
This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992) - andrewflnr
https://web.archive.org/web/20171130034351/http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm
======
jakebasile
I feel like there's something to think about here since we couldn't even keep
the page with this information active for a decade and the goal is to keep the
actual warning around for 10,000 years.

~~~
nixpulvis
Or, to realize that we _did_ in fact keep it active, just through archive.org,
the modern day Library of Alexandria on steroids.

EDIT: Makes things hard if the warning sign was a link however, yes. Could
just add a published date then, and I'd assume things would be fine.

~~~
nixpulvis
This is a nice little script.

    
    
        function wayback_link(url) {
          return `https://web.archive.org/web/${url}`;
        }
    
        console.log(wayback_link("https://github.com"))

~~~
patrickyeon
I just went to
[https://web.archive.org/web/news.ycombinator.com](https://web.archive.org/web/news.ycombinator.com)
(no date in the url) and it sent me to the most recent snapshot.

~~~
nixpulvis
Perfect, of course that's how this should work. Updated :P

------
dang
For the curious, 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15210404](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15210404)

2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11851871)

2011:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211025](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2211025)

2009:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948606)

~~~
saltcured
We should create something like the olympiad to gather together and re-tell
the epic story of danger every few years, rather than building a monument and
hoping it still means something on its own.

~~~
chris_wot
Except that won't work in this case. This project was designed to outlive
cultures due to the timeframes before radioactive waste becomes safe.

~~~
saltcured
To be honest, I was just trying for the repeat posting meta-joke...

But, I do think that some active process and culture to guard or maintain a
waste pile is probably necessary. So, don't fixate on some naive visitor you
have to protect from all harm in the distant future. Settle for minimizing the
delay and accumulative harm before new visitors figure it out and become the
new keepers of the message.

------
hirundo
> We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

For the Level 1 message I suggest a sculpture of two vast and trunkless legs
of stone, over a pedestal with the words

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and
despair!'

~~~
havana59er
Great poem.
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias)

~~~
MrMorden
Read by Bryan Cranston:
[https://youtu.be/T3dpghfRBHE](https://youtu.be/T3dpghfRBHE)

------
Animats
That's just a discussion of a potential marker. Here's a real one.[1]

This is the SL-1 reactor site in Idaho. Reactor destroyed by a steam explosion
in 1961. Already, the marker looks dated.

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

------
PaulHoule
No it's just a place where you can find enough Plutonium to destroy your
enemies or enough U238 to run your civilization for 1000 years...

I used to dream that maybe 2500 years from now the Scientologists and the
Mormons would fight it out over Yucca mountain but now it's clear the
Scientologists won't last that long.

~~~
grahamburger
Ha! That would make a great story. Mormons already have a hollowed out
mountain[1] but at least ostensibly it's full of genealogical records not
plutonium. (Also I'm a Mormon.)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite_Mountain_(Utah)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite_Mountain_\(Utah\))

~~~
blhack
Why so much work into storing genealogical records?

~~~
crooked-v
Mormon belief is that baptism is one of the few strict requirement for entry
into Heaven, but that it can also be performed for the dead by volunteer
proxies. Even the most obstinate sinners and nonbelievers will gain entry into
the lowest-but-still-pleasant level of Heaven if they haven't committed the
unpardonable sin[1]... so long as they've been baptized, in person or by
proxy. Combine those premises and it becomes an obvious moral imperative to
gather as much historical genological information as possible to perform proxy
baptisms for as many deceased people as possible.

Of course, this presumption of religious axioms also has a history of
upsetting people of _other_ religions, and the extensive information-gathering
involved often uses borderline unethical methods, such as the various
geneology research service websites that are run in one way or another by the
LDS Church and include terms of service that let them use the info you piece
together however they like.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin#Mormonism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_sin#Mormonism)

~~~
sk5t
The unpardonable sin seems quite... vaguely specified, and open to endless
debate. What sin is a sin against the Holy Ghost? What sin is not?

