I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Cymek said:

I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Stone, tidal fish traps?

Cymek said:

I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Simple lever devices, e.g. moving one stone which causes a bigger stone to fall on top of you could remain workable for ages.

Tamb said:

Cymek said:

I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Stone, tidal fish traps?

Those complicated someone steps on the wrong floor panel in a tomb and it sets off the walls closing, poison darts shooting out, etc or even less complicated it opens a floor trap and they fell into a pit.

Bubblecar said:

Cymek said:

I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Simple lever devices, e.g. moving one stone which causes a bigger stone to fall on top of you could remain workable for ages.

And you could build that into a puzzle where you have to work out which is the safe stone to move.

Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said:

Cymek said:

I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.
Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of none use/maintenance.

Simple lever devices, e.g. moving one stone which causes a bigger stone to fall on top of you could remain workable for ages.

And you could build that into a puzzle where you have to work out which is the safe stone to move.

In the old movie Land of the Pharaohs the trap was a stone sliding down a slope & breaking plugs which allowed dry sand to escape. This allowed other stones to sink to the floor of a passageway.

A big rolling stone only needs a brake and a pathway to work down, the brake can be gravity assisted and only needs a simple lever system one moving part. In the dry atmosphere of these sort of tombs could remain triggered for centuries.

To have the classic putting a foot on a flagstone, the flagstone would be as it were the end of a scale, press down on it and the other end would raise releasing Gravity assisted chaos. Only requires a rod and a pivot.

So the less complicated ones would probably work centuries later

Cymek said:

So the less complicated ones would probably work centuries later

But none of them have worked that we know of except the curses.
The curse on King Tut’s tomb was very effective, all of those who opened the chamber have dies including Professor Carter.
Spooky!!!

i guess the environment would play a part. desert regions stuff would fill with sand. jungle areas stuff would be invaded by roots. minor earth tremors could put things out of alignment.

Heh booby

titter ye not

> I am sure we have all seen them in movies and tv shows were one of the characters sets it off and they are in mortal peril unless they can solve a puzzle etc to turn it off again.

Like in Tomb Raider, Indiana Jones and some Scooby Doo and Dr Who episodes, occasional Star Trek. Come to think of it, I’ve even seen an example in a mathematics tutorial TV show for kids. Tri-wizard maze in Harry Potter. The original Labyrinth built by Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Stargate certainly has dangerous millennia-old equipment.

> Could you actually design a trap/puzzle that would work centuries later, I’ve always been dubious that they would work due to anything with moving parts failing even after a few years of non-use/maintenance.

Puts me in mind of the TV show “Life after people”. Batteries decay, timber rots, metal rusts, concrete spalls, cement gets eaten away, glue goes brittle or creeps, stone can decay in several ways, plaster disintegrates.

The fastest degradation tends to be biological – destroyed by tree roots or dry rot for example.
The second fastest degradation is chemical – oxidation, breakdown of organic materials, decay of batteries.
The slowest degradation tends to be physical – abrasion, UV damage, freeze-thaw, cosmic ray damage .

But that’s just a general guideline. Sometimes the rates are reversed. For instance, the physical degradation caused by the flow of wet lubricant out of joints can be much faster than degradation by the biological growth of some species of lichen.

If you want to make a puzzle that will put people in mortal peril and that will last for centuries, first carefully exclude all water. That eliminates most of the fast rates of degradation. (to be continued).

sprung loaded darts should be made from metal

booby traps are designed to keep people away for say 50 years or so

they are designed to wait out a few generations and then everyone who knows dies

the easiest trap could be something where you fall into a pit with stone spikes , maybe you ‘d coat the spikes with an inorganic poison

the VC made foot traps , the foot falls into a shallow pit with trap door spikes

you want the person to either be permanently trapped so they can’t crawl away , you want the booby trap to be ruthless to deter anyone from venturing further in.

an organic poison could be preserved with honey ?? the poison could be sprayed into the face

I’ve also seen traps like this in at least on James Bond and a Macgyver episode.

The booby traps put into the ancient Egyptian tombs failed terribly.

If you want a large mechanical trap to last a very long time, you want to make it out of a stable ceramic, such as quartz. Quartz is more resistant to chemical degradation than micas and feldspars. Failing pure quartz you could try quartzite or even sandstone, but only if it’s completely dry and there’s no physical erosion (eg. due to wind-blown sand). Granite does fairly well in a completely dry environment.

Good long duration lubricants are very difficult to make – most will eventually evaporate or decompose thermally. For a liquid lubricant one of the longest lasting is Krytox, a class of fluorinated greases. For dry lubricant you could try molybdenum disulphide, tungsten disulphide or hexagonal boron nitride.

For adhesives, certain specialist epoxies would hold up well.

For a flexible element (eg. rope), consider either a fluoropolymer such as polyvinylidene fluoride or an elastomer such as Nitrile rubber or Viton.

If you have the option, get rid of the CO2 and O2 in the local air. Use either nitrogen or a noble gas for an atmosphere for the longest lasting traps. Not a vacuum, the gases in the air actually act as a lubricant and without them you would get vacuum welding – which would be very bad for mechanisms of all types.

