It would be funny if nuclear waste warning messages become an attraction for future historical linguists.
I mean look at this thing:
A parallel text in 7 languages, with 4 different scripts between them! And pictograms! All designed to be preserved intact!
maybe nothing of value to you is here
That is legitimately a massive problem that the nuclear waste warning projects are aware of and trying desperately to counteract.
Like, every post about them on tumblr going âlmao letâs be real, if I saw this shit I would stop at nothing to explore itâ is highlighting the central conceit of the yucca mountain project.
The project is VERY aware of humanityâs tendency to explore, and the people involved are tormented constantly by the fact that ANYTHING they do to indicate âthis specific place is extremely deadly and thereâs nothing valuable here, GO AWAYâ is going to become a fucking MAGNET for treasure hunters, explorers, adventurers, mystery enthusiasts, conspiracy theoristsâŚlike, the MOMENT itâs discovered, people will flood that place.
Thatâs what makes the project so fascinatingly difficult! Thereâs so much they have to convey, but at the same time, they have to do so without making the site itself interesting in any way, and without making it significant. Many possible warnings donât incorporate a message at all, focusing instead on simply making the site as ugly, inconvenient, and unimportant-looking as possible so that itâs just never disturbed because nobody is interested in getting close. (Itâs why seemingly crazy ideas like the color-changing cat priesthood are actually more viable than the seemingly âpracticalâ example above, which still depends on written warnings guaranteed to be extremely interesting to future humans AND depends on the idea that those future humans will be able to decipher any of our languages. The most viable ideas focus on exploiting superstition and the subconscious, rather than LITERALLY trying to communicate âThis place is not a place of honorâ etc in as many words. Those are general ideas to be gotten across, not a script.)
The impossible catch-22 of the nuclear waste warning projects is that they absolutely MUST communicate the level of danger and the importance of keeping your distanceâŚwhile also being acutely aware that warnings on the walls of ancient burial sites about the horrible curses that would afflict anyone who disturbed them did jack-fuck all to dissuade archaeologists.
Anything we do to make the warning seem important will guarantee itâs disregarded, but if we fail to make the warning unmistakable enough, weâre responsible for whatever happens to the humans ten thousand years in the future who suffer from our mistakes.
The idea of a total cultural disconnect- the loss of knowledge and language and oral tradition and written history to this extent is nearly unimaginable to us as modern people, but we know that civilizations have been utterly lost before, leaving behind only vague memories as myth and a writing style that canât be deciphered (Google Minoan Civilization and Linear A for an example of this.)
Humans LOVE to explore. We love mysteries. We love finding hidden civilizations of the ancient past. Any *anything*, even a single stone tablet with a few sentences on it will make a site IRRESISTIBLE to future people if they have lost all records of how to decipher our language.
The best bet for how to house deadly amounts of radiation so that it will never be disturbed is to bury it deep in the middle of fucking no where totally unmarked and hope no one ever puts anything interesting within 100 miles of it.
Hey, um, what the HECK is color-changing cat priesthood??????
One of the proposed solutions is to breed genetically modified cats that change color in the presence of significant ammounts of radiation, and then fabricate myths and fairytales about how your cat changing color is a signal of terrible danger, and then hope that these myths stick around in the collective consciousness through songs, poetry, paintings, oral tradition, etc.
Another solution proposed the creation of a priesthood similar to the Catholic Church tasked with preserving the knowledge about these nuclear containment sites for thousands of years.
Omfg i had a dream last night that literally everything that could go wrong with my symposium talk did from normal stuff like being late, not prepared, underdressed, running around a fancy mall trying to find a nice dress for less than $100, someone else wearing the same dress and it looking better on them, but also 1) the person introducing my talk saying it was “sex-positive” (its sex neutral. its about an archive) and 2) having to go last and competing for space with about 30 people in pikachu costumes who needed the space for a dress rehearsal. Unfortunately my talk isn’t even today it’s TOMORROW so i get another night of this
I know I’m not following the right people bc i haven’t seen a SINGLE gifset putting the bath scene from season 4 ep 4 of killing eve next to the one from the handmaiden
How crazy would it be if you peed so much the toilet bowl filled to the brim
How fuxked up is it that this has happened to me before because the toliet was messed up 🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂🤣🤣😂Rockstar lifestyle hahaha worst day ever and funniest shit now that I am looking back on it
Hey if you pee a lot it’s ok no judgements here this is an inclusive space
in love with this threatening yet promising sentence from some random sports post. yes. step into the water and grieve for your maker for you will become unrecognisable. submit yourself to the reckoning of the depth. abandon hope
What sublime joy, to be able to metamorphose into something completely novel to yourself, what ecstasy to discover yourself again.
