3 ms·

Maybe we are thinking of this with too much of a helicopter parents view. If there was a high exposure death area, and a way to easily send an animal into it,

Maybe we are thinking of this with too much of a helicopter parents view. If there was a high exposure death area, and a way to easily send an animal into it, the truth and reality of the danger there would be very easy to convey.

yellowapple 8y ago
Yeah, pretty sure any advanced civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is pretty radioactive; we shouldn't stick around", while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around". Having a visual cue there (I like the jagged pointy structures) would certainly help reinforce that and/or delineate exactly where the radioactive/cursed place actually is.
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  > while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around". After a while, when quite a few people have died, and maybe their whole village and all their farmland is contaminated. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid. See for example the Goiânia accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    By that example, it sounds like "after a while" would be "a couple weeks". That's a short enough timeframe to piece together "oh darn, this happened because we went into that scary place with all the jagged rocks and took the curse of that strange land back with us". Maybe that particular village is doomed, but villages do communicate/trade with other villages and could spread the word that "hey, we visited this weird place with jagged rocks and a couple weeks later we all got crazy sick, so like, don't go there". Soon enough, the Curse of the Jagged Land will become part of the local folklore/religion, at which point Mission Accomplished. Worst-case, you might see an uptick in animal and/or human sacrifice at the site to appease the God of Plutonium.
    - Ma8ee 7y ago
      Did you miss the part about “we prefer that people don’t die at all”? Or the contaminated land? How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste? And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days. More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages. How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines?
      - yellowapple 7y ago
        > How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste? My point is that only one generation (maybe two) would be impacted, since future generations would have learned from prior generations that "Hey, if you go to this very-ominous-looking place with giant black spikey stones sticking out of the ground you're gonna get really sick and probably die". That sort of thing is the exact sort of thing that gets passed down from generation to generation via oral history. It's obviously better that people don't die at all, but that's an idealistic goal. If people are going to die, might as well make it as easy as possible to associate that death with the trespassing that preceded it. > And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days. That... only proves my point further. That's even less time between cause and effect, making it easier to associate and connect the two. Especially - again - when it's associated with a place that has a physical appearance that screams "this land is evil; stay the hell away". > More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages. In the example you linked, the rate of incidence for these things among those exposed to the radiation was not higher than the baseline for that locality. > How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines? "within days"
        Ma8ee 7y ago
        No, the example was atypical. In the general case, it will take longer, and will be harder to figure out than in the example. And in timespans of hundreds of thousands of years, this might have to repeat several times. I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in future generations get sick and die, because of our short term economic gains now, I can't help to consider you as evil.

yellowapple 8y ago

Yeah, pretty sure any advanced civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is pretty radioactive; we shouldn't stick around", while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around". Having a visual cue there (I like the jagged pointy structures) would certainly help reinforce that and/or delineate exactly where the radioactive/cursed place actually is.

Ma8ee 7y ago
> while any primitive civilization will quickly figure out "hey this place is definitely cursed; we shouldn't stick around". After a while, when quite a few people have died, and maybe their whole village and all their farmland is contaminated. This is exactly what we are trying to avoid. See for example the Goiânia accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
- yellowapple 7y ago
  By that example, it sounds like "after a while" would be "a couple weeks". That's a short enough timeframe to piece together "oh darn, this happened because we went into that scary place with all the jagged rocks and took the curse of that strange land back with us". Maybe that particular village is doomed, but villages do communicate/trade with other villages and could spread the word that "hey, we visited this weird place with jagged rocks and a couple weeks later we all got crazy sick, so like, don't go there". Soon enough, the Curse of the Jagged Land will become part of the local folklore/religion, at which point Mission Accomplished. Worst-case, you might see an uptick in animal and/or human sacrifice at the site to appease the God of Plutonium.
  - Ma8ee 7y ago
    Did you miss the part about “we prefer that people don’t die at all”? Or the contaminated land? How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste? And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days. More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages. How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines?
    - yellowapple 7y ago
      > How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste? My point is that only one generation (maybe two) would be impacted, since future generations would have learned from prior generations that "Hey, if you go to this very-ominous-looking place with giant black spikey stones sticking out of the ground you're gonna get really sick and probably die". That sort of thing is the exact sort of thing that gets passed down from generation to generation via oral history. It's obviously better that people don't die at all, but that's an idealistic goal. If people are going to die, might as well make it as easy as possible to associate that death with the trespassing that preceded it. > And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days. That... only proves my point further. That's even less time between cause and effect, making it easier to associate and connect the two. Especially - again - when it's associated with a place that has a physical appearance that screams "this land is evil; stay the hell away". > More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages. In the example you linked, the rate of incidence for these things among those exposed to the radiation was not higher than the baseline for that locality. > How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines? "within days"
      - Ma8ee 7y ago
        No, the example was atypical. In the general case, it will take longer, and will be harder to figure out than in the example. And in timespans of hundreds of thousands of years, this might have to repeat several times. I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in future generations get sick and die, because of our short term economic gains now, I can't help to consider you as evil.