Future Peril

[stickmaker]

 

"Through your collective efforts you finally force the massive door open. Beyond, stretching far past the reach of your lanterns, is a dark, silent tunnel. However, it is not completely featureless. In the distance you see something. As your eyes adjust you realize it is a glowing skull and crossbones."

 

Congratulations. Your role-playing group of atechnical future primitives have just found an ancient radioactive waste repository. :-)

Comments

[stickmaker]

Just because something is radiologically safe doesn't mean it's chemically safe. :-)

Sounds like someone was tickling the dragon's tail.

Anyway, the scenario was sparked by a recent memory of me asking several technically savvy people - including some nuclear physicists - how to build a warning sign which would last for multiple thousands of years. (I should have known better. They sent me _equations_... :-) Yes, I still have the document I made with their replies.) The original idea was signs in an alien base which are glowing even though the power failed tens of thousands of years before.

[kengr]

Yeah, the squib explosion bit is something they narrowly avoided while tickling the dragons tail. The guy who knocked things apart with his bare hands when the screwdriver slipped got a really nasty dose of radiation.

The bit with the shelving happened but it was pure "we didn't think of that".

If you are creating a booby trap on purpose, a couple of sub-critical plates on either side of a doorway would work nicely.

Most long term storage protocols involve vitrifying the stuff or otherwise making it chemically inert.

Of course, all bets are off if the primitives decide to do something with the "pretty colored glass".

Something they actually *made* back in the 50s were emergency lights that used radioisotopes to either ionize gas (sort of like a neon light with no electricity) or light up a phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb.

We've had some fun discussions on the TML about derelict starships and ancient bases.

One fun bit is that unless they use some really odd electronics (like TIMMs) nothing will work because over that long a time span the dopants will have migrated across the PN junctions rendering the semiconductor based stuff unusable.

Similar things apply to optical circuitry and quantum "chips".

But the emergency lighting might still work if you had the right mix of radioisotopes.

btw, there's a "high tech" booby trap that could be built with bronze age tech.

Ever see the experiment where dripping water is used to charge a couple of hollow metal cylinders until a spark jumps?

It could be scaled up and some crude capacitors added.

Then anybody who walks between the metal plates gets "hit by lightning".