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Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

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Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate Russia's induced ignorance about Chernobyl. Most of these 20-year-olds were from remote, shit-poor areas of Russia, and even if they went to school of some sort, it didn't matter much. You think those textbooks mentioned the incident? No. To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there . When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blo…

> So, no - they didn't know. That's 100% plausible. No, it's not plausible. Stop making shit up.

In Czechoslovakia right after the WW2 the Colorado Potato Beetle has shown up and started decimating potatoes. Communist government renamed it on American Beetle and started claiming that USAF are dropping it from planes to punish us for choosing socialism.

So rural Russians knowing nothing about Chernobyl is completely in realm of possibilities.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#112
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate Russia's induced ignorance about Chernobyl. Most of these 20-year-olds were from remote, shit-poor areas of Russia, and even if they went to school of some sort, it didn't matter much. You think those textbooks mentioned the incident? No. To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there . When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blo…

That hysteria wasn't caused by the ignorance of Russia's population. Everyone knew about the disaster for a long time. I know this because I lived there until recently.

> Everyone knew about the disaster for a long time.

I think you're falling into the mistake everyone is like you, and has access to the info you had access to.

In the meantime, there is plenty of documented evidence that Russian soldiers who were ordered to move into Ukraine were totally oblivious to the area they were occupying. There are even comical reports from the start of the war on how Ukraine thwarted the advance of some Russian columns towards Kyiv by switching road signs.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#113
post #99
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The dumbasses digging radioactive dirt probably didn’t even know about Chernobyl to begin with. Not probably. Definitely. Saw a couple of interviews with people who worked there while Russians took over the place. They said that most of the had no idea where they are (i.e. what Chernobyl is, what happened there, etc)

I’m going to call BS on this. Even if such videos existed, it’s completely implausible for something like that to true. Imagine asking random New Yorker’s what 9/11 was. Chernobyl is pretty close to being equivalent in terms of fame and media coverage. I’d be extremely surprised if you could find even 1% of people from a random sample who, when asked about Chernobyl, would respond with at least some vague statement a…

> Imagine asking random New Yorker’s what 9/11 was. Chernobyl is pretty close to being equivalent in terms of fame and media coverage.

The mistake you're making is projecting your personal experience onto others, and extrapolating your personal account to everyone.

In the meantime, the Soviet union employed a massive censorship and disinformation effort regarding the Chernobyl accident, and Russia's invasion force deployed throughout Ukraine is renowned to originate primarily from remote regions of the Russian federation.

Just because you have access to the internet and CNN and benefitted from living in a society where information flows freely, that does not mean that random people from Buryatia enjoyed the same privileges.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#114

Qui bono? "OK, guys, we'll just hack into these radiation sensors to manipulate the data feed, and make them display highly elevated level of radiation for a few minutes. Then we'll reset them back to normal... muwuhahahaha [evil laugh]...."

And the part where Russian soldiers take the server offline because they know the data is fake and they want to avoid a panic…

What?

If the Russians are doing it they can just stop

If the Ukrainians are doing it the Russians don’t know they’re doing it

None of this makes any sense, why would either side care about this? I’m now more inclined to believe it was just a weird sensor issue or for whatever reason the traffic through the area caused the sensors to (accurately or inaccurately) read higher - just because there’s absolutely no clear motive and it would be asinine for any of the actors involved to be doing this.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#115
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate Russia's induced ignorance about Chernobyl. Most of these 20-year-olds were from remote, shit-poor areas of Russia, and even if they went to school of some sort, it didn't matter much. You think those textbooks mentioned the incident? No. To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there . When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blo…

Gorbachev is quoted as saying that Chernobyl was the beginning of the end of the USSR. Nobody likes to talk about that stuff. Ideologues most of all.

I’m always impressed that the RMBK was 3.5GW… just for the core that exploded. There are 3 other cores functioning.

France’s reactors (other technology) are 0.910-1.3 Gigawatts (x60 cores)[1]. Chernobyl must have been the powerhouse for half of the country.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Fr...

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate Russia's induced ignorance about Chernobyl. Most of these 20-year-olds were from remote, shit-poor areas of Russia, and even if they went to school of some sort, it didn't matter much. You think those textbooks mentioned the incident? No. To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there . When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blo…

> So, no - they didn't know. That's 100% plausible. No, it's not plausible. Stop making shit up.

You're both way off.

I asked four of the youngest people I know (ages 19-22) what Chernobyl was and only one knew. And only because of the TV show.

You have no idea how little the average youngster cares about stuff they didn't personally experience. Almost nobody is reading history articles on Wikipedia for fun. It's just Tik Tok, Insta, and Youtube.

For the majority of them, certain subjects will just be mentioned in passing 5 minutes in a history lesson, and it exits the student's brain within days, if not as soon as the bell rings.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of the Russian soldiers come from regions without widespread indoor plumbing, to put some perspective to how backward and disconnected some people are.

Don't see how a country's infrastructure issues are related to people backwardeness. The same people who use outhouses probably also have smartphones. It's like saying people who live in remote Canadian villages without road access are backward.

Infrastructure like communications network for self study or schools for learning are limited.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#118

Qui bono? "OK, guys, we'll just hack into these radiation sensors to manipulate the data feed, and make them display highly elevated level of radiation for a few minutes. Then we'll reset them back to normal... muwuhahahaha [evil laugh]...."

> Qui bono?

It’s „cui bono“ because it’s using dative case i.e. „whom is the favor“.

Declination of the Latin relative pronoun „qui“ is the following for the masculine genus:

qui

cuius

cui

quem

quo

Sorry for being a grammar nazi.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#119
We're talking about nSv/h here. Even a ten-fold increase is still negligible and even less what you would measure in some regions of the world from natural background radiation in places like Ramsar in Iran.

Re: Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't underestimate the ignorance of young people about anything happened before they started to realize that the world is larger than their home. This is about all generations. And specifically: > Everyone knows about Chernobyl. And everyone knows about Tienanmen, the difference in what they know is made by the country where they live. Compare this poll from 2019 with the expected values from Western Europe where…

It's just a terrible title. The question was "On April 26, 1986, there was an explosion at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. How did you learn about this accident?"

If that was the question, how it comes that 33% answered one of

From documentary films

From social media and the Internet

From fictional films/ TV shows

From books

Already books, films, social media and the internet on the very first day of the accident? Fiction, maybe.

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