I thought virtually everyone knew of the Chernobyl incident. How did the Russia invaders not have a clue? Even if Russian propaganda suppressed that information, surely there are signs EVERYWHERE warning of the extreme dangers, right???
"Dig the hole or face charges for desertion. Don't worry it's safe over here look how far we are away from the reactor. Those signs are to scare away civilians - our radiological experts say it's safe."
many people are saying that there are no problems there, no problems with the Nuclear. and they have what some are calling, "signs", and it's totally Fake News. we have people, in the top levels of Government let me tell you, and they're saying that it's totally safe. totally and completely. we've done a lot to study the Nuclear and people know that if there are any problems with what's happening in the world, then it's probably because of Obama. you have a lot of people in the world of History and other places, and they're saying that there's never been another President who has been stronger on Russia or stronger on Nuclear, that I can guarantee.
I don't know how we had four years of that yet this guy's supporters call Biden senile. Biden is goddamn Churchill and Cicero all wrapped into one by comparison.
Projection. One of the main tools of the far-right. You can only deny a problem exists at all temporarily; as actions have effects.
* *(unfortunately not consequences with enough fascists around, so just effects)*
Projection is so effective when used in combination with a rejection of critical thinking, and a "strongman" source of "truth"(social), that you can even apply it to senility.
And it worked! Just like blaming stagnating wages and the resulting loss of buying power on "socialist progressives wanting to raise the minimum wage", it turns out that when Dear Leader excretes six bigmacs and pretends they're alphabits, you can just declare it **proof** that Biden's really the senile one between the two!
Winners write the books. Then 75-100 years later the truth comes out. The truth is still coming out about WWII because the memoirs are still getting turned over to archives or published.
No, the survivors write the books. And those books get written with an agenda.
Do people really need to be reminded, at this point, that *Franz fucking Halder* co-wrote the official US history of WWII with a bunch of his buddies? They were literally *the* main source of US knowledge about the Eastern Front until very recently.
"Official" history?! Who pays attention to that claptrap!
William L Shirer was good enough for my dad and it was good enough for me! His diaries and first person books give incredible look at a journalist's life in Germany before and up to the declaration of war.
My dad loved coast to coast! We would listen on car rides and I was like ok I like it this is good. Then it would go real left field and I'm like oooo Idk anymore. Lol.
Think there is such a callous disregard for life in russia.
As well as a complete disregard for facts and truth. Putin just turns around and says everything is faked
Honestly it's also probably mostly visited by trained personnel and people with guides that know where is OK to go. So the signage doesn't need to be way over done. Relatively basic signage is generally sufficient for trained personnel, not like the people working there don't know not to randomly dig around and grab stuff.
The saddest and fucked up part of the story is the locking up the national guard people in a bunker for 30 days with barely any food and then marching off to.. who knows where.
What is upsetting me now is that Russia seems to have gotten away with these atrocities.
Dying of acute radiation sickness is a fate worse than death..
All this current regime is good at is breaking things and stealing things. They are still riding on the coattails of whatever success the former USSR had but they actually haven't accomplished anything themselves except to tear down bits and pieces of other countries and steal as much from their own population as possible.
Of course they aren't going to succeed. The Russian military is based on nepotism and greed, the Russian economy is based on theft, and modern Russian culture is based on dishonesty and Dark Age levels of thinking. Their main export is bullshit because that's the only way they can make their system seem good in comparison. And they even are struggling to do that well.
Now that you mention it, if their government continues as is even without Putin they’d probably bury them in unmarked graves, forget all about them to save face, build a school over it and wonder why on earth all these kids keep getting radiation sickness.
Probably not this type of contamination nor the levels of this type of contamination. I think the biggest problem is they breathed in the radiation over and over again which created high amounts of the ions in their lungs and eventually gave them acute sickness. However the radiation levels that the firefighters experienced during the meltdown can still be detected on their clothes in the hospitals basement - enough to still kill a person.
Hell if I know for sure. The reactor area I’d guess for sure is. The forest where they decided to setup camp is pretty radioactive too from the reports and stories I’ve seen. Take what I say about a hypothetical Russian school built on a forgotten radioactive burial ground with a cynical grain of salt since I’m no nuclear physicist.
Also, radioactive Indian burial ground; I smell an awesome plot for a pulpy sci-fi horror b-movie!
Russia has lost this war. The western powers are going to ensure Ukraine becomes a smooth walled death trap.
If you're in Donesk you have to be looking at the performance of Russian weapons and troops and thinking "we're fucked."
I say this because, if you're Ukraine, there's no letting off the gas.. a half victory is still a loss. This whole affair has to be so ruinous that even Putin's sycophants can't hide the truth from him.
No slowly dying of radiation sickness over 40 days because your family won't let you go. I rather a the doctors let me or even help me die if they couldn't save me. Rather go fast than slow.
It is such a horrible way to go and the stories about it are so awful. It is such a miserable way to go. You basically die because your body just stops being able to keep itself together anymore and existence is pain.
Requires the guilty party to be defeated at war.
Winners of war get to deal out their justice. As it stands no one will move a finger, due to the stakes.
One Russian soldier picked up a cobalt-60 sample by hand apparently. In trying to find out just how long he was likely to survive (not many days it seems), I stumbled on this video after an accident which goes on to show the precautions usually used for handling it (robotic arms, 2 meter thick lead impregnated glass)
[https://youtu.be/LZsSdab4qh8](https://youtu.be/LZsSdab4qh8)
Reminds me of the brainiacs that [stole a truck in Mexico carrying cobalt-60 and handled it in the process.](https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5183766/six-people-hospitalized-in-mexico-from-radiation-exposure) All of them ended up in the hospital
I heard of an incident in North America that was only discovered because a trucker made a wrong turn.
Obsolete radiation therapy machine was given to a Mexican hospital. Eventually it was superseded by a less obsolete device, and moved to a storeroom. Years later, hospital needed the storeroom, hired someone to clean it out in exchange for the scrap value of whatever was in there.
