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Selects: Nuclear Semiotics: How to Talk to Future Humans · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's me Josh, and for this week's select,
0:04
Speaker 1: I've chosen one of my favorite episodes in honor of
0:06
Speaker 1: the birthday of my favorite person, my dear sweet wife, Yumy,
0:10
Speaker 1: whose birthday is today. Since this episode is so cool
0:13
Speaker 1: and Yumi is too, I figure it was just logical
0:17
Speaker 1: and logical stuff really floats my boat. Plus, what better
0:20
Speaker 1: way to send off a not too bad year, considering everything,
0:24
Speaker 1: especially the last couple of years, than with a real
0:26
Speaker 1: head scratcher. Fascinating, interesting episode. I hope you enjoy it.
0:31
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to Yumi, and happy New Year to everybody.
0:39
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:48
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
0:52
Speaker 1: Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And this
0:56
Speaker 1: is Stuff you should Know. It's a podcast.
1:01
Speaker 2: And you're about to say that the Blank Edition.
1:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was, but I couldn't think of anything.
1:06
Speaker 2: It was literally the blank Edition, was it? I mean,
1:09
Speaker 2: you couldn't think of anything you were playing?
1:10
Speaker 1: No, No, that's right, it was the blank Edition. Oh gosh,
1:13
Speaker 1: it's a terrible start, Chuck.
1:14
Speaker 2: So how about this, just to divert ourselves from that disaster.
1:20
Speaker 2: What was not a disaster were our live shows we
1:23
Speaker 2: just did. Oh yeah, we finally got up on stage
1:27
Speaker 2: everyone since first time since January. Yeah, kick the rust off.
1:31
Speaker 2: Sure in Chicago and Toronto.
1:33
Speaker 1: And both of them were we just killed.
1:35
Speaker 2: They were great. Yeah, every audiences were great.
1:37
Speaker 1: Everyone had a really great time. Yeah, they told us so,
1:40
Speaker 1: uh huh. They seemed to be legitimately meaning what they
1:43
Speaker 1: were saying.
1:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was really really great to get back on
1:46
Speaker 2: stage with you, my friend.
1:48
Speaker 1: And also also also hats off to Chicago for showing up.
1:52
Speaker 1: They showed up, Like we called you guys out and
1:54
Speaker 1: you responded, yeah, thank you very right, and thank you
1:57
Speaker 1: Toronto for not making us call you out.
2:00
Speaker 2: But there are still tickets remaining for August twenty ninth
2:03
Speaker 2: in Boston, the wilbur and Portland, Maine. You know, we're
2:06
Speaker 2: venturing up into the hinterlands of America right years after that,
2:12
Speaker 2: But August thirtieth, there are still plenty of great tickets
2:16
Speaker 2: left there. And then the same can be said in
2:19
Speaker 2: October and Orlando and October tenth. I think I said
2:24
Speaker 2: October ninth right in Orlando, October tenth and New Orleans Yep,
2:27
Speaker 2: that's right, Brooklyn. I'm not worried about that.
2:29
Speaker 1: That's already all sold out, the whole thing, all three nights.
2:33
Speaker 2: Man, should we add a fourth?
2:35
Speaker 1: Jeez, I don't know.
2:36
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it anyway. Thanks to everyone who came out.
2:39
Speaker 2: It was a lot of fun. And this is a
2:41
Speaker 2: good one. So you don't want you don't want to
2:42
Speaker 2: miss it.
2:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, so come on out, especially you Portland Maine. Let's
2:46
Speaker 1: get with.
2:46
Speaker 2: It all right now. Nuclear Semiotics, which I didn't know
2:49
Speaker 2: I loved, but I do.
2:51
Speaker 1: Really do you remember ninety nine percent Visible did a
2:53
Speaker 1: very famous episode on this very topic.
2:56
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't hear that.
2:57
Speaker 1: I specifically avoided going back and listening to it because
3:00
Speaker 1: I don't want to be stunk upon by its taint.
3:04
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
3:05
Speaker 2: You don't want Roman Mars' taint.
3:08
Speaker 1: It's more like, it's just such a classic episode that
3:11
Speaker 1: I don't wanted to like leak in. I don't want
3:13
Speaker 1: to accidentally rip it off.
3:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we certainly can't ninety nine invisible this thing,
3:18
Speaker 2: because that is a show that exists at the top
3:21
Speaker 2: echelon this industry.
3:23
Speaker 1: Sure so so do we Sure we're up there all right?
3:26
Speaker 1: But if you like this one, if this stuff like
3:28
Speaker 1: floats your bone and you're like, I want to know more,
3:30
Speaker 1: go listen to the ninety nine percent Invisible episode.
3:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, this thing really triggered a lot of like synapsis
3:36
Speaker 2: firing for me, and I think, like, I think I
3:40
Speaker 2: really enjoy this kind of thought experiment, problem solving stuff.
3:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I.
3:47
Speaker 2: Think I would really dig like that. Part of the
3:49
Speaker 2: zombie Apocalypse is figuring the stuff out as a team, right,
3:54
Speaker 2: Because the whole time I was reading this, I was saying,
3:56
Speaker 2: great idea, terrible idea. They should do this, they shouldn't
3:59
Speaker 2: do that.
4:00
Speaker 1: Sit down. Yeah, you I like the cut of your gym.
4:02
Speaker 2: It was really cool. I dug this. I'd never heard
4:04
Speaker 2: of it, so thank you.
4:06
Speaker 1: Oh you're very welcome. I actually heard of it before
4:09
Speaker 1: Roman Mars made the episode, so I can't really thank him.
4:12
Speaker 2: But well, not before he heard of it, because I
4:14
Speaker 2: think it's well known that Roman's first words were nuclear semiotics.
4:18
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, even before Mama, that's right. I could
4:23
Speaker 1: totally believe that. Actually. Yeah, So what we're talking about
4:28
Speaker 1: is Chuck said a couple of times for those of
4:29
Speaker 1: you who don't know, is nuclear semiotics and that is
4:33
Speaker 1: a very specialized branch, interdisciplinary branch of I guess science
4:39
Speaker 1: that involves all basically any feel of research that you
4:42
Speaker 1: can throw at the wall would probably have some function
4:46
Speaker 1: to play in the field of nuclear semiotics. And to
4:49
Speaker 1: make a long story short, to do the too long,
4:51
Speaker 1: didn't read version of this TL semi colon dr is,
4:57
Speaker 1: nuclear semiotics seeks to figure out how how to warn
5:02
Speaker 1: the future humans to come.
5:05
Speaker 2: Or whatever is here. Sure, let's get on a good point.
5:07
Speaker 1: I mean why discriminate, right, Yeah, to warn the future
5:10
Speaker 1: humans or the future super intelligent jellyfish whatever to come. Hey,
5:16
Speaker 1: this is a very dangerous radioactive dump site that we've
5:20
Speaker 1: put here. Stay away.
5:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that easy.
5:23
Speaker 1: It sounds easy. The problem is is if you presume
5:27
Speaker 1: that it's easy, you're making a lot of assumptions that
5:30
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily going to hold up.
5:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like a lot of times are like they
5:34
Speaker 2: should just do. And I would even stop halfway through
5:36
Speaker 2: my thought because like, no, that wouldn't work.
5:38
Speaker 1: It's true because our languages might be gone by then.
5:42
Speaker 1: Our symbols don't necessarily make sense outside of the context
5:46
Speaker 1: that we understand them in civilization might be ridiculously advanced
5:50
Speaker 1: by them, a civilization might be in a state of
5:52
Speaker 1: collapse by then. We have no idea. But the point
5:55
Speaker 1: of nuclear semiotics is to figure out how to come
5:58
Speaker 1: up with a a message that is understandable to everybody
6:03
Speaker 1: in any situation in the future. And the current state
6:08
Speaker 1: of the art is, let's figure out how to speak
6:10
Speaker 1: as far as ten thousand years into the future.
6:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and that's like being generous. It needs
6:17
Speaker 2: to go beyond that.
6:18
Speaker 1: It does, because the whole point of nuclear semiotis the
6:20
Speaker 1: whole point of warning the future is this stuff, this
6:23
Speaker 1: nuclear waste that we're putting into the ground now, is
6:27
Speaker 1: going to be dangerous for tens and tens of thousands
6:30
Speaker 1: of years.
6:30
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:31
Speaker 1: Plutonium two thirty nine has a half life of twenty
6:34
Speaker 1: four thousand years. There's something called technetium ninety nine has
6:40
Speaker 1: a half life of two hundred and eleven thousand years.
6:42
Speaker 1: So another one is like one point seven million year
6:45
Speaker 1: half life. This is the nuclear waste that we're creating
6:49
Speaker 1: now and are putting in the ground.
6:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Julia Layton, who is one of our writers
6:55
Speaker 2: who does great work for us, she made a lot
6:57
Speaker 2: of great points, which is like the history of an
7:00
Speaker 2: evolution is two hundred thousand years. Yeah, and like we've
7:03
Speaker 2: only been like reading and writing for how long.
7:06
Speaker 1: About five thousand, less than six thousand years?
7:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's it sounds like like you said, it
7:12
Speaker 2: sounds simple. And so many times I thought I had
7:15
Speaker 2: I thought I had it cracked right, only to think
7:19
Speaker 2: like I was, like, why don't they just do something
7:21
Speaker 2: purely visual and stage a play of people at that
7:26
Speaker 2: site digging in and then dying. And it's like, well,
7:28
Speaker 2: what do you do with it? Well, I'll just put
7:30
Speaker 2: it on a DVD. Sure, that just plays on a loop. Right,
7:35
Speaker 2: It's like, well, how are you going to power that thing?
7:37
Speaker 1: Right? You know what happens when everybody's converted to blu ray?
7:40
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly? Or you know, thought, well, then solar put
7:43
Speaker 2: a solar panel up? Is that a last river? But
7:45
Speaker 2: what have it done? What if there's like a forever
7:48
Speaker 2: nuclear storm or whatever. But if the sun never shines
7:51
Speaker 2: again on Earth in eight thousand years, that's could happen.
7:55
Speaker 1: That's the cool thing about thinking into the deep future
7:58
Speaker 1: is all the things that will go. Yeah. It makes
8:01
Speaker 1: you realize like how specific everything you think and know
8:05
Speaker 1: and understand really is to your current time.
8:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very cool. She brings up the point about
8:10
Speaker 2: an apple, Like when you see the word apple, you
8:13
Speaker 2: don't see the word apple, right, You see you visualize
8:15
Speaker 2: the symbol of that is an apple.
8:17
Speaker 1: Right.
8:18
Speaker 2: So it's like it's almost like the words very much.
8:21
Speaker 2: The words will just not have meaning anymore at some point, right.
8:25
Speaker 1: Man, Well, let's dig into this stuff. You ready, Let's
8:28
Speaker 1: do it. So to start, we should talk about where
8:31
Speaker 1: this all came from. It came from a new type
8:34
Speaker 1: of nuclear storage solution, nuclear waste storage solution called long
8:41
Speaker 1: term geological repositories, and it is basically digging into the
8:46
Speaker 1: earth a couple of miles into the earth, putting our
8:50
Speaker 1: nuclear waste there again, waste that's going to be harmful
8:53
Speaker 1: to health for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years,
8:57
Speaker 1: and sealing it up and then covering over the site
9:01
Speaker 1: and then putting a warning on there. And right now,
9:04
Speaker 1: the general consensus is that salt beds are the best
9:09
Speaker 1: place to put that nuclear waste. And there's actually some
9:11
Speaker 1: pretty good reasons why.
9:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, we could do an episode on nuclear storage. I
9:16
Speaker 2: think I really want to in and of itself, yeah,
9:18
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's a shorty or a long ea.
9:20
Speaker 1: It's probably a longie. Yeah, But just briefly, the reason
9:23
Speaker 1: salt beds are preferable is because the fact that they're
9:26
Speaker 1: even there suggests that there's no water. They if there
9:29
Speaker 1: was water, they would have been dissolved long ago. It's
9:32
Speaker 1: really relatively easy to mine into them. And then what's
9:35
Speaker 1: awesome about salt is that when you mine a shaft
9:39
Speaker 1: into a salt bed and you put your deposit there
9:44
Speaker 1: and then you pull back out, the salt bed actually
9:48
Speaker 1: heals itself over, like just a few.
9:50
Speaker 2: Decades, seals itself back up, right.
9:52
Speaker 1: Yes, so you put a container that's been engineered to
9:55
Speaker 1: hold the nuclear waste inside for ten thousand years.
9:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also in a container. I should point that
9:59
Speaker 2: out right.
10:00
Speaker 1: You're putting it into a borehole in the salt. The
10:05
Speaker 1: salt is going to grow back around it and intument
10:09
Speaker 1: perhaps permanently in this salt.
10:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, very strong too, write.
10:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is fairly strong. I mean, like, if you're
10:16
Speaker 1: mining using modern mining equipment, it's really easy to mine into.
10:20
Speaker 1: But if you just have like a pickaxe or something,
10:22
Speaker 1: it's rock too. Salt rock is what it's called. Right,
10:25
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of reasons why people have figured
10:27
Speaker 1: out like this is not a bad idea to entomb
10:30
Speaker 1: nuclear waste. But but here's the thing. We can't just
10:34
Speaker 1: entune it and walk away, Like, we have a responsibility
10:38
Speaker 1: for those of us generating this waste today to warn
10:41
Speaker 1: the future. Sure, and it's on the future. If they
10:44
Speaker 1: listen to us or not, that's on them.
10:47
Speaker 2: Right, But we have to make them able to listen.
10:49
Speaker 1: To us, exactly, like, we have a responsibility to do that.
10:51
Speaker 1: Because some people are proposed like, hey, let's just bury
10:54
Speaker 1: and forget about it. The chances of somebody actually finding
10:56
Speaker 1: it are pretty slim. Just bury and forget about it.
11:00
Speaker 1: That's probably the best, the best way to go. And
11:02
Speaker 1: people said it's not a bad idea, but it's actually
11:04
Speaker 1: a pretty bad idea.
11:05
Speaker 2: See, actually I thought that one wasn't the worst idea.
11:07
Speaker 2: It's not that was a behavioral psychologist. He was like,
11:10
Speaker 2: and he wasn't like, just forget about it. He was like,
11:12
Speaker 2: maybe the smartest thing to do is to leave it unmarked.
11:15
Speaker 1: Right, because, as we'll see, attracting attention to something like
11:19
Speaker 1: exactly attracts attention.
11:20
Speaker 2: I know, it's interesting thought experiment, right.
11:22
Speaker 1: That was that psychologist, by the way, was doctor Percy Tenenbaum.
11:26
Speaker 2: No really, no, no wonder I liked it of.
11:28
Speaker 1: The East Hampton ten and baums.
11:29
Speaker 2: So we should point out that there's a couple of
11:33
Speaker 2: a couple of big times that these that this has
11:35
Speaker 2: been commissioned, like, hey, we need to think of something.
11:38
Speaker 2: One for a site that never happened, and one for
11:42
Speaker 2: a site that has happened. The one that has happened.
11:44
Speaker 2: It's only one of the United States right now.
11:46
Speaker 1: The only one in the world as far as I know.
11:48
Speaker 2: No, it's number three. Oh really, it's the third largest. Okay,
11:52
Speaker 2: I didn't see what the other two were.
11:53
Speaker 1: It must have been the first in the world.
11:55
Speaker 2: Then, yeah, probably the first in the world. Okay, yeah,
11:57
Speaker 2: which makes sense because the other two are bigger. But
11:59
Speaker 2: this is New Mexico. It's called the WHIP the Waste
12:02
Speaker 2: Isolation Pilot Plant, and this one they are they're actively
12:08
Speaker 2: guarding for. They've committed the Department of Energy is committed
12:12
Speaker 2: to guarding it with people for one hundred years.
12:15
Speaker 1: They've hired Barney Fife into one hundred year contract to
12:19
Speaker 1: look over.
12:19
Speaker 2: This nuclear way for at least one hundred years. It's
12:22
Speaker 2: not like at the end of the hundred years are
12:23
Speaker 2: going to just like put a padlock on it and
12:25
Speaker 2: walk away. I imagine they will keep guarding it as
12:28
Speaker 2: long as they feel like it needs guarding.
12:31
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's the thing. I don't know, man.
12:33
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about a government run program here.
12:36
Speaker 2: Well, at least one hundred years, we can at least say.
12:38
Speaker 1: That, yes, they agreed to that.
12:40
Speaker 2: So you know, the whole idea arose before that though.
12:46
Speaker 2: What was the other one in Nevada?
12:49
Speaker 1: That's the Yucca Mountain one.
12:50
Speaker 2: That was the first one, right, that's the first one
12:52
Speaker 2: that never happened, right, But that's when, you know, in
12:56
Speaker 2: the seventies is when this idea sort of came about.
12:58
Speaker 2: And I think it was a nineteen eight when it
13:00
Speaker 2: was sort of codified as an official I guess science or.
13:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a brand. It's an interdisciplinary branch of science,
13:09
Speaker 1: nuclear semiotics is. And it's because the EPA came up
13:15
Speaker 1: with a rule in nineteen eighty two, a law.
