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Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

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Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#231

Post by pixl97 »

sgjohnson wrote: post #164
colinb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument that nuclear power generation is clean if you ignore the times when it isn't seems a bit no-true-Scotsman to me. It's a thing I've changed my mind about more than once in the past. What sways my thinking now is: - most nuclear power does indeed seem to be well run with minimal pollution. - when it goes wrong, the consequences are awful and long-lived (I can, off the top of my head, name two sites that a…

> This argument that nuclear power generation is clean if you ignore the times when it isn't seems a bit no-true-Scotsman to me. The same can be said about wind and solar. Nothing about producing the rare earths required is clean. Even if we include Chernobyl, nuclear is still by far the safest source of energy when looking at deaths per TWh generated. > I can, off the top of my head, name two sites that are dangerou…

If I set up a wind generator and then leave it with no maintenance it's a risk to an area a little bit bigger than its maximum height. If I leave a nuclear reactor unattended it's a risk to hundreds of thousands of square miles.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#232

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

quakeguy wrote: post #153
AlotOfReading wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/40%C2%B013'48.0%22N+97%C2%...

Damn, that looks awful, those tailings alone…

Yes，and I feel it's the sweetest home for many years.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#233

Post by schoen »

Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #209
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sells a storytelling course... perhaps this is meant to be a 'gotcha' where he reveals the con after the fact? My guess is there are people reading this who know something isn't quite right.

I can personally guarantee that this piece is 100% non-fiction.My course also focuses on narrative writing techniques.Does 'Storytelling' have to imply fiction?In Chinese "story(故事）" just things happened, it can be real or fiction .

There are a lot of subtleties about connotation here. I would say that "storytelling" traditionally primarily meant fiction, but some modern uses also include narrative technique generally, including nonfiction and also marketing. There may also be older traditions of nonfiction storytelling, but that has some connotation of a ritualized or formalized activity (e.g. children sitting in a circle listening to a recitation).

The term that has no connotations of fiction is probably "narrative".

I think many languages have closely related words for fictional narratives and nonfictional narratives.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#234

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

desmoulins wrote: post #211

This is really interesting, from what the first part describes, the design and operation of "factory 404" has a lot in common with similar facilities built in the US and Russia. The US built the Hanford/Richland site in the desert of eastern Washington, and Russia built Mayak/Ozyorsk in an isolated part of the Urals. They're all versions of this project to build a self-contained 'utopia' city in the wilderness, dedic…

To be honest, growing up inside, we lived in a state of 'enforced innocence.' While Hanford and Mayak's histories are now well-documented in the West, 404’s specific records regarding accidents or contamination remain largely classified.I only heard some stories from my parents.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#235

Post by thomassmith65 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #112
thomassmith65 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As often as not, these days, when someone online criticizes the West, it's for something absurd (eg: Churchill interfering with Hitler's continental invasions, or America using the word 'regime' when discussing Iran). Obviously, other times the criticism is wholly justified. What "dominant Western narratives" apply here? I'm not going to bicker. I'm just curious.

There's no need to be defensive. We are largely westerners on a western website studying history from a western perspective. There's nothing wrong with that, it's natural. It just means we lose some understanding of events if that's the only side we know. OP is performing a service by documenting first-person history, and doesn't need to justify why it's important. It's important.

My comment was asking for details about its parent comment, not about the main post.

I was curious about the 'narratives' it mentioned.

They might be wrongheaded; they might be valid.

Either way, it piques my interest.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#236

Post by readthenotes1 »

panic wrote: post #197
Vincent_Yan404 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this profound comment. It is incredibly humbling to hear this from someone who has spent a decade researching the topic. You are right—the generation that built '404' is aging, and many of their stories are fading into silence. One of my primary motivations for writing this was the realization that if I didn't document these memories now, they might be lost forever. I hope my first-hand account can prov…

[flagged]

It passed my turing test. I found it well written and interesting.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#237

Post by schoen »

In the U.S. we have belatedly had declassification of various parts of military history, including lots of details about Los Alamos (where the U.S. atom bomb was invented). Sometimes this has happened on a delay of many decades and there are certainly still some things that the public might think of as part of "history" that are not officially declassified. Has there been a similar process in China where older military history is no longer officially secret?

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#238

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

shimman wrote: post #200
FarmerPotato wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a lot of LLM replies, and counting.

Yeah I was willing to suspend disbelief but that comment kinda did it there.

My sincere apologies to everyone here. You caught me red-handed, and I feel terrible about it.

I promise that the story of 404 is my own, lived experience. Just as the whole article, they are translate by LLM.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#239

Post by Vincent_Yan404 »

the_af wrote: post #169
saltwatercowboy wrote: post #159

Something about this feels off. Anyone else?

It feels off to me as well. It's the kind of unverifiable story that we would like to believe, but there's almost zero way of having independent confirmation. The photos could be from anywhere. The author seems likeable and writes an interesting story, but who knows how much of it is true. The story seems almost tailored to cater to HN, with secret projects, nuclear power, China, and secrecy.

Those pictures photoed by me and my parents,I did use LLM to translate, cause my english is not good enough to write a long article.

Re: Growing up in “404 Not Found”: China's nuclear city in the Gobi Desert

#240

Post by xanthor »

sersi wrote: post #215
xanthor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read Dongping Han

Oh the fact that there has been some positives from the cultural revolution (by having educated people sent to the farm and rural area) doesn't stop the fact that the cultural revolution was a net negative for the country. How many works of arts have been destroyed due to it? How many people suffered? Nothing is ever white or black but it doesn't mean that we can take a small positive outcome and use that to justify…

The fact that you immediately think you know what the author I referenced has written and continue to plow forward with your pre-established conclusions is evidence of the “dominant western narrative” effect.

Accounts from well-off diaspora of any country will always be negative. It’s a self-selecting group with specific interests.

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