When the princesses receive word of a mysterious illness breaking out at an archaeological survey site in the Badlands, they send Twilight, Spike, and Starlight to investigate. They find a bizarre sequence of markers, signs, and hints left long before pony civilisation as they know it, leading the way to place long forgotten by history. Together, the ponies must uncover their meaning, before an ancient evil from a past not even remembered by ponies leaves its mark on the future.
Thanks to Alden MacManx for proof reading.
Featured 31/10 - 05/11/21
Chapters (1)
10,000 years would be plenty of time for the radioactive levels to decrease significantly, depending on the half-life of the material.
Even before reading I KNEW exactly where this was going, and I was right. Very well done.
11032657
i mean they could only realy guess the time scale and there is also the possiblity that magic could have made it worse or there was alot more or since the only year we got is 2030 something could have appered after the present that is more dangerus?
One of my thoughts on the nevada repository was that by putting it in the center of the old nevada proving ground, you're already having to wade through a lot of sickness inducing radioactive leftovers to break into the place. Its not great but its in a location that should never be very inhabitable. The finish put their repository in a vault so far away that people would have to have sophisticated sailing technology to even reach the island, then have to figure out there was something there as their plan is not to leave anything on the surface, and completely fill the vault with clay and cement. will that stop someone? i don't really know, oak island is a thing precicely because of this, but then if you're able to break into the vault its thought you'll be of a level of sophistication high enough to appreciate the radiation. The real biggest danger is leaving any high level radiation sources abandoned. there's been too many incidents where people in our age have been killed by playing with the magic looking glowing sources. I don't know how we get to a future where we've forgotten about radioactivity without leaving these horrible things on the surface waiting to be discovered. the good thing is pretty much all of the high energy sources we have are short lived in the sense that after 100 years if someone cracked open a can of cobalt-60 it probably wouldn't be anything but nickel. Radioactive waste is funny like that. the highly refined stuff of the last 60 years is either going to be contained in repositories or has a short half life, its the more natural stuff from the pre-atomic age like Curie's radium covered notebooks that still pose a hazard today because they're much more long lived
wow a awesome story. Happy Halloween to one and all.
11032657
normally i would say that 10.000 years is about right for half life , but who know for sure. only time will answer that question.
Weren't the corridors planned to be blown up afterward to properly bury the nuclear waste?
I knew EXACTLY what this was about the second I read the summary. Good story and I'm glad to hear it was resolved easily. I'm guessing ponies are probably more resistant to it or perhaps those who were affected were just lucky.
Twilight accidentally stumbled on the solution right near the end but didn't realise it: Crystal Empire this thing and send it somewhere guaranteed to be uninhabited for the necessary period.
Like the sun.
I can't help but compare this with The Writing On The Wall, which remains one of my favorite dark stories on this site. The narrative here feels more scattered. I enjoyed the tour of different possible warning systems and greater attention to technical details, but I think it hurts the story qua a story.
11033034
10,000 years is the estimated time frame for the radiohazard to return to essentially natural levels (think uranium ore). If you have a fair bit of time to kill, the original report is interesting reading.
11033122
Not exactly. The plan was to seal the waste by just...not supporting the tunnels. Salt is a pretty malleable rock so it should seal itself up in a matter of decades. This self-sealing capability is also useful for avoiding leaks and a major reason that they opted to build in a salt deposit.
This story was amazing. Such a great 'what-if'. I can't believe fanfiction like this is free.
I seem to remember a previous story that had smiliar only it involved Daring Do dying of radiation poisoning
11032657 It does depend greatly on the material. The Scandinavian repositories are intended to keep everything bottled up for 100,000 just to be safe. And then there are places like Chernobyl. The estimated time it will take for Reactor No.4 to become safe exceeds the sum total history of our species.
11032676 Ah, praise from my most ardent critic.
Glad you enjoyed it, Vaalintine. 
11032846 There seems two be schools of thought on this front, either scare people away so no one comes near it, or make it so hard to reach that the civilisation will need to be advanced enough to cope. What terrifies me is that you have people in the contemporary world ignorant of radioactivity, such as in the Goiania incident. With poor sods smashing open a containment vessel, thinking the blue glow was magical and a poor kid using the caesium powder as body glitter for fun.
11033122 I did deviate from reality a bit here for the sake of story, but as has been said, I think the place is designed to effectively bury itself over time. Doesn't necessarily stop curious book horses from digging it up though.
