Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 79 - The Chernobyl Disaster: What, Why, and How Bad Was it?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Prepyet is a Ukrainian ghost town near the northern border with Belarus. Not a single resident lives there today. However, in 1985, roughly 50,000 people inhabited the then Soviet city originally built to accommodate the employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. In 1985, the city had 13,414 apartments, large hospital, over 25 cafes, a movie theater, an art school, a museum, gyms, indoor swimming pools, two sports stadiums, central park with a giant ferris wheel, much more. And then at 1.23 a.m. on Saturday, April 26, 1986, the number four reactor heated up to

Starting point is 00:00:39 more than 100 times its usual operating power, which is very, very bad. Ractor number four exploded and then several hundred staff and firefighters tackled a blaze that burned for ten days and sent a plume of radiation around the globe. And it is a globe, flat earthers. In the worst ever civil nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. More than 50 reactor and emergency workers died and in the years since, many more have died. How many deaths can be attributed to Chernobyl? How disastrous is a nuclear disaster?

Starting point is 00:01:10 Will no one be safe to live in the former town of Pripyat? Are you safe from a nuclear disaster? What led to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster? Am I saying nuclear correctly? I'm saying it so many times. So much explored, examined, and evaluated in this atom bomb of a suck. This full nuclear addition of time suck. What's going on suckers, back in the suck dungeon today and feels good.

Starting point is 00:01:42 I'm Dan Cummins and this is TimeSuck. TimeSuck is brought to us today by a part of the TimeSuck family. It's brought to us by Melissa Soroka, Hair and Makeup Studio in mainland Florida, part of the Greater Orlando area, where so much of TimeSuck is located, the Melissa Soroka Hair and Makeup Studio is conveniently located in mainland Florida next to the public's shopping center. 525, Sabela Parkway, mainland Florida suite 202. And that's S-Y-B-E-L-I-A. Hope I'm saying that right.

Starting point is 00:02:12 Melissa specializes in vivid color, also does hairstyles for the whole family. She's available for hair and makeup for weddings and family photos. She has HD camera-ready makeup for movies and commercials. So people can enjoy watching you on screen instead of focusing on counting your pores. Damn you 4k!

Starting point is 00:02:28 You can find more info at MelissaSeroka.com, check out her photos when you follow her on Instagram at Instagram.com, you know, handle MelissaSeroka hair, and it's M-E-L-I-S-S-S-U-R-R-O-C-A link available in the episode description. Make it easy for you guys. So just click that link and she's having some limited edition time suck magnets made up to give to time suckers who come in and get a service. And who's making those? Her husband Sebastian Soroka, part of the danger brain crew who designed the app avatars,

Starting point is 00:03:01 the recent merch, right, the logo, for the time suck and for the secret suck. So if you're in the Orlando area, check out Melissa Soroco. And yeah, part of the time suck family with danger brain can't recommend her enough. I know Lindsey is going to get some, get her hair did next time her and I are out in Orlando. Thanks time suckers for all the recent iTunes reviews. And it is iTunes, not iTunes, I guess I say quite often, someone pointed out recently, well over 3000 right now and the overwhelming majority of those reviews are positive.

Starting point is 00:03:31 I mean so much, help spread the suck so so effectively and the negative ones usually make me laugh so hard, like a recent one star review from one to three softball chick, Ali, who posted a subject line of really bad. Fair enough, direct to the point, you can raise your opinion. And then she posts, I tried to give this podcast another chance, mostly because he covers serial killers, which is one of my favorite topics.

Starting point is 00:03:54 He talks way too fast for starters. All right, that's again, another fair point. I have to work on slowing down here and there. I get excited, I get impatient, to get into the next bit of info. I get passionate. And then she says, all the impressions slash accents he does are horrible. Hey, that's not true.

Starting point is 00:04:12 Actually, you know what that is kind of true. If you are a fan of like impressions of your thing, like very, you know, perfectly done impressions, if that's your thing, if you're like a student of accents, you know, maybe you're an actor yourself and you're into the method people and you want it to be done perfectly and it just takes you out of everything

Starting point is 00:04:34 and the accent isn't done perfectly. Well, then yeah, this is not the podcast for you. And then, and then she said, he laughs at himself, he's the only one laughing. Okay, now here's where you start to be a trolly douche, Ali. I'm the only one on the fucking podcast. The idiot. So of course, I'm the only one laughing in the room. There's not like there's another person who just never talks and is always quiet. And I do realize you're probably saying that, you know, as in like no one out there in the world. And that's a bold statement. Other people are laughing. Read the other post to figure that out.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Also realize that I made a living as a comic for over a decade and a half. Other people are definitely laughing. You sad and retroll. And but then she says, while I can tell, he does his research, okay, all right, positive note. I appreciate that. And then she says the ad living makes it impossible

Starting point is 00:05:22 to listen to. I'm not one that thinks true to the time can't be funny. It's just that his jokes are horrible. And then she says, the ad libyn makes it impossible to listen to. I'm not one that thinks true to crime can't be funny. It's just that his jokes are horrible. God, I fucking, I do love this. I just love it when someone becomes so enraged by free contents that they feel that they feel the need to not only just like move on, which I totally get. Just like, I don't want to listen anymore. I get that.

Starting point is 00:05:44 I get this isn't for everyone. Oh, Ben, believe, I don't count me so long. I pissed off so many people in the shows. Believe me, I get this is objective. I understand it in a way that people who haven't performed as an artist or put art out there will never understand. But then what I don't do is like, just like, take the time to be like,

Starting point is 00:06:03 what the fuck, I fucking hate this so much Like I've literally never done that on on any review of everything. I've just gone away man like like I hate Yelp trolls, but I get in the restaurant kind of you know Area that if you go out you've paid money you expect a certain kind of food and then if it's really bad service I do get the negative review there. I'm just always so confused when it's like when you're doing that to free content. Where it's like, hey man, I took fucking 10 minutes of my time to listen to something I had nothing to do with making. And it wasn't perfect for me. So fuck you.

Starting point is 00:06:40 That's such an angry person. And I'm angry. but I'm like, I feel like I'm a little more rational as my anger. But if you do like me, come see me life. I'm a hilarities and Cleveland Ohio this weekend, where there will be other people laughing. I promise, Ali, come fuck and check it out. If you're happening to give this podcast another chance, come, come listen, pop in. And then you can be like, all right, other people laugh, but I still fucking hate the son of a bitch. And then fair enough. March 20th to 24th. Not sure when I'll be back in Cleveland again.

Starting point is 00:07:08 So, so get there. And just a few weeks, I'll be in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 8th, Atlanta, Georgia, on the ninth, Birmingham, Alabama, on the 10th, Huntsville, Alabama, on the 11th. Let's talk about Flat Earth, the Flat Earth, tour continues. Fucking NASA employees out there.

Starting point is 00:07:24 I will be in National Tennessee on the 12th, Houston, Texas in the 13th, Dallas, Texas, the 14th, San Antonio, Texas, the 15th, Salt Lake City, Utah. I will be there the 20th and the 21st. And then San Francisco Sacramento and Phoenix coming up right up afterwards in May. Another live time, so I podcast in Spokane, May 6th.

Starting point is 00:07:42 So come check out the Flat Earth tour, more tour dates at Dancomans.tv. Thanks to all the secret space listeners and sign ups these past few weeks, waiting to hear back on if I'm getting that psychic reading by the way. I'm gonna keep emailing, David Ike psychic. Love how fun and weird things are getting.

Starting point is 00:07:57 Now, time to go nuclear and just so you know, I know the correct pronunciation is new, clear, or nuclear. Nuclear is another way I say it sometimes and just know that that variant is accepted as I pointed out in the past by Marion Webster. So calm the fuck down, pronunciation Nazis. Don't go nuclear if I say nuclear. And stay tuned for this week's Time Sucker Updates

Starting point is 00:08:19 to hear more info from listeners about Chernobyl. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ So what actually happened with Chernobyl? This is an important question to ask. There is the official Soviet narrative regarding what happened, but we can't entirely trust that. Before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the state controlled the media, state controlled journalists, and journalists reported what the state wanted them to report, what the official narrative was supposed to be.

Starting point is 00:08:46 This was a huge embarrassing disaster for the Soviet Union, US President Ronald Reagan, Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev. They were still involved in the Cold War. So Gorbachev didn't want to look like a fool and worse, didn't want to look like a weak, especially in the eyes of the US. So the nuclear arms race had become central to the Cold War, and a nuclear blunder of any sort would be a huge embarrassment. So the Russians were in damage control mode, for sure, from the beginning regarding what

Starting point is 00:09:12 caused the reactor to actually melt down, and then afterwards the true extent of the damage caused by the meltdown. And what's the big deal with radiation anyway? I mean, is it really that bad for you? I doubt it. I mean, I used to hike around the old Hanford Superfund site near Eastern Washington's Tri-Cities, heavily radioactive. America's most contaminated nuclear waste site.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Not really that far from where I grew up in Central Idaho, and I used to catch a variant of bass, native just to that area. It's the large and smallmouth slow-moving five-headed bass fish thing. Perfect for romantic dinners because it provides its own light. And I'm fine. I definitely have less than 15 toes and I don't have that much webbing in between any of them. No, of course it's dangerous. Yes, at certain levels radiation will melt the fucking bones right out of your head. First off, let's acknowledge that radiation is everywhere though. There's a low level of

Starting point is 00:09:58 background radiation perpetually around us all at all times, right? The sun, soil, rocks, even animals give off low levels of radiation. Damn it. Can't even go on a hike to get away from radiation. Actually, it sounds like hiking is full of radiation. Nice, nice try in Mother Nature, looking all serene and shit, always trying to lure me into your radiation field. Ah, not this guy. So how does it hurt us? How does radiation hurt us? Catherine Higley, director of the Oregon State University Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics, Professor Smarty Pantser Self, explains as a radioactive material decays or breaks down, the energy released into the environment

Starting point is 00:10:36 as two ways of harming a body that is exposed to it. It can kill directly, can directly kill cells or can cause mutations to DNA. If those mutations are not repaired, the cell may turn cancerous. So these are two categories of injuries, somatic injury and genetic injury. Somatic injury is damage that occurs to the organism exposed to high levels of ionizing radiation and does not include reproductive cells. Effects like sickness, hair loss, internal bleeding, you know, things that are, you know, visible shortly after exposure, other illnesses, such as cancer, it may take a number of years to appear, and that's a somatic injury.

