Ray Cats Nuke the Moon

[00:00:03] Welcome to My Nuclear Life, I'm Shelly Lesher. Today we have three special guests. We're in the bunker in Toronto and we have Nathan Radke.

[00:00:14] Hello.

[00:00:15] And Lee Kuhln.

[00:00:16] Hi.

[00:00:17] And a very special guest, Nina.

[00:00:20] Nina Weston, hello.

[00:00:23] We are going to talk about different ideas on how to communicate with the future us on nuclear waste disposal. This is from our Ray Cats episode. And Nathan and Lee and Nina have been thinking about this for a variety of minutes or days in some cases.

[00:00:44] Yeah, a lot of the social interactions I've had in the last few days have been around this question.

[00:00:50] I bet that has been fun.

[00:00:52] It has been fun. Also, Shelly and Lee and I just did a documentary. We just released that at the Harbourfront in Toronto and then we did a great big talk about the horrors of nuclear weapons. And so it's been a really radioactive time for us.

[00:01:06] I see what you did there.

[00:01:08] Yeah.

[00:01:09] And thanks for everyone who came out to see us. So our first entry is from a listener named Bob. And his idea...

[00:01:20] The idea was... Well, first of all, he said that we were totally barking up the wrong tree and that we should be thinking outside the box about visual symbiotics. Symbiotics?

[00:01:32] Semiotics.

[00:01:33] Semiotics. Yeah, that's why I do science. That we should actually be broadcasting Lou Reed's metal machine music at ear-splitting volume when intruders gain entrance to the waste disposal site.

[00:01:46] Okay. Now that is an interesting idea. For those of you who don't know about this album, it was kind of an FU by Lou Reed to the record company who forced him to put out an album. And so as I recall, he took his guitar, cranked his amp all the way up, leaned his guitar on the amp so it generated a horrifying amount of feedback and then left and came back sometime later.

[00:02:09] So I think that would empty a room?

[00:02:12] Yeah. I mean, it's not a great album to listen to. So it's not a terrible idea. But then, of course, there's questions. How do you power that? How do you guarantee you power that amplifier that's playing this record for hundreds of thousands of years?

[00:02:28] So he does address that.

[00:02:30] Okay.

[00:02:31] So first of all, he thinks it communicates quite well that one should proceed no further.

[00:02:36] It does.

[00:02:36] I think it does. So you would obviously need batteries like the Voyager spacecraft has or better. So basically some sort of nuclear power batteries that would broadcast this. And then he says a handful of people may like this music.

[00:02:55] It's not impossible.

[00:02:57] Especially in the future, I guess.

[00:02:59] Right. We don't know what fashion will dictate at that point with music.

[00:03:02] I'm guessing the clothes will come back to the 90s.

[00:03:05] Yeah. Everyone will have giant T-shirts and ripped jeans.

[00:03:07] Yes. In the unlikely event that MMM does not deter, maybe kick in as a backup, some ambient Brian Eno or Susan Ciani? I don't know who those people are.

[00:03:20] Wait a second. I think Lee's going to have something to say about this. I feel like Lee's the sort of person who likes Brian Eno.

[00:03:25] I was just going to say, like, I listen to Brian Eno quite frequently. It's amazing reading music.

[00:03:32] Well, so the idea was that some non-lethal agent to make them drowsy.

[00:03:38] Right. Okay. No. Yeah, you're right. No, that's Brian Eno.

[00:03:41] Yeah, that will put you to sleep. But then you'll wake up eventually.

[00:03:44] That's right. And you'll be like, oh, what nice music this is.

[00:03:47] Yeah.

[00:03:47] And you'll want to start reading boring books.

[00:03:50] Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what happens.

[00:03:53] So there should be like a small library there.

[00:03:56] I'm really enjoying it. This is like my version of a man cave.

[00:04:00] Now, this is, I'm going to move in.

[00:04:02] Okay.

[00:04:02] So what this listener has done is accidentally entrapped Lee.

[00:04:07] So it's kind of like taking a box to trap a cat.

[00:04:10] You've just trapped Lee.

[00:04:11] Yes.

[00:04:11] Okay.

[00:04:12] But it does actually raise a question that I had for my scheme, which is, is there any way to use the radiation productively like a battery?

[00:04:24] I mean, I guess if there was a useful, if there was use to radiation waste, it wouldn't be waste.

[00:04:30] But I'm just thinking, could you use it to power a record player or something? You know what I mean?

[00:04:38] Well, in our make-believe world, I don't see why not.

[00:04:42] I mean, right now the waste is going to be sealed up in containers.

[00:04:46] Yeah.

[00:04:46] But there's no reason why you couldn't use it productively.

[00:04:49] I mean, we're making things up as we go along.

[00:04:51] So yeah, let's make a waste battery.

[00:04:53] All right.

[00:04:53] That's going to be helpful for my scheme.

[00:04:55] So he goes on to state that there could be other measures taken.

[00:05:02] So for example, permissive action links may also be useful as a redundant protection.

[00:05:08] Given the deadly force threatened by these kind of installations, I leave it to others for the ethical considerations.

[00:05:16] So I think that's a little cop-out, though, that you suggest them, but you're not going to be responsible for them.

[00:05:22] Or this is something that people should do more often and say, this is outside of my area of expertise.

[00:05:28] Because of course, ethics is a specialized area of expertise.

[00:05:31] And so that might be the listener saying, you know what?

[00:05:34] I'm going to admit this is not my area.

[00:05:36] And so I'm going to leave it to people who are experts.

[00:05:38] Hold on.

[00:05:39] I've come into a show where I'm talking about what to do with nuclear waste in the far distant future.

[00:05:46] And I'm fully going to talk about it as though I have some idea.

