Stuff You Should KnowSelects: Nuclear Semiotics: How to Talk to Future Humans
The nuclear waste we produce will be dangerous for a very long time. We’ve figured out how to safely store it in the earth until it’s no longer a biohazard. Now we just have to figure out how to warn humans 10,000 years in the future to stay away from it. Find out about our best ideas in this classic episode.
Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select, I've chosen one of my favorite episodes in honor of the birthday of my favorite person, my dear sweet wife, Yumy, whose birthday is today. Since this episode is so cool and Yumi is too, I figure it was just logical and logical stuff really floats my boat. Plus, what better way to send off a not too bad year, considering everything, especially the last couple of years, than with a real head scratcher. Fascinating, interesting episode. I hope you enjoy it. Happy birthday to Yumi, and happy New Year to everybody.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And this is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast.
And you're about to say that the Blank Edition.
Yeah, I was, but I couldn't think of anything.
It was literally the blank Edition, was it? I mean, you couldn't think of anything you were playing?
No, No, that's right, it was the blank Edition. Oh gosh, it's a terrible start, Chuck.
So how about this, just to divert ourselves from that disaster. What was not a disaster were our live shows we just did. Oh yeah, we finally got up on stage everyone since first time since January. Yeah, kick the rust off. Sure in Chicago and Toronto.
And both of them were we just killed.
They were great. Yeah, every audiences were great.
Everyone had a really great time. Yeah, they told us so, uh huh. They seemed to be legitimately meaning what they were saying.
Yeah, it was really really great to get back on stage with you, my friend.
And also also also hats off to Chicago for showing up. They showed up, Like we called you guys out and you responded, yeah, thank you very right, and thank you Toronto for not making us call you out.
But there are still tickets remaining for August twenty ninth in Boston, the wilbur and Portland, Maine. You know, we're venturing up into the hinterlands of America right years after that, But August thirtieth, there are still plenty of great tickets left there. And then the same can be said in October and Orlando and October tenth. I think I said October ninth right in Orlando, October tenth and New Orleans Yep, that's right, Brooklyn. I'm not worried about that.
That's already all sold out, the whole thing, all three nights.
Man, should we add a fourth?
Jeez, I don't know.
We'll talk about it anyway. Thanks to everyone who came out. It was a lot of fun. And this is a good one. So you don't want you don't want to miss it.
Yeah, so come on out, especially you Portland Maine. Let's get with.
It all right now. Nuclear Semiotics, which I didn't know I loved, but I do.
Really do you remember ninety nine percent Visible did a very famous episode on this very topic.
Oh, I didn't hear that.
I specifically avoided going back and listening to it because I don't want to be stunk upon by its taint. Does that make sense?
You don't want Roman Mars' taint.
It's more like, it's just such a classic episode that I don't wanted to like leak in. I don't want to accidentally rip it off.
Yeah. Well, we certainly can't ninety nine invisible this thing, because that is a show that exists at the top echelon this industry.
Sure so so do we Sure we're up there all right? But if you like this one, if this stuff like floats your bone and you're like, I want to know more, go listen to the ninety nine percent Invisible episode.
Yeah, this thing really triggered a lot of like synapsis firing for me, and I think, like, I think I really enjoy this kind of thought experiment, problem solving stuff.
Oh yeah, I.
Think I would really dig like that. Part of the zombie Apocalypse is figuring the stuff out as a team, right, Because the whole time I was reading this, I was saying, great idea, terrible idea. They should do this, they shouldn't do that.
Sit down. Yeah, you I like the cut of your gym.
It was really cool. I dug this. I'd never heard of it, so thank you.
Oh you're very welcome. I actually heard of it before Roman Mars made the episode, so I can't really thank him.
But well, not before he heard of it, because I think it's well known that Roman's first words were nuclear semiotics.
That's true. Yeah, even before Mama, that's right. I could totally believe that. Actually. Yeah, So what we're talking about is Chuck said a couple of times for those of you who don't know, is nuclear semiotics and that is a very specialized branch, interdisciplinary branch of I guess science that involves all basically any feel of research that you can throw at the wall would probably have some function to play in the field of nuclear semiotics. And to make a long story short, to do the too long, didn't read version of this TL semi colon dr is, nuclear semiotics seeks to figure out how how to warn the future humans to come.
Or whatever is here. Sure, let's get on a good point.
I mean why discriminate, right, Yeah, to warn the future humans or the future super intelligent jellyfish whatever to come. Hey, this is a very dangerous radioactive dump site that we've put here. Stay away.
Yeah, it's that easy.
It sounds easy. The problem is is if you presume that it's easy, you're making a lot of assumptions that aren't necessarily going to hold up.
Oh yeah, like a lot of times are like they should just do. And I would even stop halfway through my thought because like, no, that wouldn't work.
It's true because our languages might be gone by then. Our symbols don't necessarily make sense outside of the context that we understand them in civilization might be ridiculously advanced by them, a civilization might be in a state of collapse by then. We have no idea. But the point of nuclear semiotics is to figure out how to come up with a a message that is understandable to everybody in any situation in the future. And the current state of the art is, let's figure out how to speak as far as ten thousand years into the future.
