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> The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. If we found anything resemb
by cj 3y ago
> The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
If we found anything resembling this today (presumably in some language we don't understand or by a culture we assume isn't stating this as a fact of science), the first thing that would happen is someone would dig it up.
Maybe the safest solution is no marking.
- le-mark 3y agoConsidering large numbers of Russian troops were sickened after digging trenches and fortification near Chernobyl during the current war Ukraine, I tend think these warnings will go unheeded in the far future.
- elzbardico 3y ago[flagged]
- ashwoods 3y agoI don’t know, there seems to be more evidence in support of this fact than there seems to be of it being propaganda: https://www.twz.com/45098/ukraine-situation-report-evidence-russia-dug-trenches-in-contaminated-chernobyl-forest-emerges# https://www.twz.com/45098/ukraine-situation-report-evidence-...
- themaninthedark 3y agoFrom the article you linked: >Previous reports had also indicated that some number of Russian troops operating in the Red Forest experienced the effects of acute radiation syndrome after preparing this base area, but there remains nothing to substantiate this.
- Faaak 3y agoI'm curious, do you have any source (for or against)?
- lawn 3y agoCareful to not propagate the stupid Russian propaganda that aims to hide all the stupid things the Russians are up to.
- acidburnNSA 3y agoI don't think that any were sickened from radiation. The increases found were quite small, and would not cause any radiation sickness. You need dose rates thousands of times higher than what was reported to get radiation sickness. From https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60528828 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60528828: Prof Claire Corkhill, a nuclear materials expert from Sheffield University, told the BBC the spike was "quite localised" and there had been increases along the main routes in and out of the zone around the reactor. "The increased movement of people and vehicles in and around the Chernobyl zone will have kicked up radioactive dust that's on the ground," Prof Corkhill said. "Provided there's no further movement, it should decrease again over the next couple of days." But any military activity in the zone is concerning.
- belorn 3y agoIt will indeed most likely be unheeded. We already have a huge issue with mines, unexploded bombs and artillery shells laying around in many place on the globe, and ukraine has become one of the most mined country in the world. 174,000 square kilometers of Ukraine is said to be contaminated by mines. No amount of warnings will prevent accidental deaths in the future, and expecting people to never return is unrealistic.
- d--b 3y agoMy first thought as well. Weird colors and randomly thrown corpses of both people and animals could perhaps make a better deterrent?
- throwanem 3y agoI've sometimes thought that if the intent is a ten-thousand-year warning, the best way to achieve it would be a relatively shallow cave ending in a pit or chamber full of high-level waste vitrified just enough to prevent environmental dispersal. It seems plausible that over a long enough scale of time, the only reliable way to communicate "everyone who messes with this will die" regardless of language is by ensuring that everyone who messes with it does die.
- krisoft 3y agoAnd then the local witch doctors hear about the weird deaths and dig the “curse” up as a weapon[1] against their enemies :) if they are clever enough they make sure that the digging and distributing of it is not done personally but by less valuable people pressed into service (such as old slaves, enemies, etc etc) 1: not a nuclear bomb of course, just as radioactive contamination.
- throwanem 3y agoRead less fantasy and more history.
- krisoft 3y agoHistory teaches us that people every possible gains available to them to hurt others. From salting the earth[1], to gifting smalpox infected blankets[2], through carting away the grain[3], and a literal strong man sneaking literal nuclear waste material into tea to terrorise others[4]. What do you think reading more history will teach me? 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth 2: https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smal... 3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor 4: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvi...
- bitshiftfaced 3y agoYeah but then compare that situation to the one where some future inhabitant innocently wants to drill and would have understood and heeded the warning. There's probably no easy answer.
- XorNot 3y agoWe would, but we are technologically advanced. Scientists would come in, we'd bring in our instruments, collect data etc. That's a positive outcome, because anyone with a radiological sensing system would then figure out what it is.
- binary132 3y agoYou can’t imagine an energetic waste source beyond the detection capabilities of modern humanity? This seems like the precise sort of ignorant hubris that this thought experiment is exploring.
- XorNot 3y agoUnless the laws of physics are fundamentally different in a way we currently do not have any experience with, then no, I cannot. Because to cause physical damage to physical beings, you need to interact with them physically in an energetic fashion. Even primitive people, with the right knowledge, can construct a test for the presence of a hazardous waste source (i.e. literal canaries in coal mines). There are a number of methods available to 18th century technology which would be able to infer the existence of an energetic hazard even without fully understanding what it is, provided they were somewhat aware of the underlying principles.
- Ferret7446 3y agoWe know for a fact that our understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed somehow due to "dark matter" (aka fudging our equations because they don't balance based on experimental observations). We simply don't know what we don't know.
- binary132 3y agomaybe the canaries don’t die until a year later of total DNA collapse :^)