
This is not a place of honor - erubin
http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm
======
amk_
Holy shit. Dieter Ast was my landlord in college. This explains so much about
my basement.

To those who haven't read the article yet, the real title is Judgment on
Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot
Plant. Prof Ast was the material scientist on one of the multidisciplinary
teams tasked to design warning symbols for 10,000 year nuclear waste storage
sites. He used to go around collecting old lab computers that were going to be
thrown out and resurrect them with Windows 2000 or Puppy Linux installs.

~~~
colanderman
… your basement was plastered with iconographic warnings against entering due
to interminable life-ending substances contained within?

… _did you enter_?

~~~
2bitencryption
>This place is not a place of honor.

>No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

>Nothing valued is here.

"But I just need to use the laundry machines."

>...Fine.

~~~
jean-
Brilliant. This just reads like a conversation with Death in a Terry Pratchett
novel.

------
orbitingpluto
I'm never understood this marker system. Graves have been marked in a
threatening manner so that they would not be plundered. It doesn't work.

The point is to hide the waste. The system should be designed to progressively
unveil warnings if some future man starts digging. Otherwise, you're just
asking for them to dig it up.

Another thing not mentioned is to design the container so that anyone who
plans to excavate will think they have hit rock bottom... like Pharoahs' tombs
or a multi-level pirate cache.

Or even better, put something horrible and poisonous twenty feet down. It
might be better to obviously poison a couple people if they start digging this
up. That would be easily understood and eventually avoided.

Remember the radioactive sign in the Star Trek episode where Data gets
shishkabobed? They made jewelery...

~~~
neltnerb
I thought it was pretty interesting that they weren't really talking about
making the site "threatening", but making it "repulsive". Poor craftsmanship,
ugly terrain, uncomfortable heat, low value materials, etc. Some of their
design photos were very different from what I'd assumed, and pretty much
immediately triggered my "eww" response. Not intimidating exactly, just
uncomfortable.

~~~
patrickk
They attempted to go with "repulsive" for a nuclear waste disposal site in
Finland, there's a really cool documentary:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWadizC8AQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmWadizC8AQ)

~~~
lsaferite
Thank you for this. I've only watched a little so far but it's a great
documentary.

------
jtolmar
Contrary to many of the comments here, I think they did a good job of
considering what it takes to make something foreboding without sounding like
"here be treasure." The pseudo-mystical messages sound hokey, but they're
effectively a backup system in case the straight-up "This is atomic waste,
here's a description of atomic waste" descriptions are incomprehensible to
future generations. And the more primitive communications deserve more
consideration, because that's the harder part.

Additionally, I don't think the "no marker, anonymous patch of ground" plan is
sound. 10000 years is a long time, which will hopefully be inhabited by
peoples more advanced than us, and they could do a lot of digging in that
time.

That said, the approach I'd suggest would just be a big plain monument that's
physically obnoxious to get around. Although the insides of the pyramids have
been robbed, the pyramids themselves will last another 10000 years, and I
doubt anyone will try to mine under them during that time. And experience has
shown that the best way to preserve a language is to make sure there's a large
enough sample for someone to brute-force it, so these pyramids could contain
chambers full of detailed explanations with pictures.

~~~
kbart
_" Additionally, I don't think the "no marker, anonymous patch of ground" plan
is sound. 10000 years is a long time, which will hopefully be inhabited by
peoples more advanced than us, and they could do a lot of digging in that
time."_

If these people are more advanced, there's no point to teach them the dangers
of radiation as they will be well aware of that already.

~~~
proactivesvcs
Society can lose information as time progresses. Modern medicine is only just
starting to re-discover how important state of mind is when packaging,
describing and using drugs. That's the case despite the fact there haven't
been any large-scale catastrophes that caused the information to be lost. In
10,000 years who knows what we might have forgotten?

~~~
vectorjohn
Not nuclear waste.

~~~
dsl
Lets say tomorrow we figure out how to drill down and tap the geothermal from
the core of the planet. Pretty much overnight the coal, gas, and nuclear
industries become obsolete.

Nobody will be continuing studies in the field of nuclear. Knowledge will be
lost.

Heck, 5,000 after the pyramids were built we still don't know how.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Nobody will be continuing studies in the field of nuclear.

Unless they are interested in powering things that aren't tethered to the
surface of the earth. Which, you know, is something humans have been
interested in...

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

99pi did an awesome about this. I thought the most interesting idea was that
culture permeated much deeper than anything else. So seed our world with these
stories of cats that changed color near radiation or something like that would
do best. Since symbols meaning change but oral tradition or old wives tales
last much longer.

~~~
ccvannorman
Cats that change color as a geiger counter? Shut up and take my money!

