Chernobyl HBO Series

[Ashop]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8

[MuscleScience]

I find is very interesting how nature ended up taking back over the area in only a few years despite radiation and all that. In another 50 years nobody would ever be able to tell a town was there.

[Capebuffalo]

The wild hogs there are huge.

[fiddlesticks]

And they are good eatin'! Well, if you don't mind a few extra appendages and other mild mutations, that is...

Well the chicken sold at Walmart is pretty much more unnatural than anything Chernobyl can offer tbh, them chicken breasts on a cycle that would put ronnie to shame.

If I remember right avg chicken weight was .9lbs at 38? Days half a century ago and now it's like 4.2lbs.

[XnavyHMCS]

Last year I went on a tour of the city, as you can't obviously (nor would you want to) get near the reactor. The place, what the locals haven't scavenged, is freaky as hell... In many spots it looks like the people just left the house... Trees growing in the middle of the room... It was a great trip, but I am not sure what it has done for my longevity (who gives a f***, I don't want to live forever). I proof-read a professor's work (Ukrainian professor, and it was a really long article) concerning the accident, initial reaction and the subsequent fallout (no pun intended), and it was really informative.

As for the hogs: Ahhhh, the season has returned here in Eastern Europe!!! Tonight and this weekend I will be out with my bow waiting to drill one. It is all rather a comical form of hunting, as this Spring's ground blind is only 10 meters from my fence which surrounds my house... "Work smarter, not harder" is my moto for this year, as I arrowed one last fall on some state forest property a few kilometers from my house and it ended up being a lot of work. I will post up some pics!!!

[< <Samson> >]

Last year I went on a tour of the city, as you can't obviously (nor would you want to) get near the reactor. The place, what the locals haven't scavenged, is freaky as hell... In many spots it looks like the people just left the house... Trees growing in the middle of the room... It was a great trip, but I am not sure what it has done for my longevity (who gives a f***, I don't want to live forever). I proof-read a professor's work (Ukrainian professor, and it was a really long article) concerning the accident, initial reaction and the subsequent fallout (no pun intended), and it was really informative.

As for the hogs: Ahhhh, the season has returned here in Eastern Europe!!! Tonight and this weekend I will be out with my bow waiting to drill one. It is all rather a comical form of hunting, as this Spring's ground blind is only 10 meters from my fence which surrounds my house... "Work smarter, not harder" is my moto for this year, as I arrowed one last fall on some state forest property a few kilometers from my house and it ended up being a lot of work. I will post up some pics!!!

That’s awesome, I been considering going myself - but, it’s not a must - but, I did live about 5 hours away when it blew back in 86

[Beetlegeuse]

They wouldn't have spent billions of dollars putting a new (second) cap on that bitch if it weren't still seriously dangerous. There's still 200 tons of U-235 to be dealt with, lying deep in the lower levels where it ran to when the reactor melted. Four hundred thousand pounds of molten fissile material, flowing like lava down into the basement, where it remains to this day. That shit will be deadly radioactive for thousands of years to come.


The trailer for the film looks good. Then again, trailers always look better than the movie they're about. Not surprising that Stellan Skarsgard is in it. Seems like you can't make a major motion picture about the USSR/Russia or Scandinavia without Stellan Skarsgard. He's the Scandinavian Samuel L. Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister black guy? Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister, pasty-white northern-European guy? Skarsgard.

Four of his eight kids (and counting) also are actors. One of them is Floki in the TV series "Vikings." One of them was the clown in the film "It." They're like the goddam Swedish Baldwin family. Fifty-seven channels and there's a Skarsgard on every damn one of them!

The wild hogs there are huge.

Some Russian wild hogs were released accidentally on purpose in the deep south specifically intending that they hybridize with the feral hogs already there and produce something larger and more aggressive to hunt.

Mission accomplished.


EDIT:

This is what the "corium," the residue of Chernobyl's melted reactor, looks like today:



It looks like half of a Hershey's Kiss but they call it the elephant's foot.

[< <Samson> >]

^ Truth

Can I get the roids they feed to them chickens? Shit, I should b able to grow my chest out in no time - them birds are 85% breast

[Octaneforce]

Ever play fallout on xbox/ps3? Looks just like it

[Kimbo Almond]

I wrote a poem about the Chernobyl accident.