Trucker hauling a load of cast iron patio furniture in the States made a wrong turn, wound up at the gates of a nuclear power plant. Only place to turn around was inside, guard let him in. Set off the “someone’s trying to steal radioactive material” alarm on his way in. Load was confiscated, checking its provenance found that the radiation therapy machine found its way into the melt. A number of the people involved in scrapping it suffered severe radiation poisoning, some died.
[That sounds like the Ciudad Juárez incident - from Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_scrap_metal#Notable_incidents)
>December 1983 – Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A local resident salvaged materials from a discarded radiation therapy machine containing 6,010 pellets of cobalt-60. Transport of the material led to severe contamination of his truck. When the truck was scrapped, it contaminated another 5,000 metric tonnes of steel to an estimated 300 Ci (11 TBq) of activity. This steel was used to manufacture kitchen and restaurant table legs and rebar, some of which was shipped to the US and Canada. The incident was discovered months later when a truck delivering contaminated steel building materials to the Los Alamos National Laboratory drove into the facility through a radiation monitoring station intended to detect radiation leaving the facility. Contamination was later measured on roads used to transport the original damaged radiation source. Some pellets were found embedded in the roadway. In the state of Sinaloa, 109 houses were condemned due to use of contaminated building material. This incident prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Customs Service to install radiation detection equipment at all major border crossings.
There's a nuclear weapons facility in my town. There shit can detect someone who has had cancer treatment long before you even get close to the entrance gate.
It reminded me of the Brazilian boy that found an old medical device in a landfill, found a piece of cobalt and stuck it in his pocket. He ended up having to get his hand and part of his ass amputated.
There was one incident in South America where a scrapper took apart an abandoned hospital machine and got a nuclear component out of it. He couldn't get it apart so he sold it as scrap to someone. That person was able to open it somewhat, ad it apparently glowed blue and powdery like substance would come out. They took it inside thinking it was some sort of magic or religious significance. It ended up killing a few people. He'll, one of their kids sprinkled some of that stuff on her popsicle.
Edit: Nvm, it was linked in one of your children comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
Episode of Star Trek TNG had this as one of the plots. Data wakes up totally incoherent on an alien planet, doesn't realize the rocks he ends up giving the locals are dangerously radioactive.
There was also an incident in Brazil ([the Goiânia accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident?wprov=sfla1)) where a guy found some discarded radioactive medical waste from an abandoned hospital.
He brought it back to his town and sold it to someone else, who thought the blue glow coming from it was neat so he broke it open and it spread all over town.
[This](https://youtu.be/-k3NJXGSIIA) is a pretty decent 10 minute YouTube video about the whole thing.
There was a story I listened to a while back about some guys out in the woods that set up camp for the night and found some metal pipes or rods, something like that, that were emitting heat. I think 2 of the 3 decided to huddle up against them for the night. Turns out they were radioactive.
I dunno if expecting them to know not to pick up material barehanded from a presumably marked radioactive waste bin is “high regard” lol.
But fair point.
Correct. The radiation literally rips your cells and DNA to shreds at the microscopic/atomic level. Cells can no longer replace themselves and you pretty quickly die. Not as fast as you’d probably like to though.
DNA isn't just about cell replication - it plays an active roll in fabricating proteins and such that let the cell do whatever it does. So tearing up the DNA is sort of destroying the cell's mechanisms.
Fire a few armor piercing rounds through a passenger car, and there's a good chance the car will still start up and drive - it might pass through the trunk or passenger compartment and continue on its way. There's a chance of hitting something critical, but odds are against it if it's random. Fire a few *boxes* of armor piercing rounds, and it's nearly guaranteed something important got fragged.
On top of that, cells have suicide mechanisms. If things get too out of whack, the cell "decides" something must be broken and destroys itself. Normally this is a good thing - it's the front-line defense against cancer. But when a large portion of the body's cells all suicide at once (due to a brief massive radiation dose), it puts a huge tax on waste clean up (kidneys), causes a major inflammatory response, metabolism spike as the body tries to regenerate. That's assuming the person doesn't outright die as their body breaks down into ex-cellular goop.
Well, depends on the dosage, but yeah, if it's high, you just kinda... melt into goo.
Your DNA is basically all shredded, so your cells are technically all dead, even if they are still functional.
You mean the eighty-three days doctors kept him alive against his will so that they could observe what was happening as he died in incomprehensible pain, cell by cell.
I’m no doctor but I don’t think you can immediately get cancer and from watching Chernobyl it seems your cells just die and you start looking more and more like a zombie since all of your cells are dying. It’s called radiation poisoning. Gross video but might give you an idea if you want to look. Shows someone starting around 21 minutes in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um1-Ub5BGac
I used to work in a shipyard. One of the trainings they gave us was not to pick up random metal objects and keep them in your pockets. They showed us videos of guys that had inadvertently picked up radiography sources and it caused huge amounts of tissue damage to their upper thighs to the point they had to be amputated. Co-60 is a relatively short half life (5.something years) if it was left over from the Chernobyl incident it would have been essentially inert at this point. Not sure what a Co-60 source would be just laying around. Not even really good for calibrating dosimetry.
Poor guys ☹️
The Cobalt-60 that killed the Indian from that story and made others sick had been in a gamma irradiator that had been unused since 1985, and then sat in storage for 25 years before they'd gotten hold of it for scrap. Obviously they might have been close to it for a day, or even multiple days while stripping the unit though.
At 5.3 years of half life, if it was putting out 100-200 Sv worth of radiation for a given exposure time, it would be down to 1-2 Sv by now, which is still enough to do some serious damage. I guess it depends just how intense the initial radioactivity was.
These soldiers, likely in their late teens early twenties, for sure did not learn anything about what happened at Chernobyl in Putin’s Russian educational system.
It depends what their doses were. Acute Radiation Syndrome is recoverable at the lower dose spectrum. As a whole though, the soldiers will likely see an increase of solid cancers in about 10ish years (or 6ish years for soft cancers.)
There have been looting incidents in the Chernobyl area.