13:16
Speaker 2: Really that's eighty one. I got that wrong, by the way, So.
13:19
Speaker 1: It's eighty one that they came up with the law.
13:21
Speaker 2: Well, it became a discipline in nineteen eighty one with
13:25
Speaker 2: that Yuck Mountain Repository project.
13:27
Speaker 1: And I think from that yucka Mountain Repository project, because
13:30
Speaker 1: we were starting to figure out how to deposit this
13:32
Speaker 1: stuff for a long time, the EPA came up with
13:35
Speaker 1: a rule I think it was nineteen eighty two that said,
13:37
Speaker 1: if you're going to create these kind of repositories for
13:40
Speaker 1: nuclear waste, you also have to figure out how to
13:43
Speaker 1: come up with a permanent warning sign. And everybody was like,
13:47
Speaker 1: that's no problem, of course, and then the EPs to
13:49
Speaker 1: think about it. It's harder than you think.
13:51
Speaker 2: They said, just slap that nuclear waste logo that everyone knows, sure,
13:56
Speaker 2: and everyone was like, everyone doesn't know that.
13:59
Speaker 1: Well, it's been around forever.
14:00
Speaker 2: Everyone doesn't know that now, much less in two hundred
14:05
Speaker 2: thousand years.
14:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you see how that was created?
14:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was a group doodle. I don't
14:11
Speaker 2: know how that happens. I think that means they can't
14:13
Speaker 2: ascribe it to one person.
14:14
Speaker 1: They know there was like five people in one of
14:16
Speaker 1: those giant like silver spoons, pencils or kral cranon.
14:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a nineteen forty six, was it at Berkeley? Yeah,
14:24
Speaker 2: and it was a group doodle in this science class.
14:27
Speaker 1: And is that a is that an album or a
14:30
Speaker 1: band name?
14:31
Speaker 2: Group doodle?
14:31
Speaker 1: It's like the Wiggles or something.
14:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's an album title for.
14:35
Speaker 1: Sure, So the Wiggles group doodle absolutely.
14:38
Speaker 2: Okay, get that's probably a real thing.
14:40
Speaker 1: That's our gift to you, Wiggles.
14:41
Speaker 2: But I saw this was interesting. In nineteen forty eight,
14:44
Speaker 2: the symbol came under consideration for wider use because at
14:47
Speaker 2: first it was just a group doodle and then the
14:50
Speaker 2: Brookhaven National Laboratory requested a standardized symbol of standardized colors
14:56
Speaker 2: for their radiation safety program, and there was more argument
15:00
Speaker 2: about the colors then the actual symbol because at first
15:04
Speaker 2: they are like, you can't use yellow because we use
15:06
Speaker 2: yellow for a lot of stuff.
15:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, they wanted to make sure that it didn't get overused.
15:10
Speaker 1: So people had just become kind of blind to it
15:12
Speaker 1: because they saw it so much.
15:13
Speaker 2: And they were like, have you heard a striper exactly?
15:16
Speaker 2: They can't use yellow and black.
15:17
Speaker 1: They were like, no, I haven't heard them, and they like,
15:19
Speaker 1: give us forty years, you'll have heard of them, believe me.
15:21
Speaker 2: And then in forty two years, no one will have
15:23
Speaker 2: heard of them. So I think the original design was
15:28
Speaker 2: was I saw them in concert. We weren't even talk.
15:31
Speaker 1: Oh, I believe it.
15:32
Speaker 2: It was magenta blades on a blue background was the
15:35
Speaker 2: original design, and it was chosen because it was uncommon.
15:39
Speaker 2: But then in Oakridge, Tennessee, at the Oakridge National Laboratory,
15:43
Speaker 2: they went with the yellow background in nineteen forty eight.
15:46
Speaker 2: Later on in nineteen forty eight, and I guess it stuck.
15:48
Speaker 1: That's where the Oakridge boys were all scientists. That's right,
15:52
Speaker 1: So it was originally magenta on blue. Right, Yes, And
15:56
Speaker 1: the logo we're talking about, for those of you I know,
15:58
Speaker 1: it's called the nuclear trefoil. It's a circle and then
16:02
Speaker 1: three partial circles around a blade. And from what I saw,
16:06
Speaker 1: one of the original group doodlers explained it as it's
16:10
Speaker 1: supposed to be an atom with activity around it.
16:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it.
16:14
Speaker 1: Which I never saw it before, but now that I've
16:16
Speaker 1: read that, I can't unsee it. And that is really
16:19
Speaker 1: what it looks like. It's a pretty great little doodle.
16:21
Speaker 1: But it's like you said, that is not a universally
16:24
Speaker 1: accepted symbol, which is a big problem. And it doesn't.
16:29
Speaker 1: It doesn't evoke like, oh, an atom, of course, I
16:31
Speaker 1: know what an atom looks like. I just saw one
16:33
Speaker 1: go down the street a second ago, and this looks
16:35
Speaker 1: like an atom. It's a symbolic representation of an atom,
16:39
Speaker 1: which means that after people stop thinking about what atoms
16:42
Speaker 1: look like, maybe a thousand years or five thousand years
16:46
Speaker 1: down the road, if something happens, no one's going to
16:48
Speaker 1: look at that and be like, oh, it's an atom.
16:51
Speaker 1: Activity around an atom, that must mean there's radiation here.
16:54
Speaker 1: Hence this is a danger sign that's not going to happen.
16:57
Speaker 3: Right.
16:58
Speaker 2: The other thing you would think is just just put
17:00
Speaker 2: up in a bunch of languages. Done. Yeah, here's the thing.
17:04
Speaker 2: Languages are disappearing. I'm going to ask you, actually, what
17:07
Speaker 2: is your best guess? A language dies out every blank.
17:14
Speaker 1: Nine million seconds? Is that right? Did I nail it?
17:20
Speaker 2: Jerk? I got to get out of calculator. A language
17:24
Speaker 2: dies out every fourteen days.
17:26
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure there's nine million.
17:27
Speaker 2: Isn't that staggering? God? What if it was? Are you
17:29
Speaker 2: about to do that? Yeah?
17:30
Speaker 1: You keep talking.
17:31
Speaker 2: So that's about twenty five languages per year that die
17:34
Speaker 2: out and.
17:35
Speaker 1: That's really sad.
17:36
Speaker 2: It is, and it is very sad. And granted these
17:39
Speaker 2: aren't you know, major languages, but they're important to the
17:42
Speaker 2: people who speak them. Sure, but that's just sort of
17:45
Speaker 2: to to get across the point that throwing it up
17:50
Speaker 2: in a bunch of languages, there's no guarantee. And in fact,
17:53
Speaker 2: in all likelihood, in fifty thousand years, there won't be
17:58
Speaker 2: English or German or French. There may not even be humans.
18:02
Speaker 2: That's a really point. We may be what's the calculation.
18:05
Speaker 1: Four hundred and forty six days. I was a little lot.
18:07
Speaker 1: Okay there there, There may be. We may all be
18:11
Speaker 1: like post biological humans, you know, uploaded our consciousness onto
18:15
Speaker 1: like the Internet or something. And which point that really
18:17
Speaker 1: won't matter to tell you the truth. Where the nuclear
18:19
Speaker 1: waste is buried? But who knows? It could be an
18:22
Speaker 1: intelligent species, It could be humans who don't know how
18:24
Speaker 1: to read or write. The fact is is the stuff
18:27
Speaker 1: that we take for granted changes a lot faster than
18:31
Speaker 1: you think, and even if it doesn't necessarily die out,
18:34
Speaker 1: the changes that come along are pretty alarming. I found
18:38
Speaker 1: a I've been watching a lot of Silicon Valley lately.
18:41
Speaker 2: I told you yeah, great show.
18:43
Speaker 1: My vocal delivery sounds a lot like Jared's. It's a
18:49
Speaker 1: curly you think a lot.
18:53
Speaker 2: I never really put those two together.
18:55
Speaker 1: We'll keep an ear out for it now, and see
18:57
Speaker 1: what you think. I mean. Tell me I'm wrong.
19:00
Speaker 2: I mean, I would have to dissociate so much because
19:03
Speaker 2: I like you and Jared is like such a pedantic bureaucrat.
19:06
Speaker 1: Oh, I love him.
19:08
Speaker 2: I mean he's fun, yeah to watch, But I wouldn't
19:10
Speaker 2: say that he's like the most likable character. Maybe he is,
19:14
Speaker 2: I don't know.
19:14
Speaker 1: I would say pedantic bureaucrat is not entirely off for me.
19:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jared needs a girlfriend, that's his deal.
