The easiest way to guarantee interest in something is to label it forbidden. Most people will make at least a cursory effort to avoid touching something marked Do Not Touch, but the populace is riddled with those whose curiosity or contrariness will lead them to climb electric fences and stick their hands through the bars to feed a caged lion. They’re very good in a revolution but at something of a disadvantage when confronted with, say, a stop sign. It’s an understandable flaw, even a noble one. Someone has to defy chiefs and kick open barriers. Someone had to be the first person to try to wander past the part of the map that said “here be dragons.”

Still, those people cause problems if you’re trying to keep them out for a good reason. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is a facility in New Mexico that is one of only a few places equipped to dispose of nuclear waste, making it imperative that anyone that stumbles upon the place is properly warned as to the dangerous materials contained within.

The WIPP faces a unique dilemma, however: it’s designed to keep its waste hidden away for 10,000 years, after which the radioactivity will have faded to safer levels. What happens if the people that stumble across what’s left of the WIPP (say, in a future where American civilization is non-contiguous) can’t speak English? What if they have no idea what the nuclear radiation hazard symbol means?

The panel convened to design the warnings dismissed a few solutions fairly quickly. Relying just on writing was a no-go, for obvious reasons, and “keep out” symbols would merely invite curious treasure hunters. Nor would they be deterred by guardian statues — similar constructions had been removed from ancient tombs, almost as a kind of treasure in and of themselves.

Any such warning, according to the panel, would have to communicate the following messages:

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.

What they settled on is a kind of an architectural psychological warfare.

One proposed design for the disposal site

Given time, a determined invader will break any lock or knock down any wall. We’re nothing if not persistent, and if we sense that there’s even the puniest treasure at stake, we’ll throw ourselves and others onto a forest of spears just to make sure someone else doesn’t get it first. Physical discomfort is irrelevant — put the thing you’re trying to protect above an active volcano and someone will walk a flame-resistant tightrope to get it.

Mental discomfort, however, is another thing entirely. Anyone who’s been near a certain type of building knows how certain types of design can entirely change the mood of the surrounding area. There’s a housing complex on my way to a friend’s house in Hartford that seems to have been laid out by a sociopath — dark blocky buildings with small, barred windows separated by vast and treeless common areas. They’re clearly inhabited, but I’ve never seen anyone outside. It’s like the houses are sanctuaries against the complex itself. It makes me profoundly uncomfortable every time I drive past, like it’s actively hostile to life.

Imagine trying to dig for treasure in a place like this:

Another proposed design

Claustrophobic hallways (perhaps as narrow as five feet across), blocks of forbidding stone, and a fence spikes impaling themselves into your mind’s eye. The very geometry of the land would war against you the moment you stepped foot in it, like a Euclidean version of one of H.P. Lovecraft’s nightmare cities.

If you were a superstitious human of AD 12,000, stumbling upon the tattered remains of the WIPP, and you were greeted by that, you might very well steer clear. There’s no need for a “Keep Out” sign in a place like that. It’s a clawed hand beckoning from an open door in a ruined house. You can come in if you want, but you might not make it out alive.