Your challenge. Design a warning sign that lasts 10,000 years.

Romo

The Yucca Mountain plutonium storage site in Nevada has been earmarked for the disposal of all of America’s high level radioactive waste. The problem is that this stuff will be radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. This poses a grave threat for future generations of humans who happen upon the site. Naturally, it’s incumbent that some method of warning be devised. However, two huge obstacles must be overcome.

Firstly, the materials and methods of construction must be of such durability as to withstand the wastes of time. Secondly, conventional methods of warnings such as scientific symbols and English language warnings are next to useless, as the underlying concepts and the language used to express them will long since have been forgotten.


So how do you warn humans living thousands of years from now?

Any ideas? Think ‘Planet of the Apes’.

http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2002/05/10/yucca_mountain/

Giblet

Make the sign out of the radioactive waste.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Giblet wrote:

Make the sign out of the radioactive waste.

erm, there is a reason we wouldn't want the radioactive waste exposed!

Write a message in the stars, or eh, phuck it - I'll be dead

[InsertHandle]

heard about this a few years ago on the news ... at the time the concept artists were thinking along the lines of big concret(or other very hard substance) thorn-like structures ... anything that will instill fear in ppl without them actually understanding any particular language ... very difficult when u consider the many different cultures and customs that develop

The biggest problem i see is if u put something big and scary there then ppl are gonna get qurious and start poking around, so do you mark it at all??

Kernel

A huge big skull made from plastic, or a huge statue of a naked Jo Brand/Anne Widdicomb? Maybe both.. performing an act of fellatio on each other.... while Shane McGowan statue looks on spanking the monkey?

Bottle_of_Smoke

Kernel wrote:

A huge big skull made from plastic, or a huge statue of a naked Jo Brand/Anne Widdicomb? Maybe both.. performing an act of fellatio on each other.... while Shane McGowan statue looks on spanking the monkey?

yup think that would do it!

Adam

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

yup think that would do it!

Or then there's the fact that life on this planet of human stature probably won't exist 10,000 years from now so who cares?!

Kernel

fade_to_grey wrote:

Or then there's the fact that life on this planet of human stature probably won't exist 10,000 years from now so who cares?!

Pessimist!

Rhyme

Place a small wooden signpost a quarter mile from the area facing in a southwesterly direction... and make sure its fixed with only ONE nail

Stark

Write the world's greatest adventure story with the warning in it and have it passed down through the generations.

Build a canary habitat near the site.

Adam

Kernel wrote:

Pessimist!

I consider myself more of a realist tbh lol

Gordon

I would imagine that geiger counters will exist in so many years to come.

If not and humans have unevolved back to non-geiger counter possessing forms of life then, sure, what's the big deal? They'll only mutate faster into a perfect form of life if they get close to the toxic waste and start eating it.

astrofool

skulls were discounted because, while most people think of it as dangerous, when shown to kids their first thought it "pirates!". I read an article on this a few years ago, called deep time.

The best way would probably be to bury it very deep, not mark it (no matter how its marked, people would think its something kept hidden for a reason, and go after it for that reason). Maybe up close, have drawings of people dying as they would from radiation.

pickarooney

It's nice to know there won't be English, there may not be human life, but there'll always be pirates - Y'arrrr!

quank

Could people not just keep changing the warning sign every so often...

DonkeyStyle \o/

Just launch all the nuclear waste into space, it's all super-dooper radio-active up there anyway... but of course it's all about the money with these people :rolleyes:
tbh who cares, in 10,000 years it'll be someone elses problem. :hyper-mega-rolleyes:

monkeyfudge

Write the sign in Irish.

StupidLikeAFox

monkeyfudge wrote:

Write the sign in Irish.

for when we take over the world, of course

Adam

Cinnte!

http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/~kchang/pictures/funny/signs/death-sign.jpg

DadaKopf

Replace the sign with a new one every 50 years.

Thorbar

http://www.palindrom.agava.ru/images/intro/bsod.gif

Creature

DadaKopf wrote:

Replace the sign with a new one every 50 years.