19:21
Speaker 1: Okay, so I do not because I have a fine wife,
19:24
Speaker 1: That's right. So let me give you an example of
19:26
Speaker 1: how English has changed. This is a quote from Sir
19:29
Speaker 1: Gawain and the Green Knight. It was written in thirteen
19:32
Speaker 1: seventy five, Oh boy, six hundred and fifty years ago.
19:35
Speaker 1: All right, this is in English. The steel of a
19:39
Speaker 1: stiff staff, the stern hit be gripped, that was wound
19:42
Speaker 1: in with iron into the wand's end. And I'll be
19:45
Speaker 1: graving with green and gravious works. And you should see
19:49
Speaker 1: it spelled.
19:50
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I was an English major. We
19:52
Speaker 2: had to go through this stuff. It was a slog.
19:53
Speaker 1: Do you have a guess at what I just said?
19:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, you said that. He uh, the green Knight sat
19:58
Speaker 2: down and watched some silicon valley.
20:00
Speaker 1: That's right. It's that the grim Man gripped it by
20:03
Speaker 1: its strong handle, which was wound with iron all the
20:06
Speaker 1: way to the end, and graven and green with graceful designs.
20:09
Speaker 1: So like, that's English six hundred and fifty years ago.
20:12
Speaker 1: English is still around.
20:13
Speaker 2: Six hundred and fifty years. We're talking about thousands, tens
20:17
Speaker 2: of thousands of years exactly.
20:18
Speaker 1: So that's a problem. Languages evolve, languages die, Symbols don't
20:22
Speaker 1: quite make sense out of context. So there's a lot
20:24
Speaker 1: of challenges that face the people to try to explain
20:29
Speaker 1: this stuff, or figure out how to explain it to
20:32
Speaker 1: future people, I think is a better way to put it.
20:35
Speaker 2: That's right. They have looked in semio semiotitians for people
20:39
Speaker 2: who really want on this stuff. Sure, I think I'm
20:43
Speaker 2: an amateur semiutitian after reading this.
20:45
Speaker 1: That's great.
20:45
Speaker 2: But one thing that they're looking for, because what you
20:47
Speaker 2: want is ideally is instant recognition and not something I mean,
20:51
Speaker 2: yeah maybe if you have to figure it out. But
20:54
Speaker 2: what you want is something that conveys danger right when
20:57
Speaker 2: you look at.
20:57
Speaker 1: It, Like just steer clear of this right place, not
21:00
Speaker 1: come closer and start poking around. Just go away, That's right.
21:04
Speaker 2: So she makes a great point though, that, like it's
21:07
Speaker 2: a double edged sword, like you were talking about earlier.
21:09
Speaker 2: If you, you know, human beings, if you show an
21:13
Speaker 2: extreme skier or a sign this is danger, don't ski
21:15
Speaker 2: this way. Sure, he's gonna say, bra let's do it.
21:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, give me some homicide power drink.
21:22
Speaker 2: So there's a very very fine line between warning people
21:26
Speaker 2: and enticing people.
21:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, even inadvertently exactly, you know. I mean, there's she
21:32
Speaker 1: she points out haunted houses because I'm like, yeah, not
21:33
Speaker 1: everybody's like a red bull extreme sports person, but people
21:37
Speaker 1: do like it haunted houses too, So that abandoned like
21:40
Speaker 1: scary place is so creepy. Let's go there for Halloween,
21:43
Speaker 1: right because maybe Halloween survived but the English language didn't.
21:46
Speaker 1: Who knows. So yeah, you you you really walk a
21:49
Speaker 1: fine line here between warning people away and saying I
21:53
Speaker 1: dare you?
21:54
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, my whole jam is I think they need to, Uh,
22:00
Speaker 2: what will survive if there are humans at all is emotion,
22:04
Speaker 2: So I think they need to appeal to human emotions
22:06
Speaker 2: like fear, more than words and symbols.
22:11
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's take a break and we'll get back
22:13
Speaker 1: into this, all right, because this is fun.
22:15
Speaker 4: Yes, any stuffy jaws.
22:41
Speaker 1: All right, chuck. So we've kind of talked about how
22:44
Speaker 1: things go away, Languages fall away, symbols don't make sense.
22:47
Speaker 2: Any any ephemera.
22:49
Speaker 1: It is, it really is, right, So what what will last?
22:55
Speaker 1: What have nuclear semiutitions come up with? And should we
22:58
Speaker 1: explain with semiotics? Is in general.
23:01
Speaker 2: What is it?
23:01
Speaker 1: I don't even know, oh, just kind of in shorthand.
23:05
Speaker 1: Semiotics is basically the study of how and why signs
23:10
Speaker 1: have meaning. Okay, right, Like you were saying earlier, how
23:13
Speaker 1: the word apple doesn't evoke thoughts of the word apple.
23:17
Speaker 1: It evokes thoughts of the round, shiny, tasty fruit that
23:20
Speaker 1: grows on a tree. That's a sign. In semiotics, that's
23:25
Speaker 1: specifically a cursive sign because it uses language.
23:28
Speaker 2: So what they've done in many cases is, and this
23:33
Speaker 2: is a great idea for stuff like this is to
23:36
Speaker 2: have a competition. They had one at UCLA, I think
23:40
Speaker 2: in two thousand and one called it called the Desert
23:42
Speaker 2: Space Competition. And what one that year was a cactus,
23:49
Speaker 2: a yucca cacti glowing blue. And then the idea was
23:54
Speaker 2: plant a field of these regular green cacti, and then
23:59
Speaker 2: over the place where you know the waist is the repository,
24:03
Speaker 2: and then if you see the sign of a glowing
24:04
Speaker 2: blue one, I mean, I don't think I didn't see
24:08
Speaker 2: the rest of them, but I didn't think this one
24:09
Speaker 2: was that great.
24:11
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to the person who came up with it.
24:13
Speaker 2: Though I know. I think a bit of something they
24:15
Speaker 2: should do is go even further back to younger children,
24:19
Speaker 2: because sometime like go to like an elementary school and
24:21
Speaker 2: ask kids or a high school.
24:23
Speaker 1: Right, or you just take each kid out and rub
24:26
Speaker 1: their face in the sand and be like you see this,
24:27
Speaker 1: you stay out of here.
24:29
Speaker 2: No, I mean, have the kids like throw out ideas
24:32
Speaker 2: because I think, oh, oh, I see yeah, I think
24:34
Speaker 2: the I think a lot of times children can cut
24:38
Speaker 2: through the to the simplicity of something much better than
24:41
Speaker 2: adults can easily. So that's my idea. Throw it out
24:44
Speaker 2: as a as a science fair project.
24:46
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's one of the cool things about
24:48
Speaker 1: nuclear semionics is it's so inviting to like anybody can
24:52
Speaker 1: come up with a great idea. It's just so confounding,
24:56
Speaker 1: but it's also so accessible.
24:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get ideas. In fact, we want to hear
25:00
Speaker 2: from you. If you think you have a cool idea,
25:02
Speaker 2: it's a good idea, Like, I guarantee you we're going
25:04
Speaker 2: to get some good ones. Yep, We're not going to
25:06
Speaker 2: pass them along or anything.
25:07
Speaker 1: So rather than just like poo pooing the glowing yuka one,
25:11
Speaker 1: there's a here's the problem with the glowing yucca idea.
25:15
Speaker 1: It requires explanation, right, somebody. So part of the glowing
25:20
Speaker 1: yuka is to say, these things have been genetically engineered
25:23
Speaker 1: so that when there's radiation present, they glow. So if
25:27
Speaker 1: you see this yucka glowing, it means that there's radiation here,
25:30
Speaker 1: stay away, right. If you lose that that additional story
25:34
Speaker 1: that has to go along with the glowing yuka, then
25:37
Speaker 1: you just have glowing yucca. And I can't think of
25:39
Speaker 1: a more attractive thing that's going to draw people to
25:41
Speaker 1: a site than the legendary glowing yucca that only glows
25:45
Speaker 1: in this one. Soster On earth. Yeah, that's kind of
25:48
Speaker 1: the problem with it. You know.
25:49
Speaker 2: I like this other idea from that same year a
25:52
Speaker 2: little better that did not win. Fields of Asphodel, which
25:56
Speaker 2: is a Eurasian lily. They said, let's just cover the
26:00
Speaker 2: with metal blades that screech when the wind blows. It
26:03
Speaker 2: makes it horrible noise, right, not bad.
