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[prog]

Via jwz, this 1993 report [PDF] on designing warning signs for a nuclear waste facility meant to remain legible until the material is no longer dangerous -- around 10,000 years. The challenge is to present the message This place looks pretty cool but it is actually very dangerous and will kill you. Yeah, I know, "ooh, mummy's curse, scary", but honestly there's no treasure here. This isn't honoring anyone or anything. It's actually just a big hole full of poison. What? I'm serious in a way that far-future people will not only be able to read -- factoring in erosion, vandalism, and changes in human civilization -- but be willing to believe, too. Neat stuff about employing archetypes of place, designing a structure that, just by its shape, attempts to radiate a go-away vibe to any human being. (And, failing that, chiseling cartoons of "The Scream" into rock faces. Eek!)

I found myself wondering why we'd care about the fate of people who were apparently on the other end of some unthinkable cultural cataclysm that broke them off from the past in such a way that they didn't know what this thing was (for surely the structure would be permanently world-famous, if actually built). But that's kind of selfish thinking, in a strange way. I guess.

But anyway, who knows... maybe even very optimistic futures with the spaceships and the ansibles and so on still have room for some yokels stumbling across this crazy site in the (once-)American desert. Earth-that-was and all that. And of course I wonder if anyone's made an IF out of this yet. (It would, of course, involve a human explorer, stranded on another world, coming across an alien warning system...)

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I have this story I keep trying to write where, basically, that's what the Curse of the Mummy is -- a warning about some subtle attack (like radiation) that isn't obvious to those who enter, but will kill them all eventually. I mean, how do you explain radiation sickness to someone without words or common culture. But I still haven't figured out how to write it...and I'm very amused to see the similar idea here.