Starting point is 00:11:10 Genetic injury is damaged to the reproductive cells, due to exposure to high levels of ionizing radiation, and can be passed down to an organism's offspring, perhaps generations later. Like some potential illnesses, can be birth abnormalities, and cancer, somatic and genetic injuries are not solely caused by ionizing radiation. Many chemical pollutants found in our environment, such as cadmium, lead, mercury can also cause similar injuries. Radiation can damage at a DNA level. That's crazy. If a strand of DNA is damaged by

Starting point is 00:11:40 radiation, the cell may repair the damage, die or kill itself, through a process known as apoptosis. I wonder if this is why my son Kyler has three nipples or why my daughter Monroe has four testicles. Might be all those Hanford hikes, I don't know, now I'm starting to second guess it. And you don't need to have to have lived like near some nuclear catastrophe to have experienced radiation. Again, we've all experienced it, we're all experiencing it right now, especially you

Starting point is 00:12:04 piney suckers. And radioactive materials can't occur naturally. Uranium is present in the earth's crust, is brought to the earth's surface through coal mining among many other ways, and then there's radioactive waste, which is the byproduct of nuclear power generation, or nuclear weapons manufacturer, or working with highly radioactive materials. Nuclear waste is the material that nuclear fuel becomes after it is used in a reactor. From the outside, it can look exactly like the fuel that was loaded into the reactor. Assembly is a metal rod,

Starting point is 00:12:32 it can close fuel pellets, et cetera. But since nuclear reactions have now occurred with or around this metal, the contents aren't quite the same when they come back out. Nuclear energy is released. When a nuclear fuel atom snaps into two and the key component of nuclear waste is the leftover smaller atoms known as fission

Starting point is 00:12:48 product and this is radioactive and nuclear reactors in the US alone produce more than 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste a year according to the Department of Energy and some of this waste will be lethal to humans for another 250,000 years. Man, so much for truly clean energy. And a lot of that waste is being stored at the waste isolation pilot plant, 26 miles east of Carl's Bad New Mexico, less than 100 miles from Earth's Butthole, Roswell, New Mexico.

Starting point is 00:13:20 Inside joke for those of you who heard the Norse God suck. And this waste is being placed in rooms 2,150 feet underground that have been excavated with a 3,000 foot thick salt formation or excavated within this 3,000 foot naturally occurring salt formation. It's part of these silato and castile formations where salt tectonics have been stable for more than 250 million years. So they go way on the desert.

Starting point is 00:13:43 If I can just big old salt block underground, they'd like to dug into the middle of it, and that's where they've been piling our nuclear waste. Just toss it in the salt hole, man. Just toss that in the salt hole. And then harvest that salt and feed it to your enemies. Would you like some more salt, person I hate? You'll know you have the right amount

Starting point is 00:14:00 when your tongue falls out and just lands on your plate. Hey, I'm gonna run. Now luckily, not all forms of radioactive waste remain radioactive for 250,000 years. Radioactive iodine, one of the byproducts of nuclear power creation, an example of nuclear waste that can be released in a meltdown, doesn't even last anywhere near that long. It tends to be absorbed by the thyroid gland. It can cause thyroid cancer, but radioactive iodine in short lived will be around only about two months after an accident. It says Andre Bouville, the National Cancer Institute, who has studied radiation doses

Starting point is 00:14:32 from the fallout of the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine. So, if the exposure to the air comes after that time, radioactive iodine does not pose a health risk. As what he says, radioactive cesium, another reactor byproduct, another hand, can stay in the environment for more than a century. But it does not concentrate in one part of the body, the way the radioactive iodine does. The Chernobyl accident released a plume of radioactive materials into the atmosphere in a fraction of a second.

Starting point is 00:14:58 In the following years, the incidence of thyroid cancer among those exposed as children increased in Ukraine and nearby countries. The cancer showed up between four and ten years after the accident. Children were exposed to radioactive material mainly from eating contaminated leafy vegetables and dairy. There have been no detectable health effects from exposure to radioactive cesium after the accident. So, in general, it takes pretty high dose of radiation to increase cancer risk.

Starting point is 00:15:24 Americans are exposed to about three military vests each year from natural sources, such as a sun, and even at that low amount, consistent exposure to the radiation present in those ultraviolet rays can give you skin cancer. A person's risk of getting sick depends on how much radiation the body absorbs. Those exposed to high levels of radiation, about 2,000 military vests, could develop actual radiation sickness. And that shit is no joke, man. Radiation sickness is often fatal,

Starting point is 00:15:50 and can produce symptoms such as bleeding, shedding of the lining of the gastrointestinal track, cos nausea, vomiting, bloody diarrhea, mouth ulcers, and the most terrifying symptoms of all, spontaneous bleeding. I don't have a medical degree, but spontaneous bleeding sounds like just about the worst system symptom, excuse me, you can have for any disease.

Starting point is 00:16:11 This is bad, doc, I'm puke and blood. No, no, we can work with that. I'm also shit blood, that seems bad. I mean, that's bad, right? Yes, blood defecation is quite severe. But I can't work with it. There's still plenty of hope to be had. Oh, and lately I've just started spontaneously bleeding.

Starting point is 00:16:30 Just blood just pours out of my skin, my ears, my eyes. Holy shit, what the hell are you doing here? What are you trying to kill us all? Listen, sound medically speaking, you are fucked. I go crawl out in the woods and die alone, you selfish son of a bitch. Yeah, so, uh, you know, 2000 Milliseavers of radiation real bad. Even a total dose as low as 400 to 600 Milliseavers, Millie Jesus, Millie Seavers can also be lethal, can also cause spontaneous bleeding.

Starting point is 00:16:58 Or, or according to what I've read in some comic books, it can be super awesome and you can become Dr. Manhattan, for example, right? The source of inspiration for the white eyes of the time suck logo. He began as a simple lab technician named Dr. John Ostriman. When he was trapped in a radioactive particle test, his entire body was destroyed down to the molecular level,

Starting point is 00:17:19 but he was able to rebuild his body and return as Dr. Manhattan. Thank you Alan Moore, thank you Dave Gibbons, thanks DC Comics for publishing the Watchmen. So there's that. So you know, I feel like, you know, you can just kind of take your chances. If you come across some highly radioactive picture,

Starting point is 00:17:34 if you accidentally find yourself in the middle of like a nuclear weapons manufacturing plant or something and there's like a big room, this has do not enter, you know, molecular disintegration possible or something like that. I just feel like it's a fucking toying cost. Sure, maybe you're going to spontaneously bleed out or maybe you're going to be able to become Dr. Manhattan and project yourself to other worlds at will. And again, for reference, a chest x-ray

Starting point is 00:17:59 is only about 0.02 milliservants, milli-seaverts, according to the international atomic energy agency, and people are exposed to about 2.4 milliservat per year from natural background radiation in the environment. So that's just a little primer on radiation, before we get into this whole Chernobyl disaster. Now let's lead up to that fateful day in 1986 when shit went sideways with a little time suck timeline that includes a brief history on the international development of nuclear power. Shrap on those boot soldiers, we're marching down a time suck timeline. 1895, Wilhelm Runtkin discovers the X-ray. In the process of conducting various experiments

Starting point is 00:18:48 and applying currents to different vacuum tubes, all smarty pants discover that despite covering one in a screen to block out light, there still seem to be some rays penetrating through to react with a barium solution on a screen he'd placed nearby. After several experiments, including taking what would become the world's first X-ray photo of his white's hand and skeletal structure, with these new rays, he named them X-rays, temporarily, as a designation of something unknown, and the name stuck. And according to the 2012 edition of the Collins Scrabble words dictionary, you can play that word, right? You can play X-ray, with no hyphen, just X-R-A-Y. Always needing those X words was gravel.

Starting point is 00:19:27 1896, this initial discovery is followed in 1896 by Henri Becker-Rail's discovery that uranium salts gave off similar rays naturally, though originally thinking that the rays were given off as phosphorescent uranium salts after prolonged exposure to the sun, he eventually abandoned that hypothesis through further experimentation, including non-phosphorescent uranium salts after prolonged exposure to the sun, he eventually abandoned that hypothesis through further experimentation, including non-phosphorescent uranium. He instead came to recognize that the material itself gave off the rays. So, just figuring out that this radioactive material is emitting its own form of light back in 1895, 1896.