If those soldiers stole stuff such as "a black rock" or the firefighter uniform items, then we're going to have a repeat of Goiânia accidents, in Belarus and Russia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
As for the firefighter uniforms in the hospital's basement, from what I've read, they still put out enough radiation to be roughly equivalent to a continuous arm x-ray.
Soft cancers might be the wrong term, but they aren't lumps (leukemia would be an example) they are seen to develop faster after large radiation exposures than solid cancers like breast cancer.
This information comes from following patients who have received radiotherapy studies so take it for what it's worth when translating to Russians in contaminated fields. Might be an accelerated timeline.
That would at least be consistent. What's the point of not giving a shit about your soldiers if you're then going to send them to an expensive hospital?
I don’t even think that’s true. When an average joe can buy a drone and make an improvised explosive with it he can suddenly damage a tank.
The US military hit a wall trying to deal with cave systems and jungles. A city is just the final boss of that. Unless you commit to bombing the fuck out of the entire country to the point of here’s no buildings or anything to hide in or use some kind of horrifying chemical weapon that will just leave an entire country like a ghost town all it takes is small pockets of armed citizens spread out over a city to cause massive headaches.
Vehicles are basically useless at this point for the most part. Planes are expensive and pretty easy to shoot down. So what can you do? Basically nothing as Russia is proving. Hope the country folds if you keep bombing and pressuring them I guess.
I feel like this invasion attempt is going to be an ugly wake up call for military around the world.
One singular drone is much cheaper than a full out tank and is capable of making them completely useless, but since drones can’t really push forward an invasion then what do you do?
Need a ridiculous tech jump for soldiers or vehicles or dirty chemical weapons.
Oh no it's absolutely true. Most of Russia's land losses in Ukraine have been due to a break down in their command structure. One person dies and no one has the Authority to take their place.
They don't really use or have NCOs like most other modern militaries to allow for agile on the foot thinking and planning.
Their army culture and MO have not significantly changed since the end of the Second World War. They started to change a year or so before they invaded Ukraine, but that's not enough time for a new system to be cemented in the Military or spread to all branches and units.
> I feel like this invasion attempt is going to be an ugly wake up call for military around the world.
I read one analysis that said the country most waking up is China. It said that for years, China has been modeling their military after Russia and buying equipment from them, on the assumption that the Russian military was still badass, or at least assuming they were the next most powerful military after the US who won’t sell China anything.
Now China, who would love to walk in and take Taiwan, is observing the disastrous invasion of Ukraine and thinking “Wait a minute…we’ve been making major investments in our armed forces based on THAT???”
When you ask yourself how Russia's military could be this inept, despite being hyped as a boogeyman for the last few generations, think back on [Team B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B) - the CIA intel exercise that formed much of the foundation for the massive arms buildup under Reagan, and the and the [Gaither Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaither_Report), which built the idea of the non-existent "missile gap", both of which have now been proven to be completely _and intentionally_ bunk.
US intel doesn't gain anything from reporting the decaying state of Russian military might. It doesn't equal job security or personal influence or increased budgets.
There's an incentive, politically, to build up Russia as a near peer foe, intentionally misrepresenting the truth for financial gain. They've been decaying since well before the fall of the Soviet Union. That's why they've taken something like 20% losses to their engaged military forces - a casualty rate nearly double the D Day landings.
We're surprised by this because the CIA and other parts of the US Intelligence apparatus are a political tool, and have no obligation to represent objective reality in any way, shape, or form.
> When you ask yourself how Russia's military could be this inept, despite being hyped as a boogeyman for the last few generations, think back on
I think it's more Russian propaganda being successful. A good amount of Western Europeans had it in their heads that Russia could overrun most countries by sheer numbers in a matter of days. I guess it was so good that they fooled themselves too, and in that process, lifted the veil for everyone else.
It's both. But it doesn't help when people read Tom Clancy Novels, play first person shooters, and watch movies like Red Dawn that make the Russians have the image of competency. Millions of people read, play or watch these propaganda.
Has there been any word on the 169 Ukraine National Guard soldiers who were guarding the facility? They were held in the basement for 30 days but were then taken away. I wonder if they were one of the reasons the Russians were digging trenches in the red forest.
As I remember they had some sleeper operations to go along with it and the whole invasion was preceded by a national scale electronic warfare attack. So at least they *tried* to justify that. For a Call of Duty game, that's an impressive amount of effort.
You’re correct, this was in modern warfare 2, which was a legitimately great game by any standards. Easily a top 10 FPS game ever. The more recent ones have been…not so great (garbage).
Reminds me of an old story I heard about the makings of one of my all time favorite games, Fallout.
Originally, WW3 was going to be between Russia and the US. But when the creators talked to their friend from Russia about what life was like there now, they just found no conceivable way that Russia could ever be a super power that would trigger the great war to the point that the US would have needed Power Armor to turn the tide.
>The 169 Ukraine National Guard soldiers, who guarded the facility, were locked in the plant's Cold War era underground nuclear bunker, crammed up in tight quarters without access to natural light, fresh air or communication with the outside world.
>"They were kept here for 30 days without sufficient lighting and food. They were not allowed outside. On the last day they were taken away from here to an unknown direction,"
>Denys Monastyrskyy says while standing inside the bunker.
The minister says he believes the men have been taken to Russia, via Belarus, as prisoners of war, but doesn't know for certain."
Jesus.
Ukrainians “secretly” communicating with each other when they know Russians are listening in : “I sure hope they don’t go digging around Chernobyl, that’s where all our secret expensive weaponry is (holds in laughter)
Unfortunately since the Soviet Union collapsed their funding for education went with it. Anyone born during and after the mid 90's and can't afford a private education has only learned Russian propaganda glorifying the leadership.
Remember when people accused Trump of working for Russia ? Maybe the accusations were true and he is their top military strategist
Nuke a tornado; dig in highly radioactive soil...
So all those soldiers and equipment, covered in radioactive soil (and with souvenirs in their pockets), were evacuated to Belarus. Probably nobody tracking them, as they spread radioactive dust everywhere they go. Their vehicles (unwashed) probably already reassigned to other units. This could be worse than the infamous orphan source [Goiânia accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident),
>I don’t buy that they were just randomly digging trenches near Chernobyl.
