Question: Let’s say you order up a highly experimental nuclear test, and let’s take that one step further and assume that within minutes of starting the test, you’ve caused a disaster that could affect nearly a third of the world’s population. What do you do?
If you’re Russia, you sweep it under the rug. During the night of April 26, 1986, Russian nuclear officials created the exact scenario described above with the Chernobyl disaster. Although a robust 600,000 brave (ignorant?) souls, also referred to as “liquidators,” assisted in the cleanup operation, the Russian government elected not to inform people in affected areas of the potential dangers of exposure to radiation. Twenty years later, the effects are beyond tangible - many people’s lives have been both defined and destroyed by this terrible disaster.
How bad is this stuff? Check this out:
- Out of the 600,000 liquidators, 31 died almost immediately because of the exposure, and another 2200 are predicted to die of causes stemming directly from radiation exposure.
- Thyroid cancer runs rampant in contaminated areas of Belarus, appearing at rates that are so far outside of the normal statistical distribution that it’s ridiculous.
- Three out of four children in heavily affected areas of Belarus are born unhealthy.
- Even now, tumors and mutations are appearing in the offspring of those affected. Scientists believe that this will continue to be the case in later generations.
The above info comes from the sobering/amazing/beautiful/powerful web memorial put together by Pixel Press. Check it out, and be sure to read the captions on each of the pictures. If you’re not brutally offended and freaked out by the end, something’s dead wrong!
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9 Comments ↓
Holy cow. I’ve been looking at Chernobyl stuff for the past two days and it’s gut-wrenching.
This is pretty deep for you.
To answer your question, I’d be hoping with everything in me that there’d be no thing such as hell.
Chernobyl bothers me as much it does you, I think. It should have been a wake up call to us. Even in times of war, I don’t think anyone should have nuclear power, and the testing of nuclear materials is just asking for trouble, too. There are so many things we jump on and begin using, thinking that a 10-year study is enough to know about some chemical or nuclear component. It’s frightening.
This is not to say that nuclear methods could not and are not useful in some ways, but mankind is too…greedy…to have such power. In the long run, it is quite obvious that some of our greatest discoveries that initially saved lives or brought about better living will destroy us. It is the way of us.
Of course, it’s the same case with all of Pandora’s pretty little boxes, once they are opened, they are never closed again.
Here’s I ran across a while back, with some interesting pictures of the area around Chernobyl.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
Nice write and Chernobyl was certainly a gut wrenching accident, not just for the direct victims, local coomunity and neighbouring provinces and countries, but it was also a major environmental disaster up their with Exxon Valdez.
The only thing thoug, is - what was this “highly experimental nuclear test”. That’s pretty emotive (which isn’t necessarily bad), but emotions sometimes cloud the truth. With Chernobyl, the direct causes might not have been so much the nature of the test, but perhaps the way the test was run and how warning signs were ignored along the way.
All the best.
Regards,
Peter
You should visit
http://www.chernobyl.info/
if you haven’t already, it’s one of the more credible sources of information about the disaster and the consequences.
Well, i thnk its odd that the world is in arms about the korean crisis, but when the threat actually comes home, we will not notice until ist too late.
shit hey, i still cant belive this has such a big impact on peoples lives, i have been following this 4 awhile and everytime i come across it a learn more and more, well done to everyone who has made a web page, this history will defiently not be fogotten x
this is really sick what happened there at chernoybl. people should be more careful of what the do in thier country’s, I mean look at the korean NUCLEAR crisis. that had the whole country shookin up by that.
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