Warning: Chernobyl strikes back

[Kaleredar]

So there's a bushfire somewhere and you immediately flip out about it...?


Basically the news story is "bushfire happens in dry wooded area that happens to be near an area of interest because 30 years ago a nuclear reactor leak occurred there."

I don't know exactly what the OP is insinuating (That the vast area around Chernobyl is still dangerous and Russia, despite the fact that the area is in the Ukraine, is cooking the books on it somehow, despite years of research and data saying otherwise?) but I fail to see how even that is relevant to the situation at hand.

[Koriani]

Well, not really. The Союз Советских Социалистических Республик, СССР, or Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, USSR, or more commonly known as Soviet Union, is not the same thing as Russia, and even back during Soviet Union times, Chernobyl was (obviously) located in Soviet Ukraine, not Soviet Russia. In other words, Chernobyl has never been "in Russia".

Before the fall of the wall/communism and the breakup of the USSR - the terms were synonymous in "the West" (American here obviously lol). I am well aware that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Or Respooblics as its pronounced in russian) was just that, a "union" of countries all under the Soviet umbrella. So that when Chernobyl was built, it was built by the Union, in a property owned by the Union - and to us across the pond, it was all "Russia."

Yes, now that history moved forward and the USSR lost many of its states, Russia is now more synonymous with the "mainland" itself. But its "semantics" to most of the western world. The Ukraine government was not at "fault" for what happened, they weren't in charge - Russian government was (USSR), so even if you want to split hairs and say "its not in Russia", it doesn't change the actual point.

I had three years of Russian history and language so I know there's a difference. But for most of us - no, its not different at all, even if now yes the government around the building isn't the same. I mean Americans could take over the Ukraine and it would still be considered a "Russian Nuclear Disaster."

Watch a couple videos, no need to go there yourself.

Yes, because videos are just like traveling. No one ever needs to travel anymore, they can watch videos. *rolls eyes* silly!

This hilariously dumb show really did tick all the boxes; menacing music, over the top and overacting presenter, dumb premise...might as well have been fishing for Bigfoot.

Except this "dumb" show was educational (did you know all that about the fish?) and unlike bigfoot tv shows - is actually catching real animals to dispel myths instead of hunting for a myth, faking evidence, and never finding anything. Have you ever watched it?

Every "bigfoot" he goes after, pretty much, he catches. And you see how its a regular animal vs. the legends around the stories he's investigating.

And since its pretty much the only show, so far, to go fishing in Chernobyl - still interesting to the topic, which was my point. And in Chernobyl, he also shows what he fishes up.

About the only thing this has in common with "monster hunting" shows is dramatic music and narration. Bigfoot shows just add to the myth that there's something to hunt. And catch nothing.

And THAT would be really boring for a fish show =D.

- - - Updated - - -

It's not just about strength, it's also about length of exposure. The 30km exclusion zone isn't a closed-off area no one can enter - in fact there's such a thing as Chernobyl tourism, where visitors come in and have a look. What's prohibited is LIVING there, because long-term exposure to even fairly low levels of radiation can have detrimental effects (cancer incidence goes way up, for example). If you control exposure by limiting the time you spend there, using protective gear, and carefully monitoring levels with e.g. dosimeters, you can still work there. It's not like standing next to the dome will melt your face off in an instant. The radiation levels outside in the exclusion zone aren't particularly high. If you just take a stroll there your exposure is probably lower than what you get from, say, an intercontinental flight or a chest x-ray. Just don't spend months or years there, because it adds up. And it's also probably not a good idea to eat things growing there, because certain isotopes tend to bioaccumulate (but it's very hard to get accurate data on that because there's so many factors involved; many things may well be okay to eat but better play it safe).

Yes, what this guy says.

The 18 mile exclusion zone is because people, in general, are stupid. (duh) While it isn't dangerous to go walk through, or spend maybe a couple hours (at most) without protective gear in the "exclusion" zone, this is also something that was only really ok more recently. In addition, spending LONGER than that without protective gear is very bad. If they didn't make a big exclusion zone then people would start moving back in, thinking, wrongly, that it was "safe" to live even at the edges of the town, much less in the town.

