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 an unmarked grave (for example, put it in the tunnels inside a mountain then blow all entrances up) so no primitive civilization could dig it up? If civilization is sophisticated enough to dig deep enough, they must be well aware of radiation as well.
This is not a place of honor
101–110 of 287 posts
Re: This is not a place of honor
#102I've read the report several times (it keeps coming back every 5-7 years or so) since publication, and I've never felt like a reliable solution had wither been found, or was in the offing. There is good thinking, but the problem itself seems very daunting. I think that is the real lesson.
This has been haunting the news since the early '80s and it will go on for several more decades. Then, after whatever they finally come up with is constructed, there will be a creepy spectacle about which to write more tired news stories. It has always seemed a waste of effort to me. If some primitive post-dystopian human were to dig hundreds of meters through salt (!) and come into contact with the waste they would…
Yeah the artifical constraint of understandable by everyone is quite limiting. I can see two set working best: scary faces and statues for primitives, atom structure of thorium or whatever waste is for educated. Optionally leave some stuff out in a ventilated but inaccesdible area so people die/get sick before releasing the whole toxic dump in the wild. Can be in stages like pyramids: first zone warning, then the second zone trapped. Inhuman, but if your priority is to protect the whole word from releasing the waste a couple curious casualty may be a compromise.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#103Honestly, 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.
I think the most interesting thing about this is the underlying assumption that warnings and containment must survive .. the death of our current civilization and States. These researchers are talking the long path .. how do we warn people who make not have any knowledge our civilization exists in its current form? Too many people today think this will last forever; that we're in a golden age that we cannot easily re…
It's especially interesting to see a government body doing this sort of thing. Politicians don't usually care much about what kind of world they're leaving for their own children, let alone random citizens of the far future.
Is anyone actually following these suggestions? My cynical assumption is that they'd be laughed out of the house by the people who actually hold the construction purse-strings.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#104why not write in a language that has survived more than 10000 years?
Re: This is not a place of honor
#105I'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 will think they have hit rock bottom... like Pharoahs' tombs or a multi-level pirate cache.
Or even better, put something horrible and poisonous twenty feet down. It might be better to obviously poison a couple people if they start digging this up. That would be easily understood and eventually avoided.
Remember the radioactive sign in the Star Trek episode where Data gets shishkabobed? They made jewelery...
Re: This is not a place of honor
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious, what chemical waste can you not safely dispose of? All organic compounds can be incinerated at a high enough temperate to destroy them (even nerve agents). The only thing I can think of would be metal poisons, but even those can be turned into a form that is less toxic.
http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Dioxin Has a worst case half life of 50 years. http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/ Lists very small quantities as still quite dangerous to reproduction or causing cancer in exposed subjects. But on a 10,000 year scale I fail to see how it would still be a problem. A few hundred, definitely still risky.
I went to high school next to a dioxin superfund site [1]. They incinerated it (I could see the smokestack from the school) and supposedly it's all cleaned up now [2]. We'll see how we all turn out.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#107Just wanted to say I accidentally fat fingered a downvote while trying to do the opposite. Sorry!
Unvote is coming.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11852316 and marked it off-topic.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#108I had an internship here during the summer of 2010. For the most part it was incredibly boring as there was SO much emphasis on safety (rightfully so).
For example, people would have to be cleared from an area in order for janitors to vacuum an area, so that no one would trip on the power cord.
I did get to go down into the salt shaft which was incredibly cool (also literally cool, which was a relief because it was the summer in New Mexico).
For the most part I upgraded some software systems and helped with some hardware upgrades.
The engineers were all characters. Several of them were preppers convinced that I was silly for going into computer science and not stocking up on gold.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#109Use the heat of the waste's radioactivity to power infrasonic emitters, and induce horror and panic in anyone who comes close. Or maybe set it up so that the wind creates infrasonic vibrations. You'd stand a very good chance of convincing people that the place is literally haunted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrasound#Human_reactions
I have one computer that has been running (with help) for 8 years. That's a record for me. 10K years is a really long time to keep a computer running. Who's going to do that, other than more computers?
I imagine the record for uptime with zero maintenance is held by something like the Voyager probes which are nearing 40 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_1
But even if you cut out any electronics and use something as basic as a rock with a whistle carved into it for the wind to blow through, it will still be susceptible to getting clogged up/eroded.
Re: This is not a place of honor
#110Any 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