It’s like the nerds that came up with those nuclear warnings have never consumed a piece of fantasy or sci-fi media.
“Oh, this ancient civilisation had immense power and locked it away in a concrete vault underground surrounded by harrowing warnings? Fuck yes I’m digging that shit up or settling my town on the ancient site of power. Blessings of the glowing soil! My son has been born with 6 fingers on each hand! Surely a wonderful portent!”
I read a really interesting book which dealt, in part, with how to let people in the far future know about a nuclear waste dump from one of the people who helped design it (sci-fi author Gregory Benford). And one of the suggestions was not to let anyone know about it at all because if you do tell them, they’ll go dig it up. But then they also have to contend with ideas like mining robots that just tunnel through the soil looking for useful materials that might accidentally tunnel into the waste dump.
There were a lot of ideas including things like a landscape of nasty-looking concrete spikes and buried radio warnings. The final design was more modest and I don’t think would have deterred me, but I also don’t remember the details well enough because I read it decades ago.
Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia
It’s like the nerds that came up with those nuclear warnings have never consumed a piece of fantasy or sci-fi media. “Oh, this ancient civilisation had immense power and locked it away in a concrete vault underground surrounded by harrowing warnings? Fuck yes I’m digging that shit up or settling my town on the ancient site of power. Blessings of the glowing soil! My son has been born with 6 fingers on each hand! Surely a wonderful portent!”
If I’m finding a dungeon in the wild, I’m delving, and I have the education to know better. The post apocalyptic grunts stand no chance.
I read a really interesting book which dealt, in part, with how to let people in the far future know about a nuclear waste dump from one of the people who helped design it (sci-fi author Gregory Benford). And one of the suggestions was not to let anyone know about it at all because if you do tell them, they’ll go dig it up. But then they also have to contend with ideas like mining robots that just tunnel through the soil looking for useful materials that might accidentally tunnel into the waste dump.
There were a lot of ideas including things like a landscape of nasty-looking concrete spikes and buried radio warnings. The final design was more modest and I don’t think would have deterred me, but I also don’t remember the details well enough because I read it decades ago.
Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia
Looks to be available to read on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/deeptimehowhuman0000benf/page/n5/mode/2up
Children of the Atom!
The best one is genetically modified cats that change colors around nuclear waste, no one would ever want color changing cats.
Reminds me of Strugansky’s Roadside Picnic.