Slate had a piece on the 99% Invisible podcast:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/05/14/_99_percent_invisible_by_roman_mars_designing_warning_symbols_for_the_nation.html The podcast itself is available at that URL, too.
They had another story on a similar project:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/11/atomic_priesthoods_thorn_landscapes_and_munchian_pictograms.html
I've heard the "We will be around and tell people" story but never seen anything that made me think it was based on a real event. If it were, that suggestion would be as naïve as most of the other proposed solutions.
Carl Sagan's insistence that the skull and crossbones would do the trick was naïve multiplied:
1) In 10,000 years, everyone in my neighborhood figures that East Carolina University will have a really good football team and the skull and crossbones will mean "success and victory." (Go Pirates!)
2) If, somehow, it managed to be a warning of death, that would make it attractive to people under various circumstances. (The whole dragon's teeth/jagged field thing has the same problem.) I've seen cases where people broke into a house with bars on the windows because they figured there must be something really valuable inside for anyone to bother with bars. (One in a very nice neighborhood in my old home town of Santa Monica, California ended up with the death of the family that took such security measures.)
3) Many non-desperados are thrill seekers. A threat of death might encourage someone who thought it was the risk of a quick death in exchange for glory or value rather than the certainty of a slow death without such a potential payoff. Carl Sagan probably wasn't an ice climber or a base jumper.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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