~~~
proactivesvcs
One of the many discarded methods of solving Dwarf Fortress's cat population
problems. We then had to expend many Dwarf-hours and precious resources safely
disposing of the irradiated cat remains. The cats were still angry.

~~~
emp_zealoth
Irradiated Cat-splosion. Stuff that nightmares are made of!

------
valbaca
I had an internship here during the summer of 2010. For the most part it was
incredibly boring as there was SO much emphasis on safety (rightfully so).

For example, people would have to be cleared from an area in order for
janitors to vacuum an area, so that no one would trip on the power cord.

I did get to go down into the salt shaft which was incredibly cool (also
literally cool, which was a relief because it was the summer in New Mexico).

For the most part I upgraded some software systems and helped with some
hardware upgrades.

The engineers were all characters. Several of them were preppers convinced
that I was silly for going into computer science and not stocking up on gold.

~~~
brbsix
I guess that's not very surprising. If you're used to thinking 10k years out,
you recognize the inevitability of catastrophe in a way that others wouldn't.

------
tgb
Wait, can we all just take a minute to relish the extreme nominative
determinism in Ward Goodenough being involved in this project? This man was
born for this role.

~~~
finnh
good eye! if I could up vote you a thousand times I would.

------
kbart
Any marks would only attract people's attention. I can't come up with a single
historical example where some marks would successfully keep people away. Even
now we keep digging once forbidden and sacred places like pyramids, graves,
temples, plague victims' burial grounds. Furthermore, a "menacing earthworks"
example from the article looks like a treasure is buried inside that square.
Why not bury it deep enough in an unmarked grave (for example, put it in the
tunnels inside a mountain then blow all entrances up) so no primitive
civilization could dig it up? If civilization is sophisticated enough to dig
deep enough, they must be well aware of radiation as well.

~~~
krkoch
I'm not so sure. Primitive mining in e.g. Røros, Norway goes back to 1740.
Dynamite were introduced to the mine in 1870.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8ros](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B8ros)

~~~
Hondor
Only 40 years before the invention of the Geiger counter. If future primitive
people have dynamite, it probably won't be long before the know about
radiation too. This whole project seems to be being treated as far more
important than it really is. It's only to protect a very small group of people
in a very narrow window of technological advancement and only if civilization
had somehow already been destroyed yet there were enough of us around that
living in the desert seemed like a good idea.

~~~
MOARDONGZPLZ
I agree. If you missed it in the article, it's even bigger than that. The last
sentence is most telling:

"This panel member therefore recommends that the markers and the structures
associated with them be conceived along truly gargantuan lines. To put their
size into perspective, a simple berm, say 35-m wide and 15-m high, surrounding
the proposed land-withdrawal boundary, would involve excavation, transport,
and placement of around 12 million cubic meters of earth. What is proposed, of
course, is on a much greater scale than that. By contrast, in the construction
of the Panama Canal, 72.6 million cubic meters were excavated, and the Great
Pyramid occupies 2.4 million cubic meters. In short, to ensure the probability
of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest
public works ventures in history."

Plus, as interesting as this project is, I can't imagine coming across a
gargantuan spike field in the middle of the desert that I would _not_ want to
explore.

------
labster
It's really interesting to me to see architecture used for its typical
antithesis. It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive
emotions, to inspire, to bring facility to humanity, to sanctify. Here it is
being used to desecrate, to decrease utility, to ward away.

As a hacker, I'm used to the thought of "what is the worst possible way I can
make this UI", but it's cool to see it applied in an entirely different field.

~~~
rdtsc
> It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions, to
> inspire, to bring facility to humanity, to sanctify. Here it is being used
> to desecrate, to decrease utility, to ward away.

Not that uncommon. I have known 2 architects who used architecture against
probably what they learned in school or dreamed of building.

One was designing casinos. Apparently they did "dark patterns" before computer
UI people did it. Think about open places, to inspire and generate positive
emotions and so on, well their guidelines was to entrap, confuse, isolate and
promote whatever kept people playing longer. She eventually quit and became a
housewife.

The other one, lost their job where they designed office buildings, and the
only job they found in their town was building prisons. Talk about soul
crushing. Well, they said they didn't care it was just a job. But, I know it
would bring me down if I was building that.

~~~
jacquesm
> Think about open places, to inspire and generate positive emotions and so
> on, well their guidelines was to entrap, confuse, isolate and promote
> whatever kept people playing longer.

> She eventually quit and became a housewife.

I think she ended up working for IKEA.

