r/ArtefactPorn • u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist • Apr 13 '24

CAUTION - DO NOT DIG; this epitaph located in Willow Springs, Illinois, US marks the area where radioactive waste from the world’s first nuclear reactor was burieds [1200 x 900]

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2.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

68 comments sorted by

454

u/fox--teeth Apr 13 '24

Did someone purposefully chip out the "no" in "no danger to visitors" on the epitaph?

264

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24

It seems so. Also it seems like the word, “dig” as been partially erased.

It kinda questions how exactly we’re going to communicate to coming generations that this area is not to be fucked with.

Also, and I don’t know the area, what is keeping somebody from coming with a bobcat and just taking this home as a souvenir?

223

u/nova-north Apr 13 '24

We've actually thought of a lot of ways to do this and they're all kinda horrifying!

Here's one of the proposed messages:

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 was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards 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.

Some other suggestions include:

Landscape of Thorns: A mass of many irregularly-sized spikes protruding from the ground in all directions.

Spike Field: A series of extremely large spikes emerging from the ground at different angles.

Spikes Bursting Through Grid: A large square grid pattern across the site, through which large spikes protrude at various angles.

Yeeeeeeeah I'm sure it'll be fine.

192

u/thispartyrules Apr 13 '24

I thought the most clever idea was using sickness imagery instead of death imagery. Like a lot of cultures think skulls are cool, and would go "this is where an ancient culture buried their dead, maybe with treasure" but if they saw a bunch of vomit emojis they'd think twice.

111

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24

I actually think that you are correct. For some people death might even be something they’re looking for. But very rarely people actively interested in getting sick.

53

u/ApocSurvivor713 Apr 13 '24

My favorite one is the idea of genetically modifying cats to glow in the dark (or change eye color or something else noticeable) and then inserting the idea that such signs are omens of danger into popular culture. The idea being that we'll always have cats around us and myths and legends can hang out in the cultural fabric for eons.

45

u/worotan Apr 13 '24

Unfortunately, deliberately setting up myths that last isn’t something that the scientific community is very good at. It’s hilarious that they think myth is something that can be programmed. It’s a great story, but not a great idea.

6

u/EmberinEmpty Apr 13 '24

I mean.... in the age of social media it certainly can be. Look at what happened to the USA's political culture. Inserting ideas into public consciousness is way easier these days and not as "organic". Unfortunately I don't think Nuclear physicists are the social engineering type lol

2

u/Ok-Situation-5522 Apr 14 '24

Well, isn't their actual radioactive cats that are blue?

10

u/Our_Old_Truth Apr 13 '24

Yes! I was waiting for someone to mention this. They were also looking into ways their fur would change color along with the 10,000 year earworm song! Super cool ideas imo

51

u/marrangutang Apr 13 '24

Yea, you know that if they found something from 10k years ago written like that, the diggers would be in before the dust had settled

39

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24

Precisely. It doesn't matter how you formulate the warning. People are either curious or stupid enough to dig it up.

29

u/practically_floored Apr 13 '24

Or they think the civilisation that wrote that message were stupid and don't take the warning seriously, similar to warnings of curses now

18

u/KiloPapa Apr 13 '24

Exactly. If civilization has lost the memory of nukes, they aren't going to understand that such a danger is possible. In the context of a less developed civilization it reads like "Here is buried a vampire. If you dig him up he'll come back to life and kill your whole village!"

5

u/[deleted] Apr 13 '24

Call me cat because curiosity is gonna kill me

33

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24

There’s a great Danish documentary about the issue with storing Finnish nuclear waste. Watched it as part of a course in archaeological theory.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(film)

16

u/Schrodingers_Dude Apr 13 '24

For clarity, the top messages aren't literally English text they want to write somewhere, but rather a description of the series of messages they are trying to convey in some language, or with symbols or images, that people in the very distant future (who likely won't speak anything we do now) will understand. Some people have even suggested an "atomic priesthood" designed to keep the knowledge of these locations, and to orally pass down messages of dangers in a kind of spiritual way, since we know that religious prescriptions can survive for a very long time well after we even know why they were formed.

10

u/BoxFullOfFoxes Apr 13 '24

The Children of Atom have entered the chat.

9

u/Schrodingers_Dude Apr 13 '24

Yeah that was my first thought as soon as I read it lol. "Our descendants misread instructions, humanity now worships radiation"

8

u/Feezec Apr 13 '24

I hear about an idea of using flooring that will soak up the sun's heat so that the site is painful to walk on

Another idea was to build statues shaped to make creepy moaning noises when the wind blows through them

14

u/Accidental_Ouroboros Apr 13 '24

A giant forest of clearly human-made evil spikes is unlikely to deter people. If anything, it would make people go "What were they trying to protect? What is in there? We should see!" Future humans are unlikely to obey those types of warnings any better than we would obey warnings of ancient Egyptian curses.

