
Warning signs for the year 10,000 - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor
======
bugsy
Sigh. This is a political issue dating back to shortsighted decisions in the
1970s, not a technical one. Reuse this stuff in breeder reactors, the waste
from which has a substantially shorter half life. Then you don't have to build
toxic monuments.

~~~
jerf
Or toss the stuff just in front of a subduction zone.

It's also a product of the 1950s/1960s OMGRadiation!!1! mentality where
instead of treating radioactivity scientifically, it's a boogeyman that will
reach out and consume your delicious delicious brains, then increase their
size 100-fold and reanimate them so they can go cruising through Manhattan
shooting radiation death rays at the hapless public.

It's dangerous stuff. It isn't _that_ dangerous.

~~~
nitrogen
_Or toss the stuff just in front of a subduction zone._

For quite a while I've wondered whether it would be possible to put all our
truly unrecyclable waste, nuclear and otherwise, into the mantle for very-
long-term recycling. I'm glad someone else is thinking about geological
solutions too.

~~~
jerf
It's been talked about for a while in places where you can find people who
understand nuclear waste isn't magical, and that given where these zones are
even if the waste dissolves and floats away it will have no impact on the
ocean whatsoever. As you might imagine, there aren't many places where this
gets talked about.

One fun number to tell people is that there are 4.5 billion tons of uranium in
seawater [1]. Does it _really_ matter if we toss a few tons of waste in to
somewhere that is hundreds of miles from any significant life anyhow? (The
ocean is not uniformly alive, the deeps are not very alive at all.) We can
pack it up in ways that won't leak anyhow, like the well-known technique of
embedding it in glass.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_depletion#Seawater>

------
zeteo
Making the spot stand out in a spectacular way is pretty much guaranteed to
attract visitors. Why not just make it as plain as possible above the ground?
Then you can bury warnings at various depths, just in case someone decides to
dig there by pure accident. (10,000 years is too short of a time for
significant tectonic activity.) If they have the technology to dig 1,000 feet
deep, they'll probably be smart enough to decipher something like the Voyager
Golden Record.

~~~
electromagnetic
I think you're right, placing things above ground will only attract attention.

Skull and Crossbones has been a symbol associated with death at least since
Danse Macabre in the 1400's. By the late 1600's it began being a flag used by
pirates when they were raiding. By the 1880's the skull and crossbones was the
ubiquitous warning of poison.

It would be best to bury multiple warning symbols as these are likely to
outlast our languages. If you see a skull and cross bone symbol then you're
going to at least pause for thought. Bury radiological, biohazard, etc.
warnings just in case one has survived in some form of recognition, at least
someone might stop and think "hey are these symbols in our archives anywhere?"

Then I would ensure writing is buried at a deeper level. Place warnings in
every major language. Lexicologists(?) are anal retentive, they've managed to
keep Latin and Ancient Greek around despite not a single native speaker. It's
safe to assume that languages can last a long time, it's just a question of
which one.

~~~
bugsy
A really good warning would be "Death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb
of a pharaoh." That should keep out the curious.

~~~
electromagnetic
This is true, all our warnings might only encourage people. Perhaps the best
thing would be just to leave it unmarked, let the curious spelunkers die of
radiation poisoning and that'll probably serve to keep more people out than
building monoliths... or especially buried monoliths.

I mean burrying monoliths may only serve to get people to dig deep and reduce
the natural shield we wanted to protect people from the radiological
materials.

Burying them in a place where no one will go, meaning they'll have to have a
more concerted effort to dig in say the middle of a salt flat. Meaning some
level of organization and technology to dig 1,000ft deep in the middle of a
dry salt water lake bed a hundred miles from drinkable water.

~~~
kijinbear
Many of the salt flats in the Western USA used to be great lakes as recently
as a few thousand years ago. What is now "a dry salt water lake bed a hundred
miles from drinkable water" could very well become abundant land in 10,000
years.

~~~
bugsy
This is a really good point. Going back a mere 20,000 years there was an ice
age, glaciers covered much of north america, and you could walk on land from
China to Australia. Burying stuff with a half life of 25,000 years means that
in 25,000 years there's going to be 1/2 as much, not none. After 150,000 years
there will be 1.5% left. For super radioactive stuff that you have piles and
piles of that's still a huge threat! It is absolutely impossible to build
something that can protect this waste as long as it is dangerous because we
are talking about time scales over which a lot of geological change occurs.
There might even be comet strikes. The only responsible thing to do is to
process it into waste with shorter half lifes, which is something we know how
to do. Building a monument and pretending it is safe is just a fantasy we tell
ourselves to sleep at night while we are poisoning the future.