------
korethr
Honestly, reading this, I kept thinking to myself, "Man, this is just waiting
to be turned into science fiction short story." It could go in different
directions, future humans discover such a site, humans discover an alien
analogue of such a site on $planet, aliens discover such a site crafted by
humans on $planet, etc. Either way, there's potential for a good story there.

~~~
djsumdog
I think the most interesting thing about this is the underlying assumption
that warnings and containment must survive .. the death of our current
civilization and States.

These researchers are talking the long path .. how do we warn people who make
not have any knowledge our civilization exists in its current form?

Too many people today think this will last forever; that we're in a golden age
that we cannot easily return from.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's especially interesting to see a government body doing this sort of thing.
Politicians don't usually care much about what kind of world they're leaving
for their own children, let alone random citizens of the far future.

Is anyone actually following these suggestions? My cynical assumption is that
they'd be laughed out of the house by the people who actually hold the
construction purse-strings.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Politicians don't usually care much about what kind of world they're leaving
> for their own children, let alone random citizens of the far future.

Politicians probably care about this a lot much than they are given credit
for; while plenty are actually short-sighted and narrowly selfish (just like
plenty of non-politicians), no doubt a lot of the perception of that comes
from people who disagree with them on what is best for the future portraying
the politicians disagreement as disinterest. (This frequently happens when the
disagreeing parties are _not_ politicians, as well.)

------
jrockway
I like the comic where the happy man has successfully plundered the nuclear
waste. It contaminates him and he is observably less happy, though still
exhibiting signs of above-average satisfaction with life. Then in the final
frame, his beloved treasure stolen, he sadly dies of what appears to be
thyroid cancer. His dying thought is that the person that robbed him of his
ill-gotten plutonium squeezings will soon be suffering the same fate. Justice.

If I were watching a movie where the protagonist goes in to get some ancient
artifact and this comic showed up on the wall, I would be like "yeah fucking
right, some spooooky spirit kills the tomb raider? suspension of disbelief
fail!" But of course this is real and is actually what would happen. If the
society in 10,000 years is as cynical as me (and has forgotten about
radioactivity), this comic will just egg them on!

~~~
wobbleblob
I imagine a culture, 10,000 years down the road, that reads from bottom to
top. Wow, awesome, let's excavate one of these disease absorbing blocks!

Why not stick the waste in an old Uranium mine? Maybe our future descendants
will be able to make good use of our radio active waste?

~~~
michaelt
The comic shows the tree has grown bigger in the final frame of the comic.

So they'll have to assume it shrinks trees as well as absorbing disease :)

~~~
wobbleblob
It would never occur to me to interpret it that way, rather than him moving
the block closer to the trees. Wouldn't it take a human life time for a tree
to grow that much?

~~~
jrockway
Depends on the type of tree. When I was a kid we got a tree cutting at some
arbor day event and planted it in the backyard. By the next summer, the tree
was as tall as our two-story house.

------
ktRolster
To prevent people from entering, they should place statues of soldiers in
front of the entrance. Thousands of them. Each should be sculpted individually
from terra cotta.

~~~
inopinatus
May I suggest two vast and trunkless legs of stone, accompanied by a pithy
inscription. Shattered visage optional.

~~~
taneq
Look on my works, ye mighty, and check ye sperm count.

------
antihero
Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be
curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day
languages/methods of communication.

Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and
then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a
sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it.

You could even tier the messages, and use words that would likely be common
and thus more likely to have been recognised based on discovering whatever
other shit we've left around.

DEATH.

THE THINGS HERE MAKE DEATH.

THIS MATERIAL WILL KILL YOU.

And progressively more complex and complete messages, etc translated into
Chinese, Spanish, Braille, French, pictograms, what the fuck ever.

And if they're too lazy/careless to try and decrypt any of the fucking obvious
messages, fuck 'em.

~~~
creshal
> Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might
> be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day
> languages/methods of communication.

The pyramids were known for their entire duration of their existence, and
investigated and/or plundered regularly. But we lost all knowledge of
hieroglyphs for a time period of almost two thousand years (until we found the
rosetta stone).

And at the same time we were using Uranium to give glass a wonderfully green
sheen. And it glowed in the dark, too! Awesome!

If there is an event cataclysmic enough to wipe out all knowledge of nuclear
repositories, it will likely wipe out human civilization at large. We can't
make really useful predictions how much knowledge will be kept, and at what
pace it will be rediscovered.

~~~
vectorjohn
And yet nobody has yet to dig hundreds of feet under the pyramids to find out
what they're _really_ hiding. Also, the thing will be practically made of
Rosetta Stone, designed on purpose to help translate.

Really, there is nothing to worry about.

------
pqhwan
I find the "human comes near box with radioactive sign/sign is on human
now/human sick" drawing to be a pretty universal warning sign. No matter how
many years we're aiming for the message to survive, as long as we're warning
against humans, wouldn't using the human form somehow in the message be the
best way? Isn't drawing narratives with bipedal stick figures something we've
had since the dawn of humanity?

~~~
SCHiM
But reading from left to right/top to bottom is definitely not universal. How
will you make sure that the figures are read in the correct order? Perhaps a
future culture will read the signs to mean that they should bring old and
dying people to the stone to resurrect them?

~~~
mhink
Look at the tree. In the pictures, it gets larger from top to bottom, marking
the passage of time.

