There's a famous study done about Long-term nuclear waste warning messages resulting in the very popular:
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
This strikes me as odd, and the exact kind of vague statement that would drive future treasure hunters to this spot.
Think about the "curse" of King Tut's tomb. No fear of a curse kept out those archeologists (who, I often humorously note are ALL dead now (the joke being that of course they are, over 100 years later)).
That's not human nature!
Alternatives
I'm more interested in the alternatives we rejected, including starting a priesthood of the atom, who were responsible for maintaining a religion, passed down generation to generation about the dangers of the spot. Even if the details get fuzzy, the core tenants would remain.
I enjoy the record of objections to the atomic priesthood, but much like before, many of them strike me as orthogonal to human nature.
This approach has a number of critical problems:
- An atomic priesthood would gain political influence based on the contingencies that it would oversee.
- This system of information favors the creation of hierarchies.
- The message could be split into independent parts.
- Information about waste sites would grant power to a privileged class. People from outside this group might attempt to seize this information by force.
(source: Wikipedia)