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The United States Department of Energy's Human Interference Task Force, formed in 1981, sought ways to keep humans from inadvertently encountering radioactive waste stored at sites like the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The task force suggested “oral transmission” as a means of preserving warnings for future generations. Thomas Sebeok, the linguist consulted by the Human Interference Task Force, proposed in a separate report the seeding and nurturing of a body of folklore around Yucca Mountain, with annual rituals to spread the stories forward—a so-called atomic priesthood.[a][2]
In 1984, the German journal Zeitschrift für Semiotik ('Journal of Semiotics') published 12 responses from academics that speculated about how to communicate 10,000 years into the future.[2] One proposal came from philosophers Françoise Bastide and Paolo Fabbri, who suggested genetically engineering cats that would change color while in the presence of radiation, which they dubbed ray cats.[b][5] This approach has been referred to as a "feline Geiger counter".[6][7][1] They further proposed inventing a body of folklore, passed on through proverbs and myths, to explain that people should flee when a cat changes color.[2]
Cultural impact
The proposal, which has been characterized as playful,[4] was discussed in 2014 in "Ten Thousand Years", an episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible about long-term nuclear waste storage,[8] part of a wave of attention the idea received.[9] Reporter Matthew Kielty said:[10]
10,000 years from now, these songs or these stories may sound incomprehensible to us, but as long as they communicate this idea that it's not safe to be where the cats change colors, we will have done our job. May the ray cats keep us safe.
99% Invisible (which is based in Oakland, California, United States) also sold T-shirts for a fictional baseball team, the Oakland Raycats.[9]
"10,000-Year Earworm to Discourage Settlement Near Nuclear Waste Repositories (Don't Change Color, Kitty)", commonly referred to by its subtitle, is a folk song released by Emperor X in 2014 for the radio program 99% Invisible.
It was not possible in 1984 to genetically engineer cats in the manner proposed.[9] In 2015, Bricobio, a Montreal-based biology lab, created the Ray Cat Solution movement,[11] which seeks to engineer cats that can change color in response to radiation or other stimuli and runs a website promoting the idea of ray cats.[12] Ideas for creating ray cats have included harnessing bioluminescence (which occurs in some species but not cats) or enzyme interactions.[11]
Impact on semiotics
The Department of Energy never implemented the ray cat proposal, and it is unlikely it ever seriously considered it;[9] plans for storing waste at Yucca Mountain were scrapped in 2010,[2] while the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opted for granite monuments and buried libraries in the languages of the United Nations and Navajo.[13] Nonetheless, the proposal has prompted further discussion in the field of nuclear semiotics and in semiotics more generally.[9] Mattia Thibault and Gabriele Marino wrote in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law in 2018 that the ray cat constituted a "possible soteriologic figure".[14] Thibault later wrote in Linguistic Frontiers—immediately preceding an English translation of Bastide and Fabbri's 1984 paper[3]—that, prior to the ray cat proposal gaining pop-culture attention in 2014, it had become a meme in the semiotics community, citing the 2018 paper.[15] Thibault writes that the ray cat "is not a mere curiosity", but rather an idea that confronts questions both of communication with the future and communication in the future.[9]
As such, Bastide and Fabbri achieved their goal after all. Their proposal was perhaps less about engineering the actual Ray Cat, and more
about creating a symbol meant to achieve maximal awareness and reflectivity about the existence of radioactive waste and the challenge of RK&M preservation in society.
The page Ray cat in the mainspace is currently a redirect to Long-term nuclear waste warning messages.
