Originally Posted by Baby Lee:
I really hate doing it, but I feel compelled to watch with a jaundiced eye.
In the first episode, the political and rhetorical aspects of the coverup rang true, but I need a lot more empirical evidence before I quite buy into the narrative of the engineers who kept insisting that the first-person observations of those returning from the site were delusional or mistaken.
I'm not rejecting out-of-hand the possibility that the engineers were locked into a mindset that what people reported was so unbelievable that they summarily rejected it time after time, but it rang more of dramatization than knowing insight.
Oh I don't have any trouble believing that part at all. I don't need an engineering degree to understand communist fucktardery. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Baby Lee:
I really hate doing it, but I feel compelled to watch with a jaundiced eye.
In the first episode, the political and rhetorical aspects of the coverup rang true, but I need a lot more empirical evidence before I quite buy into the narrative of the engineers who kept insisting that the first-person observations of those returning from the site were delusional or mistaken.
I'm not rejecting out-of-hand the possibility that the engineers were locked into a mindset that what people reported was so unbelievable that they summarily rejected it time after time, but it rang more of dramatization than knowing insight.
After watching I of course went to the interwebs to do a little reading. It seems as if they were accurate in the story that they didn't believe what happened, could happen. But i'm guessing there was some drama added. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Frazod:
Oh I don't have any trouble believing that part at all. I don't need an engineering degree to understand communist fucktardery.
I still think there is a fundamental difference between a political mind and a scientific mind in a situation like that.
Even though Russia had all sorts of tempermental blindspots imposed by their political rhetoric, and had all sorts of logistical limitations placed on their engineering efforts, they still educated engineers fairly rigorously. And it rings suspect to me that, in the face of first-person observations and data drawn from protocols, the ACTUAL engineers would be flatly incapable of even considering that they were receiving an accurate account.
Politically minded functionaries might put on a face of denial, but this first episode was written more that actual engineers were incapable of processing reality. [Reply]
If you want a minute-by-minute accounting of what happened there is a series available on Amazon Prime called Zero Hour. They cover what happened in Chernobyl, including the design flaws of the RBMK, pretty thoroughly for an hour-long show. In short, Dyatlov fucked up majorly, the engineers knew it wasn't safe, but no one challenged him because they didn't want exiled from a prestigious and well-paying job. [Reply]
The word radiation scares people though. So many people try and refuse dental xrays here because of it.
Here's what you should tell them: we are all exposed to natural background radiation. You are exposed to less through X-rays than on a normal commercial flight. Even bananas have small amounts of radiation in them. [Reply]
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins:
Here's what you should tell them: we are all exposed to natural background radiation. You are exposed to less through X-rays than on a normal commercial flight. Even bananas have small amounts of radiation in them.
Yeah, usually tell them
"you get more radiation from eating a can of Tuna than you do here". [Reply]
Not going to read the posts yet. I bought HBO so I could watch this series. I’ll be watching the first episode tonight. Chernobyl always fascinated me.
There’s also another show on early next month with original footage from the Memphis Belle, remastered or whatever. Should be good also. “The Cold Blue”. [Reply]
Just browsing the Chernobyl wiki. Kinda blows my mind that for all of the attention this disaster has garnered over the decades, there were only 28 initial deaths, and 15 later on that were indirectly attributed. Maybe those are artificially low, but given the horrors attributed to Chernobyl one would tend to think that thousands died, maybe tens of thousand sick on top of that. [Reply]
Originally Posted by wazu:
Just browsing the Chernobyl wiki. Kinda blows my mind that for all of the attention this disaster has garnered over the decades, there were only 28 initial deaths, and 15 later on that were indirectly attributed. Maybe those are artificially low, but given the horrors attributed to Chernobyl one would tend to think that thousands died, maybe tens of thousand sick on top of that.
I am sure some of the liquidators and others containing it probably have a higher incidence of cancer. It was and is a big problem but not one that should shut down an entire method of creating energy. [Reply]