------
alexophile
"Researchers have recently uncovered what appears to be a site of significant
religious importance in the region of the ancient Mojave Desert. Human remains
were found scattered around a central monument believed to have been used for
sacrifices along with a series of yet undeciphered pictograms that are
theorized to indicate something of great importance buried below. Scientists
hope to get clearance for a neutrino scan of the area by the end of next
year."

------
pg
Believe it or not I was actually working for these people at the time they
were thinking about this. It was kind of mind-bending to have all these stolid
DoE types talking about such a sci-fiish problem.

------
russell
I remember reading an article in Technology Review a few years back that the
real problem is inefficient processing of the waste. Most of low hazard that
decays to harmlessness in a few years or decades. Much of the dangerous stuff
can be recycled as fuel or has other uses. The remaining residue has
considerably less volume and can be made into ceramic pellets that can be more
easily buried. Or dropped into the Marianas trench.

OTOH those that disturb our sacred burial grounds deserve what they get.

~~~
Alex3917
"those that disturb our sacred burial grounds deserve what they get."

There's an almost universal cultural belief that blood is what sanctifies
something, e.g. what Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address. So I think the
real message should be: don't be the moron who sanctifies and/or hallows this
ground.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
That reminded me: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211205>

------
kevinpet
Seems like a good message to future generations would be long half-life
radioactive material. Enough to detect but not to harm near the boundaries,
and then a little bit more at the center so that there's a clearly indicated
"this gets strong" idea. If civilization fails and they forget how to build a
geiger counter, they aren't likely to be doing much tunneling 1000 feet down.

Also, the mutant sickly plants will be a good indicator.

~~~
bdonlan
What makes you think understanding of radiation is necessary to dig?

Even if they had that understanding, why would they bother using a geiger
counter on an archaeological dig?

And plants can adapt - chernobyl is quite hazardous, but plant life still
grows there, and there's no guarentee that any effects on their growth will be
understood (and any level of radiation enough to _really_ effect them will
effect people standing on the surface too)

------
giberson
It seems odd, that with our current level of technology we are considering how
best to erect a warning using symbols. It seems to me that we should build
monuments that utilize pictures and videos--warning by observation. One set of
animation should be that of the nature of radiation. Something like you would
see in an 8th grade science video. An illustration of the energy that
irradiates from waste. The second set of animation should show two humans
standing side by side-away depicted away from the monument. The animation
proceeds with one human venturing towards the monument and as he gets closer,
the human displays the sign of radiation sickness, and dies.

Obviously, it isn't practical to try to sustain a working media player for
10,000 years--but thats not the only way to show animation. Instead, lets
embed a series of image cells of an animation into a permanent medium like
concrete.

~~~
bdonlan
We don't have the technology to build a video player that'll last 10,000
years, nor a power source that will last that long either. Leaving data media
is fine, but anyone with the technology to play such media will probably
understand the danger quite quickly if explained to them in words.

------
stenius
Can we compare this to the warnings of being cursed on Egyptian tombs? I know
4,000 years later when we read that something is cursed it pretty much falls
on death ears, how are we going to convince people 10,000 years later that we
have their best interests in mind and they should just let it be?

~~~
qntm
But those tombs weren't actually cursed.

That was a case of relatively modern, scientifically enlightened people
encountering a message from relatively primitive and superstitious people and
- correctly - dismissing it. This is a case of potentially very primitive
people encountering a message from us, advanced scientists who know what we're
talking about. It's a decent comparison, if only to highlight the differences
in the two problems.

This is why "Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves
to be a powerful culture." is part of the message. If we can't convince the
future that we have authority in this matter, the message will be ignored.

------
gaustin
I have to echo some of the comments from TFA. If you mark it, no matter how,
the curious are going to explore it. Even if they understand the danger they
may unearth.

The exception is if you have an advanced culture that stumbles upon it.
They'll know what it is and perhaps how to deal with it better than we do.

I have to admit that I find it hard to imagine an alien mind not having
curiosity or the urge to explore.

~~~
Nobido
This is so true. It would probably be safer to just leave it completely devoid
of any human artefact and cross our fingers nobody goes there. I can't really
imagine any situation where our current civilization wouldn't go down there. A
bunch of pictures of dying people and something buried in the earth? Sounds
pretty tempting.

~~~
bugsy
The more dire the warning, the more likely it is that it will be slaves who
are forced to give their lives to recover the treasure.