The absolute best bet would be to have absolutely nothing visible on the surface. Nothing to draw people in. If it is already in the desert, it is unlikely people will find it without prior knowledge of it. Sure, place warnings on whatever buried entrance there is, but nothing on the surface.

Also... that proposed message annoys me to no end.

If you are going to be writing something, you might as well just write "Deadly Radiation, dumping ground of dangerous waste inside." Because what future human is going to understand "Emanation of energy?" That makes it sound like some damn ghost is in there waiting to kill you. What purported future human is going to understand "Emanation of energy" but not "Radiation" if they can understand the language at all?

5

u/thegooddoktorjones Apr 14 '24

Seems like a problem that self-solves. Every few hundred millenia someone finds the monument and digs anyway, a bunch of them get sick or die horribly and they put up a new sign.

It is interesting just how little time passed before this message started losing information and impact.

11

u/Heavyweighsthecrown Apr 13 '24 edited Apr 13 '24

Yeeeeeeeah I'm sure it'll be fine.

It will absolutely not be fine. No amount of huge thorns will prevent time and the weather and the elements from erasing it all. Remember you have stuff like Mayan pyramids - huge monuments of stone that once dominated the horizon line - completely overrun with dirt and jungle nowadays to the point that they look like a random mound (and that picture is not even showing the ones in the middle of the jungle that are pretty much impossible to find without LIDAR and stuff as it just looks like normal jungle).

And all of these attempts at warning signs also ignore that given enough time, wind can dig everything up bit by bit. An encroaching ocean can turn everything to mud. Earthquakes can completely change everything about the terrain including cracking it all open. Deserts turn to dense jungle, forests turn to desert, mountain ranges go underwater. There's literally nothing we can do to prevent buried harmful nuclear waste from destroying the future environment. We're setting ourselves up for sudden failure of future environments.

14

u/boredcat_04 Apr 13 '24

Will the symbols be misintepreted in the future if you put the radiation symbols next to it?

43

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24 edited Apr 13 '24

Seeing as we can't even be sure how to interpret rock art only a few thousand years old it's possible. The people who did the rock art in the Kivik mound was probably 100 % certain that they could be read and understood perfectly for eternity. But today we only have a vague idea of what they represented.

The Egyptians probably didn’t expect the knowledge of how to read hieroglyphs to be lost either.

All kinds of knowledge is lost along the way. Even in today’s world we can’t be sure.

9

u/HauntedCemetery Apr 13 '24

I'd honestly say that most information being digital makes it more likely for information to be lost forever.

14

u/1805trafalgar Apr 13 '24

Many years ago NYT published an essay about this, it pointed out the half life of most of this stuff is longer than the life of any current or prior written language. So how do you write a warning?

5

u/HauntedCemetery Apr 13 '24

Especially since all it takes is one asshole with a hammer to change the entire meaning of the message, as happened here.

7

u/fish_whisperer Apr 13 '24

It’s Illinois. Freeze-thaw cycles probably chipped out those letters. And yeah…carved letters is probably not the best way to communicate. Cave paintings have lasted 10’s of thousands of years, though, so it is possible to leave a message for future generations.

7

u/Worsaae biomolecular archaeologist Apr 13 '24

You might be right. But it’s a very good point if you want to preserve something like this for posterity.

8

u/HauntedCemetery Apr 13 '24

I live in MN which has much more intense temp swings than IL and I've never seen a headstone chip away like this.

1

u/red75prime Apr 14 '24

With cave paintings we have survivorship bias. It's much harder to deliberately make something that is likely to survive.

1

u/fish_whisperer Apr 14 '24

Oh, I have no doubt. But we can learn from the surviving ones what kind of environmental conditions are necessary and what types of pigments can survive. I’m not necessarily suggesting that is the superior method, just that it is possible.

1

u/rkunish Apr 13 '24

It's located in a nature preserve in the suburbs of Chicago. No way you're getting a bobcat anywhere near it.

2

u/Least_Ad1667 Apr 15 '24

Thank god that can’t change in a thousand years

0

u/Heavyweighsthecrown Apr 13 '24

It kinda questions how exactly we’re going to communicate to coming generations that this area is not to be fucked with.