[tarmyg]

I wrote a poem about the Chernobyl accident.

Please do share.

[fiddlesticks]

^ Truth

Can I get the roids they feed to them chickens? Shit, I should b able to grow my chest out in no time - them birds are 85% breast

Let's hope they give the chickens some dbol or sdrol.

[KennyJ]

They wouldn't have spent billions of dollars putting a new (second) cap on that bitch if it weren't still seriously dangerous. There's still 200 tons of U-235 to be dealt with, lying deep in the lower levels where it ran to when the reactor melted. Four hundred thousand pounds of molten fissile material, flowing like lava down into the basement, where it remains to this day. That shit will be deadly radioactive for thousands of years to come.


The trailer for the film looks good. Then again, trailers always look better than the movie they're about. Not surprising that Stellan Skarsgard is in it. Seems like you can't make a major motion picture about the USSR/Russia or Scandinavia without Stellan Skarsgard. He's the Scandinavian Samuel L. Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister black guy? Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister, pasty-white northern-European guy? Skarsgard.

Four of his eight kids (and counting) also are actors. One of them is Floki in the TV series "Vikings." One of them was the clown in the film "It." They're like the goddam Swedish Baldwin family. Fifty-seven channels and there's a Skarsgard on every damn one of them!



Some Russian wild hogs were released accidentally on purpose in the deep south specifically intending that they hybridize with the feral hogs already there and produce something larger and more aggressive to hunt.

Mission accomplished.


EDIT:

This is what the "corium," the residue of Chernobyl's melted reactor, looks like today:



It looks like half of a Hershey's Kiss but they call it the elephant's foot.

Did they release Russian wild hogs in the southern United States?

[Beetlegeuse]

Did they release Russian wild hogs in the southern United States?

The story I heard was there was a rich sportsman (in Mis-sippi, IIRC) who imported some specifically to release them (without asking anybody's permission). Whether they were wild or domestic I don't know but I have read several accounts that a goodly number of the feral hogs that have been harvested got some Russian blood in 'em.

[fiddlesticks]

They wouldn't have spent billions of dollars putting a new (second) cap on that bitch if it weren't still seriously dangerous. There's still 200 tons of U-235 to be dealt with, lying deep in the lower levels where it ran to when the reactor melted. Four hundred thousand pounds of molten fissile material, flowing like lava down into the basement, where it remains to this day. That shit will be deadly radioactive for thousands of years to come.


The trailer for the film looks good. Then again, trailers always look better than the movie they're about. Not surprising that Stellan Skarsgard is in it. Seems like you can't make a major motion picture about the USSR/Russia or Scandinavia without Stellan Skarsgard. He's the Scandinavian Samuel L. Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister black guy? Jackson. Need a glib, hip-looking, sinister, pasty-white northern-European guy? Skarsgard.

Four of his eight kids (and counting) also are actors. One of them is Floki in the TV series "Vikings." One of them was the clown in the film "It." They're like the goddam Swedish Baldwin family. Fifty-seven channels and there's a Skarsgard on every damn one of them!



Some Russian wild hogs were released accidentally on purpose in the deep south specifically intending that they hybridize with the feral hogs already there and produce something larger and more aggressive to hunt.

Mission accomplished.


EDIT:

This is what the "corium," the residue of Chernobyl's melted reactor, looks like today:



It looks like half of a Hershey's Kiss but they call it the elephant's foot.

Havnt put much research or effort into nuclear stuff but its incredibly interesting that such a tiny amount of material that naturally would cause no issue could quite literally erase the world.

[Couchlockd]

Havnt put much research or effort into nuclear stuff but its incredibly interesting that such a tiny amount of material that naturally would cause no issue could quite literally erase the world.

It's not a tiny bit of material found naturally.

It's enriched to about 70-85% and was under fusion and melted down

Ore contains like 0.03% u235, the process to get enrichment is insane.

But once you have reactor grade, weapons grade is a shorter process.

The enrichment process is not linear.

Once it picks up "speed" it get going quickly.

[Beetlegeuse]

It's not a tiny bit of material found naturally.

