The academics dismiss, out of hand, a “Keep Out” sign—a woefully lacking solution, since nuclear waste will remain dangerous much, much longer than such a message would remain intelligible.
Even if future trespassers could understand what keep and out mean when placed side by side, there’s no reason to assume they’d follow directions. Not only must intruders understand the message that nuclear waste is near and dangerous; they must also believe it.
What’ll really scare off 210th-century tomb raiders? The report proposes a “Landscape of Thorns” with giant obelisk-like stones sticking out of the earth at odd angles. “Menacing Earthworks” has lightning-shaped mounds radiating out of a square. In “Forbidding Blocks,” a Lego city gone terribly wrong, black, irregular stones “are set in a grid, defining a square, with 5-foot wide ’streets’ running both ways. You can even get ‘in’ it, but the streets lead nowhere, and they are too narrow to live in, farm in, or even meet in.” Giant, jagged earthwork berms should surround the area. Dozens of granite message walls or kiosks, each 25 feet high, might present graphic images of human faces contorted with horror, terror, or pain (the inspiration here is Edvard Munch’s Scream) as well as text in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo explaining what’s buried. Three rooms—one off-site but nearby, one centrally located, and one underground—would serve as information centers with more detailed explanations of nuclear waste and its hazards, maps showing the location of similar sites around the world, and star charts to help intruders calculate the year the site was sealed. According to 1994 estimates, the whole shebang would cost about $68 million, but that’s just a ballpark figure based on very incomplete data.
I can’t think of a more awesome way to spend $68 million. It’ll blow away that Chinese terracotta army. Hell, they need to build three or four of these and forget about the toxic waste, just sell tickets.