~~~
grahamburger
In Mormon culture it's understood to be something you can only do if you've
had life experiences that should convey extraordinary faith. (IMO GP makes a
bigger deal of this particular quirk of Mormon doctrine than is needed for the
topic, fwiw.) Judas Iscariot is commonly referenced as an example of someone
who as a disciple of Jesus should have believed in His divinity but betrayed
Him. Most Mormons aren't concerned about accidentally committing an
unpardonable sin, and most teaching in the Mormon church focuses on the idea
that all sin is forgivable because of Jesus' atonement, with scant mention of
the idea that there might be sins that could be unforgivable.

(Note that despite commenting on this thread and being a Mormon I'm hardly an
examplary Mormon in a variety of ways. It's rare that a topic comes up on HN
that I know much about though, so may as well contribute some info in the
spirit of satisfying intellectual curiosity!)

~~~
mirimir
I'm not Mormon, but I was married to one. I got that I was safe as long as I
never believed. But that once you believe and then renounce, you're at least
at risk. Or maybe that was belief as documented by baptism.

~~~
DoctorOetker
and here I was thinking Roco's Basilisk was the original

~~~
crooked-v
Roko's Basilisk is just a technology-flavored reinvention of Pascal's wager:
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager)

~~~
mirimir
Sure, but "feigning belief" is not "belief". I mean, any deity worth believing
in would know whether you believed or not. So they'd also know if you really
believed, and then renounced. It's like manslaughter vs premeditated murder.

------
nkrisc
I always imagined a concept such that instead of trying to deter people from
entering was designed to convey that it was trying to keep something dangerous
from escaping.

Someone trying to keep you out of an ancient tomb? Clearly there are valuables
in there. An ancient tomb that's locked from the outside? That's creepy.

~~~
r00fus
Isn’t that exactly what an psychopath/despot/arch-villain would want? To
unleash destruction on the world... and be the one to find, conquer and
control it.

I think perhaps the Finland approach of complete obscurity may be better.

~~~
wnkrshm
That's what I thought as well when I saw the picture of the human being
poisoned by the radioactive waste and dieing. A culture might think: "This may
be a great poison, let's use it to destroy our enemies and lay waste to their
lands forever". Not entirely unlike some of our own plans for using nuclear
weapons only with less bang.

------
bosaisi
"An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to
inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted
against that of the marker system."

~~~
FooHentai
A practical consideration. If you spend human life time on efforts to prevent
loss of human life, you risk a net loss if you don't trade the cost against
the benefit.

~~~
myself248
Or just leave it unmarked and hope the pile of remains outside the entryway
gives the next adventurer a hint.

And then just accept human nature and let the pile slowly grow.

------
hanoz
I think we need only reflect on our own likely response to any conceivable
attempt by a previous civilisation to so forewarn us, to realise the futility
of our attempting likewise.

~~~
EForEndeavour
I think that's exactly the mindset that the Sandia National Labs panel
adopted: how would we react to any conceivable attempt to warn us away from
such a site? What wouldn't work on us, why, and how could we improve that? The
article summarizes their conclusions.

------
craftinator
As I understand it, the reason you'd want to communicate that a radioactive
waste dump is harmful is because of the very slow feedback loop that it
causes. It would take people a long time, and many deaths/mutations to figure
out that such an area is harmful; the signal has a very long wavelength, and
could easily get lost in noise. It's easy to attribute that harm to other
things, much like how many cultures didn't know about lead poisoning, even
though it was happening all around them. I think a simple solution would be to
dramatically increase the feedback loop, by putting nerve gas or landmines or
other fast acting dangers in the area. It would very quickly be understood to
be a "cursed" and dangerous place, and after very few deaths, people wouldn't
go there anymore.

------
Aloha
For anyone curious, here is the full report.

[https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-
control.cgi...](https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-
control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf)

------
saalweachter
> "Rubble Landscape": A square outer rim of the caliche layer of stone is
> dynamited and bulldozed into a crude square pile over the entire Keep. This
> makes a rubble-stone landscape at a level above the surrounding desert, an
> anomaly both topographic and in roughness of material. The outer rim from
> which rubble was pushed inward fills with sand, becoming a soft moat,
> probably with an anomalous pattern of vegetation. This all makes for an
> enormous landscape of large-stone rubble, one that is very inhospitable,
> being hard to walk on and difficult to bring machinery onto. It is a place
> that feels destroyed, rather than one that has been made.

"Landscape of large-stone rubble" describes, among other things, New England,
where all of those stone boulders were carefully (or more often carelessly)
stacked into stone walls to more-or-less clear the fields for planting or
pasturage.

------
andrewflnr
I went looking for this page to confirm the exact quote for a story I'm
writing. The original link on HN where I found it was dead, so I had to go to
the wayback machine. Hopefully no one has to do that again...

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