It's enriched to about 70-85% and was under fusion and melted down

Ore contains like 0.03% u235, the process to get enrichment is insane.

But once you have reactor grade, weapons grade is a shorter process.

The enrichment process is not linear.

Once it picks up "speed" it get going quickly.

S'why plutonium is the drug of choice for anybody with the technology to build an implosion bomb. It took Oak Ridge two years to make enough U-235 for Little Boy. The enrichment plant was running so many centrifuges the tiny little hamlet was burning 1/7th of all the electricity produced in the US. And they only made enough for one bomb.

All you got to do to make plutonium is show (cheap and plentiful) U-238 to a reactor emitting deuterons. By the time they popped the cap on Little Boy, the reactors in Washington state were making enough P-239 for four implosion bombs every month.

S'why we're scared shitless of Iran having a nukular program. If they have a nuclear reactor, they can make P-239.

And once they get "the bomb," the Saudis will have to have one, then it'll be 1949 all over again.

[Couchlockd]

S'why plutonium is the drug of choice for anybody with the technology to build an implosion bomb. It took Oak Ridge two years to make enough U-235 for Little Boy. The enrichment plant was running so many centrifuges the tiny little hamlet was burning 1/7th of all the electricity produced in the US. And they only made enough for one bomb.

All you got to do to make plutonium is show (cheap and plentiful) U-238 to a reactor emitting deuterons. By the time they popped the cap on Little Boy, the reactors in Washington state were making enough P-239 for four implosion bombs every month.

S'why we're scared shitless of Iran having a nukular program. If they have a nuclear reactor, they can make P-239.

And once they get "the bomb," the Saudis will have to have one, then it'll be 1949 all over again.

Yes plutonian is the drug of choice

But little terrorist nation's don't have the ability to get the implosion set up right.

The fission, fusion boosted, fission thermo nukes are pretty bad ass.

Russia thought the czar bomb would not stop expansion. Lol

The pilot that dropped it, had a estimated 50/50 chance of getting away from it.

They said he dropped about 100-125 feet elevation when it detonated

Nuclear science is very very much an area of interest for me

The core used in the nagisaki bomb killed 3 people before it was even assembled into a bomb. They called it demon core.

[Beetlegeuse]

I know a nuke is the holy grail to the Islamo-Fascists but with modern technology I think there's more ROI in bug bombs. I read today they're testing for ebola at the US-Mexico border. Every time there's an outbreak in Africa there's talk of terrorists trying to get a volunteer get infected and smuggling them into the US before they're symptomatic.

The new "nukular" arms race (at least until the Arabs start the real thing) is robots. Drones. I'm pretty sure I'll live long enough to see a battle the winner of which will be the side with the best drones. Only there isn't any Manhattan Project secrecy to limit the spread, this shit is "open source." You can buy it at Radio Shack. Or at least you could if they hadn't gone bust.

[Couchlockd]

I know a nuke is the holy grail to the Islamo-Fascists but with modern technology I think there's more ROI in bug bombs. I read today they're testing for ebola at the US-Mexico border. Every time there's an outbreak in Africa there's talk of terrorists trying to get a volunteer get infected and smuggling them into the US before they're symptomatic.

The new "nukular" arms race (at least until the Arabs start the real thing) is robots. Drones. I'm pretty sure I'll live long enough to see a battle the winner of which will be the side with the best drones. Only there isn't any Manhattan Project secrecy to limit the spread, this shit is "open source." You can buy it at Radio Shack. Or at least you could if they hadn't gone bust.

Never knew that about the ebola smuggling thing

That is scary

[fiddlesticks]

I know a nuke is the holy grail to the Islamo-Fascists but with modern technology I think there's more ROI in bug bombs. I read today they're testing for ebola at the US-Mexico border. Every time there's an outbreak in Africa there's talk of terrorists trying to get a volunteer get infected and smuggling them into the US before they're symptomatic.

The new "nukular" arms race (at least until the Arabs start the real thing) is robots. Drones. I'm pretty sure I'll live long enough to see a battle the winner of which will be the side with the best drones. Only there isn't any Manhattan Project secrecy to limit the spread, this shit is "open source." You can buy it at Radio Shack. Or at least you could if they hadn't gone bust.