Yeah, I mean, and that's like being generous. It needs to go beyond that.
It does, because the whole point of nuclear semiotis the whole point of warning the future is this stuff, this nuclear waste that we're putting into the ground now, is going to be dangerous for tens and tens of thousands of years.
Yeah.
Plutonium two thirty nine has a half life of twenty four thousand years. There's something called technetium ninety nine has a half life of two hundred and eleven thousand years. So another one is like one point seven million year half life. This is the nuclear waste that we're creating now and are putting in the ground.
Yeah. And Julia Layton, who is one of our writers who does great work for us, she made a lot of great points, which is like the history of an evolution is two hundred thousand years. Yeah, and like we've only been like reading and writing for how long.
About five thousand, less than six thousand years?
Yeah, So it's it sounds like like you said, it sounds simple. And so many times I thought I had I thought I had it cracked right, only to think like I was, like, why don't they just do something purely visual and stage a play of people at that site digging in and then dying. And it's like, well, what do you do with it? Well, I'll just put it on a DVD. Sure, that just plays on a loop. Right, It's like, well, how are you going to power that thing?
Right? You know what happens when everybody's converted to blu ray?
Yeah exactly? Or you know, thought, well, then solar put a solar panel up? Is that a last river? But what have it done? What if there's like a forever nuclear storm or whatever. But if the sun never shines again on Earth in eight thousand years, that's could happen.
That's the cool thing about thinking into the deep future is all the things that will go. Yeah. It makes you realize like how specific everything you think and know and understand really is to your current time.
Yeah, it's very cool. She brings up the point about an apple, Like when you see the word apple, you don't see the word apple, right, You see you visualize the symbol of that is an apple.
Right.
So it's like it's almost like the words very much. The words will just not have meaning anymore at some point, right.
Man, Well, let's dig into this stuff. You ready, Let's do it. So to start, we should talk about where this all came from. It came from a new type of nuclear storage solution, nuclear waste storage solution called long term geological repositories, and it is basically digging into the earth a couple of miles into the earth, putting our nuclear waste there again, waste that's going to be harmful to health for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, and sealing it up and then covering over the site and then putting a warning on there. And right now, the general consensus is that salt beds are the best place to put that nuclear waste. And there's actually some pretty good reasons why.
Yeah, we could do an episode on nuclear storage. I think I really want to in and of itself, yeah, I don't know if that's a shorty or a long ea.
It's probably a longie. Yeah, But just briefly, the reason salt beds are preferable is because the fact that they're even there suggests that there's no water. They if there was water, they would have been dissolved long ago. It's really relatively easy to mine into them. And then what's awesome about salt is that when you mine a shaft into a salt bed and you put your deposit there and then you pull back out, the salt bed actually heals itself over, like just a few.
Decades, seals itself back up, right.
Yes, so you put a container that's been engineered to hold the nuclear waste inside for ten thousand years.
Yeah, it's also in a container. I should point that out right.
You're putting it into a borehole in the salt. The salt is going to grow back around it and intument perhaps permanently in this salt.
Yeah, very strong too, write.
Yeah, it is fairly strong. I mean, like, if you're mining using modern mining equipment, it's really easy to mine into. But if you just have like a pickaxe or something, it's rock too. Salt rock is what it's called. Right, So there's a lot of reasons why people have figured out like this is not a bad idea to entomb nuclear waste. But but here's the thing. We can't just entune it and walk away, Like, we have a responsibility for those of us generating this waste today to warn the future. Sure, and it's on the future. If they listen to us or not, that's on them.
Right, But we have to make them able to listen.
To us, exactly, like, we have a responsibility to do that. Because some people are proposed like, hey, let's just bury and forget about it. The chances of somebody actually finding it are pretty slim. Just bury and forget about it. That's probably the best, the best way to go. And people said it's not a bad idea, but it's actually a pretty bad idea.
See, actually I thought that one wasn't the worst idea. It's not that was a behavioral psychologist. He was like, and he wasn't like, just forget about it. He was like, maybe the smartest thing to do is to leave it unmarked.
Right, because, as we'll see, attracting attention to something like exactly attracts attention.
I know, it's interesting thought experiment, right.
That was that psychologist, by the way, was doctor Percy Tenenbaum.
No really, no, no wonder I liked it of.
The East Hampton ten and baums.
So we should point out that there's a couple of a couple of big times that these that this has been commissioned, like, hey, we need to think of something. One for a site that never happened, and one for a site that has happened. The one that has happened. It's only one of the United States right now.
The only one in the world as far as I know.
No, it's number three. Oh really, it's the third largest. Okay, I didn't see what the other two were.
It must have been the first in the world.
Then, yeah, probably the first in the world. Okay, yeah, which makes sense because the other two are bigger. But this is New Mexico. It's called the WHIP the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, and this one they are they're actively guarding for. They've committed the Department of Energy is committed to guarding it with people for one hundred years.
They've hired Barney Fife into one hundred year contract to look over.
This nuclear way for at least one hundred years. It's not like at the end of the hundred years are going to just like put a padlock on it and walk away. I imagine they will keep guarding it as long as they feel like it needs guarding.
