
Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion - gnosis
http://downlode.org/Etext/WIPP
======
gnosis
The biggest problem I can see with this approach is that to some societies and
individuals, dangerous material might be desirable.

Knowing that there is dangerous material at the site, future generations might
want to disturb the site anyway, for the purpose of getting weapons.

The warnings are all about the things buried in the ground making people sick
and killing them, which is precisely what people looking for effective weapon-
making material would want.

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ars
I don't agree with this approach.

They are targeting their message to superstitions uneducated persons. And they
want the area ignored and forgotten.

This is fine.

Except that that opposite might happen: You might have very curious scientific
people at the level just before Marie Curie, i.e. very scientific and
interested, but knowing nothing about radioactivity.

All those messages and markers just about ensure that that area will be
thoroughly investigated.

Instead, I would suggest making that area very prominent, and NOT forgotten
and ignored.

We have buildings from 3000 years ago today and we know all about them,
specifically because they were very important.

~~~
eli
Yeah, but a great many of those 3000 year old structures are a mystery to us.
We don't know exactly why they were constructed.

Are you suggesting we count on, basically, oral tradition to pass down the
fact that a big prominent structure is extremely dangerous ... for hundreds of
generations?

~~~
ars
It's worked before.

And there is not a single instance of a case where passively warning people
away from a site has worked.

This proposal will probably, as intended, communicate that the builders want
people to stay way.

But what it won't do is actually cause people to stay away.

The only way to do that is to communicate it _actively_ to each generation.

This proposal instead wants the area forgotten.

~~~
wmf
_This proposal instead wants the area forgotten._

I don't think that's true; they're just giving more weight to the worst-case
scenario where future people have no historical continuity to warn them about
the site.

------
gregstoll
Damn Interesting had a piece on this a while ago:
[http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-
of-...](http://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of-honor)

------
devicenull
Does anyone know if anything has ever come of this? I remember reading about
this years ago, and it seems to be the exact same article now

~~~
gnosis
According to the damninteresting.com article linked above:

 _"WIPP is not scheduled to be sealed until the year 2038, and Yucca Mountain
may be operating well into the 24th century; so humanity still has a little
time to contemplate its warning to the future."_

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electronslave
It's been discussed a few times in the past, and always gets me thinking.
Personally, I like the keep-away-caveman scenario: (somehow) engineer a
structure to generate low-frequency harmonics for as long as that radioactive
material's around.

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

Combine that with the most evil-looking shrubbery/stone structures/whatever
you can find. You'll have created a land of ghosts and demons for those future
people, assuming the site isn't bingoed by a meteor.

Then, when they redevelop society to a point where industrial music is popular
again, people can have raves there. They won't even need glow sticks!

(Come to think of it, I'd love to do something like that anyway. Sounds like a
great landscaping project for a hunting lodge packed full of taxidermy.)