26:06
Speaker 1: Here's the problem with that. Okay, Moving parts Okay, sure,
26:09
Speaker 1: it's been pretty well established that if you're trying to
26:12
Speaker 1: convey something to the people into the distant future, you
26:16
Speaker 1: need to have something that's monolithic and made of one piece,
26:20
Speaker 1: because if you have multiple parts, that's an opportunity for
26:24
Speaker 1: weathering to occur through the place where the two parts meet,
26:27
Speaker 1: or three parts or five parts. And if it's a
26:29
Speaker 1: moving part, just kiss the movement goodbye.
26:32
Speaker 2: What about this? Okay, I've had the thought earlier today
26:36
Speaker 2: about just a mountain of razor wire.
26:39
Speaker 1: Okay, here's the problem with that.
26:41
Speaker 2: Okay.
26:42
Speaker 1: And this is the same problem also with the what
26:44
Speaker 1: is the problem the steel? The steel stuff that move
26:47
Speaker 1: and everything this do you want to use you? I don't,
26:49
Speaker 1: But you want to use stuff that has no value whatsoever,
26:53
Speaker 1: not just financially, but usefulness.
26:55
Speaker 2: Well, because someone will say I can harvest that razor wire.
26:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can go use that to keep the cows
27:00
Speaker 1: in in my house next door.
27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. But if you have so much of it.
27:04
Speaker 1: Over time, over ten thousand years, people like take and make.
27:08
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why the pyramids are stripped of, like
27:11
Speaker 1: they're more attractive outer. They used to have like a
27:13
Speaker 1: white I think limestone shell encasement. It's gone because the
27:19
Speaker 1: locals were like, oh, I can use that to build
27:20
Speaker 1: a fine lot pizza hut. That's exactly that's what people
27:25
Speaker 1: will do if you place something of any kind of
27:27
Speaker 1: usefulness of that true like that is the beauty in
27:30
Speaker 1: that every idea is wrong.
27:33
Speaker 2: As a whole. It's so great, it's pretty great.
27:36
Speaker 1: I love it.
27:37
Speaker 2: So. One of the most often sided bodies of work
27:41
Speaker 2: is from nineteen eighty two eighty three, and this was
27:43
Speaker 2: a call for ideas from the German Journal of Semiotics
27:47
Speaker 2: that basically said the same thing. It's like, you know,
27:49
Speaker 2: what are your ideas? This one got a little goofy
27:52
Speaker 2: to say the least. Someone suggests an artificial moon as
27:56
Speaker 2: a storage vessel.
27:58
Speaker 1: There's just a huge flaw on that one.
28:00
Speaker 2: If you ask me, I mean I don't even get that.
28:02
Speaker 1: Well, it was like, how do you make sure that
28:05
Speaker 1: the information about this site stays protected? Put it into
28:10
Speaker 1: an artificial moon in orbit around Earth? But it's like,
28:12
Speaker 1: how do you get to the artificial.
28:14
Speaker 2: Don't get that's what they meant that. Yeah, that doesn't
28:16
Speaker 2: make any sense. That's what I think I guess they were.
28:18
Speaker 2: I mean it said, oh, well, were they beaming it
28:21
Speaker 2: down to a TV that won't play?
28:23
Speaker 1: That's a different one. Yeah, and that. I just don't
28:26
Speaker 1: understand this at all.
28:27
Speaker 2: I don't understand the Radioactive Cats either, even though that's
28:30
Speaker 2: a decent band name.
28:32
Speaker 1: So there. That was a big part of the ninety
28:35
Speaker 1: nine percent Invisible episode. Now Nuclear Semiotics. They talked about
28:38
Speaker 1: the ray Cats, and I think they actually hired a
28:41
Speaker 1: musician to create a song because just like with the
28:44
Speaker 1: glowing Yucca, you have to explain what's going on when
28:47
Speaker 1: the cats glow, you need to stay away. So they
28:50
Speaker 1: had somebody come up with a Raycat song I believe
28:52
Speaker 1: for the episode.
28:53
Speaker 2: Was it Hoody and the Blowfish, Yes, it was.
28:55
Speaker 1: That was a good guess.
28:56
Speaker 2: Now, this one I thought was had a little I
28:58
Speaker 2: thought it was interesting. This semi Aitian named Thomas Cibioc.
29:05
Speaker 2: He said, this what has survived more than anything else religion, Right,
29:10
Speaker 2: religious texts that date back, you know, a couple thousand
29:13
Speaker 2: years in the Catholic Church. Not a bad start.
29:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, The ideas that you hear at Catholic Mass today
29:18
Speaker 1: are a couple thousand years old and something instances. And
29:21
Speaker 1: if you go back to the original text, which we
29:23
Speaker 1: can still read, fortunately, you can say, yep, this is
29:27
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. Like those ideas have survived that
29:30
Speaker 1: long because of the practices they use.
29:32
Speaker 2: So interesting idea, But it gets a little goofy yeah,
29:35
Speaker 2: because he thought, why don't we almost create a fake
29:39
Speaker 2: religion around this thing, a fearful myth that you can generate,
29:45
Speaker 2: appointing an atomic priesthood to tell people and tell them
29:50
Speaker 2: to tell future generations. But I mean, I guess the
29:54
Speaker 2: idea is that it's all false and it's just a
29:57
Speaker 2: big made up story.
29:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, the comic priesthood would know the truth and they
30:01
Speaker 1: would indoctrinate people. But out in society around them, it
30:06
Speaker 1: would be a closely guarded secret because everybody else thinks
30:09
Speaker 1: that whatever this fake myth about, why you have to
30:12
Speaker 1: stay away from this haunted, evil area is true when
30:16
Speaker 1: really the atomic priests are the ones who know no,
30:20
Speaker 1: actually there's radioactive stuff that out here. They just came
30:23
Speaker 1: up with this three thousand years ago to scare everybody away.
30:27
Speaker 2: But initially a decent idea as far as trying to
30:29
Speaker 2: make it or incorporate like what religion does. But it
30:33
Speaker 2: just definitely strange.
30:34
Speaker 1: It is to me though, it is at its base despicable.
30:38
Speaker 1: It's a despicable idea because it is purposefully introducing fearful,
30:44
Speaker 1: false superstition into the future, Like we're going to purposefully
30:48
Speaker 1: introduce fearful false superstition into the future just to scare
30:52
Speaker 1: people off from radioactivity, like what kind of sweeping side effects,
30:56
Speaker 1: what kind of wars might start over this time? People
30:58
Speaker 1: will die? Then this fake thing that they don't realize
31:02
Speaker 1: is fake. Because Thomas Sebiak came up with this idea
31:05
Speaker 1: to keep people away from a single site in New Mexico,
31:08
Speaker 1: that's crazy.
31:09
Speaker 2: It didn't fare too well either among his colleagues.
31:12
Speaker 1: No, and rightfully so, because again it's a despicable idea.
31:14
Speaker 2: So he was on the Human Interference Task Force. We
31:17
Speaker 2: mentioned the Nevada site. That was what was what was
31:22
Speaker 2: launched for that yucka Mountain site back in eighty one,
31:24
Speaker 2: from eighty one to eighty three.
31:26
Speaker 1: So whatever Cebiac's original idea was, he had like some
31:31
Speaker 1: other closely related ideas that were great. Though, Yeah, like
31:36
Speaker 1: he's not like this a total nut job happened. I
31:38
Speaker 1: think it was just a misfire for in an otherwise
31:41
Speaker 1: illustrious career. I think I don't know that much about him.
31:45
Speaker 1: But one of his other ideas was, Okay, well, let's
31:49
Speaker 1: take the atomic priesthood away, let's take the religion and
31:52
Speaker 1: all that stuff away, and let's just give them like
31:55
Speaker 1: the facts, but let's figure out a way to make
31:58
Speaker 1: sure that those facts get pass down. And what he
32:01
Speaker 1: came up with was called a meta message, where it's
32:04
Speaker 1: a message that says, this place has nuclear radiation, it
32:09
Speaker 1: can kill you. You need to stay away from it.
32:12
Speaker 1: And we invite you to take this message and translate
32:15
Speaker 1: it into whatever languages you guys have on Earth at.
32:17
Speaker 2: The time, assuming you can read this right.
32:20
Speaker 1: But if you do that often enough, there will always
32:23
Speaker 1: be somebody who can translate it. Oh sure, And then
32:26
Speaker 1: that way you form a bridge between now and as
32:29
Speaker 1: far into the future as people are around to read
32:32
Speaker 1: and add their own interpretation or their own translation of it.
32:36
Speaker 1: But then you want to leave the original so that
32:38
Speaker 1: if there's ever like a disagreement about what word meant,
32:42
Speaker 1: hopefully somebody can go back language and language language and
32:46
Speaker 1: connect them so that they can see the original version.
32:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like what if a society develops an isolation
32:54
Speaker 2: that knows none of these languages.