Now they are just stealing ideas from the mongols !

[Frank777]

Last year I went on a tour of the city, as you can't obviously (nor would you want to) get near the reactor. The place, what the locals haven't scavenged, is freaky as hell... In many spots it looks like the people just left the house... Trees growing in the middle of the room... It was a great trip, but I am not sure what it has done for my longevity (who gives a f***, I don't want to live forever). I proof-read a professor's work (Ukrainian professor, and it was a really long article) concerning the accident, initial reaction and the subsequent fallout (no pun intended), and it was really informative.

As for the hogs: Ahhhh, the season has returned here in Eastern Europe!!! Tonight and this weekend I will be out with my bow waiting to drill one. It is all rather a comical form of hunting, as this Spring's ground blind is only 10 meters from my fence which surrounds my house... "Work smarter, not harder" is my moto for this year, as I arrowed one last fall on some state forest property a few kilometers from my house and it ended up being a lot of work. I will post up some pics!!!

I'm sure you won't forget that trip! I watched a documentary film about Chernobyl and all that stuff was shown there (I mean, trees in the middle of the room, things and toys that people left). The hardest scenes were about people who died after fighting the fire. having watched it,I'm not sure I want to go there.

[Beetlegeuse]

There's about a dozen different pox viruses, including chicken pox, camel pox, cow pox, horse pox and, of course, smallpox. Smallpox is supposed to be extinct in the wild and horse pox was extinct altogether. Two years ago a Canadian scientist bought some generic DNA strands from a lab in Europe -- a sort of DNA paint-by-numbers kit -- and built a living, breathing horse pox virus from it. The polio virus was re-created the same way in 2002 (by a different group).

The guy who made the horse pox reckons someone with his know-how could have made a smallpox virus just the same (its DNA sequence is a matter of public record). He figures for about half a million $USD, you could create a weaponized smallpox virus. That's chump-change compared to what a nuke would cost, even if you could buy one on the black market. And it's much easier to deliver than a nuke would be, especially if they're looking to set it off with maximum blast effect.

And while you're cooking up this weaponized smallpox, maybe you could tweak its DNA just a tad so it's unaffected by the current smallpox vaccine. I don't know about you but I'd sooner be vaporized at ground zero of a nukular detonation than die from smallpox.


It also makes all this handwringing over whether the CDC should destroy its remaining samples of live smallpox virus completely moot.

[Beetlegeuse]

The first episode was an absolute snooze-fest but it turned around in the second. I've got Episode 3 downloading as I type. Looking forward to it.

[Proximal]

Never knew that about the ebola smuggling thing

That is scary

It would have been so ridiculously easy to f up this country during the last Ebola outbreak, why it didn't happen astounds me.

[Proximal]

The first episode was an absolute snooze-fest but it turned around in the second. I've got Episode 3 downloading as I type. Looking forward to it.

Really? It got he hooked immediately.

GREAT show thus far!

[Beetlegeuse]

Third episode is keeping the momentum going. I just don't know how long they can milk it for.

But I have to admit, a big reason I like it is because it's confirmation bias. I spent most of my adult life champing at the bit for the chance to spill Soviet blood. Chernobyl shows what a retarded and hopelessly corrupt system it was. Like semi-literate coal miners blackmailing high party officials, and getting away with it. Lying to Gorbachev's face at a Central Committee meeting to cover your own ass, even though the guy next to you will own your balls for all eternity because he knows the truth of it.

I still remember vividly one day walking up to a urinal in one of Saddam's palaces and noticing the man taking a wiz next to me was wearing a Ukrainian army officer's uniform. I had to keep muttering under my breath, "he's not a soviet any more, he's not a soviet any more ..." to suppress the urge to slide a blade between is ribs.


I forgot to mention how the first episode set a very high standard for itself when it started out dramatizing the protagonist's suicide. That's setting the bar really high, because you do you hold the viewer's interest when you've already told them at the start that this guy's gonna die?

Reminds me of Sunset Boulevard, IMHO the greatest Film Noir ever made. It opens with the narrator, William Holden, telling how that's his dead body you see floating in that swimming pool. It took some masterful storytelling after that to make the viewer care what happened to him.