I don't know if that's the thing. I don't know, man. I mean, we're talking about a government run program here.
Well, at least one hundred years, we can at least say.
That, yes, they agreed to that.
So you know, the whole idea arose before that though. What was the other one in Nevada?
That's the Yucca Mountain one.
That was the first one, right, that's the first one that never happened, right, But that's when, you know, in the seventies is when this idea sort of came about. And I think it was a nineteen eight when it was sort of codified as an official I guess science or.
Yeah, it is a brand. It's an interdisciplinary branch of science, nuclear semiotics is. And it's because the EPA came up with a rule in nineteen eighty two, a law.
Really that's eighty one. I got that wrong, by the way, So.
It's eighty one that they came up with the law.
Well, it became a discipline in nineteen eighty one with that Yuck Mountain Repository project.
And I think from that yucka Mountain Repository project, because we were starting to figure out how to deposit this stuff for a long time, the EPA came up with a rule I think it was nineteen eighty two that said, if you're going to create these kind of repositories for nuclear waste, you also have to figure out how to come up with a permanent warning sign. And everybody was like, that's no problem, of course, and then the EPs to think about it. It's harder than you think.
They said, just slap that nuclear waste logo that everyone knows, sure, and everyone was like, everyone doesn't know that.
Well, it's been around forever.
Everyone doesn't know that now, much less in two hundred thousand years.
Yeah, did you see how that was created?
Yeah, it was. It was a group doodle. I don't know how that happens. I think that means they can't ascribe it to one person.
They know there was like five people in one of those giant like silver spoons, pencils or kral cranon.
Yeah, this is a nineteen forty six, was it at Berkeley? Yeah, and it was a group doodle in this science class.
And is that a is that an album or a band name?
Group doodle?
It's like the Wiggles or something.
Yeah, I think it's an album title for.
Sure, So the Wiggles group doodle absolutely.
Okay, get that's probably a real thing.
That's our gift to you, Wiggles.
But I saw this was interesting. In nineteen forty eight, the symbol came under consideration for wider use because at first it was just a group doodle and then the Brookhaven National Laboratory requested a standardized symbol of standardized colors for their radiation safety program, and there was more argument about the colors then the actual symbol because at first they are like, you can't use yellow because we use yellow for a lot of stuff.
Yeah, they wanted to make sure that it didn't get overused. So people had just become kind of blind to it because they saw it so much.
And they were like, have you heard a striper exactly? They can't use yellow and black.
They were like, no, I haven't heard them, and they like, give us forty years, you'll have heard of them, believe me.
And then in forty two years, no one will have heard of them. So I think the original design was was I saw them in concert. We weren't even talk.
Oh, I believe it.
It was magenta blades on a blue background was the original design, and it was chosen because it was uncommon. But then in Oakridge, Tennessee, at the Oakridge National Laboratory, they went with the yellow background in nineteen forty eight. Later on in nineteen forty eight, and I guess it stuck.
That's where the Oakridge boys were all scientists. That's right, So it was originally magenta on blue. Right, Yes, And the logo we're talking about, for those of you I know, it's called the nuclear trefoil. It's a circle and then three partial circles around a blade. And from what I saw, one of the original group doodlers explained it as it's supposed to be an atom with activity around it.
Yeah, that's it.
Which I never saw it before, but now that I've read that, I can't unsee it. And that is really what it looks like. It's a pretty great little doodle. But it's like you said, that is not a universally accepted symbol, which is a big problem. And it doesn't. It doesn't evoke like, oh, an atom, of course, I know what an atom looks like. I just saw one go down the street a second ago, and this looks like an atom. It's a symbolic representation of an atom, which means that after people stop thinking about what atoms look like, maybe a thousand years or five thousand years down the road, if something happens, no one's going to look at that and be like, oh, it's an atom. Activity around an atom, that must mean there's radiation here. Hence this is a danger sign that's not going to happen.
Right.
The other thing you would think is just just put up in a bunch of languages. Done. Yeah, here's the thing. Languages are disappearing. I'm going to ask you, actually, what is your best guess? A language dies out every blank.
Nine million seconds? Is that right? Did I nail it?
Jerk? I got to get out of calculator. A language dies out every fourteen days.
I'm pretty sure there's nine million.
Isn't that staggering? God? What if it was? Are you about to do that? Yeah?
You keep talking.
So that's about twenty five languages per year that die out and.
That's really sad.
It is, and it is very sad. And granted these aren't you know, major languages, but they're important to the people who speak them. Sure, but that's just sort of to to get across the point that throwing it up in a bunch of languages, there's no guarantee. And in fact, in all likelihood, in fifty thousand years, there won't be English or German or French. There may not even be humans. That's a really point. We may be what's the calculation.
Four hundred and forty six days. I was a little lot. Okay there there, There may be. We may all be like post biological humans, you know, uploaded our consciousness onto like the Internet or something. And which point that really won't matter to tell you the truth. Where the nuclear waste is buried? But who knows? It could be an intelligent species, It could be humans who don't know how to read or write. The fact is is the stuff that we take for granted changes a lot faster than you think, and even if it doesn't necessarily die out, the changes that come along are pretty alarming. I found a I've been watching a lot of Silicon Valley lately.
