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This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

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Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#91
The giant spikes of varying styles are the most readable, but also the most intriguing and inviting. So, you have to figure on a few realities.

First: With tectonic activity and geologic timescales, you’ll see possibly the entire continent migrate to a new climate, before full turnover. This could mean glaciation, mountain ranges, canyons and river or dense jungle. How it looks now, it might not look in one million years, at all. If there’s wildlife, no one will care about signage if the wildlife is healthy.

Second: Archeological expeditions will try to explore the architecture, and some will die, before they figure it out. So, with explorers in mind, the spikes are a good landmark to raise general awareness that this unnatural structure exists, but, realistically, one has to expect attrition before any interested party gains full understanding, and thus a means of wayfinding that produces a sort of conceptual mummy’s curse should be engineered with an entrance.

Third: There’s no consideration for intelligent animals of different sizes or scale in proportion to non-human bodies. From crustaceans and mollusks, to dancing bees, to talking dogs or socially regimented elephants and woolly mammoths that communicate with infrasound. What about those guys? Space aliens, you can bet will be fine, but nascent intelligent life that erupts in the wake of an extinct human civilization might need a clue as well...

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one sin is to, as far as I can tell (not a Mormon here), refuse God's light once you have seen it . It would take a crazy man, the kind that would say "the sun does not shine when he sees it", to deny a revelation. Arguably... Anyone who doesn't believe because they have not seen anything has not sinned. The sin would be, for example, to realize "the Mormons were right!" as you face the gates too paradise and say…

Seems rather uncharitable. If you are not rational enough to recognize divine truth, are you really in a position to be condemned for your ignorance? Seems like it's targeted towards the mentally ill and disabled.

I think the point is it can only be committed if you understand it rationally and still reject it. So seeing the pearly gates and believing it to be a hallucination, for example, would not qualify.

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#93
post #5

I always imagined a concept such that instead of trying to deter people from entering was designed to convey that it was trying to keep something dangerous from escaping. Someone trying to keep you out of an ancient tomb? Clearly there are valuables in there. An ancient tomb that's locked from the outside? That's creepy.

IIRC the Egyptian tombs / pyramids all had warnings similar to "trespassers will be cursed"; didn't stop the tomb robberies, and didn't stop Tutankhamun's sealed tomb from being unsealed and opened.

The parallels to this are pretty clear; supposedly, there was a mold in there that ended up killing a few of the archeologists.

Re: the article, and I'm sure I've mentioned this in the previous discussions, they should try and explain radiation as a scientific thing. "This is not a place of honor" is far too vague, and only piques people's interest - like, "well what is it then?", or, "Why would they go through all this trouble?". Either find a way to explain radiation, or - probably preferable - put it in a location that is invisible on the outside and will only become more inaccessible over time, like down a geological fault line.

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#94
post #82
post #5

I always imagined a concept such that instead of trying to deter people from entering was designed to convey that it was trying to keep something dangerous from escaping. Someone trying to keep you out of an ancient tomb? Clearly there are valuables in there. An ancient tomb that's locked from the outside? That's creepy.

Isn’t that exactly what an psychopath/despot/arch-villain would want? To unleash destruction on the world... and be the one to find, conquer and control it. I think perhaps the Finland approach of complete obscurity may be better.

That's what I thought as well when I saw the picture of the human being poisoned by the radioactive waste and dieing. A culture might think: "This may be a great poison, let's use it to destroy our enemies and lay waste to their lands forever". Not entirely unlike some of our own plans for using nuclear weapons only with less bang.

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#95
post #10

"An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system."

A practical consideration. If you spend human life time on efforts to prevent loss of human life, you risk a net loss if you don't trade the cost against the benefit.

Or just leave it unmarked and hope the pile of remains outside the entryway gives the next adventurer a hint.

And then just accept human nature and let the pile slowly grow.

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#96

Maybe we are thinking of this with too much of a helicopter parents view. If there was a high exposure death area, and a way to easily send an animal into it, the truth and reality of the danger there would be very easy to convey.

Yeah, pretty sure any advanced civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is pretty radioactive; we shouldn't stick around", while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around". Having a visual cue there (I like the jagged pointy structures) would certainly help reinforce that and/or delineate exactly where the radioactive/cursed place ac…

> while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around".

After a while, when quite a few people have died, and maybe their whole village and all their farmland is contaminated. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid.

See for example the Goiânia accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just make the area incredibly radioactive, problem solved!

That was in fact suggested unironically in addendum initialized "WS" at the end: > We have all become very marker-prone, but shouldn't we nevertheless admit that, in the end, despite all we try to do, the most effective "marker" for any intruders will be a relatively limited amount of sickness and death caused by the radioactive waste? In other words, it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without…

The big danger isn't individuals dieing from radiation, the danger is contamination of ecosystems with radioactive isotopes.

Above all, engineering and use of the site is to be prevented - nobody should dynamite it and release radioactive dust, nobody should lead a river through it or flood the site, nobody should use parts of it to build anything. Immediate proof that the site is dangerous, by people coming in contact with it dieing while not being contaminated with any kind of radioactive dust, may be a safe and universal isolation of it. Even animals may learn to avoid it.

The only problem is that it's probably impossible to have sufficiently high levels of radiation on the outside of the 'Keep' while still keeping the isotopes safe from any kind of disaster or environmental effects.

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#98
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Mormon culture it's understood to be something you can only do if you've had life experiences that should convey extraordinary faith. (IMO GP makes a bigger deal of this particular quirk of Mormon doctrine than is needed for the topic, fwiw.) Judas Iscariot is commonly referenced as an example of someone who as a disciple of Jesus should have believed in His divinity but betrayed Him. Most Mormons aren't concerned…

I'm not Mormon, but I was married to one. I got that I was safe as long as I never believed. But that once you believe and then renounce, you're at least at risk. Or maybe that was belief as documented by baptism.

and here I was thinking Roco's Basilisk was the original

Re: This Place Is Not a Place of Honor (1992)

#99
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authors seemed to think hiding the site was impossible. However I find it difficult to believe it's harder to hide it than it is build massive earthworks all over it.

Which raises the question, has someone maybe hidden something like this somewhere already on the earth?

Are you suggesting Oklo is an old radioactive waste site from an ancient civilization?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

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