How do you make a KEEP OUT sign that will last ten thousand years?
How do you make a KEEP OUT sign that will last ten thousand years?
I've been reading the governmental documents for a highly dangerous nuclear waste and toxic materials site that is in the process of being designed right now. Normally I roll my eyes at "nuclear waste" because it's rarely anything to be afraid of. Most actually harmful nuclear waste is recycled and used over and over until it's generally harmless if you seal it in a concrete barrel and put it in a shed. If you work in a nuclear power plant, every day you wear a bunny-suit and slippers, and every day you take said protective clothing and stuff it into a 'hazardous waste' unit. Exposure to most "radioactive" waste is often less dangerous than standing in direct sunlight for ten minutes because it's mostly bunny suits, tissues, used tampons (not kidding) and other garbage. Seriously. The majority of "nuclear waste" is shit you could eat and it would do nothing to you (except give you some tummy troubles from all the fibres). The shit they're planning on burying at the New Mexico WIPP is pretty hellish shit, though. It's these rocks are full of death-rays shit so they actually have a very good reason for wanting theoretical people 2600 years in the future from keeping the fuck out.
So they're gonna bury it, and they know that it won't actually be safe to touch for around 10,000 years or so.
So how do you make sure that people will fuck off in the event of a complete collapse of civilization and the ending of everything that we assume to be natural? You might say why not put a bunch of skull and crossbones around huh??? but remember than in many cultures skulls are actually symbols of good luck, and may as well be a neon sign blinking Dig Here For Honoured Ancestors OK. They don't want to make a giant, symmetrical building with scary faces and images of death, because that could easily be interpreted as "hey, this is a temple and we got something really powerful buried far down :3!!!!!". How many Egyptian tombs have been raided despite the most dire and terrifying warnings about the curses that will fall on interlopers? How many times have people walked into temples with statues and carvings of gruesome deaths because they didn't believe that anything honestly dangerous was present?
The current project that they're going to complete building by 2048 or so will be a large area of land designed to be asymmetrical, uncomfortable, inhospitable and disturbing. They will make a periphery of jagged concrete lines showing something unpleasant radiating from the centre, and there are several rather disturbing pictographs of people touching something marked with a radioactive symbol, then the sybol transferring into them, then the person weeping and deformed, then dying. I won't go into tremendous detail, but the amount of effort these people have put into deliberately making a landscape as horrifying and unpleasant as possible is truly staggering. Several of the pictographs use images of a human face expressing what is regarded as a universal expression of revulsion/disgust and terror/horror the closer they get to the centre, and an expression of calm and contentment the further they get away.
Warnings will be engraved on 48 stone towers, and the warnings range from Level I, which is the monument itself indicating that something manmade is present, to Level V, which is buried a few hundred feet below the surface and detailing the horrors that await anyone who attempts to open the "bound monster" of waste they're going to bury there.
All the areas have large mounds built that will contain powerful magnets and radar-blockers, which will hopefully help any future culture realise that there's something terribly abnormal with the area and to stay the fuck away. There's also a planned 'maze', that will be a bunch of dyed black concrete monoliths that will absorb heat of the sun and roast anything that comes close. Neat!
The very fascinating thing is that in several recently declassified documents there's open discussion of an acceptable level of deaths. There was, for a while, discussion of deliberately making the hot-cell a very radioactive sort of object, so that people would naturally realise that to come near this fucking thing means that you'll hemmeroage blood and die. Thankfully that idea was nixed.
Fuck the pyramids. Our civilization's lasting monument will be the most ugly, hideous, horrifying landscape our most brilliant minds we can come up with.
... neat!
edit: here's some sample text of what they're going to engrave on the monuments in seven languages (English, Spanish, Navajo, Arabic, French, Chinese and Russian)
This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
and
These standing stones mark an area used to bury radioactive wastes. The area is ... by ... kilometers (or ... miles or about ... times the height of an average full-grown male person) and the buried waste is ... kilometers down. This place was chosen to put this dangerous material far away from people. The rock and water in this area may not look, feel, or smell unusual but may be poisoned by radioactive wastes. When radioactive matter decays, it gives off invisible energy that can destroy or damage people, animals, and plants.
Do not drill here. Do not dig here. Do not do anything that will change the rocks or water in the area.
Do not destroy this marker. This marking system has been designed to last 10,000 years. If the marker is difficult to read, add new markers in longer-lasting materials in languages that you speak. For more information go to the building further inside. The site was known as the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) site when it was closed in ...