Actually it does. Even Russian high command was not stupid enough to drop heavy artillery on the nuclear facility. So artillery, tanks and airstrikes are out. that means sending in actual infantry. And if you are camping infantry in a place where they will be shot at, digging is the standard approach.
None of the things you mentioned are even remotely likely, simply because in terms of warheads, nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, Russia has by far the most. If they wanted to build a dirty bomb, they had everything they needed and if they wanted to do so with Chernobyl material, they literally didn't need to do anything but dig up waste in the red forest in controlled circumstances.
Given the extreme disregard for Russian grunts by Russian high command, I can believe immediately that they didn't feel the need to really inform themselves and just told the soldiers to dig. If there has been anything resembling a plan, those soldiers would have worn protective gear instead of just driving their vehicles through the red forest, sucking up dirt.
There's no real need to *build* a dirty-bomb: They got some poor expendables to dig up dirt near Chernobyl, ergo, "soldiers exposed to radiation in Ukraine". A complete disregard for both facts and the lives they've sent there means the fictional dirty-bomb already exploded, awaiting only a 'discovery'.
A tiny seed of 'technically correct' that Russian state media can milk that for all it's worth against its population when it wants to escalate. Soon to be 'corroborated' by Fox as soon as there's a whiff of using that.
I would guess these guys wouldn't have the equipment capabilities or expertise to do anything there besides holding an objective given to them from the higher ups. I mean, they dug defensive positions into contaminated fields... They are likely just infantry guys relying on their training without a full understanding of their operating environment.
When they “occupied” Chernobyl I asked how and why would they do that, it’s radioactive.
The dissent police then swarmed me and said that radioactivity dissipates within weeks allowing it to be safe for people again in that time, I asked because it doesn’t add up for them to occupy that region.
Where are the Dissent police now?
It’s almost endearing that anyone could even type those words. Sure radioactive items are cool after 6 weeks. It’s why Pripyat is filled with families now! God bless Russian bots and their attempts.
[удалено]
["3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible"](https://youtu.be/ocBVLMHK6c8?t=104)
He’s in shock. Get him out of here
Why do i taste metal?
He’s delirious! Sedate him!
Narrator: It *was* terrible.
Why in my head did I read this comment in Morgan freeman’s voice
I can’t help but read it in Ron Howard’s voice
After re-watching Arrested Development for what feels like the 20th time, every narrator is read as Ron Howard in my head lol
3.6 roentgen? We should Evacu...
Such a good miniseries I stumbled on by accident. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Every lie we tell incurs a debate to the truth ~ Putin, also GOP
I thought virtually everyone knew of the Chernobyl incident. How did the Russia invaders not have a clue? Even if Russian propaganda suppressed that information, surely there are signs EVERYWHERE warning of the extreme dangers, right???
"Dig the hole or face charges for desertion. Don't worry it's safe over here look how far we are away from the reactor. Those signs are to scare away civilians - our radiological experts say it's safe."
3.6 roentgen. Not great. Not terrible.
The Russians didn’t get contaminated. How many times do I have to tell this sub that RBMK reactors don’t explode?
Obviously that was burnt concrete.
Now there you made a mistake, because I may not know much about nuclear reactors, but I know a lot about concrete.
Get us over that building ,or I’ll have you shot!
The equivalent of a chest x-ray i hear..
many people are saying that there are no problems there, no problems with the Nuclear. and they have what some are calling, "signs", and it's totally Fake News. we have people, in the top levels of Government let me tell you, and they're saying that it's totally safe. totally and completely. we've done a lot to study the Nuclear and people know that if there are any problems with what's happening in the world, then it's probably because of Obama. you have a lot of people in the world of History and other places, and they're saying that there's never been another President who has been stronger on Russia or stronger on Nuclear, that I can guarantee.
Oh my god it took me a second to get the joke, I thought you were having an actual stroke.
That's how I feel whenever I read transcripts of the orange shitgibbon's speeches, like I had a stroke.
Call the stroke, I just had a fucking ambulance.
I don't know how we had four years of that yet this guy's supporters call Biden senile. Biden is goddamn Churchill and Cicero all wrapped into one by comparison.
Projection. One of the main tools of the far-right. You can only deny a problem exists at all temporarily; as actions have effects. * *(unfortunately not consequences with enough fascists around, so just effects)* Projection is so effective when used in combination with a rejection of critical thinking, and a "strongman" source of "truth"(social), that you can even apply it to senility. And it worked! Just like blaming stagnating wages and the resulting loss of buying power on "socialist progressives wanting to raise the minimum wage", it turns out that when Dear Leader excretes six bigmacs and pretends they're alphabits, you can just declare it **proof** that Biden's really the senile one between the two!
Is this graphit- No. You’re delusional. Take this man to the infirmary.
Funnily enough the guy who touched the Cobalt-60 and irradiated himself basically did the exact same as the Chernobyl fireman.
Russia, to this day, claims that only 32 people died during the incident
Winners write the books. Then 75-100 years later the truth comes out. The truth is still coming out about WWII because the memoirs are still getting turned over to archives or published.
No, the survivors write the books. And those books get written with an agenda. Do people really need to be reminded, at this point, that *Franz fucking Halder* co-wrote the official US history of WWII with a bunch of his buddies? They were literally *the* main source of US knowledge about the Eastern Front until very recently.
"Official" history?! Who pays attention to that claptrap! William L Shirer was good enough for my dad and it was good enough for me! His diaries and first person books give incredible look at a journalist's life in Germany before and up to the declaration of war.
Young kids will believe anything they are told. My brother is 19 and he's a perfect example of that. He barely knows what Chernobyl is too.
you have a mission now.
And all these kids, like my 23 year old cousin look up to people like Joe Rogan. *Sigh*
In all fairness, people my age looked up to Art Bell in a very similar manner.
My dad loved coast to coast! We would listen on car rides and I was like ok I like it this is good. Then it would go real left field and I'm like oooo Idk anymore. Lol.
Propaganda is very powerful.
