By Vince Beiser, 07 September 2006
A half-mile below the surface of the New Mexico desert, the federal government is interring thousands of tons of monstrously dangerous leftovers from its nuclear weapons program –plutonium-infested clothing, tools and chemical sludge that will remain potentially lethal for thousands of years to come.
It may be safely secured now, but how to keep our descendants centuries in the future from accidentally unearthing it?…
To address it, the Department of Energy convened a conclave of scientists, linguists, anthropologists and sci-fi thinkers to develop an elaborate system intended to shout “Danger!” to any human being for the next 10,000 years — regardless of what language they speak or technology they use…
“We looked at what messages had come from deep in time to the present, like the pyramids,” explains David B. Givens, an anthropologist specializing in non-verbal communication who helped conceive the warning system. “It boils down to stones,” he says — the only medium so far to have established a track record of retaining messages for as long as 5,000 years.
Full story over at Wired