Yeah I would've thought that would be the most sensible option. Put up the usual sign, like this and then just change it should that sign for some reason be no longer associated with radioactive hazards.

tuxy

Myth wrote:

http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/~kchang/pictures/funny/signs/death-sign.jpg

i know polo is a very dangerous sport (just look what happened to poor christopher reeves) but the problem with that one is the same as all the others
in 10k years will polo exist?

Kernel

Creature wrote:

Yeah I would've thought that would be the most sensible option. Put up the usual sign, like this and then just change it should that sign for some reason be no longer associated with radioactive hazards.

That's really really ... *yawn*... really imaginative/funny... zzz... I think I'll *stretch* go to bed now. Nite nite.

LadyJ

Earthworm Jim will save the day!

Kernel

LadyJ wrote:

Earthworm Jim will save the day!

Damn LadyJ, you still awake?!!?

LadyJ

Kernel wrote:

Damn LadyJ, you still awake?!!?

Always! This lady has insomnia!
Dear PI readers.....

Sleepy

Release a load of Jaguars into the area.

Dig a moat around it and fill it with Pirahna.

seamus

The more "Do Not enter", "Danger", "Keep out" signs you put in, the more people will want to investigate and explore it.

I say just make the area completely dead (do something to remove all the nutrients from the soil), and unattractive, and it'll be left alone.

iceman_2001_ie

Maybe the pyramids had an alternative use, other than burial monuments for the Pharaohs.
Maybe the Eygptians discovered radioactive materials millenia ago.
Maybe they were using these "magic stones" to cure the skin cancer caused by living in the sun all your life.
Maybe they discovered that ultimately the stones resulted in death.
Maybe they sprinkled the dust of the stones on the ground inside the burial chambers, and all those warnings of a "curse" were merely the eygptian equivalent of a permanent warning.

Hmmm.

Muineach

hmm maybe a simple "Warning Humans were here" should cover most things, probably do it like the voyager gold plate etchings :P

humanji

Romo wrote:

Think ‘Planet of the Apes’.

Then why should we care? Let those damn dirty apes handle it!

Blisterman

Im sure in the future, theyll know there used to be radioactivity and would check that before entering.

netwhizkid

Why don't they but the sign up in Binary code, as nearly all modern technology is bsed on it as it is a system of 0's and 1's, this is an english to binary code translater. As modern technology as we know it started off with binary code and as it would be that that started their evolution to more enlightened times i'm sure they should still recognise it as it should be in mueseum somewhere.

Regards netwhizkid

Romo

There are two fundamental problems that must be overcome. The warning, it need not necessarily be a sign, must be durable. It must withstand for thousands of years. It must also be intelligible enough to the people viewing it in the distant future so as not to be ambiguous or enticing. Modern technological society may understand binary code, but that’s no guarantee that people in the distant future will. The concept of zero was alien to western thought until relatively recently. I believe it was first divined by the Arabs in the 10th century.


The people of the distant future may have no accumulated technical knowledge. They may gravitate toward tribal or cultic symbols.

I think this thing taps into something deeper. If you were to ask people what they think the future holds for humanity it’s usually one of two stock answers. Either, we’ve destroyed the planet and there are no humans. Or, we’ve gone out into outer space. Both of these are modern secular myths, as misleading as any religious myth.

Pondering something like this, forces us to reflect on a future that most people find a little unsettling.

netwhizkid

on second thought why don't they just hang a big picture of Dubya at the entrance, with what he have done i doubt i will be forgotten for a long long time time througout history and thus his face will represent evil and danger thus even the most primative of people should stay away.

Regards netwhizkid

Muineach

if its 10,000 years in the future whos to say we havent evolved into beings that use nuclear waste as food ?

evolution might sort it all out for us

tuxy

netwhizkid wrote:

on second thought why don't they just hang a big picture of Dubya

no the apes that control the world in the future will want to investigate their ancestor

Kernel

netwhizkid wrote:

on second thought why don't they just hang a big picture of Dubya at the entrance, with what he have done i doubt i will be forgotten for a long long time time througout history and thus his face will represent evil and danger thus even the most primative of people should stay away.

Regards netwhizkid

I'm no fan of George Jnr. But at the end of the day, wouldn't people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot etc. be judged as being worse? What's the worst thing he has done - invaded Afghanistan and Iraq for the sake of the US oil dependent economy. Even the people behind the big corporations that control the economic situation should be held more accountable.