[Beetlegeuse]

Just saw episode four. I have no idea how accurate their fact are but, if accurate, it's emblematic of what a fucked-up system they had that it was four months after the explosion and they still haven't cleared all the radioactive debris off the roof.

[Tigershark]

Love the show. Have watched some documentaries on it and it seems to stay to facts. I'm sure some stuff is added for dramatic effect here and there but in all great mini-series.

[Beetlegeuse]

Watched #5 last night. What a scalding indictment of the Soviet system.

I thought they did an incredible job of explaining the nuts-and-bolts of how the reactor exploded. The simplest and most comprehensible description I yet have seen.

In a day when all manner of neo-Socialists in D.C. are making headlines, I was puzzled that HBO would risk the coin on a show that portrayed the bleakness and ineptitude of the world's first socialist totalitarian regime. Last week I heard rumblings from political quarters that it's part of a plan to tarnish Trump45 by association. As if continuing to peddle the "collusion myth" eventually will result in people coming to the conclusion that Putin has Trump in his pocket, and therefore Trump somehow bore some peripheral responsibility for something that happened in the USSR in 1986.

Puh-leez!

There is no question that new TV shows are full of anti-conservative, anti-traditional ideals, but I think this is too much of a reach. In no small part because not enough people will believe this horseshit to matter. Trump's approval ratings are 40-50% too high for the demoncrats to risk the blowback from an impeachment. And once he's into his second term he'll absolutely unassailable.

Which begs the question, is it that the conservatives who see the connection are paranoid, or that the neo-Socialists who are behind the plot remain that delusional?


Innywho, I try to guard against my own prejudices against the Soviets, but sometimes the depravity and inefficiency of the Soviet regime is undeniable. And I saw clear evidence of that in #5. About seven minutes in, Legasov (Jared Harris) is called to an impromptu meeting with deputy chairman of KGB Charkov (Alan Williams) in his executive limousine. A GAZ 24 Volga, unless I miss my guess, a genuine period-correct Soviet-made car.

This is a screen shot of when Charkov's man opens the car's rear door for Legasov:



It's dark but I think you can make out what I'm on about.

In the show there's obviously nowhere where smoking is discouraged, much less prohibited. So it stands to reason there'd be an ash tray in the rear doors of an executive car. And Vodka. The ancient Romans kept the masses placated with "bread and circuses." The Soviets used cigarettes and vodka. Their cigarettes were famously harsh (as one might expect) and they used to say that they were the only thing that got them through the Russian winters.

The other point is the window crank. It's 1986 and the government limousine for the deputy chairman of the Committee for State Security doesn't have electric window lifts. Because electric window lifts were too costly and too difficult to manufacture in their primitive economic system. Neither could they master making ball point ink pens or denim jeans.

Packard introduced power windows on its cars in 1940. All the windows in 1960s Cadillacs were power-operated (and some Caddys in that era had EIGHT windows), standard.

Regarding that greatest of Soviet inventions, the Kalashnikov automatic rifle, the chief reason it's so reliable is that its designer took into consideration that it would be built in a country with a manufacturing base that was so primitive that most of the farm tractors in the country still had four hooves and ran on hay.

[Proximal]

Really liked the series!

And you are so right about the clarity & simplicity of that explanation, incredible.

[Beetlegeuse]

It would have been so ridiculously easy to f up this country during the last Ebola outbreak, why it didn't happen astounds me.

Speaking of which, what do you get when you add this ...

The world's second-biggest Ebola outbreak is still raging

... to this ...

‘Large Groups’ of African Migrants Illegally Crossed Texas Border, Say Feds

... hhhmmmmm?

[kelkel]

Another series I really like is Warrior. Set when Chinatown was developing.

[Beetlegeuse]

I was re-watching a bit of the last episode so I could transcribe part of the testimony of Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris) to the Chernobyl tribunal/lynch mob and was reminded of something.

Immediately after his testimony -- which ends with Legasov proclaiming that the true cause of Chernobyl was "lies" -- Legasov is immediately escorted by two KGB men into a washroom off of a kitchen.

Apart from the porcelain fixtures, there is no furniture in the washroom save for a single folding stool. And the stool has been sat next to a rather large drain in the floor.