~~~
gwern
Couldn't you have used
[https://urbigenous.net/library/WIPP/](https://urbigenous.net/library/WIPP/)
or [https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-
control.cgi...](https://prod-ng.sandia.gov/techlib-noauth/access-
control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf) which turn up if you google any of it?

~~~
andrewflnr
I was really trying to find the exact thing I had seen before. I think the
"motherf_cking webpage" aesthetic adds to the effect. Also, the PDF is a bear
to search for the juicy parts, and I actually don't remember seeing that first
link.

------
frankhorrigan
I've actually thought about this quite a lot. Not because I have an expertise
in the matter--I don't. But because it's such a fascinating thought
experiment.

My proposed solution goes something like this: It is hard to convey that there
is nothing of value and only danger within. So what if you just made the site
actually dangerous on the surface? Is it possible to build something like a
lake of acid that would make the area uninhabitable, dangerous, and impossible
to develop?

Or, to keep it more abstract: Maybe the problem is that we're looking for the
right symbol. But instead of symbols we should make the fact of the area
itself the deterrent.

~~~
CptFribble
Given enough time, literally anything that indicates the slightest bit of
"don't go in here" will make someone ask "why go to the trouble if it isn't
valuable?

I'm pretty sure the only way to keep people out is to hide it.

~~~
gubbrora
To toot my own horn a bit, posted this exact idea in the previous thread.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19761577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19761577)

The solution is simple in my view. Just make it dangerous enough that they
can't get it no matter how much they would want to loot it. And if they can
outsmart the dangers we face them with they must be smart enough to figure out
how to deal with the radio activity.

~~~
dc_gregory
You could just make the area incredibly radioactive, problem solved!

~~~
jrochkind1
That was in fact suggested unironically in addendum initialized "WS" at the
end:

> We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit
> that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for
> any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death
> caused by the radioactive waste? In other words, it is largely a self-
> correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and
> it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-
> scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000
> years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be
> weighted against that of the marker system.

I'm not convinced. I guess there are levels of radiation poisoning that have
effects immediate enough to make it obvious from whence they came. There are
also many levels which are not, but will still end or ruin lives.

~~~
wnkrshm
The big danger isn't individuals dieing from radiation, the danger is
contamination of ecosystems with radioactive isotopes.

Above all, engineering and use of the site is to be prevented - nobody should
dynamite it and release radioactive dust, nobody should lead a river through
it or flood the site, nobody should use parts of it to build anything.
Immediate proof that the site is dangerous, by people coming in contact with
it dieing while not being contaminated with any kind of radioactive dust, may
be a safe and universal isolation of it. Even animals may learn to avoid it.

The only problem is that it's probably impossible to have sufficiently high
levels of radiation on the outside of the 'Keep' while still keeping the
isotopes safe from any kind of disaster or environmental effects.

------
edgarvaldes
Personally, this seems a more interesting experiment from the perspective of
language and communication, and only incidentally about the risks of nuclear
pollution.

~~~
salthound
That is exactly what it was, a very interesting piece of foundational research
in anthropology justified by allusions to the dangers of nuclear pollution.

------
Herrin
For anyone interested in things like this, I'd recommend "Deep Time" by
Gregory Benford[1]. It has a chapter devoted to WIPP[2] and this messaging.

[1] Amazon link: [https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-
Mille...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Time-Humanity-Communicates-
Millennia/dp/0380793466)

[2] Seems to be online, albeit poorly formatted, here:
[https://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benford.html](https://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/benford.html)

------
pontifier
Maybe we are thinking of this with too much of a helicopter parents view.

If there was a high exposure death area, and a way to easily send an animal
into it, the truth and reality of the danger there would be very easy to
convey.