~~~
jbandela1
Og says

"Look, if we sacrifice a virgin in this spot, we will have abundant crops. See
how the tree is getting bigger as the person dies"

------
dbrower
I've read the report several times (it keeps coming back every 5-7 years or
so) since publication, and I've never felt like a reliable solution had wither
been found, or was in the offing. There is good thinking, but the problem
itself seems very daunting. I think that is the real lesson.

~~~
topspin
This has been haunting the news since the early '80s and it will go on for
several more decades. Then, after whatever they finally come up with is
constructed, there will be a creepy spectacle about which to write more tired
news stories.

It has always seemed a waste of effort to me. If some primitive post-dystopian
human were to dig hundreds of meters through salt (!) and come into contact
with the waste they would be rapidly educated as to the hazard and go find
something better to do. Anyone less primitive should have no trouble
interpreting some straightforward pictographs preserved on a few strategically
placed brass plaques embedded in granite. In the meantime surround the site in
stainless barbed wire and perform routine inspections.

I guess it was kinda fun thinking about this `problem.' Once. Long ago. But
since then it seems to have just devolved into a boondoggle attracting an ever
greater circle of paper writers. Meanwhile, with all of these great minds
sweating 10,000 year hypotheticals, the actual handling of waste is down to
yahoo contractors mixing high level waste with randomly procured cat litter,
producing nitrate fueled nuclear waste explosions...

Priorities. In order. Not.

~~~
LoSboccacc
Yeah the artifical constraint of understandable by everyone is quite limiting.
I can see two set working best: scary faces and statues for primitives, atom
structure of thorium or whatever waste is for educated. Optionally leave some
stuff out in a ventilated but inaccesdible area so people die/get sick before
releasing the whole toxic dump in the wild. Can be in stages like pyramids:
first zone warning, then the second zone trapped. Inhuman, but if your
priority is to protect the whole word from releasing the waste a couple
curious casualty may be a compromise.

------
apsec112
We should just assume that nuclear waste lasts forever, like a lot of chemical
waste does, and then treat it the same as the equivalent class of chemical
waste. When someone says "10,000 years", people start thinking about how to
wait it out. When someone says "forever", people give up on waiting it out,
and start thinking about more realistic safety measures.

~~~
refurb
I'm curious, what chemical waste can you not safely dispose of? All organic
compounds can be incinerated at a high enough temperate to destroy them (even
nerve agents). The only thing I can think of would be metal poisons, but even
those can be turned into a form that is less toxic.

~~~
jacquesm
[http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Dioxin](http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Dioxin)

Has a worst case half life of 50 years.

[http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/](http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/)

Lists very small quantities as still quite dangerous to reproduction or
causing cancer in exposed subjects.

But on a 10,000 year scale I fail to see how it would still be a problem. A
few hundred, definitely still risky.

~~~
polpo
I went to high school next to a dioxin superfund site [1]. They incinerated it
(I could see the smokestack from the school) and supposedly it's all cleaned
up now [2]. We'll see how we all turn out.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Beach,_Missouri)

[2] [https://clu-in.org/download/remed/incpdf/times.pdf](https://clu-
in.org/download/remed/incpdf/times.pdf)

~~~
jacquesm
A school within line of sight of a smokestack burning dioxins is something
that should not even exist.

~~~
vonmoltke
An incinerator outgassing smoke toxic to surrounding people is something that
should not exist. Proximity to a school is irrelevant, except for irrational
fearmongering.

~~~
jacquesm
I disagree. Developing tissue will have to live for much longer than older
folks and any kind of cumulative toxins or hard to break down toxins have a
lot more chance to do harm in children than in adults.

------
jtmarmon
> (a) 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.

Wow. reminds me of the ford pinto case:
[http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Legg...](http://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Leggett-
pinto.html)

------
SCAQTony
What language(s) did the earth speak 10,000 years ago. The concept is
electrifying for will English or any other language written or spoken today
even exist?

The monument would have to be a "Rosetta Stone(s)" quite obtrusive and large
like a pyramid. It would have to be written in multiple present and ancient
languages. It would would have to feature math formulas and illustrations
etched foot deep into Titanium, carbon fiber, or a material that wouldn't
degrade in 10,000 years. Then inside the monument would have to feature even
more information. WOW!

~~~
stickfigure
I'm going to go out on a limb and surmise that, barring cataclysmic events,
10k years from now the majority of people will speak an english-derived
language that is mostly understandable to someone living in the present day.
Information transfer in the past was extremely analog, slow-moving, and lossy.
Today we are rapidly approaching a "single meme pool" and your tweets are
getting archived for eternity, whether you like it or not.

Scratch that. I already can't read twitterspeak. Sigh.

------
duckingtest
I don't want to sound evil... but why? It's not like digging up low-intensity
radioactive waste is going to end the world. Just look at how alive Chernobyl
zone is... So let's say some people bring it up, they get sick and die, which
makes people remember that radioactivity symbol = bad for the next several
hundred years or so.

On a related note, wouldn't it make more sense to turn the radioactive waste
into powder and dump it over a large area of sea or desert (Sahara is HUGE)?
Given a large enough area it wouldn't even be detectable.

~~~
fennecfoxen
> why?

Largely because the project requirements said "we should warn people away from
this dangerous site".

