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 “lmao let’s be real, if I saw this shit I would stop at nothing to explore it” is highlighting the central conceit of the yucca mountain project.
The project is VERY aware of humanity’s tendency to explore, and the people involved are tormented constantly by the fact that ANYTHING they do to indicate “this specific place is extremely deadly and there’s nothing valuable here, GO AWAY” is going to become a fucking MAGNET for treasure hunters, explorers, adventurers, mystery enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists…like, the MOMENT it’s discovered, people will flood that place.
That’s what makes the project so fascinatingly difficult! There’s 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 don’t incorporate a message at all, focusing instead on simply making the site as ugly, inconvenient, and unimportant-looking as possible so that it’s just never disturbed because nobody is interested in getting close. (It’s why seemingly crazy ideas like the color-changing cat priesthood are actually more viable than the seemingly “practical” 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 “This place is not a place of honor” 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 distance…while 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 guaranteeit’s disregarded, but if we fail to make the warning unmistakable enough, we’re responsible for whatever happens to the humans ten thousand years in the future who suffer from our mistakes.
“Now we are at home. But home does not preexist: it was necessary to draw a circle around that uncertain and fragile center, to organize a limited space. […] The forces of chaos are kept outside as much as possible.”
A Thousand Plateaus, on the territorial role of the refrain.
