Quick solutions to a modern warning placed on the surface of a planet for future generations

In response to Write once perpetual storage, is such a thing possible? Separatrix pointed me at How could an ancient race warn the future in a universally understandable way? and How might modern humans leave a message for 50,000 years?. While neither question addressed my concerns they have made me ask something else that will be useful much later, and possibly elsewhere too:

Given modern materials what would be the best method for creating a long term record/warning of events, on the planet's surface, if we only had three days, or at most, a week to do it?

I'm not asking what the message should contain or how it should be encoded, I want to know what medium it should be written on that will last as long as possible and can be fabricated in minimum time.

The message will cover approximately 1200 A4 pages or 75m² of surface area, and will include both written and pictorial information. This is the absolute size of the representation that must be produced. Answers need not worry (nor consider) scaling it, or compressing it etc.

Out of scope for the purposes of this question: anything about how such a message might, or might not, be translated in future, the message can be assumed to be translated as long as it is still legible. The message will be outside in an environment that gets only occasional light winter rainfall and is otherwise geological extremely stable and sheltered from erosion.

The society leaving the warning has no expectation of survival and wishes to leave a warning that lasts as long as possible. They only have one shot at it and very limited time, which means they must use their currently existing technology. If we were leaving such a message on the surface of the planet, starting tomorrow, what material would we use?

Important note:

The message must be readable without auxiliary technological assistance, so they could, for example, use laser etching to write the message, but not an encoding that requires a laser reader.

posted over 6 years ago

Ash‭

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