Legasov scans the entire room searchingly from the moment he enters, then he takes a step over to the stool, looks down and stares intently at the drain.



In his book "Breaking With Moscow," KGB defector Arkady Shevchenko details how the Soviets performed state executions. The room would be empty except for a stool in the middle and a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The condemned (who might or might not have known he had been condemned) would be led in and sat on the stool and made to face away from the door. And then be left alone until "they" were satisfied he had been suffering from anticipation long enough. Then the executioner would walk in, press the muzzle of his pistol just behind the condemned's right ear and put a bullet into is brain.

The drain in the floor was a practical consideration for cleaning up after.

So that's the significance of this scene.



Vasily Blokhin was history's most prolific executioner. He worked for Stalin's NKVD before its name was changed to KGB. It's believed he performed 22,000 executions over his illustrious career.

It doesn't carry same impact from this remove. It's hard to imagine how barbarous we thought the Soviets were at the time, barbarous to the point of evil, and how fearful we were -- and with damn good reason -- of them coming dominate the world.

After the USSR's almost unopposed invasion of Poland in September of 1939, in an event known as the Katyn Massacre, the Soviet military executed about 22,000 Polish prisoners of war (the similarity to Blokhin's total number of executions is entirely coincidental). Blokhin tried to keep to a schedule of 300 each night. They always worked at night so the bodies could be removed unseen in the dark to try to prevent desperation turning to bravery in the remaining prisoners. Blokhin personally executed 7,000 men over a period of 28 days.

He had a schedule to maintain so he couldn't tolerate a malfunctioning pistol, so he wouldn't use the customary Tokarev automatic because he didn't trust its reliability. So he always brought a brief case full of his own Walther Model 2s chambered in .25 ACP.



Because, in the immortal words of the Admiral of Soviet Fleets Sergey Gorshkov, "'Better' is the enemy of 'Good Enough'."

Another series I really like is Warrior. Set when Chinatown was developing.

Thanks, KK I'll have to have that a look.

[Obs]

I was re-watching a bit of the last episode so I could transcribe part of the testimony of Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris) to the Chernobyl tribunal/lynch mob and was reminded of something.

Immediately after his testimony -- which ends with Legasov proclaiming that the true cause of Chernobyl was "lies" -- Legasov is immediately escorted by two KGB men into a washroom off of a kitchen.

Apart from the porcelain fixtures, there is no furniture in the washroom save for a single folding stool. And the stool has been sat next to a rather large drain in the floor.

Legasov scans the entire room searchingly from the moment he enters, then he takes a step over to the stool, looks down and stares intently at the drain.



In his book "Breaking With Moscow," KGB defector Arkady Shevchenko details how the Soviets performed state executions. The room would be empty except for a stool in the middle and a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The condemned (who might or might not have known he had been condemned) would be led in and sat on the stool and made to face away from the door. And then be left alone until "they" were satisfied he had been suffering from anticipation long enough. Then the executioner would walk in, press the muzzle of his pistol just behind the condemned's right ear and put a bullet into is brain.

The drain in the floor was a practical consideration for cleaning up after.

So that's the significance of this scene.



Vasily Blokhin was history's most prolific executioner. He worked for Stalin's NKVD before its name was changed to KGB. It's believed he performed 22,000 executions over his illustrious career.

It doesn't carry same impact from his remove. It's hard to imagine how barbarous we thought the Soviets were at the time, barbarous to the point of evil, and how fearful we were -- and with damn good reason -- of them coming dominate the world.

After the USSR's almost unopposed invasion of Poland in September of 1939, in an event known as the Katyn Massacre, the Soviet military executed about 22,000 Polish prisoners of war (the similarity to Blokhin's total number of executions is entirely coincidental). Blokhin tried to keep to a schedule of 300 each night. They always worked at night so the bodies could be removed unseen in the dark to try to prevent desperation turning to bravery in the remaining prisoners. Blokhin personally executed 7,000 men over a period of 28 days.

He had a schedule to maintain so he couldn't tolerate a malfunctioning pistol, so he wouldn't use the customary Tokarev automatic because he didn't trust its reliability. So he always brought a brief case full of his own Walther Model 2s chambered in .25 ACP.