~~~
yellowapple
Yeah, pretty sure any advanced civilization will quickly figure out "hey this
place is pretty radioactive; we shouldn't stick around", while any primitive
civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we
shouldn't stick around".

Having a visual cue there (I like the jagged pointy structures) would
certainly help reinforce that and/or delineate exactly where the
radioactive/cursed place actually is.

~~~
Ma8ee
> while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is
> definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around".

After a while, when quite a few people have died, and maybe their whole
village and all their farmland is contaminated. This is exactly what we are
trying to avoid.

See for example the Goiânia accident:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident)

~~~
yellowapple
By that example, it sounds like "after a while" would be "a couple weeks".
That's a short enough timeframe to piece together "oh darn, this happened
because we went into that scary place with all the jagged rocks and took the
curse of that strange land back with us". Maybe that particular village is
doomed, but villages do communicate/trade with other villages and could spread
the word that "hey, we visited this weird place with jagged rocks and a couple
weeks later we all got crazy sick, so like, don't go there".

Soon enough, the Curse of the Jagged Land will become part of the local
folklore/religion, at which point Mission Accomplished. Worst-case, you might
see an uptick in animal and/or human sacrifice at the site to appease the God
of Plutonium.

~~~
Ma8ee
Did you miss the part about “we prefer that people don’t die at all”? Or the
contaminated land? How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is
acceptable to store our radioactive waste?

And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and
died within days. More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and
different kinds of genetic damages. How long is it going to take before people
connect those things to the strange mines?

~~~
yellowapple
> How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store
> our radioactive waste?

My point is that only one generation ( _maybe_ two) would be impacted, since
future generations would have learned from prior generations that "Hey, if you
go to this very-ominous-looking place with giant black spikey stones sticking
out of the ground you're gonna get really sick and probably die". That sort of
thing is the _exact_ sort of thing that gets passed down from generation to
generation via oral history.

It's obviously better that people don't die at all, but that's an idealistic
goal. _If people are going to die_ , might as well make it as easy as possible
to associate that death with the trespassing that preceded it.

> And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick
> and died within days.

That... only proves my point further. That's even _less_ time between cause
and effect, making it _easier_ to associate and connect the two. Especially -
again - when it's associated with a place that has a physical appearance that
screams "this land is evil; stay the hell away".

> More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of
> genetic damages.

In the example you linked, the rate of incidence for these things among those
exposed to the radiation was not higher than the baseline for that locality.

> How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the
> strange mines?

"within days"

~~~
Ma8ee
No, the example was atypical. In the general case, it will take longer, and
will be harder to figure out than in the example. And in timespans of hundreds
of thousands of years, this might have to repeat several times.

I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in
future generations get sick and die, because of our short term economic gains
now, I can't help to consider you as evil.

~~~
yellowapple
> I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in
> future generations get sick and die

Oh yes, because the contaminants polluting the Earth from solar panel
manufacture are so much better[1]. And let's totally ignore that coal power is
actively spewing radioactive soot into our atmosphere and water and food
_right now at this very moment day in and day out_ [2]. Who cares about _that_
, right?

Oh, but surely we can bury _those_ byproducts deep in abandoned mines where
they're relatively isolated and quarantined... oh... wait... hmm...

If you think that it is acceptable that a lot of people in _current and
future_ generations get sick and die, because of our myopic and irrational
fear of a power source the harmful byproducts of which are trivial to contain,
I can't help to consider you as evil.

\----

[1]: [https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-
isnt...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-
as-green-as-you-think) ← In fairness the situation is apparently improving,
and future technologies will hopefully make this less of a problem, but this
is nonetheless a problem now, and unlike nuclear waste we're doing far less to
try to contain these pollutants.