For a power source, gravity is one that perhaps lasts the longest, so you’ll see that a lot in the movies. A single large falling weight is one option. Cuckoo clocks use two falling weights.

Hero of Alexandria ran his stage scenery, which was an extraordinarily complicated group of mechanical mechanisms, off a fire powering a steam turbine, so perhaps you could get a small mechanism to light a fire to produce steam power. The limitation of using steam power as to run the complicated trap is the problem of the decay and evaporation of fuel – coal and charcoal would be two of the most stable fuels to power such a trap.

All that I’ve said above relates to mechanical traps, such as that in the Tomb Raider movie, not chemical traps such as a pit of acid or biological traps such as a nest of army ants.

I suppose the HHGG landing on Magrathea also falls into the category of an ancient booby trap that can only be avoided by solving a puzzle.

I’ve mentioned gravity and steam as power sources. Hydroelectricity is included in gravity of course. I’d be inclined to avoid batteries, solar power and wind power entirely. Ditto geothermal power, wave power, animal power and centuries-long energy storage in large flywheels.

Making light for the trap using luminescent bacteria, while difficult, shouldn’t be completely ruled out.

mollwollfumble said:

chemical traps such as a pit of acid or biological traps such as a nest of army ants.

In the novel, The Seventh Scroll, the tomb raiders almost died when they walked into a gas trap. The old builders had left some type of organic material, which had decayed and the gas sunk to the lowest point at the bottom of 2 staircases.

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

yes acid

sulphuric acid

hydrochloric acid

furious said:

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

yes plutonium

cobalt is lethal

maybe you could make a maze, keep them in long enough to make them sick

furious said:

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

I read a good article about how nuclear waste sites could be marked as dangerous for thousands of years in the future. One idea was spiky concrete sculptures that invoked a sense of danger.

• I read a good article about how nuclear waste sites could be marked as dangerous for thousands of years in the future.

That conversation was had on this, or a site like this previously. I’m not sure if it is possible…

AwesomeO said:

furious said:

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

I read a good article about how nuclear waste sites could be marked as dangerous for thousands of years in the future. One idea was spiky concrete sculptures that invoked a sense of danger.

spikes i think

they were thinking of something that howls when wind passes through it

or you could bury it deep

furious said:

• I read a good article about how nuclear waste sites could be marked as dangerous for thousands of years in the future.

That conversation was had on this, or a site like this previously. I’m not sure if it is possible…

I think if it is dangerous people over generations will figure it out as native Americans did with tick areas in summer, and if not dangerous, why worry?

burying it out of sight would be better

bury it on the moon

you need brains to get to the moon

you could bury it in a crater perhaps , like tycho

you could form it into a solid black block and bury it there

wookiemeister said:

burying it out of sight would be better

bury it on the moon

you need brains to get to the moon

you could bury it in a crater perhaps , like tycho

you could form it into a solid black block and bury it there

Drop it into a deep,ocean subduction zone.

furious said:

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

Nice idea. Low and medium level nuclear waste just won’t cut it, neither will uranium ore or depleted uranium metal. Ditto radioactive potassium.

You’d need at least a 1 Gray = 100 rads whole body dose to be effective as a trap. The only sensible way to do that is with high level nuclear waste, containing fission products and lesser actinides.

However, after only about 20 years most of the radiation from high level nuclear waste would have decayed. After 100 years the radiation has dropped to only 10% of the amount after 10 years. After 1000 years the radiation from high level nuclear waste is only 1/500 of that after 10 years. So if you want a radiation trap to be deadly for 1000 years then you couldn’t do it – you’d die immediately from radiation poisoning while making the trap despite taking even the most stringent precautions.

To overcome that, I suppose it’s back to uranium metal for the trap, in massive quantities.

> 1000 years … To overcome that, I suppose it’s back to uranium metal for the trap, in massive quantities.

Even there, the uranium would have to be physically hot from the effects of the radioactivity. If it was extremely radioactive then no-one would go near the trap for fear of being physically burnt. Explorers carrying a thermometer and prepared to avoid anything that causes a slight rise in the temperature would probably be safe.

mollwollfumble said:

> 1000 years … To overcome that, I suppose it’s back to uranium metal for the trap, in massive quantities.

Even there, the uranium would have to be physically hot from the effects of the radioactivity. If it was extremely radioactive then no-one would go near the trap for fear of being physically burnt. Explorers carrying a thermometer and prepared to avoid anything that causes a slight rise in the temperature would probably be safe.

The crossover point between the radiation of high level nuclear waste and natural uranium is 15,000 years. To get the same dose from high level nuclear waste after 100 years and from natural uranium, you’d need 100 times as much natural uranium as high level nuclear waste. That’s why I say “massive quantities” of uranium would be needed for the trap.

AwesomeO said:

furious said:

What about something radioactive? Not powered but just lethal amounts lying about…

I read a good article about how nuclear waste sites could be marked as dangerous for thousands of years in the future. One idea was spiky concrete sculptures that invoked a sense of danger.

I read that as well, it was interesting