Don't dig here, fools (1 Viewer)

[littlewing69]

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=160

An interesting look at the problem of warning future civilisations of the nuclear dumps we're burying.

 

[The Logical One]

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=160

An interesting look at the problem of warning future civilisations of the nuclear dumps we're burying.

Easy... put a picture of a skull. Hundreds of pictures of skulls.

Skull is the universal symbol for danger. (in all human history)

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Easy... put a picture of a skull. Hundreds of pictures of skulls.

Skull is the universal symbol for danger. (in all human history)

Wrong.

Some cultures keep skulls as a trophy; some even go so far as to say that drinking blood from an enemy's skull will grant the drink that enemy's power.

Of course, that idea has long since disappeared, but who can say what will happen in a hundred years let alone a thousand? Especially when a lot of developing nations import and bury nuclear waste as a form of income?

 

[The Logical One]

Wrong.

Some cultures keep skulls as a trophy; some even go so far as to say that drinking blood from an enemy's skull will grant the drink that enemy's power.

Of course, that idea has long since disappeared, but who can say what will happen in a hundred years let alone a thousand? Especially when a lot of developing nations import and bury nuclear waste as a form of income?

No, idiot.
It's still thought of as a symbol of 'DANGER', even in voodoo.

 

[littlewing69]

Easy... put a picture of a skull. Hundreds of pictures of skulls.

Skull is the universal symbol for danger. (in all human history)

Yes, but a generic "Here be danger" symbol isn't going to deter the future's archeologists. The tombs of the Pharaohs were covered with curses and warnings, but we paid no notice and smashed on through. What's to say a future civilisation wouldn't assume it was just superstition, or perhaps be even more curious and keen to dig when they say the danger signs?

 

[The Logical One]

Yes, but a generic "Here be danger" symbol isn't going to deter the future's archeologists. The tombs of the Pharaohs were covered with curses and warnings, but we paid no notice and smashed on through. What's to say a future civilisation wouldn't assume it was just superstition, or perhaps be even more curious and keen to dig when they say the danger signs?

hmm... that's so true... well there could be another way...
I wonder if you can speed or decrease the half life of a nuclear reactive element... hmm... well, I was thinking of destablising the nucleus... but that would just be like a huge atomic bomb... cause it would dissociate the atom releasing neutorns... which is just like... yeah, a massive nuke... worse then ours now...

 

[The Logical One]

Thorium, baby.

Lol, thorium is sexy but but... (half life wise), peep!

Thorium:
Heat capacity (25 °C) 26.230 J·mol−1·K−1

Uranium:
Heat capacity (25 °C) 27.665 J·mol−1·K−


OGM!! Uranium Wins!

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

No, idiot.
It's still thought of as a symbol of 'DANGER', even in voodoo.

You missed the point: there are some cultural practices - not limited to voodoo - where people collect skulls as a sign of their victory over another. We're thinking in Mexico, South America and the Pacific Islands, here. Now, while those practices have died out, the point is that we don't know what might happen in 100 years let alone 1000. Cultures evolve though memes, just like people do through DNA, so those practices may come about again. If you buried your waste in the heart of the Amazon and stuck a skull sign over it as a sign of danger, some long-forgotten tribe of Amazonians (and believe me, they still exist) might find it, and seeing the skull, believe it to be a place of victory or something. You can put all the warnings you want in english, Spanish, Portugese, but languages vary from tribe to tribe, so you'd never be able to cover all of them, especially the obscure tribes that were believed to have died out years ago. The end result would be that they entered the stronghold and if they took something, they could contaminate not just themselves, but other local populations and the environment. There was a case in Brazil in the late 1980s where a hospital was abandoned, but they left something behind. Two men saw the bluish glow of the radioactive material and took it, selling it to a junkyard owner who then tried to make it into a ring for his wife and ended up contaiminating most of the town because he didn't know what it was. Now if something like that was in your central-Amazonian nuclear waste dump marked with a skull and a few warnings in the most-commonly-used languages of the country and the locals got in and found something like that ... well, it's obvious what would happen next.

Besides, the skull symbol is already used to mark poisons.

