A few days ago, I was just thinking of the phrase 'This place is not a place of honor' and the foreboding aesthetic of the field of spikes warning nuclear waste buried below. I first saw this document many years ago, yet it stuck with me enough to have my mind wander to it on occasion.
Every time this is posted, many comments on this topic echo comments made in the past. This is reassuring, because many people throughout the years will independently arrive at some of the same critiques, as diverse as those critiques may be. There's concerns about the longevity of the artifacts intended to communicate the message, there's concerns about whether the symbolism will be understood to signify danger, and there's concerns about whether the message of danger will be heeded. There's also the argument that drawing overt attention to the site is more risky than concealing its location, and that avoiding the circulation of information about it is wiser than publicizing it and risk it becoming a legend that some may someday seek.
While it's difficult to design a message that transcends time, culture, and biology, and conveys the authority of the writers and the gravity of the warning, violence against intruders conveys the danger to those who value their existence. It won't necessarily protect against malevolence of someone seeking to unearth a weapon, or the arrogance of individuals willing to compel or force others to put themselves in danger in their stead, but the properties of nuclear waste in particular may enable a design that proves fatal to anyone who may enter the protected chamber, such that once they're through, they can never leave. Technology and telecommunications could still be used to extract material from the site, but only the most dedicated adversaries would be able to proceed.
Thinking on this, the obscurity argument is compelling. It relies on the vastness of the planet to approximate random chance, and force dedicated adversaries to devote time and resources in spacetime (in an analogue to cryptography and keyspace), while clearly marking a location aids those are intrigued by it and lets them skip to planning on how to exploit it. In times when a trustworthy defense force may protect the site from adversaries, the public location is hard to exploit, but in times when no such force exists, the obscurity forces an adversary to expend more work than if the location were known.
Every time this is posted, many comments on this topic echo comments made in the past. This is reassuring, because many people throughout the years will independently arrive at some of the same critiques, as diverse as those critiques may be. There's concerns about the longevity of the artifacts intended to communicate the message, there's concerns about whether the symbolism will be understood to signify danger, and there's concerns about whether the message of danger will be heeded. There's also the argument that drawing overt attention to the site is more risky than concealing its location, and that avoiding the circulation of information about it is wiser than publicizing it and risk it becoming a legend that some may someday seek.
While it's difficult to design a message that transcends time, culture, and biology, and conveys the authority of the writers and the gravity of the warning, violence against intruders conveys the danger to those who value their existence. It won't necessarily protect against malevolence of someone seeking to unearth a weapon, or the arrogance of individuals willing to compel or force others to put themselves in danger in their stead, but the properties of nuclear waste in particular may enable a design that proves fatal to anyone who may enter the protected chamber, such that once they're through, they can never leave. Technology and telecommunications could still be used to extract material from the site, but only the most dedicated adversaries would be able to proceed.
Thinking on this, the obscurity argument is compelling. It relies on the vastness of the planet to approximate random chance, and force dedicated adversaries to devote time and resources in spacetime (in an analogue to cryptography and keyspace), while clearly marking a location aids those are intrigued by it and lets them skip to planning on how to exploit it. In times when a trustworthy defense force may protect the site from adversaries, the public location is hard to exploit, but in times when no such force exists, the obscurity forces an adversary to expend more work than if the location were known.