Starting point is 00:19:59 And then, on rays, a French doctoral student, one Marie Curie, she named this newly discovered phenomenon, these rays emanating from substances such as uranium, this process of atomic nuclei breaking down and releasing high energy particles radioactivity. She called it radioactivity in 1898. And the particles being released are called radiation. And years later, radiation will be used to create the recipe

Starting point is 00:20:26 for monster energy drinks. To this day, a small amount of the profits from monster energy drinks make its way to the descendants of Marie Curie. Curie, and that is total nonsense. Monster energy is not radioactive that I am aware of. But if an article came out saying that it was, not shocked. A random trivia, Marie Curie, Curie,

Starting point is 00:20:46 a fucking Marie Curie, there we go, was not ethnically French. She was a naturalized French physicist originally from Warsaw, Poland. Maria, Salomea, Sledowska. After all the shit I've given Polish listeners, I felt necessary to throw you this bone. She was a Polish genius, turns out they foreshure exist.

Starting point is 00:21:04 Marie Curie would go on to become the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. She'd go on to win two Nobel prizes and two different sciences. Also become the first woman to become a professor at the University of Perry. So, you know, yay Polish people, yay women. And I don't know, Hail Lucifina.

Starting point is 00:21:20 Between 1898 and 1902, the Curies, Marie worked with fellow researcher and husband Pierre, published jointly or separately a total of 32 scientific papers, including one that announced that when exposed to radium, disease, tumor forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells. Using radiation and cancer treatment can be traced back to curie. Pretty amazing. She deserves her own suck someday for sure. Unfortunately, they didn't know at the time that radiation in addition to being able to cure cancer could also ironically cause cancer. Prior to Curie's research, the atom was considered unbreakable, and also to be the smallest thing in existence. Curie discovered that radiation was the product of atoms splitting apart. Her research

Starting point is 00:21:59 also led to this insane, and I'm not making this up. This insane radiation craze in the earliest 20th century that I didn't know about before I started researching this episode, holy shit. Once people found out that radiation could attack tumors, it became assumed that it was kind of this cure all. They could take care of all kinds of stuff, like there was this new miracle substance. One doctor wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine,

Starting point is 00:22:21 radioactivity presents prevents insanity, rouses noble emotions, retards, old age, and creates a splendid, useful, joyous life. Yeah, turned out it does exactly none of that stuff. But suddenly watches, clock faces, gun sites, instrument panels, fingernail polish, even children's toys are glowing with radiation. I swear. You can do some Google research. If you use some image searches, you find all kinds of hilarious old ads and packaging.

Starting point is 00:22:49 The United States radium corporation, for example, opened in 1914 in New York City, and they hand painted all sorts of items with radioactive radium and their new Jersey factories. And the employees of the factories of these corporations would lick their brushes to keep the tips pointed during their work and gesting radioactive particles each and every time they did that. And years later their teeth and skulls began to disintegrate. And then these poor people dying and unable to work made their way south to the Jersey Pine Barons and began popping out so many Newt Babies. Well, look at here now, I got some pig.

Starting point is 00:23:26 Tasty ass. Tasty ass nuke, I ever did lick. Adam a woman's beard. Well, look at here now, with a full belly, made a nuke baby with a woman on mine, in her second head. Well, look at here now, a nuke baby fell out of a woman's magic nuke butt. And a second nuke baby dropped out of mine,

Starting point is 00:23:43 and those nuke babies had another baby, and the butt baby is a Jersey devil, and that's how the song's gonna end. No, they did not take off to the Pine Barrens to have butt babies and give birth to the Jersey devil. But, but, they did sadly begin to suffer and die. By the early 1920s women working these factories began to connect their swollen jaws and fragile bones, their bones are literally disintegrating to their deaths and to working in these factories. By 1927, litigation was beginning to be brought against the United States' radium corporation, other similar companies. However, they continued to pump out their products for decades, because no true scientific understanding of the harmful effects of radioactive exposure was yet known.

Starting point is 00:24:23 Some early deaths, companies like making radium cosmetics and toothpaste promising to rejuvenate the teeth and skin. Oh my gosh, even radioactive condoms are being produced. Wow, just a whole new way to experience a burn-insensational on your gendels. They had no idea how toxic this stuff was yet. Just put their weenes in some radioactive condoms and then putting those radioactive weans in vaginas. Like how ironic that the early practitioners of safe sex were adding a preposterously unnecessary danger to their bedroom activities. Radiation was also added to cigarettes. Yeah, most cancer inducing cigarettes ever. Radiolactive cigarettes. That was a real thing.

Starting point is 00:25:02 You can even get radium and sand for your kids, sand pits. Not kidding, it was advertised as more hygienic and beneficial than world-renowned curative baths. Yeah, just get the new sand kids. Hey kids, you look a little pale, once you get in the newc box. Get, go on there, get in the newc box. The general public, yeah, no idea,

Starting point is 00:25:21 this was horrible for you. 1926, her man, Joseph Mueller, an American geneticist did finally figure out that idea. This was horrible for you. 1926, uh, her man, Joseph Mueller, uh, an American geneticist did finally figure out that this shit was really bad for you. He discovered a clear quantitative connection between radiation and lethal mutations. By 1928, some other scientists had made the same connection, but then the Great Depression hit and everyone had other stuff to worry about. Right? So shut the fuck up about your radiation mutations, Dr. Crazy Talk. We're trying to figure out how to not starve to death right now and get our economy going. And then on the heels of the Great Depression World War II hit and it still wasn't a good time

Starting point is 00:25:51 to hear about radiation was bad for you. There was a war to be fought, a war to be won by any means necessary, and radiation was becoming crucial to that war effort. So don't talk shit about. It wouldn't be until 1946 that Mulder would be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mutations can be induced by X-rays. And that was conveniently given to him after the war and after a couple of real nasty bombs were dropped on Japan. Right? Seems like very suspicious timing to me.

Starting point is 00:26:18 Oh, radiation is bad? Seriously? Oh man. Oh, if we only knew about that before we bombed the fuck out of Japan. We're so sorry. Whoops, whoopsies! 1932. British physicist James Chadwick discovered that the neutron was a thing. Big discovery, concerning the ability to create both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. An important piece of the atomic puzzle was unlocked. The atom has a nucleus, a central region of protons and neutrons circled by electrons.

Starting point is 00:26:51 This discovery was verified by the scientific community in 1934, and he won the Nobel Prize in 1935. Scientists soon realized that the newly discovered neutron was an uncharged but fairly massive particle could be used to probe other nuclei. Didn't take long for scientists to find it. Hitting uranium with neutrons resulted in the fission of the uranium nucleus and the release of incredible amounts of energy making possible nuclear weapons. Chadwick would work on the Manhattan Project, another future sucked during World War Two

Starting point is 00:27:20 to build atomic bombs. Also in 1932, well-known industrialist Playboy, three bottle a day, Radathor drinker, Eben Byers. Radathor being radioactive water, Soldiers of Curl, died a horrific death of a then unknown illness. Turns out he had a real bad case of radiation sickness. Byers had drank nearly 1,400 bottles of radioactive water over three years, holy shit. He was probably smoking radioactive cigarettes and probably playing in his kids radioactive sand Nukebox as well. And by the time he died, Byersbrain was abscessed and holes were forming in his skull.

Starting point is 00:27:55 Upon his death, the Wall Street Journal ran the headline, the radiating water worked fine until his jaw came off. Ugh! Would a terrible way to go out. But still radioactive products continue to be sold. 1938, the process of nuclear fission is discovered by German physicist Lisa Mettner and Otto Feisch. They determine that when an atom nucleus splits and creates a new nuclei, a process called

Starting point is 00:28:17 nuclear fission releases vast amounts of energy. They theorize that a fission chain reaction was possible. They also theorize that this chain reaction could be harness to create a limitless supply of clean energy for ships, planes, factories, homes, etc. In 1942, the world's first nuclear reactor is built in Chicago, Illinois. It's called Chicago Pile 1, an apt title considering how low tech the same was. Here's a quote. It was a stack of 40,000 graphite blocks held together in a wooden

Starting point is 00:28:45 frame, 25 feet wide and 20 feet tall. Inside about half the blocks were holes containing small amounts of uranium oxide. Inside a few others were nuggets of refined uranium metal, the production of which was still a novel process. The pile had few safety features. The scientists only protection against radiation came from a set of cadmium control rods designed to be inserted and removed by hand, along with untested theories and calculations. As one governmental report later put it, there were no guidelines to follow, no previous knowledge to incorporate. They were pioneers. Neither university nor city officials were told in an experiment that even as creators judged

Starting point is 00:29:25 as risky was taking place in the heart of the second largest city in the United States. Love it. Just a bunch of scientists dicking around with a radioactive brick pile, trying to cause some atomic reactions. That could have been one of the biggest scientific backfires in US history, just contaminate all of Chicago with lethal radiation. Sorry guys, whoops, you're all going to have to move. You're all going to have to find a different place to live. It's a whole city has to go. The experiment itself was anti-climactic,

Starting point is 00:29:48 the piles started up on December 2nd, brought to criticality, the point at which a nuclear reaction becomes self-sustaining, then shut down a half hour later before it's growing heat and radioactivity became too dangerous and could possibly cause a massive explosion. The metallurgical laboratory experimented with it

Starting point is 00:30:03 for a few months before disassembling and reconstituting it, now with radioactive shielding at a site somewhat more removed from the city where it became known as Chicago pile 2. Ultimately, the reactor ran for over a decade there before it was finally dismantled and buried in the woods. The following month, planning planning began to build a proper series of nuclear reactors at Hanford, Washington, right, to breed plutonium for a bomb. And in January of 1945, plutonium reprocessing begins at Hanford, uh, January 20th, uranium is separated for the first time in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. On July 16th, the U.S. explodes the world's first atomic bomb, the Trinity test at Alamogordo,

Starting point is 00:30:42 New Mexico. On August 6th, little boy, a uranium bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan between 80,000 and 140,000 people are killed. On August 9th, fat man, a plutonium bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and about 74,000 people are killed. Fuck. So many civilians, man, we have to suck on those bombings someday, for sure. I get the rationale to stop the war.

