Message To The Future On Nuclear Waste

This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us.
We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.

These standing stones mark an area used to bury radioactive wastes. The area is ... by ... kilometers (or ... miles or about ... times the height of an average full-grown male person) and the buried waste is ... kilometers down. This place was chosen to put this dangerous material far away from people. The rock and water in this area may not look, feel, or smell unusual but may be poisoned by radioactive wastes. When radioactive matter decays, it gives off invisible energy that can destroy or damage people, animals, and plants.
Do not drill here. Do not dig here. Do not do anything that will change the rocks or water in the area.
Do not destroy this marker. This marking system has been designed to last 10,000 years. If the marker is difficult to read, add new markers in longer-lasting materials in languages that you speak. For more information go to the building further inside. The site was known as the WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) site when it was closed in ...

Message Levels
describes four information levels for the messages:
Level I: Rudimentary Information: "Something man-made is here"
Level II: Cautionary Information: "Something man-made is here and it is dangerous"
Level III: Basic Information: Tells what, why, when, where, who, and how (in terms of information relay, not how the site was constructed)
Level IV: Complex Information: Highly detailed written records, tables, figures, graphs, maps and diagrams
The various site designs may be listed as follows:
The site must be marked.
All levels of message complexity should be located on-site. Thus, communication vehicles for information at Levels I, II, III, and IV should be on the WIPP site and available to humans. As well, this team has developed specific message content for each level, presented later in Section 4.6.
The design of the whole site itself is to be a major source of meaning, acting as a framework for other levels of communication, reinforcing and being reinforced by those other levels in a system of communication. The message that we believe can be communication non-linguistically (through the design of the whole site), using physical form as a "natural language," encompasses Level I and portions (faces showing horror and sickness) of Level II. Put into words, it would communicate something like the following:
This place is a message...and part of a system of messages...pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor...no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here...nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location...it increases toward a center...the center of danger is here...of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.

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