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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

#161

Post by creshal »

antihero wrote: post #158

Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it. You could even tier the messages…

> Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication.

The pyramids were known for their entire duration of their existence, and investigated and/or plundered regularly. But we lost all knowledge of hieroglyphs for a time period of almost two thousand years (until we found the rosetta stone).

And at the same time we were using Uranium to give glass a wonderfully green sheen. And it glowed in the dark, too! Awesome!

If there is an event cataclysmic enough to wipe out all knowledge of nuclear repositories, it will likely wipe out human civilization at large. We can't make really useful predictions how much knowledge will be kept, and at what pace it will be rediscovered.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#162

Post by vectorjohn »

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

Mining, dynamite or otherwise, has to be for something. So why would people dig super far down in the desert through sand and worthless rocks?

Re: This is not a place of honor

#163

Post by stared »

antihero wrote: post #158

Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it. You could even tier the messages…

How one should know that a combination of signs (or a separate sign) stands from "death" not, e.g. "food", "fortune", "treasure", "fame", etc? Regardless of in how many different languages or styles repeated.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#164

Post by vectorjohn »

creshal wrote: post #161
antihero wrote: post #158

Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it. You could even tier the messages…

> Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. The pyramids were known for their entire duration of their existence, and investigated and/or plundered regularly. But we lost all knowledge of hieroglyphs for a time period of almost two thousand years (until we found the rosetta stone).…

And yet nobody has yet to dig hundreds of feet under the pyramids to find out what they're really hiding. Also, the thing will be practically made of Rosetta Stone, designed on purpose to help translate.

Really, there is nothing to worry about.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#165

Post by antihero »

stared wrote: post #163
antihero wrote: post #158

Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it. You could even tier the messages…

How one should know that a combination of signs (or a separate sign) stands from "death" not, e.g. "food", "fortune", "treasure", "fame", etc? Regardless of in how many different languages or styles repeated.

How did we figure out any historic languages? We researched them and analysed them. It's not really my field but there are ways of doing this and we've been doing it for thousands of years.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#166

Post by tome »

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.

It's not completely unlike Roadside Picnic, which I highly recommend.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#167

Post by antihero »

creshal wrote: post #161
antihero wrote: post #158

Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. Just have the same concepts relayed in as many languages/ways as possible, and then make the site sufficiently difficult to infiltrate that it would take a sufficiently advanced civilisation to break into it. You could even tier the messages…

> Surely written warnings, if some future society discovers them, they might be curious enough to have decrypted at least one of our present day languages/methods of communication. The pyramids were known for their entire duration of their existence, and investigated and/or plundered regularly. But we lost all knowledge of hieroglyphs for a time period of almost two thousand years (until we found the rosetta stone).…

Sure, so what we do is, as the other bit of my post said, make the material sufficiently difficult to get to that it would take a long time and an advanced civilisation to be able to get to it, by which point they would have had plenty of time to figure out what the writing meant.

We're not talking about a bunch of dudes with shovels here, we're talking about colossal industrial machinery or advanced explosives.

Re: This is not a place of honor

#168

Post by anonymfus »

rjsw wrote: post #146
bbcbasic wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That image of "L-Tower" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vienna_flak_tower_dsc0159... ) reminds me the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakh_architecture , especially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chanta.jpg

Re: This is not a place of honor

#170

Post by stared »

antihero wrote: post #165
stared wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How one should know that a combination of signs (or a separate sign) stands from "death" not, e.g. "food", "fortune", "treasure", "fame", etc? Regardless of in how many different languages or styles repeated.

How did we figure out any historic languages? We researched them and analysed them. It's not really my field but there are ways of doing this and we've been doing it for thousands of years.

And mostly fail (unless we get some direct translation, like the Rosetta Stone). And if the civilization is gone, it's not unlikely that there won't be much more written record.
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