But that is where the problems would come in. As this poster mentioned, its about quantity over time of isotopes. Something that for 10 minutes is fine, for 3 days is deadly (example not at all factual numbers). Something you only breathe in for a few days might be fine, but turn around and eat food or animals from the area in those few days you might then go over into deadly amounts. You wouldn't know you had passed that mark for days, weeks, even years later - but the damage would have been done. Your cells start mutating and then problems...

The ground is absolutely not safe to eat anything out of or grow anything in. No animals are safe to eat who live in the area. However, its an AMAZING and unique ecosystem that we can now study where we can watch how all of this evolves and plays out. Many animals in the zone have already mutated in a variety of ways that we have no way to study except from Chernobyl. The fisherman in the show I mentioned earlier talks about how the fish have mutated to survive the environment.

But not at all safe to eat anything from there, or even walk out with a tree limb.

The greatest concern (last I heard, but yes documentaries can be several years old at this point) I understood to be whether it ever leaks into the ground water. It hasn't so far; but the pipes are all still there and they are all still running water through them. (NO they haven't invested in building pipes to go around it). Should the core/leakage break through and infiltrate the ground water it would then radiate towns and even major cities down stream from that groundwater. And THEN you'd see more human fallout concerns (from contaminated ground water) than you would see just because there's a fire near or in the exclusion zone.


And honestly right now I'd be way more concerned about any more damage/fires to the Reactors in Japan that only melted a few years ago (much less the effect to fish in the next decade from the area...) as that is a much newer disaster and the radiation hasn't had years to settle out.

[Deleted]

Have you ever watched it?

Yeah, I watched one full season of it, I'm pretty sure. Every single episode was the same; menacing music, huge amounts of hyperbole about some cryptid-level monstrous animals doing some almost supernatural shit and killing people left and right, the dude spent days and days trying to catch the supposed "monster" in each particular episode, never obviously did, and every time he did catch something, he sold it like it was the antichrist himself that he had just hooked, even though it turned out to be just some regular fish that is completely common to that part of the world.

Plus fishing for fun is dumb. Eat what you catch or go home and knit a sweater. It's not a "sport".

[Dizson]

Yeah because wild fire is just as bad as nuclear explosion. Reminder that wild fire can be easily controlled.

[Khadgar]

There is less radiation from walking around Chernobyl now than there is flying in an aeroplane or hell, just driving along some highways were mining has taken place, you're being exposed to probably 5x background radiation, much more than anything in Chernobyl, which i believe sits at like 2x or less for the majority of the city and even around the site itself.

This is nothing. Calm yourself down.

/thread

If you stand in a particular spot in Chernobyl for just a half-hour you can get a unsafe dose of radiation.

[Priestiality]

Good fearmongering OP. Most of the radioactivity in Pripyat (the ferris wheel city) and surrounding areas is well within safe levels and no worse than you'd get on an airplane or an area with poor magnetic field coverage. Most of the dangerous elements have extremely short half-lives, like less than 3 months, and have long since gone inert. As you get closer to the actual plant numbers go up but they tend to be concentrated in the soil. Life in the area is doing just fine, in fact it's practically become a nature sanctuary. Animals don't live long enough to suffer the ill effects of DNA degradation by radiation, even through subsequent generations. Here, take an hour out of your day and watch this:


Now keep in mind, this was made in 2006-2007, so things have only gotten better for nature in the area.

[Casterbridge]

So far the most entertaining things in this thread are the S.T.A.L.K.E.R references.

I think I need to go revisit it, Misery has had a recent update if I remember correctly.

[Daedius]

Not to surprising they are having fires like that. One weird side effect of radiation is leaf litter in a lot of the effected area won't decay as all the things that would break it down get killed off by the surface radiation levels. So there is now areas that have a LOT of dead leaves/branches/trees that just won't decay and break down so lots of kindling for wild fires.

Collect and compress them into pellets for burning!

[Glnger]

Not to surprising they are having fires like that. One weird side effect of radiation is leaf litter in a lot of the effected area won't decay as all the things that would break it down get killed off by the surface radiation levels. So there is now areas that have a LOT of dead leaves/branches/trees that just won't decay and break down so lots of kindling for wild fires.

I watched a show on the science channel or discovery about that. Decades of leaf build up and a warmer/dryer Europe They've known about the risk for so long I'm sure they have plans and monitoring stuff ready... I hope