Letter: Post-apocalyptic world and Yucca

Saturday, July 14, 2007 | 7:05 a.m.

Alan Weisman's new book about a post-human world, "The World Without Us," is compelling. Although the book doesn't mention Yucca Mountain, it forced me to consider how we can communicate to post-nuclear holocaust creatures to stay away from Yucca Mountain, if a nuclear dump is built there.

All articles I've ever seen about plaques at Yucca Mountain assume a literate creature is reading them. What, though, if the creature is a Neanderthal-type that now peers at us through museum glass? How do we communicate to it the lethality of a Yucca Mountain repository?

Putting fences around Yucca would do no good because those evaporate in a nuclear blast. How do we protect that creature from the killing radiation at Yucca Mountain? Or do we care?

Ron Bourgoin, Rocky Mount, N.C.