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

you could try and barricade/block off the waste sites so that it's impossible to reach the stuff...but you never know what technology could develop in the next 1000 years that could allow people to uncover it anyway. Plus the more heavily-guarded/protected/buried it is, the more curious people could be --> the more effort they'll go to to dig it up.

although, tribes and stuff aside, will, or could, nuclear waste be completely forgotten in a few hundred years? as in, will people no longer have any idea what it is? i reckon that even in a few hundred years, people will still recognise nuclear waste when they see it and hopefully not cause too much damage with it. but then again, there are those tribes and communities who havent got a clue... put it in their hands by accident and there could be trouble.

edit: someone in the discussion on that page had a good idea "So why not just have lots of pictures of people burning with arms and legs falling off."

simplistic, but straightforward. no matter what language you speak, graphic images of death and destruction should turn you off like no tommorrrow, unless you're an idiot...which along with curiosity seems to be a defining human characteristic :s

maybe we should just leave them unmarked...

 

[littlewing69]

maybe we should just leave them unmarked...

That's what I thought. The 'super-hard warning disks' the article mentions will likely be stripped within a hundred years by people wanting to hang them on their walls--God knows I would do it. Marking it as a significant place will probably just attract unwanted attention. Curiosity >> exploration >> radiation sickness.

On the other hand, I figure if we leave it unmarked and just bury it deep, it should be fine. Any society advanced enough to dig deep enough to find the stuff would surely also be advanced enough to take a Geiger counter with them, or at least recognise what's up when their miners start losing their teeth/hair and developing sores.

 

[ObjectsInSpace]

Or how about we just keep records of what's in there and a guard of some sort? Chances are that we'll still be using nuclear power in a thousand years; as my high school science teacher so lightly put it "Scientists are beginning to theorise that once we remove all the radioactive material from the earth's crust, the earth will lose its magnetic field, but by that time the Sun will have expanded enough to have swallowed the earth, so we don't need to worry about it anyway."

Right litle ray of sunshine he was ...

 

[littlewing69]

Or how about we just keep records of what's in there and a guard of some sort?

Yeh they're guarding it for the next hundred years. Problem is, they're thinking on a 10,000 year timescale, so its inevitable that govts will fall, civilisations tumble, etc. Chubb security can't hold on forever...

 

[SiZmOs]

i like the idea of giving a bunch of kids some crayons and paper and telling them to draw things that mean danger.
simple yet effective.

 

[Serius]

very interesting.

I am not even sure there is a solution. If you hint something dangerous is there, archelogists will ignore it and warmongers will want it as a weopon. The black monoliths is a good idea, it would definetely scare off societys smaller than ours, larger or the same would atleast proceed with caution. Anything they do is basically a giant sign saying "IMPORTANT SHIT OVER HERE, COME DIG AND FIND RICHES!"

utimately it wont matter that much, because low tech civilizations wont be able to reach the waste, and similiar or high tech ones will be able to read the complex danger symbols saying its nuclear waste and when the area will be safe.

edit: ooh i like this idea

Or maybe we will leave a bit of contamination on the surface of the container. This would give a warning to any one advanced enough to detect radiation and cause sickness to people who get close to it, so no one will touch it again, much less try to open it. Give them a taste of what's inside, and they'll stay the hell away from it.

that way the warnings of "there is danger and sickness here, you will die" etc will be followed up by anyone who approaches the mounds gets sick and dies. Also it should prevent anything growing near the mounds, making it look like a deseased, cursed land.

 

[Not-That-Bright]

Their problem imo.

 

[HotShot]

how about just leave it open and dont put anything there, that way your not giving any significane to it, and in 12000 thousand years the suckers who dig (as if they would) and have little surprise.

 

[^CoSMic DoRiS^^]

i was thinking about this again today. and i realised that most, if not all the ideas i have come across seem to assume we will mark the spots once, and leave them for 10, 000 years. well if we do that, OF COURSE the markers will become obsolete. that's like asking for it. so why not mark the spots, and keep on updating the markers at regular intervals? say, every fifty or hundred years? that way, if new information about the waste (like its stability, how reactive it is etc) has been discovered, it can be added, and this also has the advantage of being able to have the markers evolve with changing cultures and societies, to make the warnings relevant and keep them that way... lets say, hypothetically, that we put a system in place to update/replace the markers every 50 yrs, then not only will the info on them remain relevant, the language and means of conveying the info will also remain relevant because it will change as society changes. theoretically if we could keep doing that for the next 10, 000 years, people will still be very much aware of the issue and thus be less likely to dig it up because they will know exactly what it is, and why it is dangerous, and will (hopefully) also have archives of historical evidence of it being there.