[00:05:50] Right.

[00:05:51] But that's because we go on the radio sometimes.

[00:05:53] Right.

[00:05:54] Okay.

[00:05:54] I was going to say, isn't that what we do is we talk about things we don't know about with great, you know.

[00:06:01] Well, certainly what I do.

[00:06:03] You see you are well within your wheelhouse doing a podcast on nuclear physics as a physicist.

[00:06:11] This is.

[00:06:12] Yeah.

[00:06:13] Okay.

[00:06:13] And I'm asking someone in humanities.

[00:06:16] Exactly.

[00:06:16] Okay.

[00:06:16] Yeah.

[00:06:17] Exactly.

[00:06:17] I see what you're saying.

[00:06:19] Shots fired at humanities.

[00:06:22] Deservedly so, I'm sure.

[00:06:24] Yeah, they've earned it.

[00:06:27] Another suggestion, of course, was think Indiana Jones, pyramids, booby traps and predatory animals.

[00:06:36] But I mean, first of all, predatory animals, while may seem like a good idea, that does mean you need some sort of live humans to feed them.

[00:06:45] Right.

[00:06:46] And we can't tell what kind of changes will happen in that environment over that period of time.

[00:06:50] If we're seeing something catastrophic enough so that human society is interrupted, I think it's safe to say that there's also going to be some serious adjustments to any kind of ecosystem in the area.

[00:07:03] And the animals probably would not be able to adapt quickly enough in order to survive that.

[00:07:09] In addition, you'd have to have an entire ecosystem.

[00:07:11] You couldn't just have predatory animals.

[00:07:13] You'd have enough prey animals in that area to keep those predatory animals alive.

[00:07:18] And Nathan, this actually speaks to your expertise as a shrimp farmer.

[00:07:22] Right.

[00:07:22] A gentleman shrimp farmer.

[00:07:23] What can possibly go wrong when you try and build your own ecosystem self-contained?

[00:07:28] It works great, doesn't it?

[00:07:30] I mean, it just stays within perfect balance.

[00:07:32] I mean, I am a gentleman shrimp farmer.

[00:07:35] Shelly is right now, as we record, sitting beside my gentleman shrimp farm.

[00:07:39] I've actually seen them now.

[00:07:40] Yeah, they're cute.

[00:07:41] They're blue.

[00:07:42] They're adorable.

[00:07:42] They're busy.

[00:07:43] But there are so many unforeseen consequences that you can't possibly imagine before they happen.

[00:07:49] For me, for example, I had a bit of a snail invasion.

[00:07:53] I had to then bring in predatory snails to deal with the other snails.

[00:07:58] And then those got out of hand.

[00:07:59] And basically, playing God is slightly harder than you would assume at first.

[00:08:05] Finally, he wants to thank me for leading him to your podcast.

[00:08:09] Aww.

[00:08:10] Which he now follows.

[00:08:13] Oh, that's adorable.

[00:08:14] Well, thank you for listening to it.

[00:08:16] Indeed.

[00:08:16] Thank you very much for listening.

[00:08:17] So I do want to note again, like the Indiana Jones way of protecting waste in that we talked about this on the last episode, that that's just going to encourage people to try to get at the waste.

[00:08:35] Yeah.

[00:08:35] I mean, famously, in Indiana Jones films, the entire point is that he is going to these places.

[00:08:42] Right.

[00:08:42] And the more kind of booby traps and obstacles you put in place, the more people think there's gold at the end of the tunnel.

[00:08:49] The more obstacles, the more important it must be.

[00:08:53] Yeah.

[00:08:54] No, exactly.

[00:08:54] And so that has a bit of a paradoxical effect, I think, ultimately.

[00:08:58] But I do like the idea of music.

[00:09:00] Like, that was a different way of going about it.

[00:09:03] Well, I mean, sound certainly has been used in order to keep people away from things.

[00:09:07] There is, of course, the noise that is played in some subway stations to discourage teenagers from hanging around, where they'll take a noise that is high-pitched enough so that the olds, whose hearing has been damaged, it won't register at all.

[00:09:20] But for the young teenagers, to them, it's like a high-pitched, irritating whine.

[00:09:24] Or they just play classical music, or I guess something like Doobie Brothers would probably work.

[00:09:30] Or Brian Eno.

[00:09:31] Or Brian Eno.

[00:09:32] And it would just attract all of the lees.

[00:09:34] All the lees would be in one place.

[00:09:36] How adorable.

[00:09:37] What a nice time that would be.

[00:09:40] So some good ideas there for sure.

[00:09:42] Yep.

[00:09:42] It was fun.

[00:09:43] Speaking of the young folk, we have one right here.

[00:09:46] Nina Westin, visiting Cambridge medical student and all-around smart egg.

[00:09:51] So, Nina, would you like to give us your idea?

[00:09:54] So you've sat with this question for what, like?

[00:09:57] Like approximately 20 minutes.

[00:09:59] Okay.

[00:09:59] So I'm feeling like an expert.

[00:10:01] I'm ready.

[00:10:02] Excellent.

[00:10:03] So what have you come up with?

[00:10:04] How are you going to keep people away from radioactive waste for hundreds, if not thousands of years?

[00:10:12] So I'm thinking of maybe like a large form art installation that we're all just going to have to let be.

[00:10:19] It could be anywhere.

[00:10:21] It could be in the desert.

[00:10:22] It could be in Berlin.

[00:10:24] They might like it over there.

[00:10:25] But basically, I'm thinking like an 100 meter squared space where around the outside of it is like a happy, like Pompeii without the volcano style, just like village of statues.

[00:10:41] And they're all like living in basically suburbia and they're all smiling and they're like little stone puppies and things like that.

[00:10:48] It's all nice.