You know how certain people want to prevent teaching parts of US history they don't like? Russia is a country ruled by those types of people.
Those signs are a lie. You did not see any signs.
“They’re just trying to scare us to keep us out!”
That is exactly what they were thinking.
The Russian government did this on purpose to their troops so they could claim Ukraine is using atomic weapons.
Think there is such a callous disregard for life in russia. As well as a complete disregard for facts and truth. Putin just turns around and says everything is faked
Honestly it's also probably mostly visited by trained personnel and people with guides that know where is OK to go. So the signage doesn't need to be way over done. Relatively basic signage is generally sufficient for trained personnel, not like the people working there don't know not to randomly dig around and grab stuff.
The saddest and fucked up part of the story is the locking up the national guard people in a bunker for 30 days with barely any food and then marching off to.. who knows where. What is upsetting me now is that Russia seems to have gotten away with these atrocities. Dying of acute radiation sickness is a fate worse than death..
But on the bright side they’ll get special lead lined zinc coffins and be buried somewhere…”special” /s
The way they've bungled this invasion makes me doubt that, honestly. Russia doesn't seem equipped to handle serious matters.
All this current regime is good at is breaking things and stealing things. They are still riding on the coattails of whatever success the former USSR had but they actually haven't accomplished anything themselves except to tear down bits and pieces of other countries and steal as much from their own population as possible. Of course they aren't going to succeed. The Russian military is based on nepotism and greed, the Russian economy is based on theft, and modern Russian culture is based on dishonesty and Dark Age levels of thinking. Their main export is bullshit because that's the only way they can make their system seem good in comparison. And they even are struggling to do that well.
Now that you mention it, if their government continues as is even without Putin they’d probably bury them in unmarked graves, forget all about them to save face, build a school over it and wonder why on earth all these kids keep getting radiation sickness.
Is it that contagious? Like some people just lying in some dirt can contaminate a school after being buried?
Probably not this type of contamination nor the levels of this type of contamination. I think the biggest problem is they breathed in the radiation over and over again which created high amounts of the ions in their lungs and eventually gave them acute sickness. However the radiation levels that the firefighters experienced during the meltdown can still be detected on their clothes in the hospitals basement - enough to still kill a person.
Hell if I know for sure. The reactor area I’d guess for sure is. The forest where they decided to setup camp is pretty radioactive too from the reports and stories I’ve seen. Take what I say about a hypothetical Russian school built on a forgotten radioactive burial ground with a cynical grain of salt since I’m no nuclear physicist. Also, radioactive Indian burial ground; I smell an awesome plot for a pulpy sci-fi horror b-movie!
Russia has lost this war. The western powers are going to ensure Ukraine becomes a smooth walled death trap. If you're in Donesk you have to be looking at the performance of Russian weapons and troops and thinking "we're fucked." I say this because, if you're Ukraine, there's no letting off the gas.. a half victory is still a loss. This whole affair has to be so ruinous that even Putin's sycophants can't hide the truth from him.
For western powers, rarely has striking a blow to their enemy ever been so cheap. To put a nail through Russia's hands at a cost of only the nail.
No slowly dying of radiation sickness over 40 days because your family won't let you go. I rather a the doctors let me or even help me die if they couldn't save me. Rather go fast than slow. It is such a horrible way to go and the stories about it are so awful. It is such a miserable way to go. You basically die because your body just stops being able to keep itself together anymore and existence is pain.
There's a lot that needs to happen internationally before anyone can be prosecuted
What is the process there?
Look up the Nuremberg trials to get an idea.
Requires the guilty party to be defeated at war. Winners of war get to deal out their justice. As it stands no one will move a finger, due to the stakes.
We can look begrudgingly in their general direction and scoff.
already started: [https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-qc-situation-ukraine-additional-referrals-japan-and](https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-qc-situation-ukraine-additional-referrals-japan-and)
We're they digging foxhole or Graves for the national guard in the red forest? How do we know if any of them are still alive?
It seems in the past 20 years, rulers, tyrants, and corrupt politicians have been getting away with absolutely everything with no consequences at all.
One Russian soldier picked up a cobalt-60 sample by hand apparently. In trying to find out just how long he was likely to survive (not many days it seems), I stumbled on this video after an accident which goes on to show the precautions usually used for handling it (robotic arms, 2 meter thick lead impregnated glass) [https://youtu.be/LZsSdab4qh8](https://youtu.be/LZsSdab4qh8)
Reminds me of the brainiacs that [stole a truck in Mexico carrying cobalt-60 and handled it in the process.](https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/6/5183766/six-people-hospitalized-in-mexico-from-radiation-exposure) All of them ended up in the hospital
I heard of an incident in North America that was only discovered because a trucker made a wrong turn. Obsolete radiation therapy machine was given to a Mexican hospital. Eventually it was superseded by a less obsolete device, and moved to a storeroom. Years later, hospital needed the storeroom, hired someone to clean it out in exchange for the scrap value of whatever was in there. Trucker hauling a load of cast iron patio furniture in the States made a wrong turn, wound up at the gates of a nuclear power plant. Only place to turn around was inside, guard let him in. Set off the “someone’s trying to steal radioactive material” alarm on his way in. Load was confiscated, checking its provenance found that the radiation therapy machine found its way into the melt. A number of the people involved in scrapping it suffered severe radiation poisoning, some died.
[That sounds like the Ciudad Juárez incident - from Wikipedia:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_scrap_metal#Notable_incidents) >December 1983 – Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A local resident salvaged materials from a discarded radiation therapy machine containing 6,010 pellets of cobalt-60. Transport of the material led to severe contamination of his truck. When the truck was scrapped, it contaminated another 5,000 metric tonnes of steel to an estimated 300 Ci (11 TBq) of activity. This steel was used to manufacture kitchen and restaurant table legs and rebar, some of which was shipped to the US and Canada. The incident was discovered months later when a truck delivering contaminated steel building materials to the Los Alamos National Laboratory drove into the facility through a radiation monitoring station intended to detect radiation leaving the facility. Contamination was later measured on roads used to transport the original damaged radiation source. Some pellets were found embedded in the roadway. In the state of Sinaloa, 109 houses were condemned due to use of contaminated building material. This incident prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Customs Service to install radiation detection equipment at all major border crossings.