I told you yeah, great show.
My vocal delivery sounds a lot like Jared's. It's a curly you think a lot.
I never really put those two together.
We'll keep an ear out for it now, and see what you think. I mean. Tell me I'm wrong.
I mean, I would have to dissociate so much because I like you and Jared is like such a pedantic bureaucrat.
Oh, I love him.
I mean he's fun, yeah to watch, But I wouldn't say that he's like the most likable character. Maybe he is, I don't know.
I would say pedantic bureaucrat is not entirely off for me.
Yeah, Jared needs a girlfriend, that's his deal.
Okay, so I do not because I have a fine wife, That's right. So let me give you an example of how English has changed. This is a quote from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was written in thirteen seventy five, Oh boy, six hundred and fifty years ago. All right, this is in English. The steel of a stiff staff, the stern hit be gripped, that was wound in with iron into the wand's end. And I'll be graving with green and gravious works. And you should see it spelled.
Oh yeah, I mean I was an English major. We had to go through this stuff. It was a slog.
Do you have a guess at what I just said?
Yeah, you said that. He uh, the green Knight sat down and watched some silicon valley.
That's right. It's that the grim Man gripped it by its strong handle, which was wound with iron all the way to the end, and graven and green with graceful designs. So like, that's English six hundred and fifty years ago. English is still around.
Six hundred and fifty years. We're talking about thousands, tens of thousands of years exactly.
So that's a problem. Languages evolve, languages die, Symbols don't quite make sense out of context. So there's a lot of challenges that face the people to try to explain this stuff, or figure out how to explain it to future people, I think is a better way to put it.
That's right. They have looked in semio semiotitians for people who really want on this stuff. Sure, I think I'm an amateur semiutitian after reading this.
That's great.
But one thing that they're looking for, because what you want is ideally is instant recognition and not something I mean, yeah maybe if you have to figure it out. But what you want is something that conveys danger right when you look at.
It, Like just steer clear of this right place, not come closer and start poking around. Just go away, That's right.
So she makes a great point though, that, like it's a double edged sword, like you were talking about earlier. If you, you know, human beings, if you show an extreme skier or a sign this is danger, don't ski this way. Sure, he's gonna say, bra let's do it.
Yeah, you know, give me some homicide power drink.
So there's a very very fine line between warning people and enticing people.
Yeah, even inadvertently exactly, you know. I mean, there's she she points out haunted houses because I'm like, yeah, not everybody's like a red bull extreme sports person, but people do like it haunted houses too, So that abandoned like scary place is so creepy. Let's go there for Halloween, right because maybe Halloween survived but the English language didn't. Who knows. So yeah, you you you really walk a fine line here between warning people away and saying I dare you?
Right? Yeah, my whole jam is I think they need to, Uh, what will survive if there are humans at all is emotion, So I think they need to appeal to human emotions like fear, more than words and symbols.
Okay, well, let's take a break and we'll get back into this, all right, because this is fun.
Yes, any stuffy jaws.
All right, chuck. So we've kind of talked about how things go away, Languages fall away, symbols don't make sense.
Any any ephemera.
It is, it really is, right, So what what will last? What have nuclear semiutitions come up with? And should we explain with semiotics? Is in general.
What is it?
I don't even know, oh, just kind of in shorthand. Semiotics is basically the study of how and why signs have meaning. Okay, right, Like you were saying earlier, how the word apple doesn't evoke thoughts of the word apple. It evokes thoughts of the round, shiny, tasty fruit that grows on a tree. That's a sign. In semiotics, that's specifically a cursive sign because it uses language.
So what they've done in many cases is, and this is a great idea for stuff like this is to have a competition. They had one at UCLA, I think in two thousand and one called it called the Desert Space Competition. And what one that year was a cactus, a yucca cacti glowing blue. And then the idea was plant a field of these regular green cacti, and then over the place where you know the waist is the repository, and then if you see the sign of a glowing blue one, I mean, I don't think I didn't see the rest of them, but I didn't think this one was that great.
I'm sorry to the person who came up with it.
Though I know. I think a bit of something they should do is go even further back to younger children, because sometime like go to like an elementary school and ask kids or a high school.
Right, or you just take each kid out and rub their face in the sand and be like you see this, you stay out of here.
No, I mean, have the kids like throw out ideas because I think, oh, oh, I see yeah, I think the I think a lot of times children can cut through the to the simplicity of something much better than adults can easily. So that's my idea. Throw it out as a as a science fair project.
Well, I think that's one of the cool things about nuclear semionics is it's so inviting to like anybody can come up with a great idea. It's just so confounding, but it's also so accessible.
Yeah, we'll get ideas. In fact, we want to hear from you. If you think you have a cool idea, it's a good idea, Like, I guarantee you we're going to get some good ones. Yep, We're not going to pass them along or anything.
