Favorite long-term nuclear waste warning message

Ah truncation

This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.

What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.

The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

landslide

unfortunately

This place is not a place of honour.

I have seriously thought about getting a tattoo of this.

otm

iconic

I also once thought about doing a concept album of the names of the landscape features: 'Landscape of Thorns', 'Menacing Earthworks' etc. Just a whole bunch of great names.

Did y’all hear about the alternate suggestion of creating a religion around shunning the waste site? Like nuclear monks or something would guard the site.

I remember other ideas included writing folk songs about the nuclear waste and breeding cats to change colour when they encountered radiation

I just shooed one of my dogs out of a closet by telling her “this is not a place of honor”.

something so elegantly brief about "we considered ourselves to be a powerful culture."

the reminds me of the Sagan-inspired phonograph record on the Voyager probe.. are we assuming the aliens have a sweet Technics turntable?

I love the repeated evocation of the danger.

This is not a dream. We are using your brain as a receiver. We are unable to transmit through conscious neural interference.

are we assuming the aliens have a sweet Technics turntable?

Vinyl is actually a really good choice for this! It's fairly clear that information is encoded on it (to any civilisation that has language and data capacities, they'd be able to work this out v fast), and you don't need much specialised equipment: just any bit of metal should work, and maybe something to make a funnel so the sound is audible.

I love "The danger is still present in your time, as it was in ours." Sounds like some shit that Gandalf would say. Possibly gasses up the encroaching party for danger-flouting heroics too well to work.

Not a place of honor is all time, obv

I want this whole list carved in stone and mounted on my apartment door.

This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

Follow-up poll to determine which US state should adopt this as its new motto.

lovecraftian, that one

Someone in 10,000 years time: "The ancestors sure wanted us to stay away from here. It must be where they kept all their cool shit. Let's dig!"

https://64.media.tumblr.com/acf8c78f95ccf1fc9596c6040da9c5cb/79478eea7e8dbb1f-fd/s640x960/844d3c1eb070b156e800cfab8c3d7bc5a01c2a1c.jpg

I like the pathos of "Sending this message was important to us." That's my vote.

gotta get someone to record these to use as interstitial for rap albums

*interstitials

What if the memeification of these messages is all part of the atomic priesthood's plan?

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This place is not a place of honour... is so poetically chilling. It sounds Arthurian, like something written at the entrance of an ancient cave happened upon by a Knight errant. Very hard not to love. You would think they'd make it a little less intriguing: Of course you're going to want to know what's in the forbidden place

Also makes me think of the "No serviceable parts inside" sticker you would get on the back of household appliances and stereo systems

i should clarify that these aren't specific messages but rather descriptions of what the message should convey. they do just come across like beautiful stanzas of something, tho

how 'bout: You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

i love seeing these two statements next to each other, all this loneliness and hubris captured in a few words.

^^^
The finality of a lesson learned too late.

i highly esteem the use of 'highly esteemed deed' and also that they (correctly) did not hyphenate it

highly esteemed dude

I agree with snoball - if we would find something like this from an ancient civilization (especially the threatening landscape features in the wikipedia article), that is 100% the first place we would dig.

It's such a fascinating project. In particular, how do you convey without words "trust us, we're not trying to hide treasure, there's bad stuff here"?

The idea of paving the desert waste site with miles of heat-absorbing black rock, not flat but at random odd angles--you're not prevented from reaching the location, but they make it uneasy, uncomfortable, unfarmable and unlivable.

What if the memeification of these messages is all part of the atomic priesthood's plan?

What is here does NOT beat a Jet2 holiday. Digging here will NOT save you £50 per person, nor £200 off for a family of four. Sending this message was important to us.

Write-in: "this is the last gasp of a dying scene, nobody under the age of 30 has any interest in this shit"

This ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arms race.

Can't believe no one's said "Turn back you poxy fule" yet

That wiki article is wild. One of the ideas for warning future generations was to breed “ray cats” that changed colors as a living radiation detector.

Ray cat strut
I'm a ladies' cat
Nuclear waste site in South Carolina

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emanation of energy deserved a vote

I regret my Place of No Honor tramp stamp on a regular basis.

pics or it didn't happen