11033298 Depending on the dose and physiology, ARS isn't necessarily a game over. I didn't go into all the details because it would just slow down the story. Although, if you want an additional dose of horror, remember that ARS has a latency period.
To quote Legasov; 'The immediate effects subside, the patient appears to be recovering. Healthy even. But they aren't. Then the cellular damage begins to manifest. The bone marrow dies. The immune system fails. The organs and soft tissue begin to decompose. The arteries and veins spill open like sieves, to the point that you can't even administer morphine for the pain which is...unimaginable.' Luckily, I'm not twisted enough to write about ponies going through that. 
11033356 I actually hadn't come across this, so thanks for the link. This story definitely does focus more on the systems. I was angling for a sort of 'Nothing is Scarier' trope in that sense, at least until the explanation is found. But it was more examining the question of what do we do, rather the horror.
See also: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/42409/1/the-writing-on-the-wall/the-writing-on-the-wall
For a given amount of the material, the more radioactive it is, the less time it is dangerous (because it decays faster, half life is lower). Of course, putting lots and lots of not very radioactive waste in one place will make that place dangerous forever.
Some of the more radioactive nuclear waste can be reprocessed and used as fuel in different reactors. I think one of the ideas is to do that a few times until you end up with waste that is about as radioactive as natural uranium, at which point you can put it back in the mine where you got the uranium.
Alright so, while I agree that the education should happen, it should happen after you push through the miles of unsettling structures. The message itself is far more likely to make people curious and disregard the mile of unnatural structures. The Humans had the right idea of building the information structure in the center, if only it had been made of granite as well.
dang #2 on the feature list. awesome.
11033568
That is a plan being developed- use the refined materials until they are no longer refined. I hope to one day be a nuclear engineer, and help with this process.
the Biohazzard symbol is pretty close to a Fan/ship propeller, mediastorehouse.com/p/173/international-biohazard-symbol-6436717.jpg.webp
ehmmmmmmm looks at Gen 5, oh..... that'll not be fun at all....
of cause, "those who don't learn from history is doomed to repeat it."
Of course thats his name.
And I see, even thouh you didn't quite intend for it, you made the perfect example of the Atomic Priesthood with the Buffalo. Assuming 10,000 years have passed, and it wasn't a total disaster that wiped us from that planet, the priesthood would have passed down what it could to whoever it could. It would make sense that it would be passed down through the ages in the local buffalo tribe, but with the original meaning lost through time or translation, would just be taken as folktale by some unsophisticated tribal people.
Fantastic job on this. As soon as I saw the description of the story, I knew exactly what it was.
Good news on the nuclear power front. Many indian based nuclear power companies claim that they have found a way to squeeze more out of nuclear waste so that it's less dangerous, and we get more power from it. I'm personally a huge fan of thorium power because rather than go from uranium to a higher element that's less manageable and more radioactive, it goes from a mostly safe to handle thorium, to (I think) one tenth the amount of the more stable isotope of uranium.
Fantastic job taking a look at the future of our nuclear waste.
11033649 No. 1 at the moment.
11033823 Glad to see somepony spotted that little nod.
11033596 Then again, spooky structures and the general 'go away' vibe didn't stop inquisitive purple book horse. In fact it encouraged her to press on further. But yeah, I figure only put technical schematics in a place where a sufficiently advanced civilisation could unearth them.
11033778 I considered doing a brief epilogue about just that. But I'm sticking with G4 for my stories.
THIS PLACE IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR
11033865
okey then, :)
Shrug.
Will you do a sequel with the next gen finding it?
Oh man, I knew where this was going and damn even then it still managed to chill.
11033958
Twilight's right, knowledge can be lost...
I'd bet my life savings that this video was the inspiration for this fanfic. A highly enjoyable video that I recommend that everyone watch.
https://youtu.be/lOEqzt36JEM
11034089
Same here. It was clearly radiation sickness right from the start, but was still a good read.
11033958
Izzy would sense the sinister "luminescence" and know to keep away.
Ah, I love fics with this premise. Very nicely written.
If you liked this one, check out this fic next:
- MLP: FiM
- Adventure
- Horror
- Mystery
Beneath the earth rests something beyond equine understanding.I could swear I've read this story before.
Ha.
Excellent man. This is just great. I had no idea where this was going until it became obvious with the (literal) writing on the wall.
Very eerie and spooky even. Profound in how it sparks my thoughts about the implications that, well, our world and Equestria's is the same. How does the EGQ world fit into this? Was that actually the past in the canon of this story, or a separate reality?