[00:10:49] And then in the middle of it is disaster land.

[00:10:52] So statues of broken houses, dead people, corpses.

[00:10:57] So fun stuff.

[00:10:58] Yeah.

[00:10:58] Maybe some sharks, just like anything that people don't like.

[00:11:01] Okay.

[00:11:02] And then right in the middle of that, just put like a random symbol, like we can just decide, like a symbol that is right in the center of all the damage.

[00:11:12] And then whenever we create a new nuclear waste site, we can just put that symbol on top of it.

[00:11:18] And then everyone will think, ah, the large statue that was warning us against this kind of thing.

[00:11:23] So this art installation wouldn't be over the depository site.

[00:11:27] It would just be somewhere visible to people to start making the association.

[00:11:31] Yeah, exactly.

[00:11:32] Like basically creating like a Pavlov's dog style, just having some negative associations build up in the mind with this scary statue.

[00:11:41] So you could actually have them in multiple places around the world to start associating bad things with this symbol.

[00:11:46] Yeah.

[00:11:47] And like they don't all have to directly show nuclear waste because it doesn't actually matter as long as it's scaring people away.

[00:11:52] So you could have some with like clowns because like everyone hates clowns.

[00:11:57] I don't think everyone hates clowns.

[00:11:59] Who doesn't hate clowns?

[00:12:00] I don't know those people, but like I've been told that some people don't dislike clowns.

[00:12:08] I guess clowns probably quite like clowns.

[00:12:11] But yeah, that could be true.

[00:12:13] So what would this installation be made out of?

[00:12:18] Well, Nathan suggested granite and I don't know anything about buildings.

[00:12:23] So that sounds nice and strong to me.

[00:12:26] But it might get something that would just be there for a long time, I guess.

[00:12:31] I don't know if you have any more long lastings.

[00:12:34] I mean, for 20 minutes, this is a pretty good idea.

[00:12:37] Yeah.

[00:12:37] Thank you.

[00:12:38] Thank you.

[00:12:38] Yeah.

[00:12:38] I've been freestyling a little as well.

[00:12:40] But, you know, so 20, 22 minutes maybe.

[00:12:43] I mean, think of this as a job interview with the Jasons.

[00:12:48] And I think she did pretty good.

[00:12:50] Excellent.

[00:12:50] Yeah.

[00:12:51] At least given the thumbs up.

[00:12:52] I think I've solved that.

[00:12:52] I think I've solved the nuclear problem.

[00:12:55] Yeah.

[00:12:55] And it took a young person.

[00:12:57] See?

[00:12:58] With no high-pitched music to scare me off.

[00:13:01] So we're all good.

[00:13:01] Well, thank you, Nina.

[00:13:03] Let's see what...

[00:13:04] Well, Nathan always likes going last.

[00:13:07] So let's see what Lee has for us, who's been thinking about it for quite a while now.

[00:13:13] And Brian Eno is not going to do it for Lee.

[00:13:17] And Lee has papers.

[00:13:20] So...

[00:13:22] All right, Lee.

[00:13:24] So have you solved this question for us?

[00:13:28] Remember, this is your interview for the Jasons.

[00:13:30] Right.

[00:13:30] No, I'm taking it very seriously.

[00:13:32] In fact, I might be taking it a bit too seriously.

[00:13:36] I don't think there's any maybe about it.

[00:13:37] He's got a clipboard.

[00:13:38] We've got a clipboard.

[00:13:39] A very Jason-esque kind of clipboard.

[00:13:41] This is, I think, what they looked like in the 1960s.

[00:13:43] At least that's always my image of the Jasons.

[00:13:46] Okay, yeah.

[00:13:46] Is writing grants in the 1960s to nuke the moon.

[00:13:49] He's not wearing a lab coat.

[00:13:51] No, I left that at home.

[00:13:52] It's an audio-only format.

[00:13:54] This is the theater of the mind, as you like to say.

[00:13:57] And also, we could just lie.

[00:13:58] He is wearing a lab coat.

[00:13:59] That's right.

[00:14:00] And a pocket protector.

[00:14:01] Yeah, exactly.

[00:14:02] And big square glasses.

[00:14:03] Okay.

[00:14:05] Square haircut.

[00:14:05] So, I actually decided to take a look at some kind of precedent that would help me answer

[00:14:13] this question.

[00:14:14] And I really like this notion of trying to communicate into the far distant future.

[00:14:20] And I went about it in two different ways.

[00:14:23] So, the first one is going to tie back in when you see what I'm getting at.

[00:14:27] But I remember an example given by the physicist Richard Feynman.

[00:14:33] And I thought this was really interesting.

[00:14:36] It was the same idea.

[00:14:37] If you were able to communicate one sentence to the far distant past, or maybe to a future

[00:14:46] that had gone through some kind of civilization-ending event, completely cut off from our history.

[00:14:52] Anyway, Feynman asks, what would that one sentence be?

[00:14:58] And his answer, and this is actually a quote from this lecture series, Lectures on Physics.

[00:15:04] Now, it's admittedly quite a long sentence.

[00:15:06] He's using a lot of punctuation here.

[00:15:08] But nonetheless, it's the-

[00:15:10] Is he cheating with semicolons?

[00:15:11] A little bit.

[00:15:12] It's the atomic theory of matter.

[00:15:14] He says, if you only knew this, then you would be able to get back to the civilization that we have now.

[00:15:22] And it would go so much faster.

[00:15:24] Feynman, to quote him, that all things are made of atoms, little particles that move around in perpetual motion,

[00:15:31] attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.

[00:15:37] If you just knew that, you know, you could probably leapfrog millennia ahead, right?

[00:15:44] In terms of the direction that your science and that your research is going to go in.