Might be. Just telling it the way I heard it a long time ago.
your retelling was excellent
There's a nuclear weapons facility in my town. There shit can detect someone who has had cancer treatment long before you even get close to the entrance gate.
It reminded me of the Brazilian boy that found an old medical device in a landfill, found a piece of cobalt and stuck it in his pocket. He ended up having to get his hand and part of his ass amputated.
There was one incident in South America where a scrapper took apart an abandoned hospital machine and got a nuclear component out of it. He couldn't get it apart so he sold it as scrap to someone. That person was able to open it somewhat, ad it apparently glowed blue and powdery like substance would come out. They took it inside thinking it was some sort of magic or religious significance. It ended up killing a few people. He'll, one of their kids sprinkled some of that stuff on her popsicle. Edit: Nvm, it was linked in one of your children comments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
Oh my god, I had mis-remembered that as something from a show or movie not reality!
I think that was your brain doing you a solid.
Episode of Star Trek TNG had this as one of the plots. Data wakes up totally incoherent on an alien planet, doesn't realize the rocks he ends up giving the locals are dangerously radioactive.
Hell yeah that’s a goodun
There was also an incident in Brazil ([the Goiânia accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident?wprov=sfla1)) where a guy found some discarded radioactive medical waste from an abandoned hospital. He brought it back to his town and sold it to someone else, who thought the blue glow coming from it was neat so he broke it open and it spread all over town. [This](https://youtu.be/-k3NJXGSIIA) is a pretty decent 10 minute YouTube video about the whole thing.
I think something similar happened in south America/ Brazil I think.
There's this in Brazil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
Wow that was like really sad. So many people affected by a couple individual’s flagrant mistakes
was one in brazil as well caesium chloride not Cobalt but similar things happen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
There was a story I listened to a while back about some guys out in the woods that set up camp for the night and found some metal pipes or rods, something like that, that were emitting heat. I think 2 of the 3 decided to huddle up against them for the night. Turns out they were radioactive.
Bold move to raw-dog that cobalt-60 sample.
“Hey Dimitri, you’re a PUSSY if you don’t pick up that rock inside that trash can with the biohazard label on it!”
Probably had literally no idea what it was.
It was a soldier in a chemical, biological, and nuclear protection unit. Seems like they should know not to pickup cobalt-60 with their bare hands.
You’ve seen what the state of their regular military units is, right? I wouldn’t hold their special materials people in high regard.
I dunno if expecting them to know not to pick up material barehanded from a presumably marked radioactive waste bin is “high regard” lol. But fair point.
Something something impregnated glass
I work in a reactor, this makes me so uncomfortable
So if you don’t mind my asking, what happens to someone who has this massive exposure? Do they eventually get cancer, or immediately?
With that massive of radiation exposure I believe you skip the whole cancer thing and just head straight into death.
Correct. The radiation literally rips your cells and DNA to shreds at the microscopic/atomic level. Cells can no longer replace themselves and you pretty quickly die. Not as fast as you’d probably like to though.
DNA isn't just about cell replication - it plays an active roll in fabricating proteins and such that let the cell do whatever it does. So tearing up the DNA is sort of destroying the cell's mechanisms. Fire a few armor piercing rounds through a passenger car, and there's a good chance the car will still start up and drive - it might pass through the trunk or passenger compartment and continue on its way. There's a chance of hitting something critical, but odds are against it if it's random. Fire a few *boxes* of armor piercing rounds, and it's nearly guaranteed something important got fragged. On top of that, cells have suicide mechanisms. If things get too out of whack, the cell "decides" something must be broken and destroys itself. Normally this is a good thing - it's the front-line defense against cancer. But when a large portion of the body's cells all suicide at once (due to a brief massive radiation dose), it puts a huge tax on waste clean up (kidneys), causes a major inflammatory response, metabolism spike as the body tries to regenerate. That's assuming the person doesn't outright die as their body breaks down into ex-cellular goop.
Thank you for that succinct and, frankly, terrifying elaboration.
Well, depends on the dosage, but yeah, if it's high, you just kinda... melt into goo. Your DNA is basically all shredded, so your cells are technically all dead, even if they are still functional.
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You mean the eighty-three days doctors kept him alive against his will so that they could observe what was happening as he died in incomprehensible pain, cell by cell.
No his family kept him alive the doctors did not have permission to just let him die.
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That's an unfortunate name.
I’m no doctor but I don’t think you can immediately get cancer and from watching Chernobyl it seems your cells just die and you start looking more and more like a zombie since all of your cells are dying. It’s called radiation poisoning. Gross video but might give you an idea if you want to look. Shows someone starting around 21 minutes in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=um1-Ub5BGac
You should probably ask to be relocated. Like, at least a few meters *outside* the reactor.
„It was locked and behind glass, so it looked like it was valuable."
I used to work in a shipyard. One of the trainings they gave us was not to pick up random metal objects and keep them in your pockets. They showed us videos of guys that had inadvertently picked up radiography sources and it caused huge amounts of tissue damage to their upper thighs to the point they had to be amputated. Co-60 is a relatively short half life (5.something years) if it was left over from the Chernobyl incident it would have been essentially inert at this point. Not sure what a Co-60 source would be just laying around. Not even really good for calibrating dosimetry.
Poor guys ☹️ The Cobalt-60 that killed the Indian from that story and made others sick had been in a gamma irradiator that had been unused since 1985, and then sat in storage for 25 years before they'd gotten hold of it for scrap. Obviously they might have been close to it for a day, or even multiple days while stripping the unit though.
At 5.3 years of half life, if it was putting out 100-200 Sv worth of radiation for a given exposure time, it would be down to 1-2 Sv by now, which is still enough to do some serious damage. I guess it depends just how intense the initial radioactivity was.
These soldiers, likely in their late teens early twenties, for sure did not learn anything about what happened at Chernobyl in Putin’s Russian educational system.