In any event, this was a good read for Nightmare Night! You deserved the Feature. It's a treat to see something that deserves being Featured get Featured. And thanks to everyone for recommending Writing on the Wall - I will read that next!
I'll only mention a minor negative which is that you used a lot of "present tense" words for a story written in past tense. Words like "now" and referring to things as "this" and not "that". Overall minor, but before the story really ramped up, I did find myself distracted by the tense-confused word choice.
Glad to see a story dealing with long-term waste management. Time is a vast chasm. We can only send a one-way message and pray that the future can understand it.
11033495
The unpredictability of people and cultures certainly makes it seem like hiding the facility with warning signs within it as the most practical solution. Other than that, we can only hope there's a stable continuity of knowledge passed down from civilization to civilization.
The improving health of the three ponies made me immediately thought... "walking ghost". It would have been a darker route to explore for sure. No doubt panic and paranoia would have spread like wildfire.
One interesting side note on the "Long-time nuclear waste warning messages" wiki page are some additional interesting proposals under the "Cultural memory" section. They mention "ray cats" that are genetically engineered to change coat colour when exposed to higher-than-ambient levels of radiation and catchy, earworm folk-songs that help remind people.
Little G4 ponies have vivid, unnaturally hued coats and have a cultural penchant for catchy group songs...
poor guy, youre gonna get SO many reminders of The Writing On The Wall.
Huh. I was actually expecting Twiggles to die.
11034278
Already done, and was about to recommend it.
Just as justifiably terrifying as this one.
11034713 Please, make it stop!
Edit: And now it's on the popular stories list too.
11032846
With the Finnish project, the line of thinking is to fill the entire shaft down with concrete, occasinally adding in hardened steel plates. The idea is that by putting that much sheer effort into burying it, the message of "This isn't valueable, just dangerous" will be conveyed to anyone who finds it and has the technology to make it through a plate or two. No one who wants to recover something puts that much effort into filling the hole, but something that no one would want, like hazardous waste, that is extremely dangerous is worth the effort.
for example, yes the pharohs didn't want people taking their stuff, but the pyramids were there as a mark of significance. this is kilometers down in bedrock. It took quite the effort just getting there in the first place and that's without all the crap you can cram in a mine shaft to foul up a drilling operation. honestly even if someone decided to dig beside the plug, they'd still be contending with bedrock for a good while before they got near enough for the waste to be a hazard.
Checked for contamination how? Given the earlier mention of biohazard suits and later mention of chemical suits, it could be either of those (assuming ponies have invented a direct reading or fast responding test for chemical and biological hazards) but given the ponies' lack of awareness of radioactive decay, how would they be checking for that and not tell Twilight about it?
That aside, great story!
11034658
"My little pony my little radiation exposure detecting pony..."
hmmm there might be something here
11035883
that is an interesting thought, the race to study chemistry inevitable stumbled upon radioactivity as scientists chemists and geologists filled out the periodic table. a society that has advanced enough chemistry to construct hasmat suits would be at least aware of the potential for deadly radiation given that even natural radioactive elements can kill if sufficiently purified and in large enough quantities, even if the source was something they couldn't understand.
at least with high level waste you're dealing with relatively predictable metal that we're fairly confident we can contain, low level waste is just an unfathomable dirty mess of labware, contaminated chemicals, solvents, trace elements and contaminated machine parts stuffed into barrels with no way to even mark them
11035944
If you're interested in a thought exercise on legacy waste, Funranium Labs has some good content, and more under the Choose Your Own Radiation Adventure tag.
Bill Gates and some scientists developed an experimental nuclear reactor that would work with nuclear waste, in order to handle any dangerous contamination from actual nuclear reactors.
Unfortunally, due to politics and eco-panic, none wants to build and test such project nowadays.
11035445
You could at least rest knowing that if someone writes a third story about ponies and nuclear waste, yours will definitely hit the comments there.
11036114
I'm expecting people to start reinvestigating these reactors when the energy crisis starts seriously growing. Still, better to research the technology now than desperately trying to rush for it later.
11036180
The thorium cycle and molten salt were all over the popular science blogs a while back. They'll probably play a role in the future, but just one part. As always, building new or retrofitting old infrastructure is blood from a stone and a messy patchwork results.
I'm more interested in the recent fusion breakthroughs.
Small error, you should fix it.
Great story!
Edit: Where is the Human tag?