10K

Sandia Report

SAND92-1382

Aerial view of a desert with hand-drawn markings, a dotted square outline, and various scrawled labels

In 1990, Sandia National Laboratories gathered two teams of scientists, linguists, and artists and issued them a challenge: create a marking system capable of lasting until the year 12,000 A.D., warning future civilizations to stay away from the nuclear waste buried beneath the hot New Mexico sands.

The rest is history.

The challenge

Introduction