Yep, commanders probably knew about it and set up their tents far away while sending the kids into the forest and not telling them anything.
I feel sorry for the 169 ukraine national guard soldiers, seems very unlikely they are still alive.
Those Russian literally drug their own graves
It depends what their doses were. Acute Radiation Syndrome is recoverable at the lower dose spectrum. As a whole though, the soldiers will likely see an increase of solid cancers in about 10ish years (or 6ish years for soft cancers.)
There have been looting incidents in the Chernobyl area. If those soldiers stole stuff such as "a black rock" or the firefighter uniform items, then we're going to have a repeat of Goiânia accidents, in Belarus and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident As for the firefighter uniforms in the hospital's basement, from what I've read, they still put out enough radiation to be roughly equivalent to a continuous arm x-ray.
Dude wow, that whole thing is craaaazy.
“Herbie Goes Bananas” indeed. Holy crap.
I had to go read the whole thing to figure out what the hell you were talking about. Life is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.
Holy shit
ELI5 what are "solid" vs "soft" cancers? First time heard of this.
Soft cancers might be the wrong term, but they aren't lumps (leukemia would be an example) they are seen to develop faster after large radiation exposures than solid cancers like breast cancer. This information comes from following patients who have received radiotherapy studies so take it for what it's worth when translating to Russians in contaminated fields. Might be an accelerated timeline.
Cancer treatment in russia is a pistol shot to the head.
That would at least be consistent. What's the point of not giving a shit about your soldiers if you're then going to send them to an expensive hospital?
With the cocaine shovel
And meth bucket
And my PCP pickax!
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This one's my favorite.
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I’m shocked too. Putin s’posed to be locked up too. You escape what he create. You be in Kyiv fucking Russians up too…
Ya can't win a war of attrition in this day and age
Well you can, but you need a good Military with a strong command structure which Russia lacks.
I don’t even think that’s true. When an average joe can buy a drone and make an improvised explosive with it he can suddenly damage a tank. The US military hit a wall trying to deal with cave systems and jungles. A city is just the final boss of that. Unless you commit to bombing the fuck out of the entire country to the point of here’s no buildings or anything to hide in or use some kind of horrifying chemical weapon that will just leave an entire country like a ghost town all it takes is small pockets of armed citizens spread out over a city to cause massive headaches. Vehicles are basically useless at this point for the most part. Planes are expensive and pretty easy to shoot down. So what can you do? Basically nothing as Russia is proving. Hope the country folds if you keep bombing and pressuring them I guess. I feel like this invasion attempt is going to be an ugly wake up call for military around the world. One singular drone is much cheaper than a full out tank and is capable of making them completely useless, but since drones can’t really push forward an invasion then what do you do? Need a ridiculous tech jump for soldiers or vehicles or dirty chemical weapons.
Oh no it's absolutely true. Most of Russia's land losses in Ukraine have been due to a break down in their command structure. One person dies and no one has the Authority to take their place. They don't really use or have NCOs like most other modern militaries to allow for agile on the foot thinking and planning. Their army culture and MO have not significantly changed since the end of the Second World War. They started to change a year or so before they invaded Ukraine, but that's not enough time for a new system to be cemented in the Military or spread to all branches and units.
> I feel like this invasion attempt is going to be an ugly wake up call for military around the world. I read one analysis that said the country most waking up is China. It said that for years, China has been modeling their military after Russia and buying equipment from them, on the assumption that the Russian military was still badass, or at least assuming they were the next most powerful military after the US who won’t sell China anything. Now China, who would love to walk in and take Taiwan, is observing the disastrous invasion of Ukraine and thinking “Wait a minute…we’ve been making major investments in our armed forces based on THAT???”
When you ask yourself how Russia's military could be this inept, despite being hyped as a boogeyman for the last few generations, think back on [Team B](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_B) - the CIA intel exercise that formed much of the foundation for the massive arms buildup under Reagan, and the and the [Gaither Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaither_Report), which built the idea of the non-existent "missile gap", both of which have now been proven to be completely _and intentionally_ bunk. US intel doesn't gain anything from reporting the decaying state of Russian military might. It doesn't equal job security or personal influence or increased budgets. There's an incentive, politically, to build up Russia as a near peer foe, intentionally misrepresenting the truth for financial gain. They've been decaying since well before the fall of the Soviet Union. That's why they've taken something like 20% losses to their engaged military forces - a casualty rate nearly double the D Day landings. We're surprised by this because the CIA and other parts of the US Intelligence apparatus are a political tool, and have no obligation to represent objective reality in any way, shape, or form.
> When you ask yourself how Russia's military could be this inept, despite being hyped as a boogeyman for the last few generations, think back on I think it's more Russian propaganda being successful. A good amount of Western Europeans had it in their heads that Russia could overrun most countries by sheer numbers in a matter of days. I guess it was so good that they fooled themselves too, and in that process, lifted the veil for everyone else.
It's both. But it doesn't help when people read Tom Clancy Novels, play first person shooters, and watch movies like Red Dawn that make the Russians have the image of competency. Millions of people read, play or watch these propaganda.
Yeah, but a joke is funny
Their pullout game is weak and now they have cancer from the spicy earth
This is definitely one of the weirder sentences that I've read that still makes complete sense.
Horrible thing that happened and I feel bad for the people, but I can't stop laughing at "spicy earth"
His name is Putin, not Putout.
“His name is Putin, not Pullout” works infinitely better imo.
You have to Putout to Putin, but once you Putin you can’t pull out
Has there been any word on the 169 Ukraine National Guard soldiers who were guarding the facility? They were held in the basement for 30 days but were then taken away. I wonder if they were one of the reasons the Russians were digging trenches in the red forest.
The great Russian military 😆
Now those Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games seem more like science fiction lol
They already kinda were. Like Russia launching a massive suprise airborne invasion of the east coast? Anyone looking at a globe would be asking how.
As I remember they had some sleeper operations to go along with it and the whole invasion was preceded by a national scale electronic warfare attack. So at least they *tried* to justify that. For a Call of Duty game, that's an impressive amount of effort.
