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Chernobyl 20 years on

MagwangMagwang Veteran
edited April 2006 in General Banter
As I type this my eyes are full of tears and my heart aches.

I just watched this photo essay on the children of Chernobyl:

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay%5Fchernobyl/

Comments

  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited April 2006
    Mankind's capacity to foo things up is limitless and breathtaking... Fortunately, it is countered by people such as this man, who are to be praised for their never-ending persistence in keeping such issues alive, as a reminder to us of how very stupid we are, and how insane it is to believe that we can be more powerful than the forces of nature.

    Thank you for posting this.
  • YogaMamaYogaMama
    edited April 2006
    How sad. And Fede's right...it's important to keep these issues alive to remind us of how terribly stupid humans can be sometimes.
  • BrigidBrigid Veteran
    edited April 2006
    Heartbreaking and so important to be reminded of right now because the price of oil is rising so drastically that people are starting to talk nuclear again. It drives me nuts. We had to study everything nuclear when I was working for Greenpeace so we could counter any arguments with the truth. We had to know our stuff and it was absolutely brutal. This is one of the areas in which humanity shows it's most lethal form of ignorance and depraved indifference to suffering. People just don't understand and so many just refuse to understand.

    Thank you, Magwang. I'm sharing your tears.

    Brigid
  • FrizzerFrizzer
    edited April 2006
    That was just awful but it needs to be seen.

    What really gets me is the arguments people put up against alternative forms of energy. Take for example wind power. You get all these people going "Oooh but the windmills look ugly". Not half as ugly as the consequencies of other forms of energy - as this essay only too painfully shows.
    I think the wind turbines look nice myself. I'd much rather live next to a wind farm than a nuclear power station.
  • buddhafootbuddhafoot Veteran
    edited April 2006
    That link has screwed me up mentally for the entire day.

    -bf
  • gregcgregc
    edited April 2006
    I agree. I am a wind power advocate myself, and I believe that's the best energy we have. I will try to convert myself to using wind power, I'm so convinced that it's the right way.

    I am also messed up for the day from the link. It's sad, brutal to see, but it's good that we remember things like this, for us Europeans, what our families have lived through. Absolutely horrifying, real shock treatment.
  • BrigidBrigid Veteran
    edited April 2006
    Wind, solar, tidal etc. There time is going to come. We just have to back them.

    Brigid
  • MrsKarmadilloMrsKarmadillo
    edited April 2006
    Maybe some of you have already seen this, it's been around a few years now......

    A Ukranian woman tours through the affected region on a motorbike (The links to the next pages/chapters are at the bottom of the screen it's not very clear:) )

    KiddofSpeed
  • PadawanPadawan Veteran
    edited April 2006
    Thanks for the links, everyone. Ther isn't a single day that goes by when I consider myself to be a very fortunate man. My wife was born just 80 km away from Chernobyl, and if the wind had blown south instead of north on that fateful day, we'd never have met. It was thanks to the BBC world service that the people in that region knew of the disaster; the state-run radio network deliberately blacked out all transmissions for the best part of a week.

    My daughter, (From my first marriage) when studying in college in Ireland, interviewed my wife for a project she was doing on Chernobyl and it's legacy. She was able to raise such a level of awareness among her fellow students that they organised an annual event, where their families arrange for children orphaned by the disaster to stay with them in Ireland for two weeks, and they also send food and clothing parcels there to help the families cope. Needless to say, I'm one very proud parent...
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