So rather than just like poo pooing the glowing yuka one, there's a here's the problem with the glowing yucca idea. It requires explanation, right, somebody. So part of the glowing yuka is to say, these things have been genetically engineered so that when there's radiation present, they glow. So if you see this yucka glowing, it means that there's radiation here, stay away, right. If you lose that that additional story that has to go along with the glowing yuka, then you just have glowing yucca. And I can't think of a more attractive thing that's going to draw people to a site than the legendary glowing yucca that only glows in this one. Soster On earth. Yeah, that's kind of the problem with it. You know.
I like this other idea from that same year a little better that did not win. Fields of Asphodel, which is a Eurasian lily. They said, let's just cover the with metal blades that screech when the wind blows. It makes it horrible noise, right, not bad.
Here's the problem with that. Okay, Moving parts Okay, sure, it's been pretty well established that if you're trying to convey something to the people into the distant future, you need to have something that's monolithic and made of one piece, because if you have multiple parts, that's an opportunity for weathering to occur through the place where the two parts meet, or three parts or five parts. And if it's a moving part, just kiss the movement goodbye.
What about this? Okay, I've had the thought earlier today about just a mountain of razor wire.
Okay, here's the problem with that.
Okay.
And this is the same problem also with the what is the problem the steel? The steel stuff that move and everything this do you want to use you? I don't, But you want to use stuff that has no value whatsoever, not just financially, but usefulness.
Well, because someone will say I can harvest that razor wire.
Yeah, I can go use that to keep the cows in in my house next door.
Yeah. But if you have so much of it.
Over time, over ten thousand years, people like take and make. I mean, that's why the pyramids are stripped of, like they're more attractive outer. They used to have like a white I think limestone shell encasement. It's gone because the locals were like, oh, I can use that to build a fine lot pizza hut. That's exactly that's what people will do if you place something of any kind of usefulness of that true like that is the beauty in that every idea is wrong.
As a whole. It's so great, it's pretty great.
I love it.
So. One of the most often sided bodies of work is from nineteen eighty two eighty three, and this was a call for ideas from the German Journal of Semiotics that basically said the same thing. It's like, you know, what are your ideas? This one got a little goofy to say the least. Someone suggests an artificial moon as a storage vessel.
There's just a huge flaw on that one.
If you ask me, I mean I don't even get that.
Well, it was like, how do you make sure that the information about this site stays protected? Put it into an artificial moon in orbit around Earth? But it's like, how do you get to the artificial.
Don't get that's what they meant that. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. That's what I think I guess they were. I mean it said, oh, well, were they beaming it down to a TV that won't play?
That's a different one. Yeah, and that. I just don't understand this at all.
I don't understand the Radioactive Cats either, even though that's a decent band name.
So there. That was a big part of the ninety nine percent Invisible episode. Now Nuclear Semiotics. They talked about the ray Cats, and I think they actually hired a musician to create a song because just like with the glowing Yucca, you have to explain what's going on when the cats glow, you need to stay away. So they had somebody come up with a Raycat song I believe for the episode.
Was it Hoody and the Blowfish, Yes, it was.
That was a good guess.
Now, this one I thought was had a little I thought it was interesting. This semi Aitian named Thomas Cibioc. He said, this what has survived more than anything else religion, Right, religious texts that date back, you know, a couple thousand years in the Catholic Church. Not a bad start.
Yeah, The ideas that you hear at Catholic Mass today are a couple thousand years old and something instances. And if you go back to the original text, which we can still read, fortunately, you can say, yep, this is what they're talking about. Like those ideas have survived that long because of the practices they use.
So interesting idea, But it gets a little goofy yeah, because he thought, why don't we almost create a fake religion around this thing, a fearful myth that you can generate, appointing an atomic priesthood to tell people and tell them to tell future generations. But I mean, I guess the idea is that it's all false and it's just a big made up story.
Yeah, the comic priesthood would know the truth and they would indoctrinate people. But out in society around them, it would be a closely guarded secret because everybody else thinks that whatever this fake myth about, why you have to stay away from this haunted, evil area is true when really the atomic priests are the ones who know no, actually there's radioactive stuff that out here. They just came up with this three thousand years ago to scare everybody away.
But initially a decent idea as far as trying to make it or incorporate like what religion does. But it just definitely strange.
It is to me though, it is at its base despicable. It's a despicable idea because it is purposefully introducing fearful, false superstition into the future, Like we're going to purposefully introduce fearful false superstition into the future just to scare people off from radioactivity, like what kind of sweeping side effects, what kind of wars might start over this time? People will die? Then this fake thing that they don't realize is fake. Because Thomas Sebiak came up with this idea to keep people away from a single site in New Mexico, that's crazy.
It didn't fare too well either among his colleagues.
No, and rightfully so, because again it's a despicable idea.
So he was on the Human Interference Task Force. We mentioned the Nevada site. That was what was what was launched for that yucka Mountain site back in eighty one, from eighty one to eighty three.
So whatever Cebiac's original idea was, he had like some other closely related ideas that were great. Though, Yeah, like he's not like this a total nut job happened. I think it was just a misfire for in an otherwise illustrious career. I think I don't know that much about him. But one of his other ideas was, Okay, well, let's take the atomic priesthood away, let's take the religion and all that stuff away, and let's just give them like the facts, but let's figure out a way to make sure that those facts get pass down. And what he came up with was called a meta message, where it's a message that says, this place has nuclear radiation, it can kill you. You need to stay away from it. And we invite you to take this message and translate it into whatever languages you guys have on Earth at.
