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This is not a place of honor

wipp.energy.gov

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Re: This is not a place of honor

#111

Post by neltnerb »

orbitingpluto wrote: post #105

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 wi…

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.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#112

Post by Hondor »

ProAm wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. One million years an counting so far?

But we've only been relevant for ~7,000 and if we do not make the Earth inhospitable ourselves in the next 10k years then the chances of a cataclysmic event are ever increasing to assist us. 99.9% of all animals ever to exist on the Earth are extinct, we're not that special.

We're hoping to start a colony on Mars. How could we possibly make Earth even remotely as inhospitable as Mars? Do you expect us to remove all the oceans' water? Remove most of the oxygen from the atmosphere? Kill all plants? I don't think we have much hope of making Earth inhospitable to us even if we tried.

Perhaps we somehow contaminate it all with nuclear waste. Even then, there'll be safety underground for long term living, relative safety even in contaminated areas for short term work, and radioactive water can be cleaned by distillation, mechanical or chemical means. We might have to set up a lot of infrastructure to do all that, but we've done a good job of setting up far more complex infrastructure already. It took only a couple of hundred years since the beginning of powered machines to get to where we are now. We could do it all again many times over in the next 10,000 years.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#113

Post by kbart »

krkoch wrote: post #110
kbart wrote: post #101

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 a…

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

Imho, that's still solvable easier than creating marks readable for 10000 years in the future. Simply choose a mountain that contains no valuable metals/minerals and is made of rock that's too hard for primitive tools.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#114

Post by ubernostrum »

korethr wrote: post #65

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.

You might enjoy the short story "The Man Who Walked Home" by Alice Sheldon (usually published under her pen name of James Tiptree, Jr.).

Re: This is not a place of honor

#115

Post by Hondor »

krkoch wrote: post #110
kbart wrote: post #101

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 a…

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

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.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#116

Post by taneq »

inopinatus wrote: post #62
ktRolster wrote: post #51

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.

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

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

Re: This is not a place of honor

#117

Post by taneq »

takshak wrote: post #104

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

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?

Re: This is not a place of honor

#118

Post by e12e »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #96
Turing_Machine wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 purp…

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

Re: This is not a place of honor

#119

Post by 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.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#120

Post by desdiv »

ktRolster wrote: post #51

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.

Disadvantage: tomb robbers who steal the statues will receive radiation poisoning.

Advantage: tomb robbers who steal the statues will receive radiation poisoning.

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