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Man films his own death: Chernobyl disaster, the first days of clean up inside

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ArjanN

Member
TheOMan said:
Black slime that feeds on radiation. Neat!

gb121.jpg
 
Wow...

I watched a thing on youtube with a girl from Chernobyl who rode her motorcycle back into the place. All she had was a device that detects radiation. There was another I saw where they went into the actual room where the meltdown happened.Really interesting stuff. Kind of like the Titanic.
 
Dreams-Visions said:
the crippled kids living on the floor will fuck with me for the foreseeable future.

I've been reading about Chernobyl since my first post in here and trying to understand a lot of the jargon. Interesting case that seems to have been simply a combination of unlikely circumstances (the delayed shutdown causing an unexpected shift to have to handle it), ignorance (lack of appropriate oversight and lack of training), and technical problems with the reactor design (including the graphite tips on the control rods and the poor handling of steam-formation). And of course, the removal of various layers of safety protocol.

Then the issue of the Soviet Union trying to keep it quiet, allowing thousands...and maybe hundreds of thousands to become exposed to extraordinarily high volumes of radiation. Some of the results of the chromosome mutation won't be seen for generations yet to come.
Yeah, it's a textbook example of everything going/done wrong before, during and after an event. They couldn't hide it anymore, specially when it hit Europe, although they sure tried.

Dreams-Visions said:
Saddest thing I've read is that many of the leukemia-stricken children could be saved with bone marrow transplants but their parents can't afford them because they're only making about $30/month. So they take out ads in the local paper. These ads are an ever-present reminder.
As if it wasn't enough these children that, outside making them comfortable, there's nothing more that can be done, even with the best medical technology/knowledge available.

The pictures and narration are spirit crushing.
 
Isn't the sarcophagus about to collapse? I remember reading there were worries it was weakening a year or two ago.

Dark Octave said:
Wow...

I watched a thing on youtube with a girl from Chernobyl who rode her motorcycle back into the place. All she had was a device that detects radiation. There was another I saw where they went into the actual room where the meltdown happened.Really interesting stuff. Kind of like the Titanic.

She didn't ride her motorcycle through the place. She went on a standard tour of the exclusion zone and wore biker gear to make her photos seem more authentic.
 
TheSeks said:
Well, duh. But camera film generally goes bad due to even X-ray levels of radiation, this is beyond that. How did the film survive is the question.
They may have used special, durable film. It would explain why the footage within the vicinity of the plant itself was in black and white.
 
Valkyr Junkie said:
Isn't the sarcophagus about to collapse? I remember reading there were worries it was weakening a year or two ago.
from what I've seen, yes, it's going to collapse sooner or later.

those biorobots/liquidators job of throwing those ridiculously radioactive graphite blocks into the "pit" was the most ridiculous fucking job I've ever seen before. I know someone has to do it...but fuck that. 1 minutes of exposure max? that's enough for me to look for a new job.
 

Risible

Member
Dreams-Visions said:
the crippled kids living on the floor will fuck with me for the foreseeable future.

/opens link
/watches up to the point where the little girl with no lymph system is shown
/mashes the close window button repeatedly before anything else can be seen

No way I need that keeping me up at night right now.
 
Going to Chernobyl is my dream vacation. I read that the Ukrainian government recently opened more of the site to tourists.
 
Those pictures of the children were terribly sad. I couldn't sit through the whole thing. Chernobyl has always been very curious to me. Maybe because it happened before my time and its the biggest nuclear fuck up ever, or the fact that the place is a damn ghost town. It looks haunted from all of the pictures I have ever seen. I would love to go on that tour.
 
Very interesting, haunting and powerful information in the links provided. To think that there probably were many more harrowing stories that never got to be told is equally distressing.
 

YYZ

Junior Member
Aaron Rodgers could watch that slideshow at this moment and feel the worst he's ever felt right now. Fuck. I can't sit through that.
 

Al-ibn Kermit

Junior Member
ethic said:
That's actually a ridiculously stupid statement.

//edit

Holy shit, I didn't even notice your DDT comment. Super-ridiculous. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the concept of Biomagnification. Rachael Carson. Such a hippie. Same with those UC Irvine researchers who discovered the dangers of CFCs. How dare they care?!

Rachel Carson was right about DDT being persistent and accumulating in the environment but she didn't actually present any data at all that showed it to cause egg shells to thin or people to get cancer.

In one part of the book, Carson references a paper by James DeWitt and she says that it supported her thesis of DDT causing declining bird populations. That was not true. The paper showed the DDT group of quails having 80 percent hatch rate versus 84 percent in the control group and the DDT group of pheasants actually having a higher hatch rate than the control group. These tests were about 3,000 times the dosage that is in normal human diets. On top of that, the bird populations were actually recovering from their low when Silent Spring was published in 1962. Even though DDT usage was at an all time high.

Since then, they have found that in some reptiles, DDT can imitate estrogen and cause them to become more feminine, but of course you can't overlook all the arguments that the book makes and rationalize it by saying that she might have indirectly done some good by getting DDT banned. Since the book was written, they have found out that egg shells were actually becoming thinner due to acid rain and that there is no connection between levels of DDT in tissue samples and cancer rates.

