Message For The Future
Since 1991, the DOE has been working with a team of linguists, scientists, science fiction writers, anthropologists, and futurists to come up with a warning system. The markers, called "passive institutional controls", will include an outer perimeter of 32, 25-foot (7.6 m)-tall granite pillars built in a four-mile (6 km) square. These pillars will surround an earthen wall, 33 feet (10 m) tall and 100 feet (30 m) wide. Enclosed within this wall will be another 16 granite pillars. At the center, directly above the waste site, will sit a roofless, 15-foot (4.6 m) granite room providing more information. The team intends to etch warnings and informational messages into the granite slabs and pillars. This information will be recorded in the six official languages of the United Nations (English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic) as well as the Native American Navajo language native to the region, with additional space for translation into future languages. Pictograms are also being considered, such as stick figure images and the iconic "The Scream" from Edvard Munch's painting. Complete details about the plant will not be stored on site; instead, they would be distributed to archives and libraries around the world. The team plans to submit their final plan to the U.S. Government by around 2028.
Read more about this topic: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
Famous quotes containing the words message for, message and/or future:
“I will meditate the while upon some horrid message for a challenge.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Never miss an opportunity to allow a child to do something she can and wants to on her own. Sometimes we’re in too much of a rush—and she might spill something, or do it wrong. But whenever possible she needs to learn, error by error, lesson by lesson, to do better. And the more she is able to learn by herself the more she gets the message that she’s a kid who can.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)
“We live in an age when to be young and to be indifferent can be no longer synonymous. We must prepare for the coming hour. The claims of the Future are represented by suffering millions; and the Youth of a Nation are the trustees of Posterity.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)