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?
This 2000 AD Annual 1980 was part of a large lot of books that came my way last month.
I was never a 2000 AD reader but I now appreciate the effort and following of the comic that emerged in the decaying end of the Seventies.
Browsing through I was attracted to the reds of Dan Dare.
I saw this plastic key fob on auction and instantly thought of our friend the Wombat.
The World Council received word from NASA that traces of marine life had been detected by Apollo 111 on the Jovian moon, Europa.
Tri-SpaceX was alerted and sent a Salvage Craft to investigate. Capable of pelagic landing, sub-aquatic video and animal salvage, the craft touched down on the ice blue waters of the moon.
Incredibly, the crew managed to photograph what appeared to be immense ocean-going Plesiosaurs, the first life-forms discovered since disturbing the dust bats in the caves of our own moon by Apollo 11, a fact not reported at the time.
The Tri-SPACEX crew were also able to briefly film one, which they nicknamed the 'Predator X', directly below their floating craft. It was far far more hostile than first reported by NASA.
This was the last communication received from the crew. The craft was not heard from again. A rescue mission is underway.
It is called Project SWORD sent in to rescue SpaceX. Godspeed.
