A secret society dedicated to the protection of the secrets of the holy grail. They attempt to foil Indiana Jones and the Nazis.

Either that or a series of booby traps like in Raiders of the Lost Ark or the Goonies.

Yes I am fully aware that these are all FICTION. Just some thoughts on how absurd the concept is of trying to keep people out of an area over the ages.

It also draws thoughts of the Darwin awards to mind. It doesn’t matter HOW many warning labels or obvious drawbacks a decision has. There is ALWAYS someone that is willing to ignore them to satisfy their curiosity, greed, or ego.

If the curse of the Pharaohs was actually inscribed on the tomb entrances, do you honestly think that it would have kept scientists, researchers, and grave robbers away from the tombs? ( I do realize that the curse was a media fabrication, but I believe that the concept applies here).

If the society that we are trying to communicate with IS more advanced or equivalent to ours, then the warnings would be simple and would likely be effective.

If the society is LESS advanced, then I would imagine that the human flaws of curiosity, greed, or ego would come into play and the lessons would unfortunately have to be learned “the hard way” with a few corpses to instill fear of the area having to be made. This would be akin to a real life “Curse of the Pharaohs”.

That way if people in the future find the cave, the first the will see are the cavepaintings, showing death and suffering caused by a strange black rock, if the continue they will find what they will think is a prat of the material surrounded by serveral skeletons trying to get away from it.

However, I do see a problem with havning the black rock and the seletons there, sooner or later someone will realize that the black rock isn’t dangerous, which will lead to they ignoring all the warnings…

This is difficult….

Because its waste, and it kills people.

Human civilization will get that and stay the hell away.

I have to agree with the suggestion that skull’n'bones symbols are pretty universal… unless humanity has been completely wiped out in a few thousand years, and whatever has evolved/arrived to poke around the site bears no resemblance to use whatsoever – advanced arthropods, perhaps, in/from a mammal-less world, who may be unaware that creatures were once around whose hard bits were on the inside..?

Build the facility to be as hardened as possible, of course, and provide a paragraph (as suggested) in various languages explaining what lies beneath. If the society that finds it is not very advanced, then perhaps they will take heed of the skulls and save themselves the arduous task of breaking the seals. On the other hand, if the society that finds one of these sites is advanced, it may take them long enough to break the seals that they may complete their translations in time to understand the dangers before they begin.

As well as natural languages and basic symbols, I imagine it would be worthwhile including various symbols and diagrams depicting the nature of the materials interred. If the society that finds a site is sufficiently advanced enough to pose a risk to the seals, they should also be scientifically adept enough to translate, for instance, a diagram of an atom (with appropriate details of nucleus, neutron/proton count, and electron orbits).

Then again, that last suggestion is predicated on the presumption that a future society comes to the same basic conclusions regarding the nature of matter prior to digging up the site, and that our own interpretation/representation of an atom’s structure bears appropriate similarities to theirs.

I expect a little scientific symbology, basic numerical representations, and a number of skulls would be enough to convey the danger.

On the other hand, as I think has been mentioned, it only takes a handful of grave robbers with explosives to knock holes in a few walls without paying heed to the signs, and I’m sure that the properties of explosives can be utilised long before the underlying chemistry is understood- we were messing around with things that go bang long before we dismissed the ridiculous notion that lead could be turned into gold via chemical transmutation, so it stands to reason that future visitors may have the means to explore without the knowledge to understand.

I like the idea of throwing the waste into the sun, like some humongous disposal furnace… the only issue just happens to be the impracticality of getting millions of tons of radioactive waste off the ground in the first place – the energy requirements are unthinkable! By the time we’ve figured out a way of doing it practically, we’re going to be up to our knees in waste, so we’re still going to have to bury the stuff in the mean time, with appropriate warnings just in case we manage to blow ourselves up before we start shipping this stuff out.

I expect that anything thrown into the sun though, especially the heavier substances we really want rid of, could be dismissed from our thoughts forever. In the unlikely event that some might be dispersed rather than being dragged to the core, I imagine it would be so thinly spread as to be of no consequence. We’re continuously bombarded by cosmic rays and solar winds to which a lump of radiating waste is little more than a fart in the wind.

…and it’s all good until we uncover some previously-unknown or under-estimated mechanism of astro-physics that leaves a prematurely dead sun as our lasting legacy. At least our planetary grave will glow a little less in the dark.

#77 has the Sun-launching idea mostly correct (lots of misinformation elsewhere just stung my eye so… Although there is bit more stuff in solar system than he said, the Sun is still BIG)
-if tl;dr: too dangerous, too expensive to send to the Sun

However he thinks pictographs/language would be understood-not probable:
#66 has nice example
-pictographs/language would NOT be understood/would NOT repel from digging, has not happened so far and will not happen (every “cursed” tomb has been opened). Nobody knows even one neanderthal language now.

#89 has nice link (Physics professor), although a little too positive probability calculations in my opinion. Then again, some countries have different stuff (see 112) to dump.

#106 has digging-problems (loved steam-shovel), but really primitive civilizations did dig really deep

#112 very nice horror(reality)-film, I strongly recommend, great mood etc… Best film in any category I’ve seen in years. And it also states stuff not noted in many places. Watch it !

I loved the idea to put some nerve gas or something else fast-acting toxic (if it keeps that long) just to kill first few before they get to the “slowly killing” stuff.
I wonder why many seem to think there will be another civilization if we don’t make it “to stars”. Lake-iron has been used, oil has been used for a long time to come, most ores near surface have been used (and no digging without easily-findable ore) etc… Also, see dark ages and watch out-this time we don’t have another country to help us if we fall on our knees.

Sorry, I don’t dump any sources; too long already.