At Yucca Mountain, where nuclear waste will remain stored for over 1,000,000 years, the issue is how to create a warning durable enough to last for that long. The answer is in diversification:

We have looked very closely at what WIPP is doing—the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. They did a study with futurists and other people-sociologists and language specialists. They decided to come up with markers in seven languages, basically like a Rosetta Stone, with the idea that there will always be someone in the world who studies ancient languages, even 10,000 years from now, someone who will be able to resurrect what the meanings of these stelae are. They will basically say, “This is not a place of honor, don’t dig here, this is not good material,” etc.

New problems, classic solutions (via Kottke). One of my students at Parsons arrived at the same solution earlier this year when I put the challenge to my Experimental Typography class. Project description here.

Discover Magazine’s 10+1 rules for time travelers:

0) There are no paradoxes.
1) Traveling into the future is easy.
2) Traveling into the past is hard — but maybe not impossible.
3) Traveling through time is like traveling through space.
4) Things that travel together, age together.
5) Black holes are not time machines.
6) If something happened, it happened.
7) There is no meta-time.
8) You can’t travel back to before the time machine was built.
9) Unless you go to a parallel universe.
10) And even then, your old universe is still there.

(via Buzzfeed).

Above: Yoshi Hozumi researched the ancient practice of salting the earth in her response. She presented her findings in a chapbook along with renderings of the barren strip she proposed salting at the outskirts of the site.

The following was broadcast on an NPR news report:

In 2002, [Desert Space Foundation Director Josh] Abbey created a design competition to find a permanent warning sign for the proposed nuclear waste site [in Yucca Mountain, Nevada]. The purpose of the competition, he says, is to find a universal warning sign which conveys that the deposit is highly dangerous. One caveat: the symbols have to work even if language or communication breaks down in the future. And the design has to last at least 10,000 years.

Take a moment to consider this design challenge. Then, respond to it in whatever manner you feel is most appropriate.

This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It was inspired by several projects from the Long Now Foundation.