I am willing to believe that she wasn't trying to lie and that her assumptions were just due to the primitive state of environmental science at the time. The thing is that her assumptions lead to a boom in malaria cases due to DDT being banned. For example in Sri Lanka, the number of malaria cases before DDT was introduced was 2.5 million cases and 31 cases after they used DDT. It's totally not necessary to spray it in city streets or on farms but it is a life-saving chemical. There is no reason not to use it as in the context of malaria control today. There are still 300-500 million cases of malaria worldwide with about 2.7 million deaths.
 
It's just terrifying that it can wreak so much havoc , you can't see or feel it, and it seeps straight through a lot of solid matter.
 

Pseudo_Sam

Survives without air, food, or water
LaserBuddha said:
It's just terrifying that it can wreak so much havoc , you can't see or feel it, and it seeps straight through a lot of solid matter.

I believe that you can feel heavy radiation, though - like pins and needles is what they say. It also apparently tastes like metal.
 

Keio

For a Finer World
Al-ibn Kermit said:
Rachel Carson was right about DDT being persistent and accumulating in the environment but she didn't actually present any data at all that showed it to cause egg shells to thin or people to get cancer.

In one part of the book, Carson references a paper by James DeWitt and she says that it supported her thesis of DDT causing declining bird populations. That was not true. The paper showed the DDT group of quails having 80 percent hatch rate versus 84 percent in the control group and the DDT group of pheasants actually having a higher hatch rate than the control group. These tests were about 3,000 times the dosage that is in normal human diets. On top of that, the bird populations were actually recovering from their low when Silent Spring was published in 1962. Even though DDT usage was at an all time high.

Since then, they have found that in some reptiles, DDT can imitate estrogen and cause them to become more feminine, but of course you can't overlook all the arguments that the book makes and rationalize it by saying that she might have indirectly done some good by getting DDT banned. Since the book was written, they have found out that egg shells were actually becoming thinner due to acid rain and that there is no connection between levels of DDT in tissue samples and cancer rates.

I am willing to believe that she wasn't trying to lie and that her assumptions were just due to the primitive state of environmental science at the time. The thing is that her assumptions lead to a boom in malaria cases due to DDT being banned. For example in Sri Lanka, the number of malaria cases before DDT was introduced was 2.5 million cases and 31 cases after they used DDT. It's totally not necessary to spray it in city streets or on farms but it is a life-saving chemical. There is no reason not to use it as in the context of malaria control today. There are still 300-500 million cases of malaria worldwide with about 2.7 million deaths.
Sorry for the long quote and slightly OT, but am using the mobile webapp.

DDT resistent malaria is actually the main reason why DDT isn't used for malaria control in large amounts.

With Chernobyl, I remember playing outside in the rain when the fallout hit Finland. Also forest mushrooms are my favourite, so I probably have gotten my share of the radiation. It was an accident that impacted a much larger than the immediate area, but the increased cancer rates etc. are not easily noticeable consequences.
 

BeEatNU

WORLDSTAAAAAAR
fuck man.

20 years after the fire fighters who was first on the scene; it's not safe to stand next to them??!?!
 

Al-ibn Kermit

Junior Member
Keio said:
Sorry for the long quote and slightly OT, but am using the mobile webapp.

DDT resistent malaria is actually the main reason why DDT isn't used for malaria control in large amounts.
Yeah there are some mosquito that are becoming more resistant to DDT meaning that they can last longer in a sprayed zone before they die. But it is still widely used. In South Africa they stopped using it in 1996 due to environmental pressure, then a malaria epidemic broke out and they went back to using it 4 years later.

In order to avoid new strains of resistant mosquitoes, we should not be using DDT for anything other than malaria control.

and sorry to everybody for being off topic.
 
MetalAlien said:
We still got 20,000 years before they can build on that site again, although the last reactor was only shut down in 2000. Plus they have found a new form of life inside reactor 4, pretty cool.

http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/major-biological-discoveryinside-the-chernobyl-reactor/
Bad 50's sci-fi actually turns out to be halfway plausible?
Incoming "The Blob" remake

But yeah, Chernobyl is an ever-present scary reminder of the total devastation possible in the post-nuclear age.

"I don't know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein
 
Al-ibn Kermit said:
For example in Sri Lanka, the number of malaria cases before DDT was introduced was 2.5 million cases and 31 cases after they used DDT.
I will admit to not knowing 100% about this subject, but if you're gonna go through the trouble of making a lengthy in-depth post and use "statistics," back them up please. Do you have a link to/written source for these numbers? Who conducted this survey, is the testing entity a credible one? 2.5 million cases over what period before? 31 cases over what period afterward? Did these statistics control for cyclic epidemics, mosquito breeding/migration patterns, mosquito population, weather conditions, other environmental/behavioral contributing factors? And what about anthropological factors/behaviors? Going on these numbers alone it's a classic case of correlation being mistakenly interpreted as causation, and likely out of proportion. Don't take it personally, I just hate when people throw out numbers all willy-nilly without providing some scientific context or background.
 
nuclear is safe?

are you fucking kidding me?
I still remember the disaster. My mum slapped my face after I ate cherrys from our tree that summer. Pretty much everything grown was contaminated with radiation. Note that I live in central austria over 1000km away from the incident. In some parts of austria and south germany grown mushrooms and deer are still considered dangerous to eat after 25 years.

also nuclear waste is everything but safe and there is no way to get rid of it other than shooting it into space. Alone that problem should make us abandon nuclear power forever.
 

