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Comment by ReactiveJelly | Hacker News Reader

> Carve something into plastic, on the other hand, and it can survive decades. Substitute plastic for metal, and you just turned decades into centuries.

"I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."

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I've been saying for years that future archaeologists will wonder at these mysterious emblems they dig up, generally associated with a large deposit of what was once highly refined iron, aluminium and copper. About half a metre wide and 11cm high, made of incredibly durable plastic obviously intended to last for centuries, if not millenia.

And they'll puzzle over the inscriptions, "G809 BGG", "R420 BRL", "RFS 131Y", "SJ12 EXW", "RE51 CUE" - this on some huge chunk of steel, easily three times as big as the rest, and so many others.

What could they mean?

As a non-American, I don’t even understand today what that means. (And the website linked to isn’t loading, so I don’t have the context from that.)

I believe those are car license plate numbers.

British ones of various vintage, with RFS 131Y the oldest of those, from 1983.

My old Volvo 340GLE 1.4, first car after I passed my driving test. Awesome things, engine at front, gearbox at back, 50/50 weight distribution, enough torque to break traction if provoked, inoffensive enough not to freak out your girlfriend's dad.

Perfect car for a 20-year-old.

License plates vary between countries but this description should be recognisable to most of the world.

We use "AA AA 1234" or variations of that, so the examples did not register as license plates at all. Interesting.

Regardless of the content, what other 50x11cm mass produced metal signs are there? I was thinking street name signs, before reading the examples.

The comment described them as made out of plastic, while license plates here are usually made from aluminum, so I was thinking more along the lines of some kind of packaging.

In the UK they're incredibly high quality perspex, to the extent that if you need to make up some small HV insulators that won't be subjected to a lot of mechanical stress you could do worse than chop up some old numberplates.

"We believe they served some kind of religious purpose."

I mean, <gestures at car culture>...

Ironically, most of the metal stuff doesn't survive from antiquary. For instance most statues were in bronze not marble, but since metal can be easily recycled the only metal statues that survived are from ship wrecks.

Stone is a safer bet to survive the centuries, but even those are reused as bricks, like the Rosetta Stone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

I thought it was 40K reference at first about certainty of steel

it's from the mistborn series by brandon sanderson. fun books. would make a great big budget TV series someday

Mistborn was supposedly picked up for film.

Picked up by Apple, of all places, and Brandon finished the first draft of the screenplay last week.

You can buy rocks engraved with "Nothing Is Written In Stone". https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nothing+is+written+in+stone&ia=ima...

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