------
ShardPhoenix
Is the slight possibility of some people being killed in the event of total
collapse of civilization (with presumably billions already dead) really worth
spending time on?

~~~
cema
Yes, if you are being paid.

Or if this is your pet project.

------
maxklein
Why not just put a bunch of spikes 50 feet below the ground, with a lot of
scattered stones cut into the shapes of skulls. Most people will get that, and
it will avoid having a prominent above ground landmark.

Although on the other hand, if there are above ground landmarks, then
knowledge about what the place signifies is less likely to vanish.

~~~
joe_the_user
Anything you create above ground will have to survive the equivalent of being
sand-blasted for many weeks.

No sculptural details are going to survive. You can write symbols though, by
mixing different colored concretes.

------
PanMan
Every Indiana jones movie has thought us that, when there are signs of
warning, a large treasure is to be found. I wonder if these signs will deter
or attract future visitors.

~~~
cema
Well, so bury a treasure next to it, in a relatively safe place. Then it might
be psychologically easier for the treasure hunters to avoid the danger.

------
bobds
This reminds me of these designs:

[http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/10/warning_signs_fo...](http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/10/warning_signs_for_tomorrow.html)

Nanoparticle Hazard, Nonstandard Spacetime, Macroscale Quantum System...

------
aj700
this topic is called

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_semiotics>

------
sciolistse
Sounds like the Onkalo nuclear waste repository in Finland. There's a
documentary about it where they talk a bit about the difficulties of marking
the site in a way that won't just pique someone's curiosity after it's been
forgotten.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyKe-HxmFk>

Unfortunately it's not a very good, or enlightening, documentary. Has its
moments though.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
Pablos Holman is working on a design for a nuclear reactor that can take as
fuel what's currently discarded as waste.

~~~
uvdiv
There are lots of such reactor designs. Liquid metal fast reactors, and
thorium breeders for two.

------
teraflop
There's a great discussion of this project in _Deep Time_ by Gregory Benford,
which is where I first learned about it.

[http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-
Millen...](http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-
Millennia/dp/0380793466/)

------
dfischer
I miss this site. I remember checking it daily. Too bad they stopped updating
it.

------
maeon3
Just show in a long series pictures inscribed in granite a happy productive
group of humans and animals, having offspring, eating/drinking/being merry,
then show them digging and investigating the radioactive symbol. Then show a
picture of the entire tribe being sick, showing the radioactive symptoms to
humans/animals in pictures. Then show every life form obviously dead. Put that
radioactive symbol all around, in the ground and at the entrance of the waste.

If an alien culture comes to investigate, it will probably be much more highly
advanced so they will treat our warnings as "cute and endearing", as we treat
a mouse warning us about an oncoming cat.

The only creatures who could be helped by this warning is humans (if we
decline back into the stone age) or some other form of life that takes root on
earth long after our ecosystem goes away. I think the whole issue is
irrelevant. Just keep it contained and add pictures describing biological
decay in the presence of this area.

------
hasenj
> someone unfamiliar with the symbol probably wouldn’t guess that it means
> “Danger! These rocks shoot death rays!”

Funny, I never realized that's what the symbol denotes.

~~~
emelski
Neither did I, so I looked it up:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_symbol#Radioactive_si...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_symbol#Radioactive_sign)

In fact, the symbol is so completely unintuitive that ISO came up with a new
version:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/New_radiation_...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/New_radiation_symbol_ISO_21482.svg)

... which to me certainly does connote "these rocks shoot death rays!" as well
as the sage advice "RUN!"

~~~
DanI-S
The new version could also be interpreted as saying 'the breeze from ceiling
fans can reanimate the dead'...

~~~
eagleal
Agreed. It would make much more sense rearranged like this
<http://oi51.tinypic.com/15hzdcj.jpg>

~~~
DanI-S
You know, that makes me think - arrows seem totally obvious to us, but would
they be obvious to someone from a completely different culture? <\- could be
'go this way'; it could also mean 'avoid as if it's the mouth of a crocodile'.

~~~
eagleal
Well as they said above, to dig that deep the civilization needs a non trivial
technology, so I would think any human with an index finger would get it (but
the problem remains for those who don't have fingers).

------
dstein
Considering that the English language is quickly de-evolving into a hybrid
form of SMS and inner city slang we need to solve this problem within the next
10 years let alone 10 thousand years from now.

------
philthy
This is a ridiculous waste of money. What happens when there is a major
continental fracture/disaster in the next 10000 years putting the sites
possibly thousands of miles in any direction... I know it isn't likely to
happen but putting this refuse inside the planet probably isn't a good idea.

~~~
ido

        I know it isn't likely to happen 
        but putting this refuse inside 
        the planet probably isn't a good 
        idea.
    

Where do you think Uranium comes from?