[00:15:49] Right.

[00:15:50] Okay.

[00:15:50] So that's my idea, is that what you want to do, and I realize that I haven't answered the question yet of the semiotic problem, right?

[00:15:59] How do you communicate to a culture that has a completely different set of symbols than we do?

[00:16:06] But what I would communicate would be a short sentence like this.

[00:16:10] The other analogy that I was thinking about with this was communications with extraterrestrials.

[00:16:15] Because it presents exactly the same problem.

[00:16:19] We don't know what they're speaking, and they don't know what we're speaking.

[00:16:24] In fact, wasn't that part of a recent, in the last 10 years, movie where aliens come to Earth,

[00:16:31] and then it's actually like linguists' arrival.

[00:16:35] Thank you.

[00:16:35] Yeah, that was actually a pretty good film.

[00:16:37] Probably one of the better first contact films I'd ever seen.

[00:16:39] Because it really struggles with that problem, right?

[00:16:42] Of like, actually, communication is going to be difficult.

[00:16:46] I dug up an NSA paper on this, actually.

[00:16:50] You are such an academic.

[00:16:53] And it tackles this problem.

[00:16:55] It's written by, if anybody wants to look it up, Lambros de Calamajos.

[00:17:00] Now, I don't know who that is, but wrote this NSA paper.

[00:17:03] I quote a couple of things.

[00:17:05] Quote,

[00:17:06] If civilization were trying to establish communication with us,

[00:17:09] it would first embark on attention-getting signals of such a nature that we could distinguish them from random cosmic noise.

[00:17:18] Okay?

[00:17:19] So that's like step number one, is whichever way we're going to communicate with the distant future,

[00:17:25] we're going to set up a set of symbols that are just obviously not by accident.

[00:17:31] Right?

[00:17:32] Now, what he suggests, and it gets wonderfully weird, but what he suggests is so straightforward and coherent.

[00:17:43] Number sequence.

[00:17:44] Right?

[00:17:44] That just something like one, two, three, four.

[00:17:49] The assumption, and obviously going on further.

[00:17:51] What kind of numerical system?

[00:17:55] You could do it in all kinds of different ways.

[00:17:57] You could use dots.

[00:17:59] You could use, and I would suggest actually, you're skipping ahead, but I would suggest actually doing it in various modalities.

[00:18:06] Right.

[00:18:06] So you could have blocks of stone, you know, arranged in a system that clearly distinguishes it from randomness.

[00:18:15] But like, we do a lot of quite weird things.

[00:18:19] Like, how would they know to pay attention to the dots and not to like the Eiffel Tower or something?

[00:18:24] Well, the assumption here is that there's something that's happened that has either totally destroyed civilization,

[00:18:31] and so those things are gone, or it's so far in the distant future that all of those things are gone,

[00:18:36] that none of the elements of our civilization actually remain.

[00:18:40] Now, you could get more complicated with those sequences.

[00:18:44] Right?

[00:18:44] So you could do the Fibonacci code, or you could do the Pythagorean theorem.

[00:18:49] The assumption is, of course, that number is somehow an almost intrinsic language,

[00:18:55] especially for any kind of even nascently technologically developing society.

[00:19:01] Like, you will need to figure out number if you're going to do something like build the pyramids,

[00:19:06] or have even rudimentary calendar keeping.

[00:19:10] I mean—

[00:19:10] Basically anything.

[00:19:11] People will always count.

[00:19:13] Yeah, like how many sheep do you have?

[00:19:14] Yeah, I was going to say, if you're trying to farm, if you're trying to have any kind of exchange system.

[00:19:19] So I think number is the kind of bridge that we can use to get to develop a new language.

[00:19:29] But I just wanted to quote one more thing, because this, again, was actually taken seriously in this paper.

[00:19:36] And this is within that paper.

[00:19:38] In 19—I'm quoting—in 1952, British scientist Lancelot Hogben.

[00:19:43] Do you know him, Shelley, by any chance?

[00:19:45] Oh, I thought you were looking at Nina.

[00:19:47] I'm like, yes, all British people know each other.

[00:19:48] Right.

[00:19:49] Well, of course they do.

[00:19:51] That's why I'm not even looking at Nina.

[00:19:52] That's why I was right to you as a scientist.

[00:19:55] Lancelot Hogben.

[00:19:55] What an English name.

[00:19:57] That's amazing.

[00:19:58] And I only see your shadow.

[00:20:00] I can't see any facial features because of the backlight.

[00:20:03] But it's such an English name.

[00:20:06] So he is developing something called astroglossa, or celestial syntax.

[00:20:14] What?

[00:20:14] Yes.

[00:20:15] Sounds made up.

[00:20:16] I mean, you have a name like that, you're going to have to bring it.

[00:20:18] Right.

[00:20:19] And so I'm not surprised.

[00:20:19] That's the kind of science I do.

[00:20:21] You've got a lot to live up to, Lancelot something something.

[00:20:23] So he's arguing that number is the most universal concept for establishing communication between intelligent beings.

[00:20:29] And so if aliens were to communicate with us, or we were to communicate with aliens, that would be the basis.

[00:20:36] We would set non-random sequences.

[00:20:39] I mean, of course, this is what SETI is looking for, right?

[00:20:42] Yes.

[00:20:42] There's some kind of signal that will distinguish it from the background radiation.

[00:20:46] And I'm suggesting that we do something like that terrestrially through.

[00:20:53] And then this now gets more into the meat of the matter.

[00:20:58] So you're treating our distant future relatives as basically alien.

[00:21:04] Which I think is a pretty good analogy.

[00:21:07] Thank you, Nathan.

[00:21:08] You're welcome.

[00:21:08] But not quite.

[00:21:09] Yes and no.