Starting point is 00:31:04 I've heard about it many times, you know, you know less overall loss of life that the war would have continued but civilians like how we're Truman and others not charged with war crimes seriously strongly guessing they weren't charged because we won the war had we lost oh for sure for sure their war criminals the Japanese were already talking surrender by the way when those bombs were dropped the hero shima bombing also caused wide scale radiation poisoning in the actress war criminals. The Japanese were already talking surrender, by the way, when those bombs were dropped. The Hiroshima bombing also caused wide-scale radiation poisoning in the actress Medori Nakka, present during the bombing, was studied extensively for radiation poisoning. Her death in 1945 was the first to be officially documented as having been caused by radiation poisoning or radiation sickness. At the time, this radiation poisoning was referred to as atomic bomb disease. Her hair fell out days after the bombing. Purple patches developed on her skin. Her death

Starting point is 00:31:49 receives widespread publicity and the dangers of radiation first become known to the general population in the world. August 1, 1946, President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act. Its purpose is to control the development and production of nuclear weapons and to direct the research and development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy. December 25th, the Soviet Union achieves its first nuclear chain reaction in Moscow. Also in 1946, two scientists from the USA die after working with fizzle materials without using protective clothing or shielding. And before we continue with our nuclear timeline, let's have a quick word from today's sponsor. Time suck has brought to you once again by Chikotilo's Rastlin Academy, a Chikotilo's Rastlin

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Starting point is 00:35:07 Get $125 off and a free pillow. When you go to Lisa, L-E-E-S-A, dot com slash time stuck. Okay, back to some nuke shit. August 29, 1949, Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, Joe I, and Kazakhstan. It is a copy of the Fat Man bomb from the US-Drop from Japan, has a yield of 21 kilotons. Then out in the desert, 18 miles southeast of Arco, Idaho, on December 20, 1951, the small

Starting point is 00:35:39 experimental Breeder Reactor I becomes the world's first electricity producing reactor when it generates sufficient electricity to power four two hundred watt light bulbs. Yeah! I know! First day to power anything with nuclear electricity motherfuckers, so suck on that! You suck on that! However, the small reactor was just built to prove theoretical concepts and was never intended to be used for commercial use and it was quickly shut down and dismantled. Wap, wap, wap, wap. Alright, well, I know how to brief moment of glory.

Starting point is 00:36:08 I still am excited about it. June 26, 1954, at Obynksk, Russia, the nuclear power plant APS-1, with a net electrical output of 5 megawatts was connected to the power grid, the world's first nuclear power plant that generated electricity for commercial use. Now, there are currently approximately 447 nuclear reactors in use in over 30 different nations with over 60 more currently under construction. September 30th, 1954, the USS Nautilus, the first American nuclear power submarine is launched.

Starting point is 00:36:40 They had shrunk in the tech down enough to get a small nuclear reactor inside a submarine, which is great for a subs ability to remain underwater and go out and be out at sea for long periods of time with no need for refueling. Also terrible for people in a sub if a meltdown occurs, which we will mention in a second. Under December 30th, 1958, an accident occurs in the Los Alamos Platonium Processing Facility that would cement the dangers of radiation. Cecil Kelly, an experienced chemical operator, was working with a large mixing tank. The solution in the tank was supposed to be lean, typically less than 0.1 grams of plutonium

Starting point is 00:37:14 per liter. However, the concentration on that day was actually 200 times higher. When Kelly switched on the stirrer, the liquid in the tank formed a vortex and the plutonium, containing layer went critical, releasing a huge burst of neutrons and gamma radiation and a pulse that lasted a mere 200 microseconds. Kelly, who had been standing on a on a on a ladder, a foot ladder appearing in the tank, through a viewing window fell or was knocked to the floor by this quick flash. Two other operators on duty saw a bright flash, her adult thud, quickly rushed to help and found Kelly in coherent and saying, only I'm burning up, I'm burning up.

Starting point is 00:37:47 He was rushed to the hospital, semi-conscious, wretching, vomiting, hyperventilating, I'm guessing spontaneously bleeding. And the hospital, Kelly's bodily excretions were sufficiently radioactive enough to give a positive reading on a radiation detector. And sadly, he does not turn into Dr. Manhattan. Two hours after the accident, his condition seems to improve. He regains coherence. And then, uh, however, uh, it becomes clear very soon that he would not survive long. Test show that his bone marrow is destroyed. And the pain in his abdomen becomes difficult to control despite medication. And he dies

Starting point is 00:38:18 35 hours after the accident. Man. July 4th, 1961, the Russian nuclear sub sub K19 develops a major leak in her reactor cooling system, causing the reactor temperature to rise to a very dangerous 800 degree Celsius, due to poor design and failure to have a backup cooling system installed, Captain Zateev had no choice but to order a team of seven engineering officers and crew to undertake a repair despite lethal rates of radiation exposure. The repair crew was successful in stopping the leak, however all 7 were dead within a week. The incident contaminated the entire boat within a few years, 20 more crew members were dead, their deaths attributed to the incident C. Man, how bad is fucking following that order suck?

Starting point is 00:38:58 Hey man, get in there, get it, go grab that radioactive fucking stuff and stuff it back in the reactor. Get in there, go seal it off. But I don't have the proper clothes, I get in there, you'll be fine. Just take a shower afterwards. Also on October 31st, 1961, the USSR explodes the world's largest nuclear bomb with the yield of 58 megatons. They went about to let a little atomic poisoning stop some new weapons testing. 1970, a pre-piet is founded on February 4th as the ninth nuclear city of the Soviet Union.

Starting point is 00:39:31 It's a closed city. It had to be authorized to live in a residency. They would have these closed cities where it's not like you could just go on a country drive and drive through a pre-piet. You had to have authorization to be there. August 15th, 1972 construction begins on the Chernobyl power plant near a prei-at. You had to have authorization to be there. August 15th, 1972, construction begins on the Chernobyl power plant near a prepi-at. The first Chernobyl reactor is completed in 1977,

Starting point is 00:39:52 followed by a second reactor in 1978, third in 81 and a fourth in 83. And each reactor could produce 1,000 megawatts of electricity and the plant produced 10% of all of the Ukraine's electrical needs So 10th, 1982 a partial core meltdown occurs in reaction number one The extent of the accident was not made public until 1985 The reactor was repaired put back into operation within months. No one

Starting point is 00:40:19 You know that we know of was harmed that incident And for the most part everything goes really well at Chernobyl until April 25th 1986 Now a few days earlier, a few days, you know, like April 20th, 21st, 22nd, right around their reaction number four had been scheduled for maintenance and to test, you know, the ability of the reactors turbine generator to generate sufficient amount of electricity to power the reactor safety system in case of like an emergency blackout. Like, all the power went down for any reason, could this turbine generator keep the safety systems on? Well, in April 25th, all the required went down for any reason, could this turbine generator keep the safety systems on?

Starting point is 00:40:45 Well, in April 25th, all the required conditions had been met in order to run the test, and the reactor electricity output was gradually reduced to 50% of reactor capabilities. And then suddenly, and totally unexpectedly, the regional power station that supplied the area with electricity went offline. The Kiev power grid controller ordered postponement, postponement of further reduction of output, because electricity was needed to satisfy the evening peak demand. The test was postponed,

Starting point is 00:41:12 but in the hands of the night shift of the plant, and the night shift operators had very little experience in nuclear power plants because the majority of them have been brought over for some coal-powered plants. That sounds bad. Like, I have no experience working in nuclear power or any other kind of power job, but I feel like any type of systems test should be completed by a team with a lot of experience making sure you know that the plant doesn't melt down. Just you know it just

Starting point is 00:41:35 feels like hey sirgy we can't complete the plant safety test right now. Should we not wait until tomorrow? No, no, no, put Homer Simpson and beat him on it immediately. What could go wrong? Well, 11 p.m. the Great Controller in Kiev gave permission to continue the procedure. And so the power output of reactor number four needed to be reduced to 0.7 down to, between 0.7 and 1 gigawatts in order to conduct the test at the prescribed lower power level. But the real problem was that the new crew wasn't aware of the prior postponement. They weren't prepared like aware that the power

Starting point is 00:42:10 had already been reduced. I don't know. They didn't somehow check the right fucking meters, I guess. They didn't realize the power wasn't running at normal levels. And they followed the original test protocol, which results in power level and power level decrease to unacceptable levels. Right. So because of this, the late shift reduced the power to about a third of the minimum necessary required power to complete the experiment and out of the ignorance the crew continue with the experiment. You know, reading this, it does feel like these guys worked at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant from the Simpsons.

