
This place is not a place of honor - carbocation
http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm
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grzm
Previous discussion a year ago (280 comments):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871)

Submitted a couple other times in the past as well, just not as much
discussion:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=This%20place%20is%20not%20a%20...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=This%20place%20is%20not%20a%20place%20of%20honor&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
This whole thing is an offshoot of antinuclear FUD. If civilization collapses
to the point where people no longer realize that radiation is dangerous, then
so many people have already died that a few more people dying early from
radiation is just background noise.

In addition, knowing human nature and our propensity for conspiracy theories,
there will be people in the future who think all those signs were put there to
dissuade people from finding a massive buried treasure. (After all, the
phrasing is pretty much what you would expect if someone had buried a treasure
and wanted to make scare people from digging for it.

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ianai
They were tasked with making signs that would be deciferable for the entire
time the site was hot-something like 10000 then later 100000 years. Let's see
you do better.

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slededit
I think his proposal was to do nothing, since if the signs were ever needed
we'd have bigger problems. Whether that's better is arguable.

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ianai
One possible scenario where it's forgotten about does not mean there aren't
others. Maybe the files for the site die a beurocratic death and 9000 years
later there aren't any records available regarding the site.

Now, one possible alternative would be to incorporate some of the waste into a
monolith. People may not be able to decipher or heed warnings but they will
probably avoid the thing that kills them. (Probably wouldn't make it past the
ERB though)

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slededit
I think the premise is that Geiger counters would be ubiquitous in pretty much
every scenario except the catastrophic destruction of civilization. Radiation
itself is its own warning sign if you are sufficiently advanced
technologically.

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beojan
As far as I am aware, we don't routinely check archeological sites with a
Geiger counter before digging.

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slededit
You would be surprised at how closely the US is monitored with radiation
detectors. There's been more than a few false alarms with pets undergoing
cancer treatment for example [1].

I wouldn't be surprised if nearly every square mile of the US was closely
monitored now, let alone in a thousand years.

> “Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour,” Giuliano told the crowd. “Agent is
> in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and
> identified an isotope [in the passing car].”

> “Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological
> treatment three days earlier,” Giuliano said.

[1] [http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/watch-out-youre-
bei...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/watch-out-youre-being-
watched/)

~~~
ianai
I had no idea. I wonder if they've ever actually stopped a nuclear threat. On
the one hand, it's reassuring to know things are that closely monitored that
could kill millions. On the other, who knows what other forms of monitoring
are in-use.

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umanwizard
I'm reminded of Japanese tsunami stones:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html)

They are markers hundreds of years old warning future villagers not to build
below certain points (high-water marks for past tsunamis). In some locations
they are still respected today.

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Animats
Seen that piece before.

Here's the marker at the SL-1 reactor burial site.[1] This already looks
dated, and it's only a few decades old. (It's not from 1961; it's from a later
secondary cleanup.) The skull and crossbones is no longer used much for
hazardous materials, and might be misread as a warning of chemically toxic
waste. The road sign for "no pedestrians" is not really appropriate. The
abstract radiation trefoil is only meaningful if you know what it means.

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/SL...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/96/SL-1Burial.jpg/1280px-
SL-1Burial.jpg)

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sgt101
One thing that appears not to have been considered is allowing a small amount
of dangerous material to be uncovered in each major attempt to access the
site. This would be a brutal way to limit the damage from repeated treasure
hunts, but it would prevent someone from drilling into the whole cache and
killing vast numbers of innocents.

~~~
mjevans
Curse of the ancient tombs of X...

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ameliaquining
The link title should have a [1992] annotation.

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kbutler
Interesting how mobile-friendly sites from 25 years ago are.

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SapphireSun
I think it's worth adding a max width, it makes the columns easier to read if
they're not too long. Other than that, it's pretty great.

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TeMPOraL
I still think the best way is to dig deep and pad it densely with filler
material. The point is, for the future civilization to be able to reach the
material, it would need to develop to the level of middle-XX-century
technology, at which point they'd most likely be able to handle the waste.

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robert_foss
This reminds me of the excellent Finnish documentary "Into Eternity" which
treads into the same territory and takes a few steps further.

How do you communicate with a civilization that has no ties with to the
current one?

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dwaltrip
I feel it would be very worthwhile to add a second set of signs/materials that
assumes whomever is reading them has at least some level of scientific
proficiency.

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LoSboccacc
Should have stages. First room myhical connotations. Second puctogram of
radiation. Third atomic elements drawn. Fourth a well preserved (albeit
powered off) geiger counter to reverse engineer, fifth the element stored in a
case with more warnings and a dot notation trying to relate the box content
with the actual stored quantity