Assuming the standard (very generous) EPA figure of $4 million as the break-
even point to save one _statistical_ human life, and an unrealistically
generous discount rate of 0%, there's essentially no way a project of the
scope of the proposed earthworks would be worth it.

------
stonogo
If their goal was to create a hokey-sounding quasi-spiritual ward that future
generations will consider naive and ignore, they've certainly hit the nail on
the head.

Probably a better approach is to accept the fact that nuclear waste will
either be cleaned up or destroy humanity long before ten thousand years comes
to pass, and spend the money they spent on this exercise in speculative
fiction instead on working toward a real solution.

~~~
periphrasis
Admittedly, I haven't read the article, but the tone of the message suggests
that it's not meant for future generations of our civilization, but for future
generations of whatever cultures come after our civilization is gone.

There's a pretty remarkable old English poem that survived from Dark Ages
Britain, in which the author marvels at the ruins of Roman Britain, wondering
what giants must have once inhabited the land in order to build such things.
From the sounds of it, these markers are targeted towards people like that,
not our own immediate descendents who will already know it's a nuclear waste
site.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and as such, any large monumental works are more likely to attract
attention than to repel it. May even become a cult place of worship. More
effective to bury and obfuscate the site entirely?

~~~
yellowapple
If it becomes a "cult place of worship", then that's probably Mission
Accomplished; the faithful have a tendency to defend holy places against those
seeking to defile them (read: dig into them and expose the world to nuclear
waste). If they can be convinced that such sites are "God's Temples" and that
defiling them will unleash all sorts of plagues (which they very likely will),
then the current generation's job is done.

~~~
stared
Religion in the service of natural selection? A nice twist. (E.g. all cultures
without worship of holy places eventually perish.)

------
mooreds
See also Into Eternity, a movie about how the Finns are dealing with this,
with a 100,000 year timeframe.

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

~~~
e12e
It is a very good documentary on the subject. For me it really drove home the
idea that current nuclear power comes with too expensive externalities in the
form of "keep this stuff safe for 100 000 years". We've never come close to
doing something like that as a species. I don't think we ever will.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Actually, after a couple of hundred years it's no more dangerous than the ore
from which it came. No one worries about putting up signs around natural
uranium ore bodies.

Saying that "x has a long half-life" is exactly the same thing as saying "x is
not very radioactive". By definition.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Example:

Uranium-238 is the most common isotope of natural uranium. It has a half-life
of 4.468 _billion_ years. By the "long half-life = ZOMG! DANGERRRRR!" standard
it must be really, really bad, no?

Nope. It's just not very radioactive. You can buy uranium ore on Amazon and
even get free shipping (no hazmat or anything).

Uranium was also used to color glass in the early 20th century. While it's not
used for that purpose any more (and I probably would not routinely drink out
of a uranium glass vessel), it's not considered hazardous. There's a lot of it
for sale on eBay.

The _really_ dangerous stuff tends to have a short half-life (= intensely
radioactive, again by definition) and an affinity for body tissues. For
example, iodine-131 -- half-live 8 _days_ , and gets absorbed by your thyroid
gland, or strontium-90 -- half-life about 29 years, and gets absorbed into
your bones (it mimics calcium).

The people who convinced you that isotopes with long half-lives are somehow
more dangerous? They either didn't know what they were talking about, or they
were lying to you.

~~~
e12e
Plutonium has a half-life of 24 000 years or so, I would still rather not
drink it and certainly not breathe it in.

------
JoeAltmaier
I worry an elaborate structure will attract unwanted attention. Think about it
- would you be interested in visiting it? Aren't you already interested? Why
would future-people be any different. I know, the average shmoe would hear
about this thing in the desert and think "Whatever" and go back to eating
cheetohs and screwing. But what about an architect? A philosopher? An
engineer? A historian? An artist? Pretty much any intellectual would be
fascinated.

It could become the 'intellectual' version of a 'predator trap'. Like the
LaBrea Tar Pits attracted more apex predators than most any other ancient
formation (because of all the grazers trapped and dying, predators were
captured in greater numbers than anywhere else in the fossile record).

Its almost a mechanism for ensuring that Idiocracy comes to pass - a trap that
kills or reproductively damages smart/curious people only, draining the gene
pool and leaving an ever-duller population of humans stuck in some post-
apocalyptic dark age with no hope of getting themselves out.

So yeah I'm against it.

~~~
justin66
The goal with something like this is to build a series of deterrents, such
that you have to be smarter and more capable (and therefore more able to
interpret a warning) as you get closer to the real threat.

------
mesh
99 Percent Invisible episode on this:
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-
years/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/)

~~~
ehnto
I feel like 99pi might become the "relevant XKCD" of podcasts soon. This was
an excellent episode and it's a really fun problem to discuss.

------
andrewflnr
Use the heat of the waste's radioactivity to power infrasonic emitters, and
induce horror and panic in anyone who comes close. Or maybe set it up so that
the wind creates infrasonic vibrations. You'd stand a very good chance of
convincing people that the place is literally haunted.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions)

~~~
kordless
I have one computer that has been running (with help) for 8 years. That's a
record for me.