[00:21:10] I'm treating the problem like trying to communicate with aliens.

[00:21:13] But thank you, Shelley, for mentioning that because there is an assumption built into what I'm doing,

[00:21:19] which is that the future humans are the same as we are.

[00:21:22] That there hasn't been some kind of...

[00:21:24] Not culturally.

[00:21:25] Not culturally, but physiologically, biologically, that there hasn't been some kind of weird evolutionary

[00:21:33] shift that has taken place.

[00:21:35] Or maybe the civilization ending event with a lot of radiation and then Spider-Man kind of

[00:21:41] things happen.

[00:21:42] Well, I mean, if we start assuming that, then the question becomes kind of ridiculous.

[00:21:46] Exactly.

[00:21:46] Because then we don't know.

[00:21:47] Maybe at that point, we will have evolved to a situation where nuclear waste is beneficial

[00:21:51] to us and we would want them to stumble across it.

[00:21:53] So I think we have to start with certain assumptions, including the fact that biologically we've

[00:21:58] remained fairly static.

[00:21:59] From an evolutionary perspective, even if we're talking about 100,000 years, that's not a lot

[00:22:04] of time in evolutionary.

[00:22:06] I mean, culture will change dramatically.

[00:22:08] Culturally, yes, but we're still humans.

[00:22:11] Exactly.

[00:22:12] And so we'll still be curious and we count and things like that.

[00:22:16] Okay.

[00:22:17] So then I went to look at what are the old things in the world?

[00:22:22] Like what things have really made it very far?

[00:22:27] And I'm wondering actually.

[00:22:29] Pyramids.

[00:22:30] Okay.

[00:22:30] So.

[00:22:31] Bruce Springsteen.

[00:22:33] How old is Bruce Springsteen?

[00:22:35] 75, I think.

[00:22:36] Okay.

[00:22:36] Really?

[00:22:37] Yeah.

[00:22:38] Oh, he's old.

[00:22:38] They're all getting on there.

[00:22:39] Yeah.

[00:22:40] The pyramids, I think are about four and a half thousand years old, which is old.

[00:22:46] Okay.

[00:22:47] But it's not as old as we want to go.

[00:22:49] Not nearly as old as we want to go.

[00:22:52] And I thought I'd take a look at Stonehenge and it's not, it's actually a bit younger.

[00:22:57] Their creation took like forever.

[00:23:01] Like it's like a thousand year building project.

[00:23:03] That's a lot of great big blocks.

[00:23:04] Um, so they're between three and four thousand years old, depending on when you date it.

[00:23:09] So that's not nearly good enough.

[00:23:11] Right?

[00:23:12] Okay.

[00:23:12] So I'm looking, I just typed in oldest thing on earth because I'm like, okay, how, well,

[00:23:18] the earth is the oldest thing on earth.

[00:23:19] Okay.

[00:23:20] Fair.

[00:23:20] Right.

[00:23:20] And it's 6,000 years old.

[00:23:22] Human made artifacts.

[00:23:24] Right.

[00:23:24] And one of them is actually very close to my hometown in South Germany.

[00:23:31] And it's called the Löwenmensch.

[00:23:33] And it is, um, a carving of, uh, a kind of a humanoid, uh, lion.

[00:23:40] And it was found in a cave in, uh, in Swabia in Southern Germany.

[00:23:46] And it has been carbon dated to be 35 to 40,000 years old.

[00:23:52] So that's getting us somewhere, right?

[00:23:54] That's, we're starting now to communicate over long distances.

[00:23:57] What's the material that it's carved out of?

[00:24:00] Ivory.

[00:24:01] It's carved out of ivory.

[00:24:03] There are a lot of elephants in Southern Germany, three and a half thousand, uh, 35,000 years

[00:24:07] ago.

[00:24:08] Clearly.

[00:24:08] No, okay.

[00:24:09] I don't actually know that.

[00:24:10] I'm just.

[00:24:11] Mastodons maybe?

[00:24:12] Who knows?

[00:24:13] It might've been mastodons.

[00:24:14] Uh, either way, it was carved out of ivory, but that is not even close to being the oldest

[00:24:21] thing.

[00:24:21] Uh, we have found cave paintings in, this is in Blombos Cave West and the Western Cape of

[00:24:28] South Africa.

[00:24:29] These have been dated to 100,000 years ago.

[00:24:34] So you need it to be protected from the elements.

[00:24:38] I'm going to get to that.

[00:24:39] Okay.

[00:24:40] Right?

[00:24:40] So yes.

[00:24:41] But that was my thing.

[00:24:42] It's like, where am I going to put this information?

[00:24:44] I need to put it somewhere where it's going to be kept safe in such a way that it's not

[00:24:50] going to be corroded by weather.

[00:24:52] And if there is a civilization ending events, it's not going to be affected.

[00:24:56] So I was like, well, we've had civilizational ending events before, quite a few of them.

[00:25:02] And these cave paintings and the Leuven Mench survived.

[00:25:05] The Leuven Mench was also found in the cave.

[00:25:07] So it wasn't just lying around.

[00:25:09] Okay.

[00:25:10] So I put all these things together and actually I have to give a shout out to your Ray Katz

[00:25:16] episode and the people who, that people had suggested to Matt Kaplan because there was

[00:25:22] a number of things I had not considered.

[00:25:24] So one of the things I hadn't considered was the rating the materials, you know, looting

[00:25:31] materials, like maybe we want the metal.

[00:25:33] So of course I was going to put some kind of like melted titanium door.

[00:25:38] So, okay.

[00:25:39] I should just say what we, what I want to do is I want to put the nuclear waste in a cave

[00:25:44] deep down, not near a water source.

[00:25:47] So maybe somewhere like a desert or something.

