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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

#141

Post by tinco »

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…

You're not thinking on the 10.000 year timescale. So you hide it, after 1000 years someone starts digging there and finds it anyway, they see the messages and stop, and then the site is left unhidden for the next 9000 years, what should it look like?

Also even if poisoning people was ethical, how would the poison last 10,000 years? And how would you prevent people from using the poison as the potent weapon it clearly is? And what would the message be for those who defeat the poison to find the treasure that's obviously hidden by such a potent weapon?

Re: This is not a place of honor

#142

Post by cturner »

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…

The primary requirements for waste disposal are geological stability and political expediency. These factors are hard and determine the site. Ability-to-mark doesn't influence the site choice.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#143

Post by proactivesvcs »

ccvannorman wrote: post #95
frostirosti wrote: post #72

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/ 99pi did an awesome about this. I thought the most interesting idea was that culture permeated much deeper than anything else. So seed our world with these stories of cats that changed color near radiation or something like that would do best. Since symbols meaning change but oral tradition or old wives tales last much longer.

Cats that change color as a geiger counter? Shut up and take my money!

One of the many discarded methods of solving Dwarf Fortress's cat population problems. We then had to expend many Dwarf-hours and precious resources safely disposing of the irradiated cat remains. The cats were still angry.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#144

Post by proactivesvcs »

kbart wrote: post #121
jtolmar wrote: post #119

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 commun…

"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." If these people are more advanced, there's no point to teach them the dangers of radiation as they will be well aware of that already.

Society can lose information as time progresses. Modern medicine is only just starting to re-discover how important state of mind is when packaging, describing and using drugs. That's the case despite the fact there haven't been any large-scale catastrophes that caused the information to be lost. In 10,000 years who knows what we might have forgotten?

Re: This is not a place of honor

#145

Post by proactivesvcs »

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.

Or discard of the waste on a small island and erect many large stone statues of scary-looking faces. I expect that, over time, the waste's emanations will kill off all of the local trees but it should serve as strong enough warning :-)

Re: This is not a place of honor

#146

Post by rjsw »

bbcbasic wrote: post #130
morgante wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions I'm not quite sure about that. Lots of architecture is used to intimidate, to signal power and that you should be afraid.

Definitely the Nazi* architecture does that. I remember seeing thee very intimidating military towers in Berlin. It was like the tower wanted to start a war itself. (*Yes I said the magic word, it is now one of THOSE threads!)

I'm guessing that you saw some of the flak towers [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flak_tower

Re: This is not a place of honor

#147

Post by proactivesvcs »

rdtsc wrote: post #32
labster wrote: post #23

It's really interesting to me to see architecture used for its typical antithesis. It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions, to inspire, to bring facility to humanity, to sanctify. Here it is being used to desecrate, to decrease utility, to ward away. As a hacker, I'm used to the thought of "what is the worst possible way I can make this UI", but it's cool to see it applied in an entirely…

> It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions, to inspire, to bring facility to humanity, to sanctify. Here it is being used to desecrate, to decrease utility, to ward away. Not that uncommon. I have known 2 architects who used architecture against probably what they learned in school or dreamed of building. One was designing casinos. Apparently they did "dark patterns" before computer UI peo…

I started my computer services business because the place I worked at doing tech support had good people but bad business practises. It felt like I was given a great opportunity to learn new skills, which I did, but then put them to such diluted use that it did our customers a disservice. I suppose that's a sign that you don't just want a job, but something to work for as part of who you are.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#148

Post by wobbleblob »

jrockway wrote: post #134

I like the comic where the happy man has successfully plundered the nuclear waste. It contaminates him and he is observably less happy, though still exhibiting signs of above-average satisfaction with life. Then in the final frame, his beloved treasure stolen, he sadly dies of what appears to be thyroid cancer. His dying thought is that the person that robbed him of his ill-gotten plutonium squeezings will soon be su…

I imagine a culture, 10,000 years down the road, that reads from bottom to top. Wow, awesome, let's excavate one of these disease absorbing blocks!

Why not stick the waste in an old Uranium mine? Maybe our future descendants will be able to make good use of our radio active waste?

Re: This is not a place of honor

#149

Post by fennecfoxen »

duckingtest wrote: post #124

I don't want to sound evil... but why? It's not like digging up low-intensity radioactive waste is going to end the world. Just look at how alive Chernobyl zone is... So let's say some people bring it up, they get sick and die, which makes people remember that radioactivity symbol = bad for the next several hundred years or so. On a related note, wouldn't it make more sense to turn the radioactive waste into powder a…

> why?

Largely because the project requirements said "we should warn people away from this dangerous site".

Assuming the standard (very generous) EPA figure of $4 million as the break-even point to save one statistical human life, and an unrealistically generous discount rate of 0%, there's essentially no way a project of the scope of the proposed earthworks would be worth it.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#150

Post by pluma »

bbcbasic wrote: post #130
morgante wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is typically used to bring a sense of bring out positive emotions I'm not quite sure about that. Lots of architecture is used to intimidate, to signal power and that you should be afraid.

Definitely the Nazi* architecture does that. I remember seeing thee very intimidating military towers in Berlin. It was like the tower wanted to start a war itself. (*Yes I said the magic word, it is now one of THOSE threads!)

Hitler was a fan of gigantic architecture. The military towers are less of an example of that than the civilian structures that were built and planned, often heavily inspired by Roman architecture but scaled up quite a bit, with massive statues and flags.

Speer's plans for Germania, the world capital that was supposed to be built on top of Berlin, were pretty impressive and pretty insane.

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