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from the How-About-Colour-Changing...People? dept.
Recently on Last Week Tonight John Oliver discussed the problem of nuclear waste storage, which despite a number of attempts to designate a central storage site is still stored in "temporary" sites throughout the US.
The idea of a central nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain was raised again. However one additional problem, highlighted by a consultation in 1981 by the US Department of Energy, was how to design radiation warnings which could be understood tens of thousands of years into the future even though language, culture, and iconography may undergo significant changes.
And on that note, here's an old guardian article on how colour-changing cats might be the solution.
In 1984, writer Françoise Bastide and semiotician Paolo Fabbri suggested the answer could lie in breeding animals that "react with discoloration of the skin when exposed" to radiation. "[Their] role as a detector of radiation should be anchored in cultural tradition by introducing a suitable name (eg, 'ray cat')."
And following up on that is the project The Ray Cat Solution, in conjunction with Bricobio, the Montréal biology maker community:
New Hampshire Institute of Art's Type 1 class has joined forces with Bricobio and The Raycat Solution to help insert Raycats into the cultural vocabulary.
While Bricobio works towards genetically altering cats so they change color when in the presence of radioactive material, the NHIA Type 1 class is working to insert the idea that if a cat changes color, that space might be dangerous to others.
There is an associated film on the subject on Vimeo.
Originally spotted through the 99% Invisible Episode "Ten Thousand Years"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 27 2017, @09:55AM
So we associate the colour change of those rats with rays, and therefore danger. Let's assume the tales get told over the generations as intended.
However every tale that gets told over generations inevitably morph. So maybe in ten thousand years, the story goes as follows:
You should always take care of ray cats, as they have the ability to kill humans with deadly invisible rays. Normally they are just amicable beings, but when they are endangered, they will have no hesitation to kill. Fortunately there is one sure indication that this will happen: If they are angered enough to kill, their colour will change.
One day, the colour of the cats will change because of a leak. There will be two groups of people: One group will try to please those cats, so they lose their anger. The other group will try to kill off all those cats, as they are clearly a danger to humans. No group will avoid the area the cats were in because the knowledge that it is the area which sends the rays, and not the cats, was lost. When humans start dying because of the radiation, both groups will accuse each other of being responsible: The ray cat huggers will claim that the ray cat killers are responsible because they are angering those cats even more by trying to kill them, while the ray cat killers will claim the ray cat huggers are responsible because they protect those cats, who then can go on killing humans with their invisible rays. Probably they'll even fight each other for the sake of humanity, causing even more dead humans.
Actually that sounds like great story material.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.