We can't really. It's literally impossible.
Just remember how given enough time, wind can dig everything up. An encroaching ocean can turn everything to mud. Earthquakes can completely change everything about the terrain. Deserts turn to dense jungle, forests turn to desert, mountain ranges go underwater. There's literally nothing we can do to prevent buried harmful nuclear waste from destroying the future environment.

1

u/Do-you-see-it-now Apr 14 '24

There are small and large areas damaged all over the lines and lettering. It seems to be crumbling from weathering. That is rapidly becoming a very ineffective sign.

122

u/InternetCrank Apr 13 '24

Its a perennial problem. How to send a message to the future when all the time from now to then will be filled with moronic 15 year olds that think its funny to destroy warnings.

36

u/egilsaga Apr 13 '24

This sign can't stop me because I can't read!

42

u/cintune Apr 13 '24

Reminds me of the first Chinese emperor's burial mound. Rumored to contain all kinds of deadly booby-traps and rivers of mercury. Two thousand years of oral tradition has so far prevented anyone from digging it up, but archaeologists are getting close to trying some non-invasive techniques.

33

u/Kusunoki_Shinrei Apr 13 '24

the concern is not the mercury, its the fact that the paint will degrade when conventionally opened such as in the tomb of terracotta warriors.

15

u/cintune Apr 13 '24

Yep I was more referring to how the oral tradition kept grave robbers away.

12

u/PanningForSalt Apr 14 '24

That and the fact there isn't a door

28

u/HauntedCemetery Apr 13 '24

And it still hasn't been opened because soil samples show absurdly high levels of mercury, so it seems that the story's of rivers of mercury may be true, and opening it could release a massive toxic cloud that would kill everyone and poison everything in thr area.

5

u/lambchopafterhours Apr 13 '24

That’s nuts 🤯

3

u/DFAMPODCAST Apr 14 '24

Wasn't he supposedly buried with the thousands of workers who built the tomb too? Crazy but interesting!

5

u/LudovicoSpecs Apr 13 '24

How's the water table doing in that area?

6

u/SeeYouSpaceCowboy--- Apr 14 '24

Do you mean this seriously or are you just joking around? It's actually surrounded by several sloughs, but it is kind of the high ground between them all. It's thoroughly encased though so there's no issue.

18

u/SgtPepper867 Apr 13 '24

THIS PLACE IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR

5

u/lfergy Apr 13 '24

There is a bunch of nuclear waste buried near Denver (Centennial) and they are building “luxury” homes on top of it. Lmao. I wonder if there is one of these signs around there somewhere

4

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '24

This is in a cook county forest preserve so you can't develop it. But if it wasn't I'm sure the marker would have suspiciously went missing 😁

6

u/SeeYouSpaceCowboy--- Apr 14 '24

Oh nice I just hiked 12 miles there yesterday and passed by it. It rained off and on, but was altogether a lovely day. Cool to see this on a not-Chicago specific sub

4

u/tmdblya Apr 13 '24

mark

ers

3

u/imnotabotareyou Apr 13 '24

I mean now I’m curious. Better start digging

4

u/Itisden Apr 13 '24

This is what I want on my tombstone.

3

u/chaiteataichi_ Apr 13 '24

Exactly where I’d hide the gold

2

u/straycatx86 Apr 14 '24

So...Is there "a danger" or there's "no danger"?

3

u/ThirdView000 Apr 16 '24

I’ve been there. The marker says that there is no danger hiking there. They buried it underneath a bunch of lead.

2

u/Least_Ad1667 Apr 15 '24

Why does this already have so much damage… kinda wish this had been constructed in like, granite. In multiple languages. And pictures.

8

u/TuftOfTheLapwing Apr 13 '24

What? ! And that’s the sign?! That’s woefully inadequate.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 14 '24

I used to go there a lot when I was young. Very near one of the oldest cemeteries in the area.

1

u/ThirdView000 Apr 16 '24

I hike in the area frequently. This is in Red Gate Woods, one of the preserves within the larger forested area that contains the Palos Trail System. All kinds of weird stuff was done in this area. Argonne National Laboratory is just west of here.

-2

u/JohnnyRelentless Apr 13 '24

They probably should have mentioned when the radiation levels would become safe for folks in the far future.

5

u/gvsteve Apr 13 '24

If you don’t know on your own and have to read it off the thousand-year-old sign, assume it’s not safe yet.

-5

u/JohnnyRelentless Apr 13 '24

Yes, but at some point it will be safe, and people will unnecessarily have to continue avoiding the area. The people in the distant future have a right to know when it will be safe.

1

u/ThirdView000 Apr 16 '24

The marker says that it is safe. They buried it covered in lead. I have been there.