Starting point is 00:42:38 And at about 105 AM in the early morning of April 26, water pumps that should have been driven by the turbine were turned on and this increased the water flow beyond what is specified in safety protocol measures. At 123 and four seconds the fatal experiment begins, the unstable state of the reactor wasn't shown on control on the control panel so the crew wasn't aware of the danger that was threatening them. The turbine was disconnected from the reactor, the water pumps were cut off, the energy supply which resulted in the increased level of steam in the center from the reactor, the water pumps were cut off, the energy supply which resulted in the increased level of steam

Starting point is 00:43:06 in the center of the reactor and the temperatures as well. So pockets of steam now form the voids and the coolant lines. 26 seconds later, 12340 operators pressed the AZ5 button that orders the shutdown of reactor in case of emergency, fully inserting all control rods, including the manual control rods that have been pulled out earlier. When all else fails, grab some rods and shove them in some holes. But the slow speed of the control rod insertion mechanism and some flawed rod designed did the opposite by increasing the reaction rate. Seven seconds later, reactor power jumps to almost 30 Gw, which is 10 times more than usual. This causes the fuel rods to melt, a rapid increase of steam pressure builds up, and then a large

Starting point is 00:43:44 steam explosion destroys the reactor lid, ruptures the coolant tubes, blows off part of the roof. I'm guessing cause at least one technician to ship themself. The steam blast kills two technicians. Part of the roof blows off, a graphite fire breaks out. The result of a reaction between the in-rush of oxygen from the air with the extremely high temperature of the reactor, and the graphite moderator that was placed on the control rod ends. The graphite fire was the main cause of radioactive, the radioactive cloud spread to further

Starting point is 00:44:13 areas, took days to extinguish. And now, at the past few minutes of exposition came across as a lot of fucking scientific mumbo jumbo to you, you're not alone. I edited and rewrote that part probably six times. And not having a degree in nuclear science. It doesn't matter how it tells you. There's a part where it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? So let me simplify. Essentially what happened was some science people

Starting point is 00:44:36 who weren't qualified to run a very important test did so anyway, right? It was like, yeah, yeah, just go ahead and they did it at the wrong time, right? To go forward with the tests was it was a movie model idea Very bad. They went forward anyway some nuke shit got way too hot It got too hot to then cool down bunch of red lights probably started flashing Sirens are going off

Starting point is 00:44:56 bunch of Russians and has met suits running around like Benny Hill just Fucking pandemonium and then blammo big explosion just oh shit, you know BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM to full day before evacuating the people of Pripyat, because there are assholes, they don't evacuate till April 27th, and total about 350,000 people would be evacuated from contaminated areas near the reactor in the days following the meltdown. Despite the health risks, the Soviet Union initially had no intention of relaying to the rest of the world what had happened in Chernobyl, but on April 28th, Swedish monitoring stations reported abnormally high levels of wind transported radio activity, press the Soviets for an explanation, they admit that there had been an accident in Chernobyl and the world, especially the world of Eastern Europe, freaked the fuck out.

Starting point is 00:45:54 It became the number one breaking story pretty much everywhere. In the weeks to follow the meltdown, 134 firemen and employees are hospitalized with ARS, a Q-Radiation syndrome, 28 of those people die, at least 14 more died from radiation-induced cancer before 1996. And the endless speculation of the real damage done by Chernobyl is in full swing. Accounts vary widely over how many people were affected and or have died due to the meltdown.

Starting point is 00:46:18 According to UN agency's estimations, a further number of 4,000 to 9,000 people died from the consequences of this disaster whose overall radiation level was estimated to be around the level of 400 atomic bombs like the one thrown in Hiroshima. The ecosystem near the reactor was so badly hit that the trees within four square miles of the nearby forests changed their color, some color between the brown and purple, and we later be called by the BBC the Red Forest.

Starting point is 00:46:44 God knows how many animals died or lost the ability to reproduce. And now that we've made it through the blast, let's hop out of this timeline to discuss the repercussions and more detail of this tragic event. When it comes to the effects of Chernobyl, let me just start by residing that experts can't and will never agree on the true extent of the damage caused. And we'll never be able to actually find out conclusively. A few years after the meltdown, John Giddes of the Royal Academy of Engineering told the UK government there could eventually be around 10,000 fatalities worldwide from this disaster.

Starting point is 00:47:29 A study announced back in 2005 by the World Health Organization set a total up to 4,000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from Chernobyl. Now this is a study conducted by an international team of more than 100 scientists, but as of mid-2005, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster. Almost all, you know, being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident, but others who died as late as 2004. Environmentalist group Greenpeace back in 2006 attributed nearly 100,000 deaths and a quarter of a million cancer cases to Chernobyl. And that report wasn't written by 10 hippies sitting in a drum circle,

Starting point is 00:48:04 you know, working on aligning their spirit rhythms on some mountaintop. No, it was conducted by a team of 52 scientists hired by Greenpeace, and the study was based primarily on Bela Rousse's national cancer statistics. The report concluded amongst other findings that on the basis of demographic data, between 1991 and 2006, 60,000 people have additionally died in Russia because of the Chernobyl accident and estimates of the total death toll for Ukraine and Belarus could eventually reach another 140,000.

Starting point is 00:48:33 Right? So, yeah, they're thinking about 200,000 deaths could be attributed eventually. Finland was one of the most heavily affected countries affected by the radioactive fallout. And another group of scientists and medical researchers analyzed the relation of the estimated external radiation exposure from the fallout to cancer incidents in Finland between 1988 and 2007. The study comprised all 3.8 million fins who had lived in the same dwelling for 12 months following the accident. Their analysis, you know, found that there was not a noticeable increase in

Starting point is 00:49:07 cancer, in some, following the Chernobyl accident, with the possible exception of colon cancer amongst women rising slightly. Now, this is important to note, man, this study didn't get a lot of media attention, really any. I had to find it in some old medical journal from the US National Library of Medicine in the National Institute of Health, but it reports the increase of cancer compared to pre-chernobyl levels. A lot of other studies just list the total amount of cancer cases since Chernobyl hit, which is completely meaningless fucking statistics.

Starting point is 00:49:35 That's completely meaningless, Dave. You've got to know the baseline, like how much cancer was already occurring previous to Chernobyl, and then how much cancer occurred afterwards. And if it's a negligible difference, then you can't really blame the meltdown on the new cancer cases. And it's tricky because cancer affects, it kills so many people already. One study I came across said that roughly 20,000,

Starting point is 00:49:57 sorry, 20%, of just all people in general on Earth will die from cancer. So when you're looking at a population of roughly 5 million people in the most heavily hit area around Chernobyl, you have to already attribute 1 million deaths to cancer of some sort, you know, as opposed to a diet of natural causes or anything else. So, that's like so much, but I found another stat that said 38.5% of people will be diagnosed with some form of cancer at some point in their life. So when you're trying to determine how much cancer Chernobyl caused, you have to look

Starting point is 00:50:28 at a significant statistical increase. You have to find that above an already gigantic number. And even then, you have to then rule out other variables, do people living in the follow areas smoke more than they used to? Do they have a higher percentage of jobs that put them in contact with other carcinogens than they used to? Do they live in more urban areas with more air pollution than people used to? Do they drink more radiation water? Do they wear more radiation condoms?

Starting point is 00:50:56 Do they sit in more radioactive sandboxes than they used to? But seriously, it's super complex. And what was the total area that may have been affected anyway? During the 10-day period of maximum release from Chernobyl, volatile radio-nuclides were continuously discharged and dispersed among many parts of Europe and later the entire northern hemisphere. For example, relatively high fallout concentrations were measured at Hiroshima and Japan over 8,000 kilometers from Chernobyl. Most radiation was deposited in areas near the reactor, although some hot particles were transported thousands

Starting point is 00:51:27 of kilometers away. The largest concentrations of volatile nucleides and fuel particles occurred in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, which makes sense. That's right, what happened. But more than half of the total quantity of Chernobyl's volatile inventory was deposited outside of those countries. So a lot of it made it many, many, many,

Starting point is 00:51:44 many miles, many kilometers away. Extensive surveying of Chernobyl's CESIM-37 contamination was carried out in the 1990s. Under the auspices of the European Commission, the results indicated that about 3,900,000 square kilometers of Europe was contaminated to various degrees by CESIM-137, which is 40% of the surface area of Europe. So in terms of surface area, Baila Rousse and Austria were most affected by higher levels of contamination. However,

Starting point is 00:52:10 other countries were seriously affected. More than 5% of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden were contaminated so statistically or two statistically dangerous levels. More than 80% of Moldova, the European part of Turkey, Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, Slovak Republic, were contaminated as well. 44% of Germany, 34% of the UK were similarly affected. In terms of total deposition, or, you know, total, you know, depositing of CZM-137, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine, received the highest amounts of fallout. While former Yugoslavia, Finland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Norway, Romania, Germany, Austria, Poland, each was received more than one petabectoral of CZM-137, a very large amount of radioactivity. So again, a lot of the world affected the sum degree of our radiation, which may have created a lot of extra cancer or almost no extra cancer outside

Starting point is 00:53:02 the immediate fallout zone. Right again, so so hard to determine, you know, who truly was affected by this. But let's talk about that zone. Let's talk about this zone right around it. There's still an area of roughly a thousand square miles around Chernobyl, which is uninhabitable. It's called the Exclusion Zone or the Zone of Alienation. And while you can't move there, you can visit. I had no idea. That was the thing. I swear to God, you could take

Starting point is 00:53:25 a tourist trip to Chernobyl right now. If you hear your permits in order, or you can, you know, visit all around the area of Chernobyl. And this area even has a hotel. The hotel is the only place for explorers of the zone to stay in. And it's staff are only allowed to work on a strict rotation of 15 days in the zone and then 15 days outside to keep radiation levels to a minimum. Workers inside the zone live in basic dormant areas in the town of Chernobyl. What the fuck? How hard up for a job are you when you apply to work at a hotel inside the exclusion zone of Chernobyl?