[00:25:49] And then I originally was going to like melt a titanium door into it, like just so it's

[00:25:56] like super difficult to get into.

[00:25:58] But then of course people will steal the metal.

[00:26:00] So I've changed my mind based on the other comments that people had made.

[00:26:05] And instead I just fill it up with rubble.

[00:26:08] Just make it look boring, as boring as possible.

[00:26:11] So you're going to hide it.

[00:26:12] Yes.

[00:26:13] So, well, yeah, I'm going to go with a mixed approach, I think is what it was called in

[00:26:17] the Ray Katz episode.

[00:26:19] If you find it, you're going to come upon lots of information that tells you to stay

[00:26:24] away.

[00:26:25] So you're going to be honest about it.

[00:26:26] I'm going to totally be honest about it, but I'm going to hide it.

[00:26:29] So the first thing I'm going to hope is that it's just going to be so boring and inaccessible

[00:26:34] that you're just never going to get there.

[00:26:36] And other things will be much more interesting and you'll go looking over, the future humans

[00:26:41] will be looking over there.

[00:26:42] Are you going to plant a decoy?

[00:26:44] No, no.

[00:26:45] But I am going to do other things that were suggested by listeners.

[00:26:52] So, okay.

[00:26:53] So here's my suggestion so far.

[00:26:54] So we take the nuclear waste, we put it in a cave, very inaccessible.

[00:27:00] We then fill up the entrance with rubble.

[00:27:06] So it's very boring and nobody cares.

[00:27:09] Now, I actually have a question here because...

[00:27:13] He's going to the clipboard.

[00:27:14] Going to the clipboard here.

[00:27:16] In the book called Nuclear Accidents by James Mahaffey, he talks about a really weird incident

[00:27:26] that happened about a hundred years ago where...

[00:27:29] And they don't know subsequently what the material was.

[00:27:32] I was wondering, Shelley, if you'd heard about this incident and if you knew about it.

[00:27:36] Because what I want to do is I want to create an antechamber, much like our listener Rob,

[00:27:42] who suggested, you know, like playing horrible music or something.

[00:27:45] I want to create a toxic antechamber that, should you encounter it, will make you violently

[00:27:53] ill, right?

[00:27:55] So you're just like, I don't want to go any further than this, right?

[00:28:00] So the actual nuclear waste is really deep down.

[00:28:03] But then should you have penetrated, say, into the first chamber, something would happen there.

[00:28:10] There would be like, say, no oxygen or something.

[00:28:13] And you would just, you would feel horrible and you would come out and you'd get to vomit

[00:28:18] and maybe have lesions on your body or something.

[00:28:20] And this, in fact, is exactly what happened about a hundred years ago with some prospectors

[00:28:25] who came upon a cave with a mystery material in it.

[00:28:31] And it was, they, at first they thought it was silver and it was glowing and it was beautiful

[00:28:37] and they couldn't believe it.

[00:28:39] And so they, they come back the next day and they go really quite deep into it.

[00:28:44] But when they're in the cave, something weird happens to all three of them.

[00:28:49] And one of them goes, gets delirious and starts just talking gibberish.

[00:28:55] And then the other two, they get really ill.

[00:28:58] They feel nauseous and they come out, you know, the, all three of them like fall on the ground.

[00:29:03] Two of them are, you know, heaving and vomiting.

[00:29:06] Later lesions start to appear on their body.

[00:29:09] I've never heard of this.

[00:29:11] Yeah.

[00:29:11] And they, of course, didn't know because this is before Marie Curie had discovered,

[00:29:18] she discovered radioactivity, did she?

[00:29:21] Yes.

[00:29:22] So it was before that.

[00:29:23] So nobody knew about kind of these kind of reactive metals.

[00:29:27] But apparently it doesn't fit with what we know about naturally occurring radioactive material

[00:29:35] in nature.

[00:29:35] It shouldn't glow like this.

[00:29:36] And of course I'm talking to the expert, but this is what the book was describing.

[00:29:40] But I was wondering if there was maybe a way scientifically of just creating, using some

[00:29:48] of the waste or using some other kind of natural material to create a toxic environment.

[00:29:53] Now, it wouldn't be, it couldn't be a biological material because we can't expect that to last

[00:29:58] a hundred thousand years, which is roughly my timeframe here.

[00:30:01] But something that should you get there, you'd feel awful.

[00:30:04] I mean, you could just give everyone radiation sickness.

[00:30:07] Yeah.

[00:30:08] Yeah.

[00:30:08] Okay.

[00:30:08] But could you do it?

[00:30:09] But would that kick in quickly enough?

[00:30:11] Exactly.

[00:30:12] I mean, you could give people a lethal dose.

[00:30:16] That seems a little horrible for Lee to be suggesting.

[00:30:20] Well, but we're trying to protect civilization.

[00:30:22] Oh, so you're going to sacrifice a few individuals to protect the hole.

[00:30:26] Yes.

[00:30:26] I mean, that seems more like a Nathan suggestion.

[00:30:29] Would people go find their friends if they went down a hole and died?

[00:30:34] Surely more people would go down the hole?

[00:30:36] So this is the hope is that you don't fully die.

[00:30:38] You just feel absolutely awful.

[00:30:41] I don't know.

[00:30:41] I think there might be just a big stack of bodies in this, in the antechamber as people

[00:30:45] keep going to look for the last search party.

[00:30:47] Like cordwood.

[00:30:48] That would work too, right?

[00:30:49] If you happen upon thousands of skulls, then you're like, okay, maybe I'm going to turn

[00:30:55] around now.

[00:30:56] Anyway, the antechamber, you know, if we can figure it out, fine.