The time, assuming you can read this right.
But if you do that often enough, there will always be somebody who can translate it. Oh sure, And then that way you form a bridge between now and as far into the future as people are around to read and add their own interpretation or their own translation of it. But then you want to leave the original so that if there's ever like a disagreement about what word meant, hopefully somebody can go back language and language language and connect them so that they can see the original version.
Yeah, but like what if a society develops an isolation that knows none of these languages.
You're just totally toast. Yeah, that's when the symbols come in.
Right. So what they settled on as a panel though, and from eighty one to eighty three was what's called long term communication was going to be the most effective thing, like kind of what you were just talking about, right, And they said a system that combines physical markers and archives that cover the two major forms of this long term community communicate, direct and successive. Direct utilizes markers, and successive is humans like you were talking about. I guess with this meta message, I guess you could write it down, but it's still humans carrying a message through time.
Well, it's more like a direct one is like you can write an inscription on a monument and that monument is going to deliver that message directly to people ten thousand years from now, yeah.
I mean it's a physical thing.
Right, whereas with successive it's kind of passed along like a game.
Of telephone exactly. And you know how that goes, right, It can get a little hinky, that's right, but it's always fun at a slumber party.
Sure, So they came up with multiple ones, Like you were saying, they've settled on a monument that had massive stone structures. Remember, you want monoliths, they're engraved with warnings in all currently known languages. It's a lot of languages.
You want a.
Buried vault that has all the info you need about radioactivity, about the site, all that stuff. Sure, you want a bunch of barriers around the site, not necessarily to definitely keep people out, but enough to basically say, hey, hey, we're trying to impede progress here.
Yeah, I mean to me, that's one of the most obvious ones. If like you see a huge wall again, it might entice you, but it for sure indicates to any culture that you're like, you're not meant to come beyond this, Right.
And then the last one is a network of archives basically the same information you would have in that buried vault, right, but elsewhere scattered around the world. So if something happens with the buried vault, somebody can come across the archives somewhere and be like, oh wait, wait, we want to stay out of.
There, right. And along with that, they said, while we're at it, can we at least like all agree around world on a nuclear warning symbol. If it's the trefoil or whatever, let's just all codify that as the thing, which is not the case right now.
No, there's was a triangle with an arrow pointing down, and then in the head of the arrow was the Biohezard symbol, which is not great because you want something that's going to be so simple that even as.
People confuse me, I need to see it. I guess yeah.
It's even when you see it you're like, wait what. But you want something simple enough so that as people kind of create a shorthand version of it, it still retains its meaning right or visually.
All right, So that stuff was the Yaka project. In the early eighties, they decided not to do that. They just packed it up, put it away, and then it all came back again with this new Mexico plant when the Department of Energy said once again, hey, we need to think of a sign and a symbol or whatever you can come up with. And we need the best and the brightest thinking of this. So call up Carl Sagan.
Get me Sagan, give me Sagan, give me Percy Tannenbaum Stat.
And this guy named John Lomberg who's a science writer and space illustrator and he had worked in semiotics before for NASA on their mission to Mars. Sagan was in ill health, so he declined to come, but he sent a message from the president. I guess that said skull and crossbones. Dude, done. Yeah, universal, everyone knows it.
He gave a really good example. He said, it has it's marked the lintels of cannibal dwellings, the flags of pirates, the insignia of SS divisions and motorcycle gangs. He makes a pretty good point. A lot of people out there see a skull and crossbones and no, it means like danger problems.
Yeah, it means this will be you. Yes, you know, you'll be a skull.
And so the the working group for the Whip project they said, no, that doesn't work. It's a Youngian archetype. It doesn't really exist outside of the West. Ye to me, I'm like, no, Sagan was definitely onto something.
Think so. I mean, tell me, if you go to China and hold up a sign with a skull and crossbunds, I would think so, wouldn't they. I mean, that's a dire warning, isn't it.
I think their point is is that the skull used to be like a memento moral where it meant like rebirth and prepare death.
So they could be like, oh, wonderful a skull and crossbud Sure, but.
To me, that is the one enduring symbol that's always going to be around as long as there are humans, because what happens when you die and rot what's left your skull. Every human knows that. Even humans in the future are going to know that, even ones that are in like a post collapse tribes were running around like and have lost all of the languages that are around today, they're going to know what a skull looks like or what a skull means, or at least one of them is going to be like, wait, I don't think this is saying that the rainbow's coming. I think it means like death or danger.
All right, let's take another break, Yeah, sure, and we'll come back in talk about the approach that the whip panel took and what they came up with right after this.
Stuffy the jawsh shot soft you.
You know, I gotta defend Sagan. It's my boy. Sure love that guy.
Someone should ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Sure, why not.
I bet he's got a good idea or two.
I'll bet they have asked.
He's still no Atlanta for a show?
Oh yeah, where Fox?
I think a cop Energy center.
Oh yeah, I think that's even more seats than the phone.
No, it's less.
Oh sorry, it's.