10K years is a really long time to keep a computer running. Who's going to do
that, other than more computers?

~~~
andrewflnr
That is indeed the trick, but who said anything about computers? Mechanical
sound reproduction, even specifically using electricity, predates computers. I
see no reason it couldn't post-date them in this application, as well. You
would want to build the system out of simple, indestructible components,
something closer in complexity to an electric doorbell than a computer.

------
joshmarinacci
While I appreciate the effort they put into it, trying to plan _anything_ for
10,000 years in the future is sheer folly. We have no idea what humanity will
be like in 200 years, much less 10,000.

Assuming we are around at all, we'll likely have mastered fusion power (thus
no longer creating nuclear waste) or have mastered space flight (thus we can
chuck it into the Sun) or have discovered that concentrations of radioactive
materials are incredibly useful and not waste at all. A few hundred years ago
crude petroleum was a waste product as well.

------
danieltillett
I would have thought that to an advanced civilization that a nuclear
radioactive waste dump may well be of value.

I do think worrying about radioactive waste given how much carbon dioxide we
have dumped into the atmosphere is a bit like bandaging a stubbed toe on an
amputated leg.

~~~
manachar
They're worried about people in the future who may not know about radioactive
waste. This location will be dangerous for a very long time in a way that's
invisible.

Carbon dioxide is certainly a concern, but most of its problems will never
produce a place that people shouldn't stumble or explore because of unseeable
danger.

I often think of the story of the Goiânia accident to be applicable. Four
people ended up dead because two people stole something they thought might
have value but was radioactive.[1]

It is prudent to assume that dangerous waste should be disposed of in a way
that assumes there won't always be guards.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident)

~~~
danieltillett
Understand the reason for the worry, but given the climate change that has
been kicked off by the CO2 released to date I don’t think people are going to
be worrying too much about tripping over a radioactive waste dump.

------
3pt14159
What I don't get is why nobody ever thinks about the international relations
angle.

Say there is a biological weapons attack and humanity is wiped out aside from
some remote communities like Alert, Canada. Some tech survives like gears, but
obviously computers go away for a while. In 3000 years people are aware that
humanity was once great, but then destroyed itself with hubris. They may even
have a fairly developed understanding of science based on what they could save
(university text books would _certainly_ be hoarded and copied 10 years after
the bio-attack).

Now the society enters an age that is kinda like a more advanced renaissance.
No more easy coal or oil, so they use electricity from wind turbines.

What happens when they figure out what is at that site? They weaponize it.
It's so obvious to me. If we want to stop people from getting killed by it we
should hide it as best as possible. Or make it as hard as obtaining enriched
uranium. Humans have always had a "Do whatever it takes" approach to war and
there is no way a emanating death object is going to be avoided once they
understand what it does.

------
hexane360
These parts stood out to me:

"We decided against simple "Keep Out" messages with scary faces. Museums and
private collections abound with such guardian figures removed from burial
sites. These earlier warning messages did not work because the intruder knew
that the burial goods were valuable. We did decide to include faces portraying
horror and sickness (see Sections 3.3 and 4.5.1). Such faces would relate to
the potential intruder wishing to protect himself or herself, rather than to
protect a valued resource from thievery."

"We must inform potential intruders what lies below and the consequences of
disturbing the waste. If they decide that the value of the metal component of
the waste far outweighs the risks of recovering the metal, the decision is
their responsibility, not ours."

Interesting how much stock they put in both the rationality and irrationality
of any future individuals. Appeal to their emotional side and appeal to their
logical side.

------
mholt
Interesting. I know that the idea of launching radioactive waste into the sun
or out of the solar system is highly criticized for the potential for things
to go wrong (and rightly so), but do the critics really think that the earth
-- with humans on it -- will be more reliable in 10,000 years than space
flight even 100 years from now?

~~~
Merad
Getting out of the solar system is _incredibly_ difficult. Well, not
necessarily difficult, but expensive. So far we've launched a grand total of
five spacecraft that will leave our solar system, with a combined mass of just
over 2500 kg. That doesn't even put a dent in the amount of nuclear waste
we're talking about.

Somewhat counter intuitively, it's actually a bit more difficult to crash into
the sun than to leave the solar system.

There's also the small problem that an explosion on launch could result in a
massive area being exposed to highly concentrated radioactive fallout.