32:56
Speaker 1: You're just totally toast. Yeah, that's when the symbols come in.
33:00
Speaker 2: Right. So what they settled on as a panel though,
33:03
Speaker 2: and from eighty one to eighty three was what's called
33:06
Speaker 2: long term communication was going to be the most effective thing,
33:09
Speaker 2: like kind of what you were just talking about, right,
33:11
Speaker 2: And they said a system that combines physical markers and
33:14
Speaker 2: archives that cover the two major forms of this long
33:17
Speaker 2: term community communicate, direct and successive. Direct utilizes markers, and
33:24
Speaker 2: successive is humans like you were talking about. I guess
33:28
Speaker 2: with this meta message, I guess you could write it down,
33:30
Speaker 2: but it's still humans carrying a message through time.
33:33
Speaker 1: Well, it's more like a direct one is like you
33:35
Speaker 1: can write an inscription on a monument and that monument
33:40
Speaker 1: is going to deliver that message directly to people ten
33:43
Speaker 1: thousand years from now, yeah.
33:44
Speaker 2: I mean it's a physical thing.
33:45
Speaker 1: Right, whereas with successive it's kind of passed along like
33:48
Speaker 1: a game.
33:49
Speaker 2: Of telephone exactly. And you know how that goes, right,
33:52
Speaker 2: It can get a little hinky, that's right, but it's
33:54
Speaker 2: always fun at a slumber party.
33:56
Speaker 1: Sure, So they came up with multiple ones, Like you
33:59
Speaker 1: were saying, they've settled on a monument that had massive
34:05
Speaker 1: stone structures. Remember, you want monoliths, they're engraved with warnings
34:09
Speaker 1: in all currently known languages. It's a lot of languages.
34:13
Speaker 2: You want a.
34:13
Speaker 1: Buried vault that has all the info you need about radioactivity,
34:16
Speaker 1: about the site, all that stuff. Sure, you want a
34:19
Speaker 1: bunch of barriers around the site, not necessarily to definitely
34:23
Speaker 1: keep people out, but enough to basically say, hey, hey,
34:25
Speaker 1: we're trying to impede progress here.
34:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean to me, that's one of the most
34:29
Speaker 2: obvious ones. If like you see a huge wall again,
34:32
Speaker 2: it might entice you, but it for sure indicates to
34:35
Speaker 2: any culture that you're like, you're not meant to come
34:37
Speaker 2: beyond this, Right.
34:39
Speaker 1: And then the last one is a network of archives
34:44
Speaker 1: basically the same information you would have in that buried vault, right,
34:47
Speaker 1: but elsewhere scattered around the world. So if something happens
34:50
Speaker 1: with the buried vault, somebody can come across the archives
34:52
Speaker 1: somewhere and be like, oh wait, wait, we want to
34:54
Speaker 1: stay out of.
34:54
Speaker 2: There, right. And along with that, they said, while we're
34:57
Speaker 2: at it, can we at least like all agree around
35:00
Speaker 2: world on a nuclear warning symbol. If it's the trefoil
35:03
Speaker 2: or whatever, let's just all codify that as the thing,
35:07
Speaker 2: which is not the case right now.
35:09
Speaker 1: No, there's was a triangle with an arrow pointing down,
35:12
Speaker 1: and then in the head of the arrow was the
35:14
Speaker 1: Biohezard symbol, which is not great because you want something
35:17
Speaker 1: that's going to be so simple that even as.
35:19
Speaker 2: People confuse me, I need to see it. I guess yeah.
35:22
Speaker 1: It's even when you see it you're like, wait what.
35:25
Speaker 1: But you want something simple enough so that as people
35:28
Speaker 1: kind of create a shorthand version of it, it still
35:30
Speaker 1: retains its meaning right or visually.
35:33
Speaker 2: All right, So that stuff was the Yaka project. In
35:35
Speaker 2: the early eighties, they decided not to do that. They
35:39
Speaker 2: just packed it up, put it away, and then it
35:43
Speaker 2: all came back again with this new Mexico plant when
35:46
Speaker 2: the Department of Energy said once again, hey, we need
35:49
Speaker 2: to think of a sign and a symbol or whatever
35:52
Speaker 2: you can come up with. And we need the best
35:55
Speaker 2: and the brightest thinking of this. So call up Carl Sagan.
35:58
Speaker 1: Get me Sagan, give me Sagan, give me Percy Tannenbaum Stat.
36:03
Speaker 2: And this guy named John Lomberg who's a science writer
36:05
Speaker 2: and space illustrator and he had worked in semiotics before
36:09
Speaker 2: for NASA on their mission to Mars. Sagan was in
36:12
Speaker 2: ill health, so he declined to come, but he sent
36:15
Speaker 2: a message from the president. I guess that said skull
36:19
Speaker 2: and crossbones. Dude, done. Yeah, universal, everyone knows it.
36:23
Speaker 1: He gave a really good example. He said, it has
36:27
Speaker 1: it's marked the lintels of cannibal dwellings, the flags of pirates,
36:31
Speaker 1: the insignia of SS divisions and motorcycle gangs. He makes
36:34
Speaker 1: a pretty good point. A lot of people out there
36:37
Speaker 1: see a skull and crossbones and no, it means like
36:39
Speaker 1: danger problems.
36:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, it means this will be you. Yes, you know,
36:45
Speaker 2: you'll be a skull.
36:46
Speaker 1: And so the the working group for the Whip project
36:50
Speaker 1: they said, no, that doesn't work. It's a Youngian archetype.
36:54
Speaker 1: It doesn't really exist outside of the West. Ye to me,
36:57
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, Sagan was definitely onto something.
37:00
Speaker 2: Think so. I mean, tell me, if you go to
37:02
Speaker 2: China and hold up a sign with a skull and crossbunds,
37:07
Speaker 2: I would think so, wouldn't they. I mean, that's a
37:09
Speaker 2: dire warning, isn't it.
37:10
Speaker 1: I think their point is is that the skull used
37:12
Speaker 1: to be like a memento moral where it meant like
37:15
Speaker 1: rebirth and prepare death.
37:16
Speaker 2: So they could be like, oh, wonderful a skull and
37:18
Speaker 2: crossbud Sure, but.
37:21
Speaker 1: To me, that is the one enduring symbol that's always
37:26
Speaker 1: going to be around as long as there are humans,
37:29
Speaker 1: because what happens when you die and rot what's left
37:32
Speaker 1: your skull. Every human knows that. Even humans in the
37:36
Speaker 1: future are going to know that, even ones that are
37:38
Speaker 1: in like a post collapse tribes were running around like
37:43
Speaker 1: and have lost all of the languages that are around today,
37:45
Speaker 1: they're going to know what a skull looks like or
37:47
Speaker 1: what a skull means, or at least one of them
37:49
Speaker 1: is going to be like, wait, I don't think this
37:51
Speaker 1: is saying that the rainbow's coming. I think it means
37:54
Speaker 1: like death or danger.
37:56
Speaker 2: All right, let's take another break, Yeah, sure, and we'll
37:59
Speaker 2: come back in talk about the approach that the whip
38:02
Speaker 2: panel took and what they came up with right after this.
38:20
Speaker 3: Stuffy the jawsh shot soft you.
38:31
Speaker 1: You know, I gotta defend Sagan. It's my boy. Sure
38:34
Speaker 1: love that guy.
38:35
Speaker 2: Someone should ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.
38:39
Speaker 1: Sure, why not.
38:40
Speaker 2: I bet he's got a good idea or two.
38:42
Speaker 1: I'll bet they have asked.
38:44
Speaker 2: He's still no Atlanta for a show?
38:46
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, where Fox?
38:48
Speaker 2: I think a cop Energy center.
38:50
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think that's even more seats than the phone.
38:53
Speaker 2: No, it's less.
38:54
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, it's.
38:55
Speaker 2: Like three thousand people, which is nothing to you know,
39:00
Speaker 2: put up a stink about. That's a lot of folks.
39:02
Speaker 1: We have not hit that.
39:04
Speaker 2: No we're not.
39:04
Speaker 1: No, we haven't. Did you hear the Star talk I
39:07
Speaker 1: was on?
39:08
Speaker 2: Oh no, it was it good?
39:09
Speaker 1: It was pretty good.
39:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
39:10
Speaker 1: If I do say, if it was supposed to be
39:12
Speaker 1: like rapid fast responses.
39:16
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
39:16
Speaker 1: We got through like four questions in an hour because.
39:19
Speaker 2: You were like, rapid fast response is not my specialty.
39:22
Speaker 2: Meal me.
39:23
Speaker 1: Let me just do a little distracting here.
