AN ATOMIC PRIESTHOOD!

 I heard something interesting on the radio the other day. Well, at least I thought so.

Being a fan of eco-dramas like Edge of Darkness and Chimera I was intrigued by Half Lives, an upcoming radio play about nuclear waste. At its heart is the tension between a scientist and a linguist struggling with the challenge of keeping future generations away from the buried peril.

Even more fascinating is the real challenge this September play emulates, how can nuclear waste and spent fuel sites remain prohibitive to human intervention for thousands and thousands of years as the deadly waste slowly decays. Put simply, don't mine here!

It turns out that teams across the world; scientists, artists, linguists, have come together to wrestle with this very conundrum, perhaps the longest-lasting of anything humans are doing.

As a simple sign worked work - future humanity may not be able to read - far more abstract things are being looked at; the hieroglyphs of Egypt, the symbology of different coloured cats and the hand paintings of the Aboriginal world and more critically, their eon-spanning oral tradition.

For me the most intriguing of the ideas is a religion, an Atomic Priesthood, because religion has proven itself to carry a message successfully over vast periods of time.

Sounds like the Jedi! 

or just give the whole job to Project SWORD!

How would you warn future humanity against drilling into our nuclear dumps?