Like three thousand people, which is nothing to you know, put up a stink about. That's a lot of folks.
We have not hit that.
No we're not.
No, we haven't. Did you hear the Star talk I was on?
Oh no, it was it good?
It was pretty good.
Yeah.
If I do say, if it was supposed to be like rapid fast responses.
Uh huh.
We got through like four questions in an hour because.
You were like, rapid fast response is not my specialty. Meal me.
Let me just do a little distracting here.
I'm more deliberate, all right. So, speaking of deliberate, the Whippanel was very deliberate and methodical. They divided it into teams and approached it from the two things we were talking about, direct and successive forms of communication. Debated a lot, deliberated a lot the recommendations. They had two proposals, and they did overlap a little bit. What I thought was pretty smart is they both had a multi leveled approach from the surface down that got more specific and intense as you went down.
Yeah, the first one was basically like you, ding Dong, this is dan or go away exactly. That's like level one, and then level two is like, okay, ding Dong and your kind of smart friend explain to ding Dong that the reason this is dangerous because there's something buried here and it's gonna hurt you, all.
Right, should we don't talk about the real things?
Oh? Sure, I thought I was so group A.
This was theirs. They studded the surface of the site with what they called menacing earthworks, so a field of spikes and then a big, massive disc painted to look like a black hole. I didn't quite get that part.
It's so dumb.
I get the spikes.
I think it's the yeah, of course, But the black hole, I think it's supposed to just mean like a void or chaos. I don't know. I'm not sure I could see how you would think that that was kind of universal, like nobody wants to fall into a hole or something, and maybe it evokes that kind of like stay away all right.
Then they have large markers all around the site, which, like you said, are the really basic messages in the warnings, including and I thought this is so interesting faces that invoke Edvard Munch's the scream.
The ones I saw were the scream. Yeah, like it was the line drawing of the guy from the.
Screen people, Yeah, like in great agony and pain. That to me not bad.
It isn't bad. I don't know though, is that more universally understood than a skull and crossbones?
I don't know, or if art survives or people like, oh, I wonder if that painting's down there.
Well, I think what they're saying is and semi autitians kind of feel this way. Is that Edvard Monk so perfectly nailed the scream that even without the art, like, if you see that, you understand that that person you're seeing is in agony?
Did I say Munch? No?
I think you said Monk did I say munch.
You said Monk. I might have said Munch.
No, you said I think you said monk. Is it Munch?
I think it's probably Monk. There's no way his name is Munch.
I'm almost positive you said monk. Jerry, can you rewind for a second.
Much?
Oh you did say much. I would have sworn you said munk.
So Group A below the surface this is when they actually start talking about nuclear waste to what it does to you, the details about the structure and all that.
Stuff, right, not bad, where they teach a little bit about radioactivity.
So Group B this was they went super informative, and really what they relied on was that people had a little bit of knowledge in the future about stuff like this.
But they also trusted that the people didn't have to just be spooked or scared or something like that. That it's like, here is the facts and information is why you want to stay away from that.
Yeah. Their big above ground work was these big earthen walls in the shape of the nuclear trifoil not bad. I imagine you have to see it from above to even know though.
Yeah, was, But that's part of the one of the requirements was that you want it to be easily visible, not just with human cognition, but like remote sensing too, right, so like magnetic surveys. They said, we should put some magnets in here, right, not just from when you walk up to it.
Right so, and you outside to be able to see it from your flying saucer exactly. And then inside the walls they have at various steps have these big markers, and here's where these like symbols and pictographs, all kinds of languages, writing in different languages, and then more human faces increasingly contorted in agony as you go down.
Yeah, it looks to me like the guys getting drunker and drunker. Yeah, yeah, that's what it looks like.
Well, maybe that means there's a happening bar exactly.
That's how I would take it if I were a future human post collapse.
Gotta go, gotta go down here.
There were also pictograms you're just like digging through the sand to get to Yeah. There are also pictograms that showed like under the ground, like real easy to understand drawings of the radioactive waste the water ground water flowing through it, taking the radioactive waste up to the plants, which are then eaten by the humans in the picture, one of whom dies, which makes sense. You don't need to understand anything about radioactivity. You don't need to be able to read anything. It's a really like it makes sense, especially if some people are sitting there thinking about it.
Was the final image of skull and crossbones or a pile of bones.
No, it was like a person, three people standing in one of them. The last one was like dead, and I think he might even have exes for eyes.
Well, I was about to say, though, I mean, if you think about twenty thousand years from now, maybe they're like, oh, this induces a nice nap. Maybe, Like but to your point though, like the bones is where you need to end up.
Right, Yeah, maybe somebody would be like, oh, these veggies here give you a great buzz if you grow them on this ground. Yeah, exes for eyes, right, Yeah, the bones do make a lot more sense. I think Sagan was right. That's that should be a T shirt. Stuff you should know T shirt. Sagan was right, don't even need to have any context.
We're gonna give an email in a few days from the guy.
From the estate of Carl Sagan saying do not make that T shirt.
So what did they go with In the end, though.
They went with an earth and burm basically to provide an obstacle and to block easy access some granite slabs monoliths that have warnings written in seven languages.