Starting point is 00:53:55 Jesus. Like, if you hate your job, be thankful you don't have that one. If you don't have a job, be thankful you don't have that one. Holy shit. Another roughly 5,000 people still work inside the exclusion zone. Mostly sentry guards, also workers on this massive new sarcophagus built to kind of like protect kind of in case the old reactor, so it doesn't spread any more radiation in the future.

Starting point is 00:54:16 There's firemen protecting the still volatile area from deadly forest fires. Man, service staff for the workers, like the hotel staff, other workers, you know, work on that rotation pattern. 15 days in, 15 days out. It keeps the radiation levels manageable. Every visitor coming out of the occlusion zone goes through a radiation screen and at each checkpoint, if your levels are too high, clothes and boots are either washed or left behind, taking anything out of Chernobyl is forbidden tour guides,

Starting point is 00:54:41 are checked regularly and say they don't receive anywhere near the annual levels of radiation deemed too dangerous. One tourist, YouTuber, bio nerd 23, she has a bunch of videos online, has visited the exclusion zone many times and has posted videos of herself. I've watched a bunch of them doing things like eating apples from apple trees, just very close to the reactor. And so far she appears to be very healthy. And Pre-Pia wasn't the only town inside the zone, by the way, I mentioned the Chernobyl itself.

Starting point is 00:55:09 There's the town of Chernobyl. This is the town that has the hotel. And a small number of people were allowed to move back to this town after the meltdown. It was about 180, mostly older residents living full time in the zone. They were able to return to their ancestral village despite warnings from the Ukrainian government, which has now largely allowed them just to return to their ancestral village despite warnings from the Ukrainian government

Starting point is 00:55:25 Which which has now largely allowed them just to return to their homes to die in peace You go watch a documentary about these people as you want called the babushka of Chernobyl and Chernobyl is less than 15 miles from the form of power plant man Tying this a bit to last week in the latter half of the 18th century It had a large acidic Jewish population in 1898 70% of the 10,000 people living in Chernobyl were Jewish, then World War Two hit, and the Nazis killed all of them. So the reactor meltdown, not even the worst thing to happen to this town in a 50-year period. And scientists say the zone will continue to be contaminated by the radiation from the

Starting point is 00:55:58 disaster for about 300 years more. For the next 300 years, it's still going to be unfit for human life. But yeah, these people are living there. And you know what? They don't look like fucking toxic of engines. I saw, you know, a little trailer for that documentary and they seem to look normal. You know, it looks like old Russian people, old Ukrainian people. Yeah. And ironically, also you can find videos of inside the contamination zone and it is full of life. Strangely, the exclusion zone has basically become a wildlife refuge.

Starting point is 00:56:28 At first wildlife populations in the immediate area of the meltdown plummeted in one area of forest covering between four and five square kilometers, many coniferous trees died. Right, like we talked about earlier, the red forest, the dynetal turning rusty red. In that first year, the most contaminated areas, many soil invertebrates like worms and bugs and shit,

Starting point is 00:56:48 they were killed, small mammal population plummeted. However, in large areas of the exclusion zone, radiation levels dropped dramatically within months, and wildlife began to bounce back, taking advantage of the absence of people. In the mid-1990s, the team of US and Ukrainian ecologists set up traps to explore how small mammals were responding, and they caught a range of voles, mice, and shrews.

Starting point is 00:57:09 They found that the abundance of animals and the diversity of species was more or less identical, both inside and outside the exclusion zone. So in other words, within 10 years of this disaster, the small mammal population is apparently showing no ill effects from radiation. Between 2008-2010, they surveyed hundreds of kilometers of animal trackways to assess population densities of elk, wolf, wild boar, deer, foxes. They found that track densities were similar to those recorded at four radiation-free nature reserves in Belarus. If anything, wolves specifically are farreed better at Chernobyl than other reserves.

Starting point is 00:57:44 The data suggests that there might be seven times as abundant there as an other local kind of force. They set up motion-activated camera traps in the exclusion zone as part of an ongoing project to better understand the risk to humans and to wildlife associated with exposure to radioactivity. And they found evidence of beavers, badgers, links, bison, even a brown bear, mid-interference. Other studies have not been quite so positive. Another study published in 2009 suggested insects and spiders are less abundant in areas

Starting point is 00:58:12 of the exclusion zone where radiation levels are high. To me, it sounds like the fucking perfect place to camp. Sounds like I need to take a little camp and trip to a little nuke zone. Are you kidding me? Less bugs, more wildlife. Sounds like a good place to hunt, right? Maybe your deer gets an extra head on it. That's a little more meat,

Starting point is 00:58:30 get a little more neck meat on your nuke deer. It's poor little nuke sauce, round yellow stone. It's poor little nuke sauce up in glacier. I'm sick of the fucking bugs, ruining my camping trips. I wanna see some critters, but I don't wanna get eaten alive by other smaller annoying critters

Starting point is 00:58:42 that maybe we can just kinda nuke out of existence. There are even an abundance of catfish living in the cooling ponds of the Chernobyl reactors That bio nerd 23 posted a video these online and I and I couldn't find one with even two heads I looked at some 2016 national geographic photos of Chernobyl and again no Multi-headed mutants no thread foxes nothing Just a bunch of normal looking very healthy animals. In fact, when you do a Google image search for Chernobyl mutant animals, picks of two headed creatures and deformed children do come up.

Starting point is 00:59:13 But the source for most of them is a website called ChernobylGuide.com, and it looks to me to be 100% wackadoodle. Looks to be total clickbait. The picks don't have sources. Most of the kids in the picks don't even look Russian. It looks to be a lot of horse shit. But I assume that a lot of people see these picks

Starting point is 00:59:32 in an image search, you know, and they're just like, oh God, the fucking, this poor new kids with their two heads. That's the world we live in now, right? You just, you just, people, a lot of people just look, oh, it's Jesus. And they do no digging past the credit on the image and just think it must be true. I also find this extremely interesting. Some Chernobyl experts have claimed that unsubstantiated

Starting point is 00:59:52 fear of radiation poisoning has actually led to, to greater suffering than the actual disaster itself. For example, many doctors throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union advise pregnant women to undergo abortions to avoid burying children with birth defects or other disorders, though the actual level of radiation exposure to these women experience probably far too low to cause real problems. Right? Plenty of these people had kids didn't abort and overwhelmingly the majority of these kids are totally fine. So those are the facts.

Starting point is 01:00:21 Radiation, bad feeling, high amounts, lethal and really high amounts, spontaneous bleeding, very bad, environmental impact of Chernobyl, more cancer-bincaws for sure, but very unclear as to how much. For non-human mammals, the benefit of the relocation of humans seems to have outweighed the harmful effects of radiation and their thriving. But who cares about facts? Who gives a shit about facts? When you have the entertaining, you know, strongly felt opinions of the idiots of the internet?

Starting point is 01:00:55 I found a video, it's a called Chernobyl mutations posted by YouTuber Paul Astrata and it's full of tons of disturbing images, pictures of kids missing limbs, kids dying of cancer, people with all sorts of various mutations. But again, how many of these victims can have their disease as conclusively linked to Chernobyl? I mean, not as I like to dick, but I could go visit various group homes and oncology awards of any city in the United States, in the fucking world, and put together

Starting point is 01:01:22 a similar group of pictures, right? It's just tragic, it's always tragic, right? It's just, it's just tragic. It's always tragic, but it doesn't necessarily link it to Chernobyl. And this stuff happens continuously across the world, mutations, you know, horrible deaths, whether or not a meltdown ever occurred. User James Spelaine shares my sentiments posting, crikey, do you not think to check out these photos? Are we have some guys on YouTube says they're from?

Starting point is 01:01:45 All of those mutations have been documented from photos showing people from all over the world with exposure to radiation Of course it was a disaster But try getting your facts right before sending in nine two-dimensional heartfelt sorry bullshit I love that you actually wrote Crikey reminds me of the crock hunter Steve Irwin Crikey, she's a beauty Crikey, would you look at the teeth on that one? Crikey, I wonder if I should stop fucking about with dangerous animals before it's too light.

Starting point is 01:02:10 Crikey, stingray, Crikey! User Cam, post some silly social justice warrior bullshit, just some feel good nonsense, saying, just shut down the nuclear power plants and then all caps, it's not that hard. So many exclamation points, frowny, concerned frowny face with a furrowed brow. Only acceptable to post if this dipshit is 12 years older, younger. Not that hard?

Starting point is 01:02:34 Are you ready to live without electricity? There are no nuts? You do realize that we won't be able to access YouTube without it, right? You do realize that nuclear power plants do more than create this nuclear waste. Do you understand that? That's where the word power comes into play.

Starting point is 01:02:48 And we kinda need it to make our world work. So there is that. User, it's just blaze, post something that may or may not be just trolling, saying, just so fuck it. Just kill them, to end hours and their misery. Wow, that post would have been dark already, but much less dark if you just didn't include hours. Put these mutants out of their misery. I mean, that's a pretty fucked-up call

Starting point is 01:03:10 for you to make. But way more fucked up when you had and mine. Put them out of my misery. The misery I endure from having to see pictures of people I don't like knowing are alive. That's how I feel the misery. What a fucking social bath. User Lori Smith apparently believes everything she sees and hears on the web proving this by posting and Russia a superpower denies their existence while warehousing these children. Human rights doesn't exist in their vernacular.

