Every time I see this topic come up, I start to think: What is the oldest known practical warning sign? Like, Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, we forgot, and then deciphered it. And even then, we could tell the difference between “O ye who dost desecrateth my tomb, let your crops wither in the fields, your daughters be barren and your sons not inherit” and “Caution: Asp pit. Movie Protagonists Only.”
Forget all the pompous “This is not a place of honor” shit and just write the word “poison” in every known language including the silly made-up ones no one actually speaks like Esperanto, Klingon and Welsh. “Poison Disposal Site” “Le site disposale poissonneaux” “Das PoisondiBosalsite” “El sito disposalo poisono” etc.
“Caution: radiation, this invisible poison will destroy your DNA, this poison will destroy all who approach it. Those who do cannot solve the following puzzles ensure their own demise” followed by some d&d ass mechanical puzzle locks that test if someone understands the basics of chemistry from identifying uranium and plutonium on a periodic table to demonstrating an understanding of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation as a byproduct of nuclear fission.
But you want all that past the big scary “no honor” stuff. You need to scare away every human society from tribes focused on things like honor and taboos to curious scientific societies. To present a puzzle that very clearly states "you will definitely die in this way if you dig without understanding how to solve these puzzles and still making them dig through concrete behind those puzzle doors is a good deterrent.
Any mechanical mechanism is out of the question. We’re talking about a message that needs to last 10,000 years. For context, the great pyramid at Giza is about 4,500 years old. You’re not going to build something complicated enough to act as a “solve this riddle and we’ll open the door” that’s going to last for 10,000 years without maintenance.
Everytime this comes up the practical answer is to just not mark it and bury it as deep as you can.
If your mark it as poison, or honestly and descriptively, people will try to use it as a weapon, or a manhood test, or whatever dumb shit might happen. The patronizing warnings won’t be legible to survivors and they’re, quite frankly, embarassing.
My money is on descriptive warnings buried with the waste that only get exposed if it’s exposed. You still run the risk of people trying to weaponize it but at least they aren’t being attracted to the site by the warnings themselves.
Every time I see this topic come up, I start to think: What is the oldest known practical warning sign? Like, Ancient Egyptian is a dead language, we forgot, and then deciphered it. And even then, we could tell the difference between “O ye who dost desecrateth my tomb, let your crops wither in the fields, your daughters be barren and your sons not inherit” and “Caution: Asp pit. Movie Protagonists Only.”
Forget all the pompous “This is not a place of honor” shit and just write the word “poison” in every known language including the silly made-up ones no one actually speaks like Esperanto, Klingon and Welsh. “Poison Disposal Site” “Le site disposale poissonneaux” “Das PoisondiBosalsite” “El sito disposalo poisono” etc.
“Caution: radiation, this invisible poison will destroy your DNA, this poison will destroy all who approach it. Those who do cannot solve the following puzzles ensure their own demise” followed by some d&d ass mechanical puzzle locks that test if someone understands the basics of chemistry from identifying uranium and plutonium on a periodic table to demonstrating an understanding of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation as a byproduct of nuclear fission.
But you want all that past the big scary “no honor” stuff. You need to scare away every human society from tribes focused on things like honor and taboos to curious scientific societies. To present a puzzle that very clearly states "you will definitely die in this way if you dig without understanding how to solve these puzzles and still making them dig through concrete behind those puzzle doors is a good deterrent.
Any mechanical mechanism is out of the question. We’re talking about a message that needs to last 10,000 years. For context, the great pyramid at Giza is about 4,500 years old. You’re not going to build something complicated enough to act as a “solve this riddle and we’ll open the door” that’s going to last for 10,000 years without maintenance.
Everytime this comes up the practical answer is to just not mark it and bury it as deep as you can.
If your mark it as poison, or honestly and descriptively, people will try to use it as a weapon, or a manhood test, or whatever dumb shit might happen. The patronizing warnings won’t be legible to survivors and they’re, quite frankly, embarassing.
My money is on descriptive warnings buried with the waste that only get exposed if it’s exposed. You still run the risk of people trying to weaponize it but at least they aren’t being attracted to the site by the warnings themselves.