[00:31:00] Now, the key to this whole thing, going back to the math, is, and I haven't figured it

[00:31:06] out yet.

[00:31:06] I admit this is a bit of a, it's a hard nut to crack, but we want to use the math to

[00:31:13] encode a Rosetta Stone so that they would be able to then use that to decipher a message,

[00:31:21] which is the Feynman sentence.

[00:31:23] And in my scenario...

[00:31:25] What does your sentence say?

[00:31:27] Because have we actually been able to decipher the Rosetta Stone?

[00:31:31] Yes, which is what allowed us to then decipher all the other languages.

[00:31:35] Oh, okay.

[00:31:36] See, I didn't know that.

[00:31:37] So...

[00:31:38] I'm not a humanities person.

[00:31:39] I thought it was that the Rosetta Stone had both ancient Egyptian and another language

[00:31:44] on it.

[00:31:44] Exactly.

[00:31:44] But then we knew the other language already.

[00:31:47] Exactly.

[00:31:47] But then...

[00:31:48] So this will...

[00:31:49] Then we'd need the alien language on our Rosetta Stone.

[00:31:51] Which is math.

[00:31:53] Math.

[00:31:53] Math is going to be our language that we know.

[00:31:57] And we built that up through the various...

[00:31:59] Thank you for noting that.

[00:32:00] We built that up then through the various different sequences, right?

[00:32:05] They maybe get more complicated.

[00:32:06] Then we could bridge from those to ones that have more syntactic or semiotic meaning.

[00:32:14] And then...

[00:32:15] Look...

[00:32:15] So why isn't this before the death chamber?

[00:32:19] Well, this is before the death chamber.

[00:32:22] Okay.

[00:32:22] This is like...

[00:32:23] This makes more sense.

[00:32:24] I'm like, why do a bunch of people have to die before you get to the Rosetta Stone?

[00:32:27] In fact, this also comes back to, I think, what some of the listeners had suggested or

[00:32:34] people in studies had suggested.

[00:32:36] I'm not even just putting this in the entrance of the cave.

[00:32:40] I want to put this in lots of other places.

[00:32:42] Okay.

[00:32:42] So that they actually have the opportunity to decipher this and then have the...

[00:32:48] They have the code ready at hand.

[00:32:49] But it will also be at the entrance of...

[00:32:52] Or somewhat inside the cave protected from the elements.

[00:32:55] So you do want to say, here be dragons.

[00:32:57] Like...

[00:32:57] Yes.

[00:32:58] In fact, my sentence is...

[00:33:00] Oh, yeah.

[00:33:00] I'm...

[00:33:01] Here we go.

[00:33:01] I'm interested.

[00:33:03] This is poison and will kill you.

[00:33:05] And it has no useful purpose.

[00:33:07] Sorry for the mess.

[00:33:08] Our bad.

[00:33:08] I like it.

[00:33:10] How Canadian.

[00:33:11] Sorry for the mess.

[00:33:13] Sorry about that, eh?

[00:33:14] Sorry.

[00:33:14] Well, I mean, I feel like we didn't do a good job here, right?

[00:33:19] And so this is your problem.

[00:33:21] We got the benefits.

[00:33:23] Now you have the problem.

[00:33:24] Sorry.

[00:33:25] Sorry.

[00:33:25] Sorry.

[00:33:26] But anyway, I thought it was...

[00:33:29] Again, based on what previous people had suggested, I thought it was important to note that you

[00:33:35] can't do anything with it.

[00:33:36] Yes.

[00:33:37] There's no...

[00:33:37] There's not good...

[00:33:38] It is poison, but there's no upside to it.

[00:33:42] All right.

[00:33:42] It's my turn.

[00:33:43] Now, at first, I figured I would look to the 1970 film Beneath the Planet of the Apes,

[00:33:48] as I do for all of life's difficult questions.

[00:33:51] In that movie, ape society has developed their own culture.

[00:33:55] Part of that culture is a taboo against going to the Forbidden Zone, which for the most part

[00:34:01] keeps the apes away from what turns out to be a stash of underground, fully functional

[00:34:05] nuclear missiles and a cult of human bomb worshippers.

[00:34:08] Of course, by the end of the film, the ape army has decided to violate that taboo and invade

[00:34:13] the Forbidden Area with catastrophic consequences.

[00:34:16] And this is the issue with a taboo-based warning system.

[00:34:19] Even in a few generations, taboos can shift within a culture.

[00:34:23] And since culture replication can turn into a bit of a game of broken telephone over the

[00:34:28] course of hundreds of years, the possibility that any religion or superstition could remain

[00:34:33] unaltered over the course of tens of thousands of years seems pretty remote at best.

[00:34:39] I mean, the religion of the ancient Egyptians didn't last nearly as long as their tombs have.

[00:34:44] So, as we've discussed, what we need to do is find something that will stick around,

[00:34:49] independent of culture or language.

[00:34:52] Something ahistorical that is just a fundamental and universal aspect of the human animal.

[00:34:58] Even semi-universal and reasonable fears such as spiders and snakes won't guarantee that

[00:35:03] people stay away, as anyone who has walked past a hot topic shop at the mall can confirm.

[00:35:09] So, what's something that will transcend time and culture?

[00:35:13] Well, what's one of the most important things about being a person?

[00:35:17] The ability to recognize another human face.

[00:35:20] In fact, this is so important that it's likely one of the first things we learn as a baby.

[00:35:25] We're too good at it, in fact.

[00:35:27] We can easily see human faces in pancakes and toast and tortillas and clouds, etc.

[00:35:35] This tendency to see things that aren't really there is referred to as patternicity or apophenia.

[00:35:41] And it's why we can identify with the most simplistic cartoon drawings.