39:25
Speaker 2: I'm more deliberate, all right. So, speaking of deliberate, the
39:29
Speaker 2: Whippanel was very deliberate and methodical. They divided it into
39:32
Speaker 2: teams and approached it from the two things we were
39:36
Speaker 2: talking about, direct and successive forms of communication. Debated a lot,
39:40
Speaker 2: deliberated a lot the recommendations. They had two proposals, and
39:44
Speaker 2: they did overlap a little bit. What I thought was
39:47
Speaker 2: pretty smart is they both had a multi leveled approach
39:51
Speaker 2: from the surface down that got more specific and intense
39:55
Speaker 2: as you went down.
39:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, the first one was basically like you, ding Dong,
39:59
Speaker 1: this is dan or go away exactly. That's like level one,
40:02
Speaker 1: and then level two is like, okay, ding Dong and
40:05
Speaker 1: your kind of smart friend explain to ding Dong that
40:08
Speaker 1: the reason this is dangerous because there's something buried here
40:10
Speaker 1: and it's gonna hurt you, all.
40:12
Speaker 2: Right, should we don't talk about the real things?
40:14
Speaker 1: Oh? Sure, I thought I was so group A.
40:19
Speaker 2: This was theirs. They studded the surface of the site
40:22
Speaker 2: with what they called menacing earthworks, so a field of
40:25
Speaker 2: spikes and then a big, massive disc painted to look
40:29
Speaker 2: like a black hole. I didn't quite get that part.
40:32
Speaker 1: It's so dumb.
40:33
Speaker 2: I get the spikes.
40:35
Speaker 1: I think it's the yeah, of course, But the black hole,
40:39
Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to just mean like a void
40:41
Speaker 1: or chaos. I don't know. I'm not sure I could
40:43
Speaker 1: see how you would think that that was kind of universal,
40:46
Speaker 1: like nobody wants to fall into a hole or something,
40:48
Speaker 1: and maybe it evokes that kind of like stay away
40:50
Speaker 1: all right.
40:52
Speaker 2: Then they have large markers all around the site, which,
40:55
Speaker 2: like you said, are the really basic messages in the warnings,
40:58
Speaker 2: including and I thought this is so interesting faces that
41:02
Speaker 2: invoke Edvard Munch's the scream.
41:05
Speaker 1: The ones I saw were the scream. Yeah, like it
41:09
Speaker 1: was the line drawing of the guy from the.
41:10
Speaker 2: Screen people, Yeah, like in great agony and pain. That
41:14
Speaker 2: to me not bad.
41:15
Speaker 1: It isn't bad. I don't know though, is that more
41:19
Speaker 1: universally understood than a skull and crossbones?
41:22
Speaker 2: I don't know, or if art survives or people like, oh,
41:25
Speaker 2: I wonder if that painting's down there.
41:26
Speaker 1: Well, I think what they're saying is and semi autitians
41:29
Speaker 1: kind of feel this way. Is that Edvard Monk so
41:32
Speaker 1: perfectly nailed the scream that even without the art, like,
41:35
Speaker 1: if you see that, you understand that that person you're
41:38
Speaker 1: seeing is in agony?
41:39
Speaker 2: Did I say Munch? No?
41:41
Speaker 1: I think you said Monk did I say munch.
41:43
Speaker 2: You said Monk. I might have said Munch.
41:45
Speaker 1: No, you said I think you said monk. Is it Munch?
41:48
Speaker 2: I think it's probably Monk. There's no way his name
41:51
Speaker 2: is Munch.
41:51
Speaker 1: I'm almost positive you said monk. Jerry, can you rewind
41:54
Speaker 1: for a second.
41:56
Speaker 2: Much?
41:57
Speaker 1: Oh you did say much. I would have sworn you
41:59
Speaker 1: said munk.
42:01
Speaker 2: So Group A below the surface this is when they
42:04
Speaker 2: actually start talking about nuclear waste to what it does
42:07
Speaker 2: to you, the details about the structure and all that.
42:09
Speaker 1: Stuff, right, not bad, where they teach a little bit
42:13
Speaker 1: about radioactivity.
42:15
Speaker 2: So Group B this was they went super informative, and
42:19
Speaker 2: really what they relied on was that people had a
42:22
Speaker 2: little bit of knowledge in the future about stuff like this.
42:25
Speaker 1: But they also trusted that the people didn't have to
42:28
Speaker 1: just be spooked or scared or something like that. That
42:31
Speaker 1: it's like, here is the facts and information is why
42:34
Speaker 1: you want to stay away from that.
42:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Their big above ground work was these big earthen
42:40
Speaker 2: walls in the shape of the nuclear trifoil not bad.
42:43
Speaker 2: I imagine you have to see it from above to
42:45
Speaker 2: even know though.
42:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, was, But that's part of the one of the
42:48
Speaker 1: requirements was that you want it to be easily visible,
42:52
Speaker 1: not just with human cognition, but like remote sensing too, right,
42:57
Speaker 1: so like magnetic surveys. They said, we should put some
43:00
Speaker 1: magnets in here, right, not just from when you walk
43:03
Speaker 1: up to it.
43:04
Speaker 2: Right so, and you outside to be able to see
43:05
Speaker 2: it from your flying saucer exactly. And then inside the
43:09
Speaker 2: walls they have at various steps have these big markers,
43:13
Speaker 2: and here's where these like symbols and pictographs, all kinds
43:17
Speaker 2: of languages, writing in different languages, and then more human
43:23
Speaker 2: faces increasingly contorted in agony as you go down.
43:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks to me like the guys getting drunker
43:30
Speaker 1: and drunker. Yeah, yeah, that's what it looks like.
43:34
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that means there's a happening bar exactly.
43:37
Speaker 1: That's how I would take it if I were a
43:39
Speaker 1: future human post collapse.
43:41
Speaker 2: Gotta go, gotta go down here.
43:43
Speaker 1: There were also pictograms you're just like digging through the
43:46
Speaker 1: sand to get to Yeah. There are also pictograms that
43:48
Speaker 1: showed like under the ground, like real easy to understand
43:52
Speaker 1: drawings of the radioactive waste the water ground water flowing
43:57
Speaker 1: through it, taking the radioactive waste up to the plants,
44:01
Speaker 1: which are then eaten by the humans in the picture,
44:03
Speaker 1: one of whom dies, which makes sense. You don't need
44:07
Speaker 1: to understand anything about radioactivity. You don't need to be
44:10
Speaker 1: able to read anything. It's a really like it makes sense,
44:13
Speaker 1: especially if some people are sitting there thinking about it.
44:16
Speaker 2: Was the final image of skull and crossbones or a
44:18
Speaker 2: pile of bones.
44:19
Speaker 1: No, it was like a person, three people standing in
44:21
Speaker 1: one of them. The last one was like dead, and
44:22
Speaker 1: I think he might even have exes for eyes.
44:24
Speaker 2: Well, I was about to say, though, I mean, if
44:25
Speaker 2: you think about twenty thousand years from now, maybe they're like, oh,
44:28
Speaker 2: this induces a nice nap. Maybe, Like but to your
44:33
Speaker 2: point though, like the bones is where you need to
44:35
Speaker 2: end up.
44:36
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, maybe somebody would be like, oh, these veggies
44:39
Speaker 1: here give you a great buzz if you grow them
44:41
Speaker 1: on this ground. Yeah, exes for eyes, right, Yeah, the
44:43
Speaker 1: bones do make a lot more sense. I think Sagan
44:45
Speaker 1: was right. That's that should be a T shirt. Stuff
44:48
Speaker 1: you should know T shirt. Sagan was right, don't even
44:51
Speaker 1: need to have any context.
44:53
Speaker 2: We're gonna give an email in a few days from
44:55
Speaker 2: the guy.
44:55
Speaker 1: From the estate of Carl Sagan saying do not make
44:57
Speaker 1: that T shirt.
44:59
Speaker 2: So what did they go with In the end, though.
45:02
Speaker 1: They went with an earth and burm basically to provide
45:09
Speaker 1: an obstacle and to block easy access some granite slabs
45:14
Speaker 1: monoliths that have warnings written in seven languages.
45:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Navajo and then the six languages of the un.
45:22
Speaker 1: So Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, French, and Russian correct which
45:27
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. But then they took Thomas
45:30
Speaker 1: Siebiak up on his idea. They kind of built on
45:33
Speaker 1: the earlier religion right exactly, and they left blank spaces
45:38
Speaker 1: or they play in their plan. They leave blank spaces
45:41
Speaker 1: on these slabs for future generations to add their own
45:44
Speaker 1: translations of the inscriptions.
45:47
Speaker 2: It's a great idea, and the faces of humans and
45:51
Speaker 2: pain and anguish, right that did survive in the end.