------
johnward
My favorite part:
[http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/WIPP%20Exhibit%...](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/WIPP%20Exhibit%20Message%20to%2012,000%20A_D_files/dead01.gif)

------
JoeDaDude
This team should collaborate with the makers of the Clock of the Long Now
([http://longnow.org/clock/](http://longnow.org/clock/)), another device
intended to last thousands of years. There is a discussion of their research
into various methods pursued by different cultures over the centuries to
pursue similar goals, see video here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphxoUxSvgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nphxoUxSvgY)

------
theoh
Recent documentary by Peter Galison and Rob Moss:

[http://containmentmovie.com/](http://containmentmovie.com/)

------
gruez
It appears that most of the images are missing (there are figures that are
refereed to but do not exist). Is there a complete copy somewhere?

edit: found a mirror [http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-
control.cgi/1992/92138...](http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-
control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf)

~~~
rory096
They show up for me. Here's an imgur album.

[http://imgur.com/a/DGizu](http://imgur.com/a/DGizu)

~~~
gruez
I see those images, but there are more that are missing. For example: Figure
4.3-18, which is referenced 2 times in text but has no accompanying picture.

------
gadders
This just makes me wonder what toxic substance the dinosaurs/space aliens
buried under Stonehenge now.

------
agentgt
It seems like one of the problem is that the place _" is not a place of
honor"_.

In modern civilization memorials and/or historically significant places are
continuously safeguarded and most importantly remembered.

Yes they can be targets of attacks but they get rebuilt. That is their
significance is _remembered_ and _protected_. It seems like a bad idea to make
a dangerous place forgettable.

So instead of hiding I propose a solution might be an extremely conspicuous
stone like edifice built on top of the land with information about what is
underneath etched in stone (I am assuming the land above is tolerable). Maybe
even make it look nice so you know it gets protected. It could even become a
cultural landmark.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
Some monuments are safeguarded today, but not all. Fewer monuments were
safeguarded in the millenia before we understood radiation. Your design relies
on a culture that values the remnants of other cultures to the point that they
are sacred. There have been times and places where the people just wanted to
re-purpose the nice building materials like the Mayan temple that was
destroyed to create road gravel. Wars can break out that destroy delicate
structures too, like the archaeological artifacts that were scooped up by the
U.S. military to fill sand-bags during the Iraq war.

Choosing huge, ugly, low-value materials for construction avoids those
dangers.

------
ageofwant
Funny stuff. A product of the narrative of the day, and in less that 30 years
its already changed. Of course there will be no nuclear waste in the future,
that stuff is way to valuable as fuel in modern reactors.

------
Bromskloss
Do the signs ever get to the point and say that it's about radioactivity?

~~~
Leynos
Yes.

The first written message a visitor to the site would encounter reads:

    
    
        DANGER
    
        POISONOUS RADIOACTIVE WASTE BURRIED HERE
    
        DO NOT DIG OR DRILL HERE BEFORE 12000 AD.
    

This message is to be rendered in seven different languages. Subsequent
messages explain the situation in more detail.

------
stevetrewick
Full report at [0] (PDF, 351 pages). According to the WIPP Wikipedia page [1]
the final report is expected around 2028.

[0] [http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-
control.cgi/1992/92138...](http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-
control.cgi/1992/921382.pdf)

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant)

------
stared
I feel that all warning are doomed. If we discovered some ancient site (let
alone ancient alien site), each marking would prompt us to dig further and
explore more.

No warning works (even if an explicit one), when met with a curious being.
See: Eve and the Tree of Knowledge (from Genesis) or Pandora and her box.

And when the beings are not curious, it is unlikely that they would develop
technology, or be tempted to new, alien places.

------
socket0
One clear problem with using A.D. (anno Domini) as measure for time elapsed,
is that in 10,000 years Domini will no doubt be taken to mean either Bender
Rodriguez or Donald Trump.

------
JoeAltmaier
Seems like overkill. What's a few poisoned people in 12,000 years? I imagine
that people dying around the site will be the most effective ward to keep
others away.

~~~
andrewflnr

      What's a few poisoned people in 12,000 years?
    

They're people, is the important point. If nothing else, this is about keeping
a clean conscience, knowing that you did your best to save them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
...and success is measured in minimizing that number. The most effective way
might be, to kill interlopers as immediately and unambiguously as possible.
Not to attract pilgrims for centuries with mysterious messages and monoliths,
who go home to die of unknown sores and blood problems.

~~~
morgante
> The most effective way might be, to kill interlopers as immediately and
> unambiguously as possible.

How would you make a system which could kill interlopers quickly and reliably
10,000 years from now?

Also, killing people is a great way to send the message that "something
valuable is here."

~~~
crpatino
> How would you make a system which could kill interlopers quickly and
> reliably 10,000 years from now?

1\. Put the real stash of waste very, very deep underground.

2\. Put a (much smaller) booby stash in a moderately innaccesible place above.
People who make it this far should get the first symptoms within one hour and
probably die painfully a few weeks later.

3\. Leave smaller traces of the stuff laying around in the more accessible
areas of the site. Ideally, it should not leak out and should not be easily
removable by human means. However, the main goal is to have people getting
sick by repeated exposure. Nothing that kills right away, but something that
leads to reduced life span and/or quality of life.

> Also, killing people is a great way to send the message that "something
> valuable is here."