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_coal_industry#Radiation_exposure)

~~~
Ma8ee
This was not a discussion pro or con nuclear power. I don't consider you evil
because you are pro nuclear power. I consider you evil because you so easily
dismisses as acceptable human suffering and death.

Just imagine your own grief and rage if it was your own children who got sick
and died because someone else in a distant past just didn't care about what
they did to your local environment.

I consider it one of the greatest problem we as humanity has right now that so
many seem to be incapable to sympathise with people just because they are
distant (in time or space). A death of a child or a spouse hurts as much in
the Middle East or in thousand years (most likely) as it does in the US in
2019.

------
js2
I’m reminded of this big red sign I saw in a men’s room, just above a big red
button:

“ATTENTION DO NOT PUSH RED BUTTON UNLESS IT IS AN EMERGENCY”

It took every ounce of my will power not to push the damn button.

[https://i.imgur.com/xnfVpOh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xnfVpOh.jpg)

~~~
mindcrime
_“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put
a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-
World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to
dry.”_ \-- Terry Pratchett

~~~
js2
I once stopped the monorail at Disney. In case you’re wondering what happens
if you try to force the doors open while it’s in motion. Don’t do that.

~~~
folli
What was your expected outcome?

~~~
js2
Good question. This was over 20 years ago. I may not have thought it that far
through.

------
niftich
A few days ago, I was just thinking of the phrase 'This place is not a place
of honor' and the foreboding aesthetic of the field of spikes warning nuclear
waste buried below. I first saw this document many years ago, yet it stuck
with me enough to have my mind wander to it on occasion.

Every time this is posted, many comments on this topic echo comments made in
the past. This is reassuring, because many people throughout the years will
independently arrive at some of the same critiques, as diverse as those
critiques may be. There's concerns about the longevity of the artifacts
intended to communicate the message, there's concerns about whether the
symbolism will be understood to signify danger, and there's concerns about
whether the message of danger will be heeded. There's also the argument that
drawing overt attention to the site is more risky than concealing its
location, and that avoiding the circulation of information about it is wiser
than publicizing it and risk it becoming a legend that some may someday seek.

While it's difficult to design a message that transcends time, culture, and
biology, and conveys the authority of the writers and the gravity of the
warning, violence against intruders conveys the danger to those who value
their existence. It won't necessarily protect against malevolence of someone
seeking to unearth a weapon, or the arrogance of individuals willing to compel
or force others to put themselves in danger in their stead, but the properties
of nuclear waste in particular may enable a design that proves fatal to anyone
who may enter the protected chamber, such that once they're through, they can
never leave. Technology and telecommunications could still be used to extract
material from the site, but only the most dedicated adversaries would be able
to proceed.

Thinking on this, the obscurity argument is compelling. It relies on the
vastness of the planet to approximate random chance, and force dedicated
adversaries to devote time and resources in spacetime (in an analogue to
cryptography and keyspace), while clearly marking a location aids those are
intrigued by it and lets them skip to planning on how to exploit it. In times
when a trustworthy defense force may protect the site from adversaries, the
public location is hard to exploit, but in times when no such force exists,
the obscurity forces an adversary to expend more work than if the location
were known.

------
inflatableDodo
Is also worth looking into the related and awesomely named, 'Human
Interference Task Force'.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Force)

I think their best work has to be the ray-cats.

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-
moo...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-moons-and-
atomic-priesthood-how-government-plans-protect-our)

[http://www.theraycatsolution.com/](http://www.theraycatsolution.com/)

[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-
years/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/)

------
devindotcom
This is the executive summary of the full paper from 1993, which is well worth
a read for several reasons and can be found (slowly) here:

[https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10117359](https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10117359)

------
GuB-42
I don't like these messages. They are really patronized for the ones who are
likely to be our future selves.

Radioactive "waste" is rare material, full of energy. It is dangerous and we
may not know what to do with it now but it may turn out valuable in the
future.

Just describe precisely what's inside.

------
newman8r
This is always a fun read. I've been pondering creative ways to keep intruders
off my land when I'm away for several months or more.

I like the idea of using fake rattlesnake sounds near the structures - I'm
thinking about rigging something up.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Repeating my comment from the last discussion:

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 scare people from digging for it.

