Nuclear semiotics

DANGER
This place is a message, and part of a system of messages, pay attention to it!
Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor, no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here nothing valued is here.
What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location. It increases toward a center. The center 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.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
 
Over the past decades, man has accumulated tons of radioactive waste, whether it be from bombs, bomb testing, or plants to make bombs, and since radioactive waste can't stop unashamedly showering everything around it with unwanted photons, our descendants will have to face the mistakes of the past, lest they threaten the future. Sadly, we cannot predict what will happen thousands of years into the future, and we cannot be sure whether our descendants can properly deal with the radioactive baggage that their idiotic ancestors have hoarded. As such, nuclear semiotics is needed to warn future humans of the dangers of radioactive waste, and why they should avoid it.
Nuclear semiotics was created in 1981 by a group of "engineers, anthropologists, nuclear physicists, behavior scientists and others" hired by the U.S Department of Energy and Bechtel Corp. The Human Interference Task Force as they were called, were hired to figure out ways to tell of the dangers of radioactive waste to our descendants, and they had to face several problems involved with communicating messages through long time spans. No one can guarantee that any institution would still exist to preserve scientific knowledge of nuclear radiation, and languages and writing spoken today could already be illegible thousands of years into the future; the language of the Sumerians has yet to be fully understood, as it existed many years ago. Three main ideas had to be expressed in the message sent to the future: that it is a message at all, that in a certain location dangerous material is stored, and information about the type of the dangerous substances stored there. The Human Interference Task Force formed several ideas that could be implemented to spread the message of the dangers of nuclear waste depositories, such as...
==A Sign!==
The first idea thought of, and the most obvious, is to throw up a sign and call it a day. Surely our inept descendants will be dissuaded by a giant "bugger off" sign? Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. Language has evolved over thousands of years, and despite the clamor of condescending pilkunnussija, language will continue to evolve. It would be foolish to assume that the English we speak will be the same as the English our descendants will, or that English will survive at all. Even worse is the subjectivity of symbols and signs in our modern world. We all know what the sign above the intro paragraph means, as these symbols have been constantly hammered in our receptive minds for years, but what of our descendants? A radioactive symbol would look only like a circle surrounded by three trapezoids to our future descendants, nothing more, nothing else. Who today will teach humanity the meaning of these symbols that we use to repel to future humans? Unless someone pioneers a sign that automatically kicks someone in the groin for getting too close, the usage of giant signs will have to be rejected for Nuclear semiotics.
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==The Atomic Priesthood!==
One idea proposed by the task force was the Atomic Priesthood. No, it wasn't a crime fighting team of mutated Bishops, but a panel of experts that would tell future generations of the dangers of radiation. Over the years, the experts (or "priests") in the Atomic Priesthood would be replaced by others, passing the knowledge of radiation over many thousands of years. The Priests would gain popularity and prominence for their secrets of the ancient past, and would tell others mythical stories about the dangers of nuclear waste. Religion has existed for thousands of years, and converting radiation safety into a religious magistrate espousing the dangers of gamma rays makes perfect sense as a means of assuring longevity of the message, but not so much as a means of preserving human dignity.
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==Green, Glowing Cats!==
Cats have been humans' no.2 animal companion for hundreds of years, and hopefully for many more hundreds of years to come. Excluding a disastrous cat pandemic which causes a massive cat genocide, these furry felines will be with humanity in future generations. Another idea (which uses the species' longevity) proposed by the Human Interference Task Force is to use the humble cat as a means to spread knowledge of dangerous radiation, rather than just annoying ticks. Other than the possibility of recreating a feline version of A Boy and his Dog, cats also have the startling advantage of being cute, cuddly, and genetically modifiable. The cats' DNA could be changed to glow when near radiation, and act as a sort of living Geiger counter. Mimicking Egyptian mythology, the "powers" of the cat would be revered through rituals, myths, songs, and carefully orchestrated dance.
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==Atomic Flowers!==
Since man discovered he could grow plants without using the spilled blood of wanton sacrificing, flowers have remained in humanity's heart as a symbol for whatever he sees fit at the moment. In different cultures, flowers represent life, death, fertility, the ideal Japanese woman, birth, enlightenment, girl power, private parts, unrequited love, or anything else that has little to nothing to do with actual flowers. Exploiting the flower's penchant for unnecessary symbolism, we can stuff even more meaning into the humble flower using genetic engineering. Genetically modified Flowers would be planted around nuclear waste sites, and their DNA would contain encoded data about the location and the dangers of radiation. The flowers would reproduce and multiply, as would its message trapped deep inside its genome. Or, you could hang a sign. Much less complicated than arranging codons to code for a protein that when deciphered says "go away".
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==In Conclusion!==
Through the years, as man advanced technologically and sociologically, the dangers of his creations have still lingered below the ground. Humanity, great and triumphant our species may be, is still foolish when examining its history. Countless wars and decades of brutal violence have ravaged our planet, yet what do we have to show for this? Toxic sludge held underneath the Earth? A landfill of the consequences of human error? Perhaps, nuclear semiotics could be a way for us to warn our future selves of our errors, or maybe just a way to redeem ourselves in the eyes of our hopefully more enlightened successors. The radioactive graves we have made could at least signal a simple "we fucked up your world, don't make our mistakes". Either way, we must protect our descendants from the blunders of the past, yet trying to do so is going to take some time; we don't have much of an idea of a way to communicate to our future descendants that isn't batshit insane, as you probably already know. But, if you think of it in a very cynical manner, we have till the end of the world to find out. Thank you for your time.
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