return to article listing...

Sunday Things - nuclear wasteland edition

posted in Links by Cargo Cult on Sunday March 19 2017

Prompted by no recent events whatsoever, here's a guide to nuclear wastelands of various types - and the apocalyptic events that might trigger them.

"We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when..."

Hello, you either have plugins turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

These recently declassified nuclear test videos are utterly mesmerizing, terrifying - the Lawrence Livermore National Lab is posting previously unseen nuclear test footage on YouTube. An aside: US nuclear test code names are brilliantly peculiar, and a vast source of computer names.

Protect and Survive

Hello, you either have plugins turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player.

Protect and Survive - the British means of surviving the thermonuclear apocalypse involved piling suitcases full of earth on angled wooden doors nailed to the floor. Brilliantly (and unintentionally) creepy, and miles away from the can-do Fallout attitude of US shelter construction.
This place is not a place of honour - no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Excerpts from Expert Judgement on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - I don't think I've linked to this already? Whatever, it's one of my favourite things ever, and you may note elements of it leaking into my level design in the past. A treatise on guarding future cultures from stored nuclear waste, some of the language is magnificent. The danger is in a particular location... it increases toward a centre... the centre of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us. The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.

Bonus No Really This Isn't An ARG corner:

  • What links these places? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Article comments (now closed)

D's gravatar

1. Into Eternity

Posted by D at 9:17AM, Sunday March 19 2017

If you've not yet seen it, you may be interested the documentary "Into Eternity".

Pace's gravatar

2. Sunday of good things

Posted by Pace at 2:36PM, Sunday March 19 2017

That spike field looks familiar, the land beyond the portal in Minerva? Actually I seem to remember those spikes from 'Someplace Else' as well? (I deserve acolyte of the decade if I'm right).
That excerpt was great, they should convene committees of academics to do science fiction. Very Jack Vance-ish.

Bonus 'It's a small world' corner: Dieter Ast from Team A was on my PhD committee. Smart guy, and a bit scary.

I don't know what links those places.
..but I must know!

Cargo Cult's gravatar

3. Re: Into Eternity, Sunday of good things

Posted by Cargo Cult at 10:23PM, Wednesday March 22 2017

D: I saw it a few years ago. Definitely tickled the 'deep time' part of my brain (see also: The Clock of the Long Now, etc.) - thinking in timescales beyond normal human comprehension.

Pace: I can't actually remember if Someplace Else was influenced by the proposed WIPP architecture, but it may not have been? I found the mention in NTK (which, blimey, has been gone completely for a decade) of the WIPP stuff which *may* be where I found it first, but it's from 2003. And Someplace Else is from 2002.

But that land beyond the portal in MINERVA? Most definitely! As with aspects deep underground in Portal 2...

The location puzzle? Born of insomnia and watching too much old telly on YouTube. I realised I could specifically locate a series of places from the vaguest of descriptions. Definitely original research. But of what?

Pace's gravatar

4. I am helpless in the face of a puzzle

Posted by Pace at 6:53PM, Thursday March 23 2017

I now have some late night YouTubing to do as well it seems..Rough science.. shall check it out.

Article is now closed for commenting.

return to article listing...