There are groups of designers who have the job of making symbols and systems that can survive for an extremely long time. One of their tasks was to design “signage” that might let generations thousands of years in the future not go poking around in nuclear waste yards. But the more crazy deadly and dangerous you make an artifact look, the more those future scientists are going to want to get into them.
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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Is this loss?
Better off writing "this place is cursed and will kill those that enter"
They wrote that on the entrance to the pyramids. It didn't discourage anyone.
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This guy never watched Indiana Jones
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The nuclear spike deterrent field has been a favorite of mine
This one looks cool, and I think that’s its biggest problem. It’s clearly a massive, man-made structure with no obvious purpose, yet with striking visual impact. To the hypothetical future civilization that is unaware of the dangerous nuclear waste, it basically begs to be investigated.
man-made structure with no obvious purpose
Probably something religious.
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Bro of course Excalibur is under the field of death. Where else would you hide something so powerful?
Hop in, let's go
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Yeah iirc the absolute best solution proposed was to not put any markings at all and bury it deep enough that any future civilization advanced enough to get to it will probably realize what it is long before they actually get to it.
I like that idea. I don't think it matters how horrifying or repugnant or boring we try to make something. If something is made by humans, and humans forget what it was made for, eventually humans are going to explore it to try and figure that out.
On the other hand, nuclear waste is potentially valuable - or "valuable" - because It could be used to fuel more advanced reactors or make nuclear weapons. And I think that's part of the discussion. The people in charge don't want to bury it so deep that their nations can't retrieve it for future use.
I watched a documentary about that: Into Eternity
What I thought was interesting about the film was the balance between entertaining a fantastical vision of some future explorer stumbling across the radioactive site, and the mundanity of most of the actual work.
One of the engineers said something like: "When we seal this up with so much concrete, there's no way you're getting in here without machinery. We should be more concerned about a future civilization that comes back here for radioactive materials when they've exhausted all other natural sources"
And then there's a whole section of the film about rules-lawyering the storage site. The dump was chartered by the Finish government to seal waste "for all time", and the engineers were mad that nothing is truly permanent.
Man this would be such a killer start or premise for a sci fi book
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.
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Put it out of reach of humans without advanced tech. Under 2km of antarctic ice, in a deep sea trench, things like that. We are not talking millions of years, only a few thousand. And in case of accidents, water/ice is a great radiation blocker.
I was thinking about this and their thinking was way too complicated. The symbol you need is bones. Bones are always associated with death and decay because after death, bones are the thing that's left.
And yes I know they thought of it but I think their dismissal of it is wrong. Their counter argument that it was once a symbol of something else by some culture, therefore. But again by its very nature it's associated with death. Any society capable of this excavation is also capable of thinking "hmm what did they mean? outside of our own culture of course" and will quickly figure out it's bad.
Yeah, Carl Sagan was like "skull and crossbones"
But of course everyone else wanted to over-engineer it, so you get proposed solutions like encoding messages in the DNA of plants, and color-changing cats with an accompanying viral song that no one's ever heard of twelve years later... 🤦♀️
Like, guys, if people today can't even figure out what it means, then it's not a universal and enduring message.
And then some of the suggestions would only serve to make it a glaringly obvious archaeological dig site.
Skull and crossbones is about as universal as you can get. Maybe some atomic diagrams and radiation symbols, and written warnings in as many languages as possible, just in case people still understand them. And a giant slab that someone could only drill through deliberately, requiring heavy equipment.
I can't believe these were supposedly some of the smartest people in the world, and yet they made the mistakes of assuming that future civilizations would be hyperintelligent and thoroughly inquisitive, while also not understanding any symbols from our era and being likely to avoid areas designed to seem ominous. As if egyptologists today respect the warnings on ancient tombs.
And yet they overlooked the skull and crossbones because it seemed too obvious. The whole point is that it's supposed to be obvious!!!
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The number one site archeologists are interested in is a graveyard. Because it tells you a lot about the people buried there.
This is funny because it's a symbol of bones, not actual bones. You know laser etched onto a platinum disc (or whatever other alloy that doesn't degrade) along with other signals that death is what will happen to you if you dig there. Any civilizaiton capable of that kind of excavation will be capable of figuring out "This is a symbol conveying a message. The message is death, not marking a juicy graveyard".
And just like the other guy, I think your fear is more likely with these other ominiuos-but-doesn't-tell-you-why markings (if the language is lost). They see all those random spikes and will think "holy shit this is the mother of all sites".
"Yea but there's a bone so clearly there must be bones."
- Future anthropologist from the idiocracy future.
Yeah idiocracy.
Are you referring to the documentary film Idiocracy?
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"There is a black ichor in center of earth, made from the dying flesh from old beast. When using it you can reach ultimate power, but by using it you slowly doom the world"
Made from dead plants, rather.
Or you could hit these yellow rocks together and become death itself.
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That explains it. All the mystical, mythological stories in the past weren't fanciful fairytales after all. Turns out that ancient people had sophisticated science that we still don't understand. Holy shit, all those history channel shows about ancient aliens or whatever were right!
Early nuclear scientists were batshit crazy deranged lunatics. Louis Slotin was researching the criticality of a plutonium core by lowering half a sphere of beryllium over it using the tip of a screwdriver and not a single piece of safety equipment.
It did not end well.
They sacrificed their lives so we could know both the power and danger ofthee subatomic world. They are accidental heroes. Now, someone who did that shit today with full knowledge of the consequences - they would be batshit insane.
For what its worth, Slotin in particular knew the consequences. If i recall correctly, he had a reputation for being a bit of a "cowboy" when it came to experimental protocol. I believe the lab even had specially made tools for handling the core, but Slotin insisted on using a screwdriver because it was easier.
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Maybe, but Slotin knew exactly what kind of dangers he was dealing with. He just chose to be a nuclear cowboy instead.
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The arc of the covenant…. The Italians have to give it back to Ethiopia
Sounds like a classic cursed artifact, read this and you will learn great knowledge, but die slowly....
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