Ray cat

An artist's impression of a ray cat

A ray cat is a proposed feline breed designed to change color in the presence of radioactivity. Though no cats were ever bred with this in mind, the idea was based on a thought experiment on how to serve as a long-time nuclear waste warning message.

Proposal

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.

Paolo Fabbri in 2013

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. 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. This approach has been referred to as a "feline Geiger counter". 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.

Cultural impact

The proposal, which has been characterized as playful, was discussed in 2014 in "Ten Thousand Years", an episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible about long-term nuclear waste storage, part of a wave of attention the idea received. Reporter Matthew Kielty said:

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.

"Don't Change Color, Kitty"

"Ten Thousand Years"

"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.

"The Ray Cat Solution"

[1]

The Ray Cat Solution movement

It was not possible in 1984 to genetically engineer cats in the manner proposed. In 2015, Bricobio, a Montreal-based biology lab, created the Ray Cat Solution movement, 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. Ideas for creating ray cats have included harnessing bioluminescence (which occurs in some species but not cats) or enzyme interactions.

Impact on semiotics

The Department of Energy never implemented the ray cat proposal, and it is unlikely it ever seriously considered it; plans for storing waste at Yucca Mountain were scrapped in 2010, while the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant opted for granite monuments and buried libraries in the languages of the United Nations and Navajo. Nonetheless, the proposal has prompted further discussion in the field of nuclear semiotics and in semiotics more generally. 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". Thibault later wrote in Linguistic Frontiers—immediately preceding an English translation of Bastide and Fabbri's 1984 paper—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. 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.

[Close with]

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.

References

Sources

 This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC-BY 3.0 US License statement: Zhang 2014. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see the terms of use.

Primary sources

• Bastide, Françoise; Fabbri, Paolo (1984). "Lebende Detektoren und komplementäre Zeichen: Katzen, Augen und Sirenen" [Living detectors and complementary signs: Cats, eyes, and sirens]. Zeitschrift für Semiotik (in Deutsch). Berlin: Deutschen Gesellschaft für Semiotik. 6 (3). Archived from the original on 2020-05-07. Retrieved 2020-02-28.
  • Republished in English as: Fabbri, Paolo; Bastide, Françoise (1 December 2022). Translated by Feil, Sebastian. "Living detectors and complementary signs: cats, eyes, and sirens". Linguistic Frontiers. Sciendo. 5 (3): 10–13. doi:10.2478/lf-2022-0008.
• Bricobio. "10,000". The Ray Cat Solution. Self-published. Retrieved 17 January 2023.

Secondary sources (scholarly)

• Nuclear Energy Agency (2019). Preservation of Records, Knowledge and Memory (RK&M) Across Generations: Final Report of the RK&M Initiative (PDF) (Report). Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
• Thibault, Mattia; Marino, Gabriele (September 2018). "Who Run the World? Cats: Cat Lovers, Cat Memes, and Cat Languages Across the Web". International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. 31 (3): 473–490. doi:10.1007/s11196-018-9559-8.
• Thibault, Mattia (1 December 2022). "Speculative Semiotics". Linguistic Frontiers (Editorial). Sciendo. 5 (3): 1–9. doi:10.2478/lf-2022-0012.

Secondary sources (other)

• Beauchamp, Scott (2015-02-24). "How to Send a Message 1,000 Years to the Future". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2023-01-15.
• Mancini, Donato Paolo (8 January 2017). "How colour-changing cats might warn future humans of radioactive waste". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
• Mars, Roman (host) (2014-05-12). "Ten Thousand Years". 99% Invisible (Podcast). Public Radio Exchange. Event occurs at 21:16–23:30, 25:54–26:43. Retrieved 2023-01-17.
• Piesing, Mark (2020-08-03). "How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years' time". BBC Future. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
• Schwartz, Ariel (2015-08-16). "Color-changing cats were once part of a US government plan to protect humankind". Business Insider. Retrieved 17 January 2023.
• Zhang, Sarah (November 2014). "The Cat Went Over Radioactive Mountain". Method. Retrieved 2021-12-09.

TBD

• https://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-discourage-settlement-near-nuclear-waste-repositories
• https://www.businessinsider.com/the-plan-to-protect-humans-from-radioactive-waste-with-cats-2015-8?r=US&IR=T
• https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/27476/ray-cats-artificial-moons-and-atomic-priesthood-how-government-plans-protect-our
• https://web.archive.org/web/20220128205949/https://www.dn.se/vetenskap/slutforvaret-sa-ska-eftervarlden-varnas-for-karnavfallet/
• https://www.cityam.com/how-scientists-are-using-colour-changing-cats-and-folklore-warn-future-generations/

External links

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryQbBqQ35xg

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