No, there was no changing the rules. The 100 years was a “for instance”. Other than that he talked about a chamber that would last for billions of years, and asked for a method that would allow “The furthest into the future.” And the title of the question is “as long as possible” not “100 years.” He’s asking for the longest possible time, whether this is 100 years or 100 million.
I don’t know the answer, but to those people advocating dried food that can be reconstituted with water, remember it be ready to eat within 30 minutes. Can you name any specific dried foods that will last forever, but don’t require hours of soaking?
Unless the food is kept in the same ‘hermetically’ sealed vehicle he himself is in I can’t see anything that could last a billion years. In a billion years whose to say if the earth is here? He may be sending himself into space. Food won’t be a problem if that happens. I think we need a specific time frame, at least.
ETA he could carry a laying hen and a milk cow on the trip .
Actually, that seems the best answer. If you can handwave a technology that will allow a person to remain alive but unchanged for a billion years, you could use the same or simpler technology to keep food stores preserved for that long.