Sunday, April 03, 2011

Into Eternity

On Friday, Katie and I saw Into Eternity at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It is about the construction of a massive underground cave in Finland that is supposed to (safely) hold the country's nuclear waste. It is being built to last 100,000 years, and is an extremely long and deep cave. No one working on it now will be alive to see the completion of the project.

The part of the movie I liked most was how the officials in charge of this project were so concerned about the well-being of civilization 100,000 years from now. Specifically, they talked about the challenges involved in communicating to people 100,000 years in the future about the dangers that will lie beneath the earth in that spot. Will they speak our language? How can we even begin to conceive of the proper way to communicate with these people?

I am pretty sure that a massive undertaking such as this, which takes into account the safety of people more than 3000 generations into the future, would never occur in the United States.

And that is unfortunate.

2 comments:

MasterBowman said...

I've seen that movie. The director is a real sell out. He also directed the Justin Bieber documentary. Furthermore, he doesn't tell you he made all his money off his Daddy's nuclear waste business. Other than that, two thumbs up.

Lowry family blog said...

surely a government that cannot balance the books, deliver the mail or run a railway without huge losses could keep 3,000 future generations safe!