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One for the thinkers…
Radioactive waste remains hazardous to humans in some cases for tens of thousands of years.
How do we warn future generations 10,000 years from now not to go near a certain area? Well…
In 1981 the US Department of Energy and the construction corporation Bechtel Corp, created the “Human Interference Task Force”; a motley team of engineers, scientists, anthropologists, psychologists and philosophers tasked to come up with ways to reduce the likelihood of future societies accidentally stumbling on a nuclear waste repository from the past.
Philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri developed an imaginative resolution called The Ray Cats Solution. It consists of two steps:
– Genetically engineer a cat to change colours or glow in response to radiation.
– Create a cultural folklore around this type of cat so everyone knows that if they see these cats change colour, they should move someplace else.
A community bio-laboratory in Montreal, Canada called Bricobio has tasked itself with step one, while New Hampshire Institute of Art is working on step two. Consider this post our contribution to the cause.
Other proposed solutions included creating an Atomic Priesthood with an organised religion based structure, orbiting satellites constantly transmitting the location data, and creating a plant with the location of waste sites edited into their DNA sequences.
We like the Ray Cats.
Have you got any ideas for how to keep a warning alive for 10,000 years?
