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Comment by kens | Hacker News Reader

There's a rather alarming photo of a Cobalt-60 source with the label "drop and run". This is a 3540-curie source (i.e. a lot). Someone did the calculations and figured if you followed the instructions quickly you'd probably survive.

https://www.lanl.gov/discover/publications/1663/2018-august/...

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Another related warning sign...

> On February 15, 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO)—adapted a new ionizing radiation warning symbol to supplement the traditional trefoil symbol. The new symbol, to be used on sealed radiation sources, is aimed at alerting anyone, anywhere to the danger of being close to a strong source of ionizing radiation.

> It depicts, on a red background, a black trefoil with waves of radiation streaming from it, along with a black skull and crossbones, and a running figure with an arrow pointing away from the scene.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Logo_iso_radiation.svg

More specifically, that graphic is reserved for use inside high-level radioactive sources, in locations that should normally never be seen. As such, most people who encounter it "in the wild" will never have seen it before, even on other surfaces of the equipment they're working with.

Interestingly, that could backfire. I've run into several people who point out that if they lacked context on it, it could be mistaken an angel smithing something else someone is running from, possibly leading some uninformed faithful person to see it as some sort of weapon for self defense.

I was rather amazed by the creative thinking required, but it did ram home the difficulty of getting an unequivocal, in ambiguous message across.

Most likely, that person isn't merely faithful but also in the midst of an acute psychotic break. And, yeah, they're going to be able to come up with some quite creative interpretations. The ideas you'll hear from these folks are wild, but to them, they're internally very logically consistent.

Imagine someone in that state, and they see a tattoo on their body of a "+" sign. Maybe that person normally just really likes math, and got a tattoo of the most unambiguous symbol to represent that that they could. It could take on a lot of different meanings in a psychotic episode, something like thinking there's a math and Christianity conspiracy/link, and maybe they think they had a bad childhood experience with the religion, so now anyone who supports math is part of that conspiracy, and obviously evil.

Something that basic and seemingly innocuous still has the potential send their mind spinning.

You might find "How to Send a Message 1,000 Years to the Future"[1] and "Expert judgment on markers to deter inadvertent human intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant"[2] pretty interesting.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/how-t...

[2] https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1279277/

That was in fact the exact thing we were talking about at the time during a Philosophy of Art course with regards to art as a medium of communication. Btw, in my original post smithing should have been smiting; but autocorrect.

I recall many guffaw from people at the time thatsucha project was even a subject of research, but every time I look back at code I haven't touched in 6 months or more, I tend to end up thinking about it again.

Id argue that the more obvious sign would be one in which all three drawings are present, but stacked vertically, with the radiation sign on top, followed by the death's head, but with an = sign between those two and no wavy arrow rays. Then below those two and their = sign, the person running with arrow. This would make it obvious that the radiation in the object means death and that running is extremely recommended. The triangle of graphics, with the radiation rays hitting both below almost seems to imply that X time is so deadly that you have no hope of escape even if you run.

I personally find equal style explanatory signs confusing. This might sound like a bad pun, but they literally don’t provide directions and I’d have to consider both expressions and it’s applicability w.r.t. situations and circumstances.

One example that comes off top of my head is Ubuntu installer disc’s “man = keyboard” sign.

I believe it is supposed to read “for universal access = hit any key on keyboard”, after seeing it for years, but for long I thought it could be “A keyboard is to hands and legs for a civilized person” or “use keyboard to see logs” or something.

I feel like that warning symbol isn't great. When you first look at it, you try to draw meaningful connections between the three items: radiation<->skull, skull<->person-running, radiation<->person-running, but what was intended was (radiation->skull)->leave immediately. A sign split in two, with (radiation->skull) on one half and a person running on the other might be clearer.

If anyone is wondering, I prefer blue paint on bike sheds.

Perfect clarity is difficult, but the IAEA (which designed that graphic) did their homework. The symbol was tested with 1,650 people from a wide variety of countries. I haven't been able to find details on their results, but I can't imagine they would have settled on this design if there were straightforward improvements to be made.

(With regard to your particular ideas, any graphical division between sections in the graphic could be misunderstood as a protective barrier against the danger represented by the skull. Wrong message entirely!)

And it's certain to be an improvement on the standard radioactivity symbol. In a global context, recognition of that symbol is poor -- it's frequently understood as a propeller or a flower.

This is a difficult problem. The US department of energy did a study on it awhile ago, but sadly the page was scrubbed a few years ago.

Fortunately, it was archived:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170910060455/http://www.wipp.e...

Some interesting excerpts:

>We decided against simple "Keep Out" messages with scary faces. Museums and private collections abound with such guardian figures removed from burial sites. These earlier warning messages did not work because the intruder knew that the burial goods were valuable.

>Note our use of irregular geometries and denial of craftsmanship. None of our designs uses any of the regular or "ideal" geometric forms, and only crude craftsmanship is sought, except for the precision of engraved messages. Why? the geometry of ideal forms, like squares and cubes, circles and spheres, triangles and pyramids is a fundamental human invention, a seeking of perfection in an imperfect world. Historically, people have used these ideal forms in places that embody their aspirations and ideals. In our designs, there is much irregularity both of forms and in their locations and directions, yet done by people with obvious knowledge of pure geometry. This shows as understanding of the ideal, but at the same time a deliberate shunning of it...suggesting we do not value this place, that it is not one that embodies our ideals.

>In short, to ensure the probability of success, the WIPP marker undertaking will have to be one of the greatest public works ventures in history.

>...it is largely a self-correcting process if anyone intrudes without appropriate precautions, and it seems unlikely that intrusion on such buried waste would lead to large-scale disasters. An analysis of the likely number of deaths over 10,000 years due to inadvertent intrusion should be conducted. This cost should be weighted against that of the marker system.

That study was for signage and messaging that could last for ten thousand years and work across cultures, i.e. a drastically different problem.

This thread is about industrial safety signage set in, and for, our current time and culture.

DROP AND RUN works, to some extent.

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