Because, in the immortal words of the Admiral of Soviet Fleets Sergey Gorshkov, "'Better' is the enemy of 'Good Enough'."





Thanks, KK I'll have to have that a look.

Later the us would create a series of knockk off browning baby styled pistols that malfunctioned to no end and was later known as "the ring of fire"

I got shot by one when its sear slipped off the firing pin.

[Proximal]

Speaking of which, what do you get when you add this ...

The world's second-biggest Ebola outbreak is still raging

... to this ...

‘Large Groups’ of African Migrants Illegally Crossed Texas Border, Say Feds

... hhhmmmmm?

Well, if it’s happened, we’d know. there’s no if’s with this shit.

And spread by indirect contact . . . . .

Waltz into an airport like Chicago, touch random stuff around terminals on flights going around the country. Contaminate a hospital or school.

Almost seems too easy. That’s why I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

[Beetlegeuse]

This is too rich.

Putin’s Media Struggle to Deal With HBO’s Chernobyl
The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel told the story about our own heroes is a source of shame for pro-Kremlin media.

As is this:

Russia Should Have Made HBO's ‘Chernobyl’
Creating a compelling drama about the nuclear disaster would be one way for post-Soviet nations to show they’ve learned its lessons.

EDIT:
One other point that I think is significant RE: nukular power and the USSR, and which never came up in the series, they put the world's first commercial nuclear power plant online in 1954. And it was a less sophisticated version of the same "water-cooled graphite-moderated reactor" variety as was the RBMK reactor that exploded at Chernobyl 30 years later.

The US didn't stand up its first commercial nuclear plant until 1957. We obviously were at the fore of world nuclear technology back then so why did the godless Russians get there first?

1., Because to them it wasn't about making power, it was about making a political statement. The Russians had (and still have) so much coal they could meet all their power needs for centuries to come with nothing but coal. They didn't "need" nuclear power, and it never was going to yield a positive ROI, they just did it to prove the "superiority" of their system. For bragging rights.

And they were willing to put the safety of millions of their citizens to make the point.

2., The Reds started out with the objective of building the lowest-tech reactor they could. They never considered any other designs. It was the same rationale that led them to start from the beginning with solid fuel rocket motors. Liquid fuel rockets need a liquid oxidant to mix with the fuel else the fire goes out when the air gets thin. But leaking oxidant causes corrosion, which can cause failure of a propulsion system, not to mention catastrophic accidents (witness Apollos 1 and 13). And liquid oxygen (LOX) is about -300°F, which means the system has to remain leak-free over a YUGE range or temperatures. And the Soviets knew they lacked the technology to make fuel system fittings that were consistently tight enough to guarantee no leaks under these conditions. So they opted for solid fuel instead. Not because it was better, because its construction was better suited to a country where most farm tractors still had four hooves and ran on hay.

The US, OTOH, built prototypes of several different reactor designs to evaluate their suitability. Which was a step that would have put a YUGE drain on the USSR's far more limited resources, so they skipped it. In the end the US settled on a pressurized water reactor. Among other advantages, a PWO reactor produces power at the inverse of temperature. It produces less power as it gets hotter, so a thermal runaway, which was what destroyed Chernobyl's RBMK reactor, and which the Soviets knew full well was a potentiality before they built the first example because of its positive void coefficient, could never happen. Despite the inherently superior safety of its design, the US also took the added step of surrounding that original US reactor with a stainless steel containment structure.

This also is why when America had its worst-ever nuclear accident, Three Mile Island, 1979, no one was so much as got sick. In the credits at the end of episode #5 of HBO's 'Chernobyl,' it reads:

We will never know the actual human cost of Chernobyl.

Most estimates range from 4000 to 93,000 deaths.




The official Soviet death tool, unchanged since 1987 ...

is 31.

A perfect illustration of why it's a bad idea to let children play with fire.

[Leres]

Great series. The Soviet Union covered it all up! Still dont know how many died from it.

[Proximal]

Another series I really like is Warrior. Set when Chinatown was developing.

Have developed some sleeping issues & recall this post.

Watched an episode tonight, liked it a lot, TY.

[kelkel]

Only about 10 episodes so far. Go back and get caught up! I really like it so far.