TIL How we plan nuclear waste warning to last 100,000 years - eviltoast
    • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Don’t you actually make a very good point for this effort?

      The problem with the superstitious warning was exactly that it was aimed only at the people of the time. It had no way to preserve it’s warning beyond cultural and intellectual changes. Same as the radioactive symbol having too little inherent deterrent in its design so it caused radiation incidents by people who did not know what it means so we designed a new one that’s specifically meant to be intuitively “dangerous” to people without any prior knowledge.

      So in a similar way, we need to have a way to create warnings about nuclear waste - or a river - that are not limited by the current generation and the way they understand signs and meanings.

    • wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one
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      10 months ago

      Thats just proof that we have designed systems to pass this knowledge down through time and cultures, and can improve on it to be more resiliant to shifts in culture and time going forward.

    • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Comparing modern civilization to tribes doesn’t make sense. We have computers, digital storage, steel, and many other things that will let us preserve and share knowledge in a way humans throughout history probably couldn’t even dream of.