I've been reading the governmental documents for a highly dangerous nuclear waste and toxic materials site that is in the process of being designed right now. Normally I roll my eyes at "nuclear waste" because it's rarely anything to be afraid of. Most actually harmful nuclear waste is recycled and used over and over until it's generally harmless if you seal it in a concrete barrel and put it in a shed. If you work in a nuclear power plant, every day you wear a bunny-suit and slippers, and every day you take said protective clothing and stuff it into a 'hazardous waste' unit. Exposure to most "radioactive" waste is often less dangerous than standing in direct sunlight for ten minutes because it's mostly bunny suits, tissues, used tampons (not kidding) and other garbage. Seriously. The majority of "nuclear waste" is shit you could eat and it would do nothing to you (except give you some tummy troubles from all the fibres). The shit they're planning on burying at the New Mexico WIPP is pretty hellish shit, though. It's these rocks are full of death-rays shit so they actually have a very good reason for wanting theoretical people 2600 years in the future from keeping the fuck out.
So they're gonna bury it, and they know that it won't actually be safe to touch for around 10,000 years or so.
So how do you make sure that people will fuck off in the event of a complete collapse of civilization and the ending of everything that we assume to be natural? You might say why not put a bunch of skull and crossbones around huh??? but remember than in many cultures skulls are actually symbols of good luck, and may as well be a neon sign blinking Dig Here For Honoured Ancestors OK. They don't want to make a giant, symmetrical building with scary faces and images of death, because that could easily be interpreted as "hey, this is a temple and we got something really powerful buried far down :3!!!!!". How many Egyptian tombs have been raided despite the most dire and terrifying warnings about the curses that will fall on interlopers? How many times have people walked into temples with statues and carvings of gruesome deaths because they didn't believe that anything honestly dangerous was present?
The current project that they're going to complete building by 2048 or so will be a large area of land designed to be asymmetrical, uncomfortable, inhospitable and disturbing. They will make a periphery of jagged concrete lines showing something unpleasant radiating from the centre, and there are several rather disturbing pictographs of people touching something marked with a radioactive symbol, then the sybol transferring into them, then the person weeping and deformed, then dying. I won't go into tremendous detail, but the amount of effort these people have put into deliberately making a landscape as horrifying and unpleasant as possible is truly staggering. Several of the pictographs use images of a human face expressing what is regarded as a universal expression of revulsion/disgust and terror/horror the closer they get to the centre, and an expression of calm and contentment the further they get away.
Warnings will be engraved on 48 stone towers, and the warnings range from Level I, which is the monument itself indicating that something manmade is present, to Level V, which is buried a few hundred feet below the surface and detailing the horrors that await anyone who attempts to open the "bound monster" of waste they're going to bury there.
All the areas have large mounds built that will contain powerful magnets and radar-blockers, which will hopefully help any future culture realise that there's something terribly abnormal with the area and to stay the fuck away. There's also a planned 'maze', that will be a bunch of dyed black concrete monoliths that will absorb heat of the sun and roast anything that comes close. Neat!
The very fascinating thing is that in several recently declassified documents there's open discussion of an acceptable level of deaths. There was, for a while, discussion of deliberately making the hot-cell a very radioactive sort of object, so that people would naturally realise that to come near this fucking thing means that you'll hemmeroage blood and die. Thankfully that idea was nixed.
Fuck the pyramids. Our civilization's lasting monument will be the most ugly, hideous, horrifying landscape our most brilliant minds we can come up with.
... neat!
edit: here's some sample text of what they're going to engrave on the monuments in seven languages (English, Spanish, Navajo, Arabic, French, Chinese and Russian)
This place is a message… and part of a system of messages… pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location… it increases toward a center… the center of danger is here… of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
and
These standing stones mark an area used to bury radioactive wastes. The area is ... by ... kilometers (or ... miles or about ... times the height of an average full-grown male person) and the buried waste is ... kilometers down. This place was chosen to put this dangerous material far away from people. The rock and water in this area may not look, feel, or smell unusual but may be poisoned by radioactive wastes. When radioactive matter decays, it gives off invisible energy that can destroy or damage people, animals, and plants.
Do not drill here. Do not dig here. Do not do anything that will change the rocks or water in the area.
Do not destroy this marker. This marking system has been designed to last 10,000 years. If the marker is difficult to read, add new markers in longer-lasting materials in languages that you speak. For more information go to the building further inside. The site was known as the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) site when it was closed in ...