Starting point is 01:03:42 I'll fuck you talking about. Not even extremist watchdog green piece thinks this is going on, right? They're not warehousing mutant children to hide the effects of Chernobyl from the world. Right, why would anyone do that? If someone is so evil to warehouse mutant kids to hide from the world, why not just kill them?

Starting point is 01:04:00 They would have to be a very unique combination of very evil and also very dumb. To be like, you know, now we're gonna take all these mutant kids, we're gonna put them in a warehouse out somewhere. So no one will know the secret. Why not just kill them? Because that's horrible. I'm not a monster, I'm not gonna kill some mutant kids. I mean, I'll put them in a fucking remote warehouse, hide them from the world and let them die there,

Starting point is 01:04:21 but I'm not gonna kill them. We're talking about. Oh man. I feel like this person, Laurie, cries a lot about the shit she thinks is happening around the world. I've met too many people like that. People who live just to learn about wallowin and share tragedy, right?

Starting point is 01:04:36 They just, they define themselves with other people's tragedies. It's like the type of person has gotten up and walked out of my stand-up comedy shows so many times over the years, right? They just can't handle something I've said. Uh, that, that, I've no interest in ever spending any time with that kind of person ever again. Oh my gosh, student. Susan, do you hear about those poor Chernobyl kids?

Starting point is 01:04:56 Russia's hiding them in warehouses right now. I just can't stand knowing that the kids going on. For peace, sake, why would those fudge nuggets hide them? Because their toxic mutants, Susan? Because Chernobyl gave them three eyes and no legs! God bless the American, it makes me so freaking angry! Gee, Willikers, Cornnuts, son of a bucket! Laurie, why is Russia doing this?

Starting point is 01:05:22 Are they really doing? Yes, Susan? Leaping lizards are doing it right now in some warehouse near Chernobyl. Go like a duck if you don't believe me. Laurie, the area around Chernobyl has belonged to the Ukraine and Belarus. Not Russia since 1991, you dumb bitch. Why do you believe this stupid shit?

Starting point is 01:05:39 You mindless fuck, don't call me anymore. I wish you could play it like that. Plenty to be outraged about in the world, when you don't need facts to back up your rage, it can be a scary world for sure, but it can be a much more terrifying world when you're an idiot of the internet. I feel like if the reviewer from earlier

Starting point is 01:06:04 would have heard that last act out should have been very upset. She wouldn't have appreciated that little comedy moment there or lack of county moments. But yeah, you find those people all over the web. They just bounce from tragic video to tragic video. Just oh no! Oh my, how could that happen? Okay, so that's what we learned.

Starting point is 01:06:25 Chernobyl is very bad. But maybe not as bad as we've been led to believe. Nuclear plant, nuclear power plants, dangerous fact, radiation sickness, horrific way to go out, fact. Nuclear meltdown could end in life as we know it, not fact, necessarily. The earth is pretty resilient. Within a few years, the area immediately surrounding

Starting point is 01:06:43 the reactor in Chernobyl has become a fucking nature preserved. Did not expect that. Now that being said, mutations did occur. Stereality did occur in those animals. This is not to be filed under the no big deal category. People to die, people are still dying from cancer that are all likely to be attributed to Chernobyl, but just maybe not as many as I expected to find out about.

Starting point is 01:07:05 What I started wondering going through all of this is is nuclear power more dangerous than other alternative energy sources. And here's what I found in an article published in the journal IE in Irish Digital News site. Speaking of Ireland, Ireland, excuse me, get those accents in now. If you're gonna play this week's

Starting point is 01:07:20 a little space lizard game on the secret suck. The 2014 article claims that over 40% of the world's energy consumption comes from coal, and that some 30,000 coal miners have died since 1970, more than in the production of any other energy source. So there's that. Environmentally, the pollutants produced by coal mining and coal burning also have detrimental effects on health. It can cause or increase the risk of a myriad of health concerns, such as heart attack,

Starting point is 01:07:43 asthma, lung cancer, bronchitis, other respiratory conditions. The World Health Organization estimated in 2008 that pollution from coal particles causes one million deaths yearly. Right? Because some countries with no regulations that is puffed, like in China and some places where there's so much fucking pollution from that. Fossil fuels currently produce almost 63% of the United States energy needs,

Starting point is 01:08:06 producing roughly 2,500 billion kilowatt hours. Nuclear power gives us 20% of our overall energy needs. Hydro power, dams, give us 7.5% of our power, wind farms, give us 6.3% solar, only gives us about 1.3% currently. To me, the real long-term danger with fossil fuels outside of environmental impact is limited availability. I mean, we're going to run out.

Starting point is 01:08:31 Not going to happen with nuclear power, right? Well, not necessarily. We're actually estimated to run out of uranium to mine in about 200 years. However, we're set to run out of fossil fuels by most estimates within 150 years. So another slight edge to nuclear power over fossil fuel power in my eyes. When it comes to the dangers of nuclear power, the perceived threat may be greater than the actual threat. So far, the only large-scale nuclear power plant meltdowns have been Fukushima and Chernobyl. But what about hydro power? What about that? Well, most usable sites in developed

Starting point is 01:09:00 nations, most rivers already have dams in place, and the earth isn't making any more rivers. So while that process can get slightly more efficient over time, not feasible for hydroelectric power to fuel the future's energy needs. So sorry water, you're f**king you're out. What about wind power? I googled, can wind power be enough energy for the whole world? And my laptop punched me in the dick and told me to grow the fuck up. Currently one giant windmill having wind farm could provide enough energy to power the entire planet. If that wind farm was twice the size of the entire state of Alaska, and that farm would have to be in a very windy area,

Starting point is 01:09:36 it couldn't just be anywhere. So you know, wind doesn't look to be able to provide anything but extra power in addition to other, you know, sources going forward. It doesn't look like you can never be a widespread, kind of primary source of power. So, you know, get out of here, wind, you're out. So then I googled, can solar energy power the whole world? And my laptop ripped my balls off, said, you clearly don't need these. Then it gave me a hacky sack,

Starting point is 01:09:59 told me to go to that instead, think about pretty things, and then it shut itself down. However, fuck my red neck, dickheadhead computer because in terms, it turns out solar power does appear to be key to the energy needs of the future. And MIT study revealed that today's solar panel technology is all that is needed to supply the world with many terawatts of clean solar power by 2050. The MIT researchers suggest that crystalline silicon, photovoltaic technology of today

Starting point is 01:10:26 will remain viable and relevant in the future. While further research may improve solar panel efficiency, we do have all the tools we need right now that, according to the study, to supply all of the world's energy needs. There's a ton of room for technological improvement in increasing solar panels efficiency when it comes to harvesting the sun's natural energy. Man, the sun! The Egyptians worshipped it thousands of years ago and maybe the key to our future survival. Because let's be honest, who wants to live without electricity now. To me, I think we've got to harvest Nimrod's eyes, man.

Starting point is 01:10:57 It is fucking sun eyes going. The hardest of power Nimrod, hell Nimrod. To me, the real danger with nuclear power isn't with energy, it's with weapons, right? And I think pretty much everyone is agreement with that. There's a website you call it nuclearsecreset.com slash nuke map, where you can enter your city and find out how many people would die if a nuclear bomb hit it. You pick a city, pick from a variety of existing nuclear weapons, find out how many people

Starting point is 01:11:22 die from initial fireball, from the air blast, from thermal radiation, you can decide if the bomb hits, you know, like, makes impact with the Earth or explodes over the Earth at various, you know, altitudes. So for example, if a hundred megaton saw bomb bomb of this Russian nuclear weapon hit San Francisco and land, like, you know, made impact on the Earth, it would kill an estimated 1,559,110 people with an additional 1,235,60 injuries. Now, that same bomb hit Tokyo in the same way, almost 12 million dead with almost another 10 million injuries. One of these bombs hits my home of Corridor Lane, I put that in there too, fucking all

Starting point is 01:12:01 of us are dead. Like this entire area is just pff gone. It's insane. So cold, hydroelectric wind, solar, none of those are dead. Like this entire area is just pff, gone. It's insane. So cold, hydroelectric, wind, solar, none of those energy means carry the same potential side effect as far as the weaponry. No one's gonna be using solar power technology to create a solar bomb that's gonna wipe out

Starting point is 01:12:14 12 million people in Tokyo. Okay, all right, enough energy talk today. My brain hurts from all these big words. Let's take a peek back at Chernobyl with today's top five takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, radiation comes in many forms, and science radiation falls on a spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Long wavelengths are things like radio waves, light is somewhere

Starting point is 01:12:39 in the middle, small lengths like alpha beta and gamma rays are emitted from radioactive isotopes. They can penetrate your cells and destroy your DNA. Of course, these rays exist all around us all the time. We're all experiencing some level of radiation. It's the amount that is the issue. Number two, a radium company in New Jersey offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove that it's certified radioactive water sold under the brand name Radithor did not contain the large amount of radium and thorium it claimed to in the 1920s and 1930s. Alas, Radithor was a real thing, no one ever claimed the prize. Radithor did claim at least one life that a well-known industrialist playboy three

Starting point is 01:13:18 bottle a day. Radithor, user Evan Byers, and again, his gruesome death in 1932 inspired the Wall Street Journal of Headline, the Radium water worked fine until his jaw came off. Oh number three the forest around Chernobyl is not teaming with three headed deer or even eight-legged nor spider horses but it is teaming with wildlife including more wolves than surrounding eastern European forests and even brown bears and healthy looking catfish in the reactor cooling ponds. Number four, a few hundred people still live

Starting point is 01:13:48 within a few miles of the meltdown. And I watch some of their interviews and they seem to be fine. I've actually seen more rugged looking people right here in Idaho at the grocery store. Number five, new info, despite settling or setting, a 19 mile exclusion zone and building a huge concrete sarcophagus to cover the melted down and still radioactive uniform reactor officials kept three reactors operating in the wake of the

Starting point is 01:14:11 aftermath nearly 14 years altogether at the time of the incident a fifth and six reactor fifth and six reactor units were under construction those projects were quickly halted but units one two and three kept producing power the last unit unit 3 operated until the year 2000, when international negotiations finally shut down the plant for good. Why? They needed the electricity. Man, how much would it suck to be told you still have to go back to work the day after the meltdown?