Yeah, Navajo and then the six languages of the un.
So Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, French, and Russian correct which makes a lot of sense. But then they took Thomas Siebiak up on his idea. They kind of built on the earlier religion right exactly, and they left blank spaces or they play in their plan. They leave blank spaces on these slabs for future generations to add their own translations of the inscriptions.
It's a great idea, and the faces of humans and pain and anguish, right that did survive in the end.
So that was the final report on this whip panel. It's a pretty good idea, makes a lot of sense because it not only so there are two groups that they're trying to say stay away, not not really like urban explorers or thrill seekers or whatever.
Because they can die.
They would have they would have virtually no chance of getting down to the actual radio act. The material. The people they are worried about were technology technological advanced civilizations that were drilling for resources, like an accident, like God helped this this this this waste disposal site. If salt becomes incredibly important in the future, right, and then less advanced civilizations that could accidentally change the flow of groundwater to go through the salt bed through massive like irrigation projects, it covers all of it.
Yeah, My whole thing is just make it inaccessible. Why is it in New Mexico? Why is it out?
You know, Well, that's I mean, that's pretty inaccessible.
It's not as inaccessible as you know Siberia.
No, some one of the recommendations for nuclear waste disposals shooting it into space. Just send it out in the outer space and forget about it. And if you believe in the Fermi paradox that it says we're the only intelligent life in the universe, man, more power to you. Yeah, that's actually not that bad of an idea. It's a horrific idea, but it's actually kind of a good idea.
To Yeah, but then I wonder about the danger and the risk involved. I mean, we've seen rockets blow up and space shuttles blow up. That would be bad, like what if the thing that they're shooting it out there malfunctioned or something.
That'd be really bad.
That'd be really bad.
That's a great point.
It's like all of our nuclear waste has just been released, oh.
Into the atmosphere. Yeah, that's a great, great point, chunk.
So here's the thing, is all of this just wasted effort because I was getting so into the stuff and then the end of this article was a real like sad trombone. Yeah, because it seems like it seems like nobody really even cares the people that matter.
Well, the first the first group like their whole thing will will probably never be implemented because yucka mountain project got shut down, right, But the Whip group may actually have their plan come to fruition because it is an EPA rule that you have to create this kind of marker, and they've got until about twenty forty until they estimate the place is going to shut down. So it's entirely possible that in twenty forty or sometime in the one hundred years after twenty forty, when the DOE stops protecting the site or the DoD, they may implement this earthen works in these sixteen granite slabs and we may live to see something like this.
Well, outside of the US, it seems like no one is super concerned. Sweden in twenty eleven had an application to build a repository and force mark and in their literal application they basically said, you know what, we're going to worry about that later. Yeah, in seventy years, when this thing's finished.
They said, see this, can we just kicked this seventy years down the.
And the Swedish National Archives they consulted on their application, they said, that's really insufficient. It said, it gives the impression that one intends to postpone important documentation efforts until the closure of the repository in seventy years. And it's like, it doesn't give the impression. It literally said that, right, So.
I think they're being ultra polite.
Yeah, I think, well Sweden, right. Good people in the.
US, though, don't tell asap Rocky then.
That don't even know what that means. That's the singer, right, Yeah, he's a rapper.
He's in prison in Sweden right now.
I did not know that oh man did what he do.
He got into a fight with some Swedish kids and it may or may not have been their fall. It looks on video like they definitely provoked it. Really, but the King of Sweden is like, sorry, rule of law. It applies to everybody, including super famous Americans.
Well true.
Donald Trump called him to try to get the thing resolved at the behest of Kanye West. Oh God, and apparently it's just made everything worse. And now the King of Sweden is like, there's no chance he's getting released early.
Wow, man, where have I been?
This is reality. I know what I just said is actual fact that actually happened here in twenty nineteen. Everybody, Humans are the far future? Can you believe it?
Humans of the near John Lomberg, that guy we were talking about earlier, who was on that original nineteen ninety one whip panel, he told Weiss just a couple of years ago, a lot of us had been around the block a few times before, because you know, he was back then doing the same thing and knew this is going to be a report. The government only did and this is the US, and we're putting more thought toward this than anyone.
Yeah, which is really surprising.
He said they only did this because they needed to show compliance. They didn't really care what we said. And then and from the nineteen eighty one Human Interference Task Force during the competition, they basically said, the most effective sign will be the dead bodies of those foolish enough to ignore, which makes sense. Whatever sign, So basically like who cares, someone will do, someone will get in there, and they'll all die, and then that'll be the big morning.
Right, which makes sense if humans are in communication around the globe and you've got the same morning. But if they're not, then it's catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe. But at least we fulfilled our part of the bargain where we really tried to warn everybody agreed. You got anything else? Nah, if you will indulge me, I would like to plug The End of the World with Josh Clark, the what the End of the World with Josh Clark? If like thinking about things in like far deep time in the future of humanity and all that stuff kind of floated your boat, I would recommend my little podcast series, The End of the World of Josh Clark.
For sure. This is right up your alley.
Thank you, Chuck. And since Chuck said right up your alley, it's time for a listener mail.
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