But what if you're warning people 5,000 years into the future to stay away from a place where you've buried radioactive waste, which is going to be deadly for another 5,000 years from even then? What sort of message do you want to convey, and how do you communicate it?
Well, fortunately some smart people are considering this idea. This panel of smart people came up with the following general themes they wanted to get across:
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.
Read the article to see how they're considering going about doing it.
1 comment:
I'm partial to the landscape o' thorns look myself. Maybe because it would look great in a movie about someone stumbling on a dangerous ancient burial site.
Of course, humans being humans, they'll go in anyway. Whatever kind of huckleberry exists in 12,000 -- some futuristic Homer Simpson -- will stumble in and try to take a crap in a radioactive recepticle. Or truck in some girls and beer with his buddies -- no doubt capping the adventure by carving the 120th century equivalent of "Freebird!" on the wall.
I love this planet.
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