The 10,000-Year Warning Sign
Deep beneath New Mexico sits nuclear waste that stays deadly for 300 generations. This episode follows the strange debate over how to design a warning that outlasts every language alive today.
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New Mexico salt beds store radioactive waste that remains hazardous for ten thousand years.
Architects designed jagged concrete spikes to trigger biological dread in future human intruders.
The Atomic Priesthood concept proposes using myths and legends to preserve warnings across generations.
Granite monoliths at the site use redundant languages and diagrams of horrified human faces.
Global archives in Geneva and Tokyo serve as backups if physical site markers fail.
Designers worry that warning signs could be misinterpreted as markers for buried treasure.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Ten-Millennium Problem2 min
- 03The Architects of Dread2 min
- 04The Science of Signs3 min
- 05Defense in Depth2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Wikipedia
- Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
- Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion ...
- Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Markers ...
- WIPP Exhibit: Message to 12,000 A.D.
- Basis for a research project on marking strategies ...
- Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion ...
- The Man Who Helped Design a 10000-Year Nuclear ...
- How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years' time - BBC
- The art of the 10000-year warning - American Nuclear Society
- 1. SEMIOTICS OF NUCLEAR SITES: HOW TO
- How do we warn future generations to avoid our buried ...
- The time and temporalities of nuclear waste - University of Exeter
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