The late U.S. semiotics researcher Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001) was a professor at Indiana University when he proposed the establishment of an "atomic priesthood" in a report he submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy in 1984.
The problem Sebeok was asked by the department to address was this : How do we warn future generations of the extreme danger of highly radioactive nuclear waste buried deep in underground storage sites ? Should someone dig up the waste at a later date, unaware of the (…)