Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

Why this matters

Sandia report SAND92-1382: expert panels were asked how to warn people 10,000 years from now away from a nuclear waste repository in New Mexico, when no current language may survive. It proposes landscapes of spikes, menacing earthworks and layered messages, and it is the source of the much-quoted 'This place is not a place of honor'. One of the strangest and most thoughtful documents the federal government has ever published.

Tags

• nuclear waste
• WIPP
• long-term warnings
• semiotics

Part of a collection · step 15 of 15

The Nuclear Paper Trail

And finally: how to say 'danger' to someone in the year 12,000.

Cite

Sandia National Laboratories (DOE). "Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant." 1 November 1993. Released 1 November 1993. https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10117359 (accessed via The Quiet Archive, QA-0026).