You can't solve this Design problem. The future of semiotics.

How can we ensure that future humans, or whatever species becomes the next dominant inhabitants of earth, understand our messages of danger from the past? It's tricky, that's for sure, and you can't solve this problem. Let's have a look at #semiotics. Correction: The WIPP is in New Mexico, not Texas.

Let's have a look at how linguistics, pictorials and even attitudes towards architecture can aid us in designing a warning system that can be understood for generations to come.

Links:
More on the WIPP: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste...
How to send a message 1,000 years into the future:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...

Music By: Quincas Moreira and Causmic
Produced By: Chris Kernaghan
Support: Jill Kernaghan

Imagine the year is 7020. As part of a distant future society, you and your team stumble across signs while exploring uncharted lands. The signs are difficult to understand, and you and your team spend months researching their possible meanings. The signs were placed there by humans in the late 21st century, but as a warning. Will the warnings be understood?

Imagine that the signs, whatever form they come in, are presented in English. How can we be sure that future civilizations be able to understand it? We can’t. For a start, look at how English has evolved over the last 1200 years from Old English to Middle English to the "modern" variant we now use.

What if the signs were designed in such a way that all UN recognised languages were used? It’s unlikely that this would work either, these languages are likely to evolve substantially over the course of the next 5000 years.

This is a design problem the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, in Texas, has been trying to solve since 1983, and as you can imagine, it's a difficult problem to address given the long periods of time involved. Is there a "solution"? A cross disciplinary effort, involving linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, materials scientists, science fiction writers, and futurists to determine a warning system that will be understood.

The team working on this plan to deliver their final submission by 2028. Let’s focus on the work carried out so far, and discuss the challenges that remain.

So we know there's a risk that any form of linguistics will not be understood. What about the addition of pictograms? There might be issues here as well, as even now, interpretation of pictograms varies from person to person, location to location. The purpose of pictograms, or iconography as used on the web, is to transcend language or work in conjunction with simple language statements.

As a UX Designer that has conducted multiple usability tests with participants all over the world, their interpretation is often surprisingly different - especially when the iconography is non-standard, and seen for the first time in a novel situation.

So neither linguistics nor the use of pictograms are guaranteed to spook future visitors away. What about the actual architecture of the storage solution that houses the nuclear waste?

The WIPP shifted their attention to the design of the actual storage facility. Could some sort of information centre be built? Possibly, but this might again be dependent on future generations understanding of language and understanding of symbolism.

One suggestion was to design the housing in such a way that passing wind created a guttural, howling effect in the hope of creating some deep-rooted Paleolithic fear.

Vilmos Voigt, author of suggestions of a theory towards folklore, suggested erecting warning signs using the most used languages of the time, with additional signage that could be updated as years passed. The signs were to be arranged in a concentric pattern around the storage solution.

Weirder, more twisted structures were also suggested. Landscapes made out of thorns, fields filled with spikes, spikes bursting through grids, black hole. Much like designing the building in such a way that it creates a sound when wind blows through it, the hope here is that it will trigger primitive fears in those that stumble across it.

The theory of generational memory, the passing on of memory, or folklore, from generation to generation. Enter, the atomic priesthood.

Consider the messaging of the Catholic Church from the past 2,000 years. Much of that messaging, a singular God exists, that takes interest in individual beings, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, has existed from inception, with little deviation from the original message.

Could the same be done with an atomic priesthood? The priesthood would exist solely to preserve the "myth" of radioactivity, and the dangers of coming into contact with dangerous waste.

Bizarrely, but not without merit, is the potential of altering cats genetically so that they "glow green" when they get too close to radioactive material - perpetuating the myth.