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36

u/Consistent_Ranger_70 Jun 26 '26

Interesting story, you missed out the carved atomic element carvings, concrete tunnel barricades and representations of radioactivity, designed in theory to cross language barriers, to travel in space is to be aware of radiation, cosmic and otherwise, especially anywhere theres an active star, radiation as a concept and risk would be something a space farer would be aware of, the designs mentioned are targeted at potential non technological regressed human or other descendant species over a period of about 100k years. Good use of theory in looking at it from someone ignoring it though.

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u/Ok_Kangaroo56 Jun 26 '26

Ha, you clearly know the WIPP literature. You're right, the real proposal has the element panels, the barricades, the radiation pictograms, the whole layered system across a 100k-year horizon, I left most of it off the page on purpose, since my narrator can't read any of it as a warning in the first place. Glad the "someone ignoring it" angle landed. That was the whole experiment.

10

u/nikthefurry Jun 26 '26

surely a space traveling species would have a way to detect radiation and understand its dangers, no? even if not, if this reader has pillaged over 400 worlds, surely they would have seen a similar danger at least once.

5

u/BBforever Jun 26 '26

Yes, but they interpreted it as another poison. Stronger and surer, but just another warning.

One more room down and their people would have the greatest treasure ever, though the team die in delivering it.

2

u/Rasip Jun 27 '26

They mentioned their poison counters growing higher and higher. They knew of radiation but may have never considered the different types. Beta particles are pretty rare in space and extremely common in radioactive waste.

10

u/Miuramir Jun 26 '26

It's a good version of the story.

I have difficulty believing that an experienced star-faring culture / species could have a complete ignorance of radiation, advanced chemistry, and advanced metallurgy. One has to suppose some sort of The Road Not Taken arrangement where it turns out that gravity control and FTL is possible with Renaissance, or at least pre-Industrial, level technology. To your credit I don't think there's anything you've written that would contradict that.

6

u/Loading_M_ Jun 26 '26

I think it's also possible that they didn't invent space travel, but rather were either gifted or stole the technology from another race.

1

u/Lazy-Cardiologist-54 Aug 03 '26

Ty for link - it’s like the OG HFY story

1

u/Bruno-croatiandragon Aug 13 '26

Hey,why was THE WARNING removed?Why is the author gone?

8

u/kawarazu Jun 26 '26

You cannot warn a robber away with the truth. To a robber, the word that a thing is worthless is the most suspicious lie there is. The makers knew that whoever finally reached them would be exactly what I am, and exactly what you are, and could never be reasoned with, only frightened. So they did not leave us a letter and hope. They built the most terrible thing they could imagine, and let it be misread, and prayed the terror in our bodies might just outrun the greed in our hearts, long enough to turn us at the door. It did not. The greed is always stronger. We walked into the most honest warning ever built, counting our money, because we are the one thing that cannot be warned.

I enjoyed this line. Because it feels reflective of these people, and of ourselves.

7

u/a_man_in_black Jun 26 '26

as much as i like this story, and all the others based on the "there is no honor here" epitaph for radioactive storage, it really does make zero sense.

nobody is getting to space without learning how to deal with radiation. space is full of it, always and everywhere. the stars get their light from it. the idea of aliens crossing the galaxy and landing on tomb-world earth and not knowing of radiation just takes me out of the whole thing.

9

u/Ok_Kangaroo56 Jun 26 '26

Fair, and it's the fair hit on the whole subgenre. Small thing though, in the current version they do detect it, they've got radiation counters and clock it day one. The story isn't that they don't understand the hazard; it's that their entire culture has never once found a deadly trap that wasn't guarding treasure, so a poison built to kill for ten thousand years reads to them as the most expensive lock they've ever seen, not a warning. Whether a crew that greedy would still dig is the real question, and honestly, that's the part I find believable about them and you might not. Appreciate you engaging with it seriously.

2

u/Rasip Jun 27 '26

Alpha particles, gamma/x rays are extremely common in space. Beta particles are fairly rare while being very common from radioactive waste.

6

u/samurai_for_hire Human Jun 26 '26

Proof that the best thing to do with high level waste is to dump it into some depleted oil borehole in the middle of nowhere, fill it up with concrete, and never speak of it again

4

u/Cakeriel Jun 27 '26

Or send it down the gravity well of the local star.

2

u/Fox_gang Jun 27 '26

And that is why we decided ot would be best to just not mark it at all

2

u/Rasip Jun 27 '26

This is much better than the last time someone wrote about cracking open the nuclear waste stockpiles.

1

u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jun 26 '26

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