# Burying a message for the future **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2015, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930 "2015-05-13T12:06:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/21 "2015-05-14T22:43:52Z")
(Missed edit window) The lede paragraph from the above-cited article: > [@](#): > > During a 2004 cleanup operation at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, personnel digging through a trench uncovered a safe containing a glass bottle. And inside the bottle, white sludge. Tests identifying the substance as a type of plutonium gave way to more tests until, in the Spring of 2009, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory revealed what, exactly, the crew had uncovered: A 1944 artifact from the fledgling nuclear weapons program—the oldest existing sample of bomb-grade plutonium from a nuclear reactor, with a half-life of 24,110 years. Although this sexagenarian sludge isn’t dangerous to touch—its particles are too large to penetrate skin—it’s poisonous if swallowed or inhaled and will be for centuries to come. Yet it was housed in a flimsy receptacle that should rightfully contain nothing more toxic than bleach. In the rush of nuclear discovery, the mid-century scientists never paused to consider that a trespasser might happen upon the safe and crack it open. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/22 "2015-05-14T22:49:59Z")
Ceramics seem to last for a long long time. You engrave your message and then fire it. Cheap and durable. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2015, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/23 "2015-05-14T22:52:35Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Your bigger problem will be to engrave your life story in some language that you feel confident will still be understood 10000 years from now. The suggestion to write it in multiple languages, like the Rosetta Stone, is a plausible start… And, like the Rosetta Stone and several other multilingual inscriptions, you could provide a future linguist the key to deciphering a “lost” language. For example, maybe the Hungarian language will be lost in the terrible persecutions committed by the Hispano-Polski-Danish Alliance between AD 4205 and AD 4390 and a future linguist will be able to compare your Hungarian inscription with your corresponding German and Chinese inscriptions (which they can read), and publish a new theory on how the long-lost Hungarian language was probably somewhat related to the language of the nomadic Neo-Finns that is spoken in some of the outlying colonies of the Reborn Republic of New New New Netherlands. ---
**Author:** ![beagledave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@beagledave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beagledave)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2015, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/24 "2015-05-15T14:01:52Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I read an article on this once, some years ago. (Sorry, couldn’t find the cite.) Scientists who are trying to develop relatively safe ways to dispose of radioactive waste (e.g., burying it at the bottom of some Colossal Cave somewhere) are apparently rather at their wits’ ends trying to imagine some way to post warning signage that will not only physically last and remain legible for the long term, but also in some way that some intelligent entities of the future will likely be able to understand. > > ETA: AHA! Found an article on-line (possibly even the same one I originally saw): > [Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes, and Munchian Pictograms: How to communicate the dangers of nuclear waste to future civilizations](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/11/atomic_priesthoods_thorn_landscapes_and_munchian_pictograms.html), Juliet Lapidos, Slate, November 2009. I remember reading a similar article back in the now defunct Omni magazine. I remember being fascinated by it because any kind of solution involved thinking not only about physical materials, but societal/cultural beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![beagledave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6de8d8/32.png) [@beagledave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beagledave)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2015, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/25 "2015-05-15T14:04:03Z")
Ahh…found it [http://archive.org/stream/omni-magazine-1985-11/OMNI\_1985\_11\_djvu.txt](http://archive.org/stream/omni-magazine-1985-11/OMNI_1985_11_djvu.txt) ---
**Author:** ![Whiskey\_Dickens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9fc348/32.png) [@Whiskey\_Dickens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whiskey_Dickens)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2015, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/26 "2015-05-15T14:34:36Z")
The oldest standing Egyptian obelisks are 4,000 years old, and are still quite legible. [Cite](http://www.egipto.com/obeliscos/chrono.html) ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2015, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/27 "2015-05-16T12:23:54Z")
> [@Whiskey\_Dickens](#): > > The oldest standing Egyptian obelisks are 4,000 years old, and are still quite legible. [Cite](http://www.egipto.com/obeliscos/chrono.html) I’ll see your 4,000 years and raise you 8,000 years. Though they predate written language, the [animistic totems at Gobekli Tepe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe_Pillar.JPG) are over 12,000 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Nefario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/59ef9b/32.png) [@Nefario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nefario)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930/28 "2015-05-16T18:17:34Z")
I really like the internally laser-etched glass idea! Sort of a statement of the level of technology of our time, could be small, and nearly indestructible except breakage. Fired ceramics are good too but breakable and limited in how much info you could write. If protected from abrasion, an engraved tablet made of polyethylene, polypropylene, or acetal (Delrin) is nearly much impervious to any chemical action. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/burying-a-message-for-the-future/719930.md?page=1)