An Alert Unlike Any Other

Their report combines dry analysis and projections worthy of sci-fi disaster films, including massive climate change and feminist corporations that disbelieve WIPP warnings because they were written by men. Civilization is so interdependent and fragile, one panelist grimly noted, "that any massive global catastrophe might lead to reversion to at least a preindustrial era." Greed or desperation could give rise to legends that WIPP holds buried treasure -- apparently confirmed by surface warnings to keep out.

In a sense, they're right. Oil and gas deposits lie thousands of feet below the plant. In 100 or 5,000 years, an energy-poor government, company or gasoline-addicted tribe in a ruined society, like those depicted in the film "The Road Warrior," could adopt a "drill first, ask questions later" policy -- piercing the repository and pulling death to the surface.

Others predicted the invention of self-guided robotic "mole miners" that would penetrate the site from the side or below. In a scenario set in the year 11991, robotic slaves are infected with a computer virus that compels them to override their safety programming as they compulsively drill and construct mine shafts.

Opportunities for WIPP to fail, the experts agreed, are limited only by the imagination.

The government formed a separate panel of scientists, linguists and artists to create a warning scheme to counter the pessimistic projections. That group immediately rejected digital or paper records -- only a solution cast in stone could hope to solve a problem for the ages.

If Egyptian pyramids have lasted more than 5,000 years, today's monuments should fare better -- if built from prosaic materials, such as ultra-hard concrete. Scavengers stripped the pyramids bare for their once-shimmering marble skins.

The trefoil symbol for radioactive material might seem a natural alternative to text, but experts doubt that it will be understood by future societies any better than today's English. Consider the swastika, first used on pottery by European tribes in 4000 BC. It was adopted by ancient Troy and later became a holy icon of Hinduism. When the Nazis claimed it, the symbol became widely reviled.

The panelists also considered the plaque on the 1972 Pioneer space probe, now headed for deep space. It pictures a nude man and woman, a schematic drawing of the craft escaping our solar system and a basic interstellar map. They soon rejected it as a model, said Jon Lomberg, an artist who designed the plaque with the late astronomer Carl Sagan.