~~~
walrus01
> 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 scare people from digging for it.

I have to agree with this. What if in 1955 America we had discovered the
equivalent of these warnings, and hints of a huge artificially constructed
underground tunnel complex in the same location as Yucca Mountain, and we
thought it was buried artifacts from some more technologically advanced
precursor or alien civilization?

Dozens of billions of dollars would have been made available to excavate the
site, damn the cost and damn the consequences.

~~~
roenxi
And, ironically, the discovery of high-energy rock would probably be a
celebrated scientific (or at least religious) advance for such a civilisation.
Marie Curie's exploits aren't remembered as foolish. She likely died of
radiation overexposure and is remembered as one of the heros of science. And
many in her lab if I recall correctly.

The 10,000 year warning is an interesting thought experiment, but if there is
anyone who claims it is relevant to the acceptance of nuclear power they are
simply not very imaginative about all the things that can go wrong over 10,000
years. A civilisation-level mind blank on where the garbage dump is doesn't
rate at any meaningful level.

The half life of lead is 1.53×10^7 years. It is a nasty toxic substance; it
has killed people. We still use it. It is objectively a bigger threat on a
longer time scale than nuclear waste. As usual, nuclear power is special
because we _could conceivably_ manage the damage. Most industrial processes
cause damage at a scale so large the cost of a no-harm policy would be
prohibitive. With nuclear the cost is simply a bit high.

------
aluminumtunes
There is a great doc about this place [https://youtu.be/qoyKe-
HxmFk](https://youtu.be/qoyKe-HxmFk)

------
vkou
The first thing people unfamiliar with the dangers of radiation will do, is to
quarry all those dramatic spikes and walls, for usable stone.

~~~
justin66
The people studying this have generally advocated a layered defense. First,
people dig up the strange stuff on the surface if they have a use for it
(although it should be designed to make this difficult, expensive and not
especially useful). They don't have to be especially advanced to do this,
maybe. Second, perhaps they develop the ability to dig deeper and they
discover more elaborate warnings. Eventually, they get to the equivalent of a
vault where they've received plenty of warnings and, one hopes, are savvy
enough to interpret them and make an educated choice as to whether they should
proceed. (there's an assumption that wisdom, caution and linguistic ability
might grow in a future society alongside the ability to prospect and dig,
which might or might not work out)

The strange spikes and so on are just one possible approach. Simply hiding the
stuff a mile under some salt can work and at least one site does that. I think
you're going to see a ton of stuff hidden that way just because it's the path
of least resistance once the regulatory permissions are secured (which is hard
enough). I think this approach has been written about in the NY Times and so
on.

------
bobcostas55
There's a great documentary about this, called _Into Eternity_. Highly
recommended.

------
praptak
It is a bit strange to worry about the safety of (a small subset of) people
several hundred generations down while at the same time ignoring the
possibility that Earth may not be hospitable to humans within two generations.

~~~
uryga
from the "Personal thoughts" section of the document:

> _An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to
> inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted
> against that of the marker system._

i'm curious re: where you're coming from with "ignoring the possibility that
Earth may not be hospitable to humans within two generations" – I feel like
that's outside the scope of this document. also, couldn't the same be said
about any plan with a long enough timeline?

~~~
praptak
Right, I wasn't clear - my thought was in fact outside the scope of the
document. I meant that it is strange to devote a large amount of resources to
this document (which may prevent a few deaths in 10k years), while we might
have already exceeded the carrying capacity of Earth (global climate change
being the most imminent threat, but not necessarily the only one) and thus not
have anyone to be around in 10k years.

------
nvr219
this is one of my favorite things

------
Mizza
Obligatory song about genetically engineered fluorescent cats:
[http://www.theraycatsolution.com/#10000](http://www.theraycatsolution.com/#10000)

------
jojoj
Reminds me of the berlin holocaust memorial and it makes total sense.

