The American flag Buzz Aldrin planted on our moon isn’t there anymore. The extreme heat, cold and UV rays probably shredded it. The hardware-store quality flag a secretary ran out to get one afternoon in 1968 is just gone.
Ten million years from now evidence of the flag, the footprints and three golf balls won’t exist. Our flag wasn’t taken because the moon was conquered by another country; it was taken by the forces of outer-space. Micrometeorites took it, to be specific. These tiny particles constantly smash into the surface of the moon at more that 33,000 mph, chewing up anything in their path.
One day all physical evidence of the Space Race will be gone. All the kids of the ’60s who got to stay up late and listen to the moon landing will no longer be around. The moon will be either back to its old self or chopped up and used to fuel rocket cars.
Thinking about the country in ten million years is ridiculous. A couple thousand years is even weird. Countries don’t last that long, especially not a republic.
Our smartphones will be compared to Rome’s aqueducts and indoor plumbing. It was a great idea, but lead? Really?
Our Constitution, which is sealed between sheets of bulletproof glass in an oxygen-free, humidity controlled environment and stored in a nuclear-bomb-proof vault with five-ton doors, will be meaningless and powerless without any advocates. It may even be a written in a dead language by that point and used as filler text by designers of whatever medium people read at that point.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet- We the People of the United States of America-
The people who inhabit this land next will dig up our garbage and put it in museums. They will analyze our culture long after we are gone, digging up our bodies and putting them on display. Scavenging our landfills to see what is left and make assumptions about our lives.
We will be all the same to them. Middle school students of the future will write in their papers, “The American people worshiped the gods of Hollywood. Their leader in the mid-to-late 20th century was Elvis. He was succeeded by Oprah.”
We will be sitting in history next to the Romans and the Egyptians. We will be another world superpower that was eventually weakened by time and conquered to make way for the next.
