Happy Anniversary, Chernobyl.
update I couldn't post last night because the internet died:
I spent the evening watching documentaries about Chernobyl compiled by a woman who bikes through Chernobyl.....we literally had the DVD lying around, and tonight seemed like an appropriate time to watch.
I have to say....I'm very affected by this. Its. Devastating and Heroic all at once......just think of all those people who knowingly worked themselves to death, just to stop the disaster from spreading further. Worse, I keep thinking about the generals who sent their soldiers in.....knowing they were sending their boys in with false promises of safety, and that they themself were dying as they gave the orders to work.
Impossible to get an accurate deathtoll, as the nuclear cloud covered about half of Europe and Russia, and many of the "liquidators" and "biorobots" (these are the names given to the clean-up workers) were brought in from all over, used for a brief time for 'safety' and sent home. Literally thousands of men were brought in to hand-carry radioactive rods back to the reactor core, and were told to carry 4 rods, toss them into the pit without standing over it, and be off-site within a minute. Estimates of the Chernobyl deaths range from 3,000 to 300,000. The "sarcophagus" built to contain the meltdown is ailing.....some of the workers were talking about how, to contain this, we'll have to design a structure that will outlast the pyramids.
The last documentary was about the radiation related physical defects......that was the hardest to handle. This girl, few years younger than me, who had thyroid cancer, and no one was telling her.....she was so sweet and smiling and cute....I seriously have a crush on her, and since the documentary has filmed, she has probably died. There were tons of children with astoundingly aweful defects. Most don't live to age 4, but some live on, seemingly against better judgement, humane kindness, and physical possibility. There was a toddler with her brain in a bubble on the outside of her skull....she seemed so normal until you saw the back of her head had this knob as big as her head itself. I think the worst was seeing a row of women in the maternity ward at a hospital......they came to the woman on the end, and when her child was born, she screamed when she saw it. They laid this alien creature on her sinking, soft belly, and I just wanted to scream "get it away from her - she doesn't want it." It made the idea of pregnancy and childbirth seem so grotesque, dangerous, and devastating.
sigh.
anyway, I think it is important in some way that we recognize what has happened and will keep happening. I do believe in nuclear power, but I think with that choice comese the duty to recognize the risks, the history, and the people whose lives have paid for this priviledge.
Some links.
Nuclear Nightmares photojournalism (link courtesy of aspasia. This is pretty powerful imagery, if you can handle seeing some of the living victims of the meltdown.
A photogallery in a Russian blog. I don't read Russian, so I don't know the context, but from the images it looks like a grafitti artist has snuck into Chernobyl and painted the life back into the city.
ABC News story. My once-girlfriendthingie sent me this link, which is a corporate news story with some basic background information, in case you're like me and were too young to know about Chernobyl as it happened.....
update I couldn't post last night because the internet died:
I spent the evening watching documentaries about Chernobyl compiled by a woman who bikes through Chernobyl.....we literally had the DVD lying around, and tonight seemed like an appropriate time to watch.
I have to say....I'm very affected by this. Its. Devastating and Heroic all at once......just think of all those people who knowingly worked themselves to death, just to stop the disaster from spreading further. Worse, I keep thinking about the generals who sent their soldiers in.....knowing they were sending their boys in with false promises of safety, and that they themself were dying as they gave the orders to work.
Impossible to get an accurate deathtoll, as the nuclear cloud covered about half of Europe and Russia, and many of the "liquidators" and "biorobots" (these are the names given to the clean-up workers) were brought in from all over, used for a brief time for 'safety' and sent home. Literally thousands of men were brought in to hand-carry radioactive rods back to the reactor core, and were told to carry 4 rods, toss them into the pit without standing over it, and be off-site within a minute. Estimates of the Chernobyl deaths range from 3,000 to 300,000. The "sarcophagus" built to contain the meltdown is ailing.....some of the workers were talking about how, to contain this, we'll have to design a structure that will outlast the pyramids.
The last documentary was about the radiation related physical defects......that was the hardest to handle. This girl, few years younger than me, who had thyroid cancer, and no one was telling her.....she was so sweet and smiling and cute....I seriously have a crush on her, and since the documentary has filmed, she has probably died. There were tons of children with astoundingly aweful defects. Most don't live to age 4, but some live on, seemingly against better judgement, humane kindness, and physical possibility. There was a toddler with her brain in a bubble on the outside of her skull....she seemed so normal until you saw the back of her head had this knob as big as her head itself. I think the worst was seeing a row of women in the maternity ward at a hospital......they came to the woman on the end, and when her child was born, she screamed when she saw it. They laid this alien creature on her sinking, soft belly, and I just wanted to scream "get it away from her - she doesn't want it." It made the idea of pregnancy and childbirth seem so grotesque, dangerous, and devastating.
sigh.
anyway, I think it is important in some way that we recognize what has happened and will keep happening. I do believe in nuclear power, but I think with that choice comese the duty to recognize the risks, the history, and the people whose lives have paid for this priviledge.
Some links.
Nuclear Nightmares photojournalism (link courtesy of aspasia. This is pretty powerful imagery, if you can handle seeing some of the living victims of the meltdown.
A photogallery in a Russian blog. I don't read Russian, so I don't know the context, but from the images it looks like a grafitti artist has snuck into Chernobyl and painted the life back into the city.
ABC News story. My once-girlfriendthingie sent me this link, which is a corporate news story with some basic background information, in case you're like me and were too young to know about Chernobyl as it happened.....
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
esme:
just for a couple days. back in CA now. How are you?
esme:
Looking, thinking, trying to figure it out. We looked at a building yesterday that had two open units....one was a decent sized studio and the other was called a studio but it had an attic as well as the two bottom rooms and I loved it lots but it's a little bit out of our (already very generous, probably unrealistic) pricerange. Plus it'll be a few months before the dream has any chance of becoming a reality and I'm sure it will have been snapped up by then. We also think it would be fun to buy some land and build a modular home with solar panels and underfloor heating and all those wonderful things. Dream dream dream.
