This whole thing is an offshoot of antinuclear FUD. If civilization collapses to the point where people no longer realize that radiation is dangerous, then so many people have already died that a few more people dying early from radiation is just background noise.
In addition, knowing human nature and our propensity for conspiracy theories, there will be people in the future who think all those signs were put there to dissuade people from finding a massive buried treasure. After all, the phrasing is pretty much what you would expect if someone had buried a treasure and wanted to scare people from digging for it.
> In addition, knowing human nature and our propensity for conspiracy theories, there will be people in the future who think all those signs were put there to dissuade people from finding a massive buried treasure. After all, the phrasing is pretty much what you would expect if someone had buried a treasure and wanted to scare people from digging for it.
I have to agree with this. What if in 1955 America we had discovered the equivalent of these warnings, and hints of a huge artificially constructed underground tunnel complex in the same location as Yucca Mountain, and we thought it was buried artifacts from some more technologically advanced precursor or alien civilization?
Dozens of billions of dollars would have been made available to excavate the site, damn the cost and damn the consequences.
And, ironically, the discovery of high-energy rock would probably be a celebrated scientific (or at least religious) advance for such a civilisation. Marie Curie's exploits aren't remembered as foolish. She likely died of radiation overexposure and is remembered as one of the heros of science. And many in her lab if I recall correctly.
The 10,000 year warning is an interesting thought experiment, but if there is anyone who claims it is relevant to the acceptance of nuclear power they are simply not very imaginative about all the things that can go wrong over 10,000 years. A civilisation-level mind blank on where the garbage dump is doesn't rate at any meaningful level.
The half life of lead is 1.53×10^7 years. It is a nasty toxic substance; it has killed people. We still use it. It is objectively a bigger threat on a longer time scale than nuclear waste. As usual, nuclear power is special because we could conceivably manage the damage. Most industrial processes cause damage at a scale so large the cost of a no-harm policy would be prohibitive. With nuclear the cost is simply a bit high.
I mean, humans dug up radioactive substances that were buried much less accessibly, in the form of low-grade ores, and processed it into highly radioactive concentrations.
> In addition, knowing human nature and our propensity for conspiracy theories, there will be people in the future who think all those signs were put there to dissuade people from finding a massive buried treasure. After all, the phrasing is pretty much what you would expect if someone had buried a treasure and wanted to scare people from digging for it.
This precisely had me thinking about a science fiction plot, along those lines: human colonists discover a massively booby trapped monument left behind by some long extinct alien civilization, and make great sacrifice to penetrate into its depths, only to realize in the end that nothing was hidden underneath except radioactive waste.
This whole thing is an offshoot of antinuclear FUD. If civilization collapses to the point where people no longer realize that radiation is dangerous, then so many people have already died that a few more people dying early from radiation is just background noise.
In addition, knowing human nature and our propensity for conspiracy theories, there will be people in the future who think all those signs were put there to dissuade people from finding a massive buried treasure. After all, the phrasing is pretty much what you would expect if someone had buried a treasure and wanted to scare people from digging for it.