What Lies Ahead?

What will they think 200 years from now when they dig up the remains of our civilization?
Let’s pretend that something happens and our lives that we know it are destroyed. Buildings and structures are in ruins from what used to be a living and thriving society. All that remains are the crumbling walls of homes and businesses and paths that once were roads which connected us with people from other cities.
Vines from unattended trees lace themselves around everything, reclaiming what had once been owned by the forest before men of our civilization came through with boats and other forms of transportation clearing the way for others from across the seas to settle the mostly untamed land. Perhaps they will find bleached bones from some great tragedy laying about the ground. Will they be able to find and dig up the 200th birthday vaults buried in 1976 for the benefit of whoever the citizens of our area would be after another 200 years?
If so, what will they think about our civilization in the mid 1970s of the 20th Century? Will the pictures and letters which were buried for posterity in so many towns and cities across the great nation that was known as the United States of America tell the new discoverers much or little about the land?
If we had it all to do again, would we choose more wisely in the chosen buried treasures? At that time in American history, there was a relative peace in the land. An American President, Richard Nixon had been forced from office because of threat of impeachment. An appointed Vice-president, Gerald Ford from Michigan would be defeated in his only attempt at being elected to the top office in the land. His defeat would come at the hands of a peanut farmer from central Georgia who ran on a campaign that was based on the fact that he would never lie to the people of this nation.
Former Governor Jimmy Carter of tiny Plains, Georgia would last only one term. His defeat would be at the hands of a former movie star—some people said he was not that good an actor—named Ronald Reagan. He would go on to serve two terms as President and gain a place in history as one of the greatest Presidents of all time. Many credited him with bringing down the threat of communism and the break-up of the once mighty and feared Soviet Union.
Will they know of a fateful day in September, 2001 when a new war came to the great country, and what will be the outcome of the sudden menace of world-wide terrorism by religious fanatics who choose to blow themselves up while killing others? Will they be able to learn from the ruins of a once-great civilization, going forward to bring about a new way of life?
Will the people who come to this land come from another world, unknown by the former civilization, but suspected by many to exist, or will they be from some former remote portion of the land known as Earth?
Just wondering?