[00:35:45] I mean, Charles Schultz's Peanuts comic strip is one of the most recognizable and relatable

[00:35:50] modern pieces of American literature ever.

[00:35:52] And his characters are barely more than a few lines of ink each.

[00:35:57] There's no reason why humans won't continue to find importance in the human face,

[00:36:01] and therefore no reason why these tendencies towards patternicity and recognizing human faces

[00:36:06] in objects won't also continue.

[00:36:09] That's why I've decided to base my warning on this ability.

[00:36:13] So, using granite, which is durable and not particularly valuable monetarily or aesthetically,

[00:36:20] I propose building around the site a perimeter of smooth, rounded, rectangular obelisks,

[00:36:27] maybe 12.56 kilometers in circumference or 2 kilometers in radius.

[00:36:33] These obelisks will be large, say 6 meters tall, which is about 20 feet tall to our American listeners.

[00:36:40] And they'll have one flat side facing away from the site.

[00:36:44] And on that flat surface, we'll engrave the most recognizable and universal symbol that exists,

[00:36:50] or will ever exist, a happy face.

[00:36:54] Now, once the purpose of these obelisks has been long forgotten,

[00:36:58] this ring of happy-faced monuments will no doubt attract some attention from our curious descendants,

[00:37:02] and they will no doubt walk further in to investigate.

[00:37:06] But, as they get closer to the site, they'll encounter another, smaller ring of obelisks,

[00:37:12] again 20 feet tall, again with one flat surface.

[00:37:16] But this time, the faces don't look quite so happy.

[00:37:19] Their smiles are gone, and they look maybe a little concerned.

[00:37:24] Of course, our intrepid descendants will continue further in,

[00:37:27] and of course, they'll encounter another, smaller ring of obelisks.

[00:37:31] But this time, the faces are unambiguously looking afraid, or worried, or angry.

[00:37:38] By now, these future explorers will probably have figured out that these concentric circles are getting smaller,

[00:37:43] and there must therefore be a center.

[00:37:45] And so, despite the unhappy-looking faces that are now confronting them,

[00:37:49] they might continue in.

[00:37:51] And, as you would expect, they'll be greeted with another ring of obelisks.

[00:37:56] But this time, the faces are quite different.

[00:37:58] Instead of facial expressions registering fear,

[00:38:01] now the faces themselves will display the reason for that fear.

[00:38:06] Humans tend to be attracted to symmetry,

[00:38:08] so these faces will be asymmetrical,

[00:38:10] with burns and gashes carved into their features.

[00:38:13] They'll be missing eyes,

[00:38:15] and have mouths that are stretched out in agony,

[00:38:17] or gaping open in revulsion.

[00:38:20] The obelisks themselves will also have been distressed,

[00:38:23] and set up with damage and jagged edges.

[00:38:25] Maybe some of them have been cracked in two,

[00:38:27] with half the brutalized face on the ground,

[00:38:29] the other half staring forward with a single eye in silent horror,

[00:38:33] and presumably with significantly reduced depth perception.

[00:38:37] Now this, all by itself,

[00:38:39] should serve as a warning that can survive the replacement of culture and language.

[00:38:42] But I want to make sure that the future humans still consider the classic happy face to be an important icon.

[00:38:48] And there's one way to guarantee that.

[00:38:50] We make sure that the happy face is always with us,

[00:38:54] always watching,

[00:38:56] always looking down on us from above.

[00:38:59] To that end,

[00:39:00] we need to revisit a Pentagon proposal from 1958,

[00:39:03] good old Project A119.

[00:39:06] And of course,

[00:39:07] listeners of both The Uncover Up and My Nuclear Life should be familiar with this one.

[00:39:10] It was the American plan to nuke the moon.

[00:39:14] Now, ostensibly,

[00:39:15] it was so that scientists could do a visual analysis of the material that would have blown up off the moon's surface.

[00:39:20] But the real reasons for this were twofold.

[00:39:23] One,

[00:39:23] it would be an amazing flex on behalf of the Americans against the Soviets,

[00:39:28] who at that time were winning the space race.

[00:39:30] I mean,

[00:39:30] imagine just telling the Kremlin,

[00:39:32] hey,

[00:39:32] look up in the sky at 12 o'clock your time,

[00:39:34] and then,

[00:39:36] best flex ever.

[00:39:38] And two,

[00:39:39] there was some concern that the Soviets were planning on doing it too,

[00:39:42] and we couldn't have a moon nuking gap.

[00:39:46] So what we do in the present is we dig up those A119 plans,

[00:39:50] and we use a barrage of nuclear missiles to etch a happy face in the surface of the moon that faces us.

[00:39:57] Now,

[00:39:57] whatever happens down here,

[00:39:58] the happy face up in the sky should remain totally unmolested and undamaged.

[00:40:03] It would be almost inevitable that the future humans,

[00:40:06] having long forgotten the original method through which the face was carved there,

[00:40:10] will come up with several religions in which the moon face figures prominently.

[00:40:14] I mean,

[00:40:14] after all,

[00:40:15] it's always there.

[00:40:16] It shows up.

[00:40:17] It seems to affect the tide somehow.

[00:40:20] It's the most noticeable feature of the entire sky.

[00:40:23] It's clearly,

[00:40:25] demonstrably,

[00:40:26] human-esque in its countenance.

[00:40:28] And so it's going to be important to the people who are still here.

[00:40:31] Whatever the specifics of the religion they come up with are,

[00:40:34] when those future humans come across the horrifying destruction of the thing they consider the most eternal and impermeable,

[00:40:40] it will no doubt result in the appropriate feeling of dread and alarm.

[00:40:45] And if that doesn't keep the nosy little bastards away,

[00:40:48] nothing will.

[00:40:49] Thank you.