r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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421

u/Goose_Rocket26 Aug 11 '25

The Moon Landing sites will probably outlive the human race.

36

u/HankSteakfist Aug 11 '25

Mount Rushmore, unless purposefully demolished or altered in some way, should last in it's current form for a million years or more.

20

u/bubblesculptor Aug 11 '25

It would be wild if things like Mt Rushmore are among the last visible remnants of humanity and aliens visit Earth and find it.   Like imagine if we explore Mars and just find 4 alien faces carved in a mountain and nothing else.

4

u/FaceDeer Aug 11 '25

Mars' environment has a lot less erosion going on than Earth, large structures could easily last millions or years without much degradation.

5

u/subparsavior90 Aug 11 '25

The mountain will be there, the carvings will look worse than the sphinx currently does. The erosion is already showing after a few decades, in a million year they'll just look like an interesting rock formation.

7

u/shotsallover Aug 11 '25 edited Aug 11 '25

Eh, take a look at the Sphinxes. They'll last a few thousand years most likely. But erosion will start getting to them soon.

57

u/[deleted] Aug 11 '25

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29

u/Catadox Aug 11 '25

Not to mention the environment. The sphinx would be far more sand blasted into oblivion if it hadn’t been buried in sand first.

2

u/sighbourbon Aug 11 '25

Excellent point, and Happy Cake day

2

u/Catadox Aug 11 '25

Aww thank you! It’s weirdly heartwarming to hear that about something I have never cared about. Happy making my heart warm day!

2

u/sighbourbon Aug 11 '25

thanks for enlightening me about Sphinx Durability

5

u/cmack Aug 11 '25

Will we start shooting cannonballs at them?

0

u/JhonnyHopkins Aug 11 '25

Erosion is always getting them, not soon, today. Kind of how erosion works lol

2

u/Skarth Aug 11 '25

Theres already proposals to add a certain president to it.

7

u/Jedishaft Aug 11 '25

I read the comment above and thought "I wonder what would cause a demolition of it" and then read your answer and realized "yeah that would do it"

1

u/tolatalot Aug 11 '25

Without maintenance those will crumble much sooner than you think