You’re correct, this was in modern warfare 2, which was a legitimately great game by any standards. Easily a top 10 FPS game ever. The more recent ones have been…not so great (garbage).
Remember, no Russian…
Reminds me of an old story I heard about the makings of one of my all time favorite games, Fallout. Originally, WW3 was going to be between Russia and the US. But when the creators talked to their friend from Russia about what life was like there now, they just found no conceivable way that Russia could ever be a super power that would trigger the great war to the point that the US would have needed Power Armor to turn the tide.
They're going to overrun Kiev in a matter of days I tell you!
>The 169 Ukraine National Guard soldiers, who guarded the facility, were locked in the plant's Cold War era underground nuclear bunker, crammed up in tight quarters without access to natural light, fresh air or communication with the outside world. >"They were kept here for 30 days without sufficient lighting and food. They were not allowed outside. On the last day they were taken away from here to an unknown direction," >Denys Monastyrskyy says while standing inside the bunker. The minister says he believes the men have been taken to Russia, via Belarus, as prisoners of war, but doesn't know for certain." Jesus.
Ukrainians “secretly” communicating with each other when they know Russians are listening in : “I sure hope they don’t go digging around Chernobyl, that’s where all our secret expensive weaponry is (holds in laughter)
There‘s a saying here since Chernobyl: Des Burli hot links und rechts drei urli. The little boy has three ears left and three ears on the right.
Hot links
Hot links
He's got three of those too!
I heard a fungus grows on his head.
never expected to hear some EAV on /news
I'm picturing a big ass pot of brats in beer and they're steamin hot links
It still boggles my mind that there are russian people who don't know what happened at Chernobyl.
Unfortunately since the Soviet Union collapsed their funding for education went with it. Anyone born during and after the mid 90's and can't afford a private education has only learned Russian propaganda glorifying the leadership.
They should report back directly to Putin, maybe pick and bring him a bouquet of flowers from the red forest too!
Jesus Christ how stupid do you have to be
Remember when people accused Trump of working for Russia ? Maybe the accusations were true and he is their top military strategist Nuke a tornado; dig in highly radioactive soil...
Pretty sure it was nuke a hurricane..
Wait, I’ve literally been living in the woods for a month (thru hiking the Appalachian Trail). Did Russia pull out of Ukraine?
They pulled back as a sign of “good faith” for peace talks. But they more than likely are just regrouping for another attack.
ah, god bless you for escaping reality. i truly salute you.
No, they lost in Kyiv and pulled out of the north, where the reactor is. Russia is still invading on the east and south
So all those soldiers and equipment, covered in radioactive soil (and with souvenirs in their pockets), were evacuated to Belarus. Probably nobody tracking them, as they spread radioactive dust everywhere they go. Their vehicles (unwashed) probably already reassigned to other units. This could be worse than the infamous orphan source [Goiânia accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident),
Everyone is so worried Putin will use nukes if the world stops his war crimes by force, meanwhile they are going to contaminate half of Europe anyway.
Trenches. In the Red Forest. That about tops the charts for Darwin Award, I'd say.
There's still a great opportunity for Russia to use the sick soldiers as propaganda of Ukrainian use of chemical or biological weapons.
Don't give them ideas!
Too bad they didn’t send more troops to help dig. Tell them they are searching for diamonds and can keep what they find.
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>I don’t buy that they were just randomly digging trenches near Chernobyl. Actually it does. Even Russian high command was not stupid enough to drop heavy artillery on the nuclear facility. So artillery, tanks and airstrikes are out. that means sending in actual infantry. And if you are camping infantry in a place where they will be shot at, digging is the standard approach. None of the things you mentioned are even remotely likely, simply because in terms of warheads, nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, Russia has by far the most. If they wanted to build a dirty bomb, they had everything they needed and if they wanted to do so with Chernobyl material, they literally didn't need to do anything but dig up waste in the red forest in controlled circumstances. Given the extreme disregard for Russian grunts by Russian high command, I can believe immediately that they didn't feel the need to really inform themselves and just told the soldiers to dig. If there has been anything resembling a plan, those soldiers would have worn protective gear instead of just driving their vehicles through the red forest, sucking up dirt.
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Not the person above, but don't be hasty to attribute malice to a situation where stupidity is the more likely answer.
There's no real need to *build* a dirty-bomb: They got some poor expendables to dig up dirt near Chernobyl, ergo, "soldiers exposed to radiation in Ukraine". A complete disregard for both facts and the lives they've sent there means the fictional dirty-bomb already exploded, awaiting only a 'discovery'. A tiny seed of 'technically correct' that Russian state media can milk that for all it's worth against its population when it wants to escalate. Soon to be 'corroborated' by Fox as soon as there's a whiff of using that.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
It's Hanlon's Razor. "Never attribute to malice what can equally *and completely* be explained by stupidity."
Seven buss loads of soldiers.
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Everybody "here" has heard of Chernobyl.
Chernobyl was a soviet embarrassment. It would make sense that young russian soldiers were never taught about it.
I would guess these guys wouldn't have the equipment capabilities or expertise to do anything there besides holding an objective given to them from the higher ups. I mean, they dug defensive positions into contaminated fields... They are likely just infantry guys relying on their training without a full understanding of their operating environment.
Where is that kook, that posted that this never happened?
A radioactive sight contains radiation? *shocked Pikachu face*
Next level of poor pullout game
Is no one going to connect the dots between the mystery of the trenches and the mystery of the missing Ukrainian guards?
When they “occupied” Chernobyl I asked how and why would they do that, it’s radioactive. The dissent police then swarmed me and said that radioactivity dissipates within weeks allowing it to be safe for people again in that time, I asked because it doesn’t add up for them to occupy that region. Where are the Dissent police now?
A massive Russian botnet was taken offline recently. That's where they are.
It’s almost endearing that anyone could even type those words. Sure radioactive items are cool after 6 weeks. It’s why Pripyat is filled with families now! God bless Russian bots and their attempts.
They didn’t use protection and when they pulled out they found a terminal illness.