The point is not to issue any overt warning. People will be smart enough to
create a story that fits the scenario. Instead of a fortress made to guard
unfathomable riches with ancient evils, you want them to think of us like a
bunch of idiots that messed with stuff they did not quite grasp and got
Darwinized in the process. There will always be 3Ds jobs: dumb, dirty and
dangerous. You masquarade as one of such places and people will not give it a
second thought.

~~~
morgante
> 1\. Put the real stash of waste very, very deep underground.

What exactly is the benefit of that?

If you're willing to poison people, just go ahead and poison them.

~~~
crpatino
By the same logic, if you are going to bitch about whatever response you get,
why botter asking in the first place?

Alternatively, you may want to fetch a dictionary and look up the meaning of
word "tradeoff".

------
AnonymousPlanet
Is there any kind of science fiction or fantasy that includes such a place
marked with repulsive myths and symbolism to repel explorers from nuklear
waste?

~~~
DanBC
There's "Deep Storm", about a crashed alien ship that warns humans about the
dangerous technology by using impossible or nonsensical mathematical
equations.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Storm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Storm)

(it's not, in my opinion, a good book.)

There are others where division by zero is used as a warning of a dangerous
place.

I'm not sure if there are any where it's humans doing the warning; or where
they're warning about nuclear waste.

------
homero
Can we tour it?

------
amelius
It seems that what they are trying to accomplish is the exact opposite of
advertisement.

------
PaulHoule
People 5000 years from now could very well see WIPP and Yucca Mountain as
valuable sources of Plutonium, Uranium as well as other fuels and nuclear
explosives.

What if 5000 years from now the Mormons and the Scientologists are fighting
over the Yucca Mountain site in search of materials to build nuclear weapons?

------
tn13
Can someone summarize this page here ? It is too long and I am unable to
understand the context.

------
takshak
why not write in a language that has survived more than 10000 years?

~~~
taneq
Or just write down exactly what's going on, in a broad variety of modern
languages in a nigh-indestructible medium, along with an exhortation to update
the documentation if it's getting archaic enough to be hard to read?

------
hugh4
The only way in which something like this will be useful is if, for some
reason, civilisation collapses but humans survive. (If humans don't survive
then 10,000 years is far too soon to worry about another intelligent species
arising.)

If that happens, some major catastrophe has undoubtedly already occurred which
makes the possible death of a bunch of future-cavemen who happen to start
digging in the wrong patch of desert pale in comparison.

If we're _really_ worried about this scenario we should worry less about
marking specific sites, and more about trying to come up with a way to store
all our existing scientific and cultural knowledge in a non-perishable manner,
in many places, that can be dug up and hopefully eventually decoded by people
of the future. Purely from an avoid-human-suffering point of view, telling
people "don't dig here" isn't nearly as valuable as telling them about
infectious diseases, and vaccination, and...

------
smegel
> Put into words, it would communicate something like the following

That initial text was not intended to be written, but communicated through the
design of the message system. Interesting.

I expected more skulls and crossbones.

~~~
zyxley
> I expected more skulls and crossbones.

"Sweet, it's like some secret pirate tomb! Maybe they buried some treasure
here!"

------
Aelinsaar
It's a fascinating problem, a way to communicate the concept that this is not
a treasure trove, not a historical site, but something dangerous that was
meant to be sealed away for many thousands of years due to its hazardous
nature. The parting thoughts seem most telling to me thought.

They wonder if this really worth it, since in the end coming into contact with
the waste is a bit of a self-limiting problem, in that people exploring will
become sick and die. It will ergo, become a "Place to avoid" anyway. If the
cost is bound to be a few explorer's lives every few millennia in any case,
and that's what will send the real message, then... well... you see?

Finally though, they just wonder how to construct something massive, durable,
and yet not likely to be cannibalized for parts or scrap! They even raise the
issue of what 400+ generations of unknowable humanity might do to the marker
structure, without disturbing the rest of the site.

~~~
bobbles
All I can picture is an Indiana Jones like situation, where everything that
would be done to protect the site will just be interpreted as something
valuable being stored in the most dangerous section.

~~~
pmontra
I can picture what people do when told "I give you this box but you must not
open it".

------
Zelmor
It is very optimistic of them to presume that there will be any kind of
civilization here in ten thousand years. By then. either humanity moves to the
stars, or moves back to fighting with sticks and stones.

------
beedogs
Why does the US bury its nuclear waste, and not recycle and refine it again?

It seems incredibly stupid.

------
kaishiro
Just wanted to say I accidentally fat fingered a downvote while trying to do
the opposite. Sorry!

~~~
Bromskloss
It's annoying that you can't retract your votes. What is the point with that?

Also, I can only upvote. Are you given the power to do the opposite once
you're seasoned enough or something?

~~~
Wingman4l7
There's some karma threshold you have to achieve to get downvote privileges
(possibly coupled with a minimum account age, but I don't know for sure).

------
gaur
Sad that even in 1993 the government was still producing documents on a
typewriter with shitty, photocopied black-and-white line art. Photoshop had
already been available for three years at this point.