45:55
Speaker 1: So that was the final report on this whip panel.
45:58
Speaker 1: It's a pretty good idea, makes a lot of sense
46:01
Speaker 1: because it not only so there are two groups that
46:04
Speaker 1: they're trying to say stay away, not not really like
46:07
Speaker 1: urban explorers or thrill seekers or whatever.
46:10
Speaker 2: Because they can die.
46:10
Speaker 1: They would have they would have virtually no chance of
46:14
Speaker 1: getting down to the actual radio act. The material. The
46:17
Speaker 1: people they are worried about were technology technological advanced civilizations
46:21
Speaker 1: that were drilling for resources, like an accident, like God
46:24
Speaker 1: helped this this this this waste disposal site. If salt
46:28
Speaker 1: becomes incredibly important in the future, right, and then less
46:33
Speaker 1: advanced civilizations that could accidentally change the flow of groundwater
46:39
Speaker 1: to go through the salt bed through massive like irrigation projects,
46:43
Speaker 1: it covers all of it.
46:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, My whole thing is just make it inaccessible. Why
46:47
Speaker 2: is it in New Mexico? Why is it out?
46:50
Speaker 1: You know, Well, that's I mean, that's pretty inaccessible.
46:53
Speaker 2: It's not as inaccessible as you know Siberia.
46:57
Speaker 1: No, some one of the recommendations for nuclear waste disposals
47:01
Speaker 1: shooting it into space. Just send it out in the
47:03
Speaker 1: outer space and forget about it. And if you believe
47:06
Speaker 1: in the Fermi paradox that it says we're the only
47:09
Speaker 1: intelligent life in the universe, man, more power to you. Yeah,
47:13
Speaker 1: that's actually not that bad of an idea. It's a
47:16
Speaker 1: horrific idea, but it's actually kind of a good idea.
47:18
Speaker 2: To Yeah, but then I wonder about the danger and
47:20
Speaker 2: the risk involved. I mean, we've seen rockets blow up
47:23
Speaker 2: and space shuttles blow up. That would be bad, like
47:25
Speaker 2: what if the thing that they're shooting it out there
47:27
Speaker 2: malfunctioned or something.
47:28
Speaker 1: That'd be really bad.
47:29
Speaker 2: That'd be really bad.
47:30
Speaker 1: That's a great point.
47:31
Speaker 2: It's like all of our nuclear waste has just been released, oh.
47:34
Speaker 1: Into the atmosphere. Yeah, that's a great, great point, chunk.
47:38
Speaker 2: So here's the thing, is all of this just wasted
47:41
Speaker 2: effort because I was getting so into the stuff and
47:44
Speaker 2: then the end of this article was a real like
47:46
Speaker 2: sad trombone. Yeah, because it seems like it seems like
47:50
Speaker 2: nobody really even cares the people that matter.
47:52
Speaker 1: Well, the first the first group like their whole thing
47:56
Speaker 1: will will probably never be implemented because yucka mountain project
47:59
Speaker 1: got shut down, right, But the Whip group may actually
48:03
Speaker 1: have their plan come to fruition because it is an
48:07
Speaker 1: EPA rule that you have to create this kind of marker,
48:10
Speaker 1: and they've got until about twenty forty until they estimate
48:13
Speaker 1: the place is going to shut down. So it's entirely
48:15
Speaker 1: possible that in twenty forty or sometime in the one
48:18
Speaker 1: hundred years after twenty forty, when the DOE stops protecting
48:21
Speaker 1: the site or the DoD, they may implement this earthen
48:25
Speaker 1: works in these sixteen granite slabs and we may live
48:29
Speaker 1: to see something like this.
48:30
Speaker 2: Well, outside of the US, it seems like no one
48:32
Speaker 2: is super concerned. Sweden in twenty eleven had an application
48:36
Speaker 2: to build a repository and force mark and in their
48:42
Speaker 2: literal application they basically said, you know what, we're going
48:45
Speaker 2: to worry about that later. Yeah, in seventy years, when
48:48
Speaker 2: this thing's finished.
48:49
Speaker 1: They said, see this, can we just kicked this seventy
48:51
Speaker 1: years down the.
48:53
Speaker 2: And the Swedish National Archives they consulted on their application,
48:57
Speaker 2: they said, that's really insufficient. It said, it gives the
49:00
Speaker 2: impression that one intends to postpone important documentation efforts until
49:04
Speaker 2: the closure of the repository in seventy years. And it's like,
49:08
Speaker 2: it doesn't give the impression. It literally said that, right, So.
49:12
Speaker 1: I think they're being ultra polite.
49:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, well Sweden, right. Good people in the.
49:17
Speaker 1: US, though, don't tell asap Rocky then.
49:19
Speaker 2: That don't even know what that means. That's the singer, right, Yeah,
49:23
Speaker 2: he's a rapper.
49:24
Speaker 1: He's in prison in Sweden right now.
49:25
Speaker 2: I did not know that oh man did what he do.
49:28
Speaker 1: He got into a fight with some Swedish kids and
49:30
Speaker 1: it may or may not have been their fall. It
49:32
Speaker 1: looks on video like they definitely provoked it. Really, but
49:35
Speaker 1: the King of Sweden is like, sorry, rule of law.
49:37
Speaker 1: It applies to everybody, including super famous Americans.
49:41
Speaker 2: Well true.
49:41
Speaker 1: Donald Trump called him to try to get the thing
49:44
Speaker 1: resolved at the behest of Kanye West. Oh God, and
49:47
Speaker 1: apparently it's just made everything worse. And now the King
49:49
Speaker 1: of Sweden is like, there's no chance he's getting released early.
49:52
Speaker 2: Wow, man, where have I been?
49:55
Speaker 1: This is reality. I know what I just said is
49:58
Speaker 1: actual fact that actually happened here in twenty nineteen. Everybody,
50:02
Speaker 1: Humans are the far future? Can you believe it?
50:07
Speaker 2: Humans of the near John Lomberg, that guy we were
50:10
Speaker 2: talking about earlier, who was on that original nineteen ninety
50:12
Speaker 2: one whip panel, he told Weiss just a couple of
50:14
Speaker 2: years ago, a lot of us had been around the
50:18
Speaker 2: block a few times before, because you know, he was
50:20
Speaker 2: back then doing the same thing and knew this is
50:22
Speaker 2: going to be a report. The government only did and
50:25
Speaker 2: this is the US, and we're putting more thought toward
50:27
Speaker 2: this than anyone.
50:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is really surprising.
50:30
Speaker 2: He said they only did this because they needed to
50:32
Speaker 2: show compliance. They didn't really care what we said. And
50:35
Speaker 2: then and from the nineteen eighty one Human Interference Task
50:39
Speaker 2: Force during the competition, they basically said, the most effective
50:42
Speaker 2: sign will be the dead bodies of those foolish enough
50:45
Speaker 2: to ignore, which makes sense. Whatever sign, So basically like
50:49
Speaker 2: who cares, someone will do, someone will get in there,
50:52
Speaker 2: and they'll all die, and then that'll be the big morning.
50:54
Speaker 1: Right, which makes sense if humans are in communication around
50:58
Speaker 1: the globe and you've got the same morning. But if
51:00
Speaker 1: they're not, then it's catastrophe, catastrophe, catastrophe. But at least
51:05
Speaker 1: we fulfilled our part of the bargain where we really
51:07
Speaker 1: tried to warn everybody agreed. You got anything else? Nah,
51:11
Speaker 1: if you will indulge me, I would like to plug
51:15
Speaker 1: The End of the World with Josh Clark, the what
51:18
Speaker 1: the End of the World with Josh Clark? If like
51:20
Speaker 1: thinking about things in like far deep time in the
51:23
Speaker 1: future of humanity and all that stuff kind of floated
51:25
Speaker 1: your boat, I would recommend my little podcast series, The
51:28
Speaker 1: End of the World of Josh Clark.
51:29
Speaker 2: For sure. This is right up your alley.
51:32
Speaker 1: Thank you, Chuck. And since Chuck said right up your alley,
51:35
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail.
51:39
Speaker 2: Hey guys, we are strangers, but we aren't. You've been
51:41
Speaker 2: with me during the most challenging times of my life.
51:43
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51:45
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51:49
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51:51
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51:56
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52:02
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52:07
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52:17
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52:21
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52:26
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52:28
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52:36
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52:38
Speaker 2: did you listen to the last Stuff you Should Know?
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52:41
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52:46
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52:49
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53:06
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53:07
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Speaker 1: you can also send us a good old fashioned email
53:29
Speaker 1: to stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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Speaker 4: You Know Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.