Truant

Member
Not to be a total dick, but the effects of radiation on the human body fascinates me.

Any videos or pictures of extreme radiation poisoning, such as described in this thread (bodies falling apart, faces melting, etc)?
 

Rektash

Member
I was born one day after the Chernobyl disaster on the 27th april '86. My mum didn't breastfeed me because of the possibilty of her eating contaminated food without knowing - in germany.
 
iamaustrian said:
nuclear is safe?

are you fucking kidding me?
I still remember the disaster. My mum slapped my face after I ate cherrys from our tree that summer. Pretty much everything grown was contaminated with radiation. Note that I live in central austria over 1000km away from the incident. In some parts of austria and south germany grown mushrooms and deer are still considered dangerous to eat after 25 years.

also nuclear waste is everything but safe and there is no way to get rid of it other than shooting it into space. Alone that problem should make us abandon nuclear power forever.
so basically, you're not going on the Chernobyl tour.
 

Diablos

Member
Nuclear does wonders for generating energy.

That said, on the other side of the coin? I really do believe that it will be a nuclear event that is most likely to kill off the human race or severely alter the modern world as we know it. Be it in the form of nuclear attacks across the world or accidents (or both). All the technological advancements and safeguards in the world still can't defy the eventual fact that odds likely dictate there will be problems from nuclear reactors popping up all around the globe.

Sometimes I think about there being so many nuclear bombs and how lucky we all are to still be alive. It's amazing that given how insane the world has become that nothing catastrophic has happened. Really, it's unbelievable. There's enough nukes to put an end to the world in no time flat.

It won't be a meteor, chemical/biological attack, plague, or [insert doomsday scenario here] that will trigger the end of the world. These things can have a profound impact on the world, but life would still go on ('cept for a big ass meteor, lol). It'll be something nuclear.

I hate to sound old fashioned but I really do not want to see an expansion of nuclear reactors in my country, or quite frankly anywhere.

Dreams-Visions said:
so basically, you're not going on the Chernobyl tour.
No, he's someone whose family nearly stared a nuclear event right in the face. He is well aware of the risks, but quite frankly the facts speak for themselves and you shouldn't have to have a personal connection to a nuclear meltdown to understand the severe risk involved.
 

Duki

Banned
pretty amazing how people who have no idea about how nuclear power works and yet are still terrified of it get to make decisions about whether its used or not

and only because OMG REMEMBER CHERNOBYL is a much more emotive argument to make than to carefully and logically explain why this disaster can pretty much never happen again

not only did those fuck ups in Ukraine ruin the lives of thousands of people, but they succeeded in poisoning the image of what is now literally a very safe source of power with increasingly negligible side products

gj fuckers
 

Kurtofan

Member
iamaustrian said:
nuclear is safe?

are you fucking kidding me?
I still remember the disaster. My mum slapped my face after I ate cherrys from our tree that summer. Pretty much everything grown was contaminated with radiation. Note that I live in central austria over 1000km away from the incident. In some parts of austria and south germany grown mushrooms and deer are still considered dangerous to eat after 25 years.

also nuclear waste is everything but safe and there is no way to get rid of it other than shooting it into space. Alone that problem should make us abandon nuclear power forever.
Tchernobyl happened in soviet Ukraine, just saying.
 
Duki said:
pretty amazing how people who have no idea about how nuclear power works and yet are still terrified of it get to make decisions about whether its used or not

and only because OMG REMEMBER CHERNOBYL is a much more emotive argument to make than to carefully and logically explain why this disaster can pretty much never happen again

not only did those fuck ups in Ukraine ruin the lives of thousands of people, but they succeeded in poisoning the image of what is now literally a very safe source of power with increasingly negligible side products

gj fuckers


how is longtime-radioactive, highly dangerous waste neglibible? This shit lasts forever and there is basicly no safe storage solution for this.

please explain.



Tchernobyl happened in soviet Ukraine, just saying.

so what?
 

FStop7

Banned
soultron said:
Another great thing to look up is the "Motorcycle Girl" photos. Girl gets pass to go into Chernobyl with a camera, and the results are amazing.

Kid of Speed is the name she uses. It turns out most of her story was fabricated. She really did visit Pripyat, but not on a motorcycle. She was part of an organized tour group. She showed up wearing her riding gear, her husband (I think?) took photos of her throughout the tour, and she then built her story around it. That said, it doesn't change the reality of the things she described about Pripyat and Chernobyl, nor did it invalidate the haunting photos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Filatova

Kurtofan said:
Shit like that won't happen with our regulations.

An expression of arrogance like this is often what immediately proceeds a complete fucking disaster that is later described as having been "unforeseen".
 
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