Starting point is 01:14:38 Uh, hello, Alexi. Are you so glad you make it alive from exposing yesterday? It's not feeling sick from right the edge. I have good news. You will not lose good pain on nuclear plant job. It may take you many years to get. I also have bad news. I need you to come in for double shifts starting to 90. Yes, plant is still burning.

Starting point is 01:14:58 Much radiation happening, trees turning red, many animals dying. So we're two jackets to be safe. And maybe bring lunch from home, plant cafe food, how you say little sketchy at the moment. Time suck, tough, right takeaway. Chernobyl sucked. Suck so much nuke today. So much nuke my jaw's gonna fall off like that poor early 20th century radiation drinker. Now, get out there and grab some tickets to my flat earth tour. Hilarities and Cleveland Ohio this weekend all over the South and early April, Salt Lake City and more. So many shows up at Dancomans.tv. Check out those dates, that's the tickets. Thanks to Harmony Velocamp, Jesse Domener, Lindsey Cummins, Josh Crel,

Starting point is 01:15:43 the entire time-soak team. Thanks to all the space lizards who voted in Chernobyl to be a subject or suck on the app. And thanks for all the reviews and spread the suck. Man, post on social media, reference on Reddit. He's spreading that sweet, sweet suck. Every review helps. It helps so much. Next Monday's episode, it's a big one. Talking about guns.

Starting point is 01:16:01 And don't get triggered, pun intended. I'm not going to have any of this aside. Man, there's enough of that out there. There's enough people saying, you fucking, you fucking don't take them. There's enough people saying don't get triggered, pun intended. I'm not gonna have any of this side, man. There's enough of that out there. There's enough people saying, you fucking, you fucking don't take them. There's enough people saying, fucking get them out of here. I'm not gonna do either one of those things, all right?

Starting point is 01:16:13 I'm not gonna talk about how we have to get rid of them all. I'm not gonna talk about how like, we don't have to fucking change anything. I just wanna present data and let you interpret it. Not claiming to have any answers, you know? I just wanna give you as much unbiased info as I can because, you know, this is something in society. We need to discuss like big boys and big girls.

Starting point is 01:16:29 Just fucking put your big boy pants on. Pull up your big girl pants. And, you know, don't be a fucking baby about it. People get way too fucking sensitive about this issue. I hate it when people feel like there's something you just can't talk about. Then that's the thing we need to talk about the most. So much emotion around it.

Starting point is 01:16:42 So much emotion just blocking logic. You know, so let's just learn about it. I'm curious, you know, in full disclosure, I'm a gun owner, I am just curious about stats regarding this issue. I've heard people get real fired up about it my entire life. And I'm ready to unpucker my butthole

Starting point is 01:17:01 and I hope you are as well. And you can trust me, me this gonna be good suck and let's find out what you suckers him up to uh you know with this week's time-sucker updates update get your time-sucker updates so much info on Chernobyl sent in by time-suckers this past week uh I love it man getting ready for this episode so we'll start with some of that including uh some of this to round out the Chernobyl presentation. First bit of extra nuclear knowledge comes in from Jesse Latham, Super Sucker. It's an excerpt from a longer

Starting point is 01:17:32 email adding insight to the meltdown. And Jesse says, the operators begin the test. The reactor is meant to have 28 control rods fully inserted at all times. However, during the course of the test, it is discovered that only 18 of the required 28 have been inserted. Even after it is discovered, not enough control rods are inserted and despite several alarming printouts from the computer calling for immediate shutdown, they continue on with the test. Even shutting down two of the eight turbines meant to feed water back into the reactor. In fact, multiple backup safety features, including the emergency core cooling system, were shut down for the test.

Starting point is 01:18:08 The RB-MK reactor has a major design flaw called positive void coefficient, so a state of before steam is produced by the boiling water heated by the fuel rods reaction. To put it as simply as I can, the explosion was caused by an increase in reactivity due to a decrease in the amount of control rods. The rate of reaction caused excess heat, excess heat caused the turbines that feed the coolant water in the core to fail. The failure of the turbine prevents coolant to enter the core, which then even further increases the temperature, which then increases the rate of activity exponentially.

Starting point is 01:18:41 The positive void refers to the empty space in the coolant the bubbles created when boiling water boils and all these factors increase. So much steam is produced by the increasing hot boiling water while this is happening one of the operators present hits the emergency shutdown button however too late due to another one of the emergency system shutdown during the test the emergency control rods fail to descend. And as the remaining fuel rods begin to descend simultaneously the rods which are tipped in a substance that does nothing to slow reaction rate the fuel rods meant to descend. And as the remaining fuel rods begin to descend simultaneously, the rods, which are tipped in a substance, that does nothing to slow reaction rate, the fuel rods meant to descend to full 23 feet to send only 6.5 to 8 feet total before they stop.

Starting point is 01:19:14 When the control rods stop, shock waves fell throughout the entire plant. Because the rods are not fully inserted, the majority of the major backup safety system for shutdown, the exponentially increasing rate of reaction slash heat in the core causes the initial explosion in the reactor due to excessive levels of hydrogen mixed with the helium nitrogen gas mixture already present in the reaction. This explosion causes the upper biological shield weighing a thousand tons over the reactor to be blown up, falls back down further jamming any last hope of controlling the reaction with the shield dislodged and exposes part of the reactor core almost immediately following

Starting point is 01:19:49 the first explosion. There is a second explosion which throws bits and chunks of graphite, moderator blocks and control rods throughout the reactor room and surrounding land outside the planet itself. It also releases about 50 tons of evaporated nuclear fuel into the atmosphere. This has been great, honored to help provide some knowledge to you and all the suckers out there, Jess. Man, thanks for that extra info. Man, again, I just pictured that Benny Hill music.

Starting point is 01:20:10 I pictured just, you know, just Russian, you know, nuclear engineers just running up, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, like tripping over each other, just, ah, fucking, you know, screaming tears. Holy shit, man, a thousand tons shield blown up into the air air and 50 tons of evaporated nuclear fuel thrown out of the atmosphere. Wow, what a huge lapse in judgment, you know, those guys may. Now another time-soaker update about Chernobyl from Ailey, I believe you're gonna be saying that right, A-I-L-E-Y.

Starting point is 01:20:39 I don't know that name very well. Ailey regarding how the evaporated, radioactive fuel affected lives far away. And Ailey says, hiya, this will be quick as I'm supposed to be working right now, not listening to time, so I love it, work and wait. I just finished the latest one and heard the topic for next week is Chernobyl.

Starting point is 01:20:55 I wanted to send you quick personal info. Places outside of the initial zone had some interesting consequences. My parents were living in Scotland and at that time my parents are always talking about how the year that year Lots of dairy and meat products were contaminated and thrown away due to the meltdown However, the bigger impact I'm personally aware of and connected to is my boyfriend

Starting point is 01:21:14 He's finished I live in Finland now and he was born soon after the meltdown He was diagnosed with leukemia within the first few months of his life According to him apparently a lot of children in Finland were you know Diagnosed with cancer after that. And as you know, Finland right next to Russia. After two years, he went into remission, hasn't shown any signs since, but still has to deal with some shit from that. And I think it's something worth mentioning, that meltdown affected the world.

Starting point is 01:21:38 And that's a warning that even the most selfish in the world, she keeps in mind during talks about nuclear energy. Anyways, just wanted to mention it. Thanks for this podcast. I've been struggling at a job I hate. And your podcast on my ride helped home help so much to keep my spirits up. Oh, yay.

Starting point is 01:21:51 Well, I wish I could see you in my hometown of Salt Lake City, but maybe you'll make it to Helsinki someday, Ailey. Well, I hope I do make it there. Thanks for rocking the suck so far from my home. I'm honored. I hope you get a better job soon. And yes, we do need to think about nuclear energy. Again, I hope that it's just a temporary patch.

Starting point is 01:22:09 I mean, clearly from when I read and uncovered a solar seems to be the way to go going forward. And now another personal note on Chernobyl, this from Super Sucker Jake, says, hey Dan, the time suck man, not sure where you're at with the Chernobyl suck, but I thought that you would find this interesting. My father-in-law's fiance was vacation in Russia when Chernobyl happened.

Starting point is 01:22:28 She doesn't talk about it often, but based on the few times that she's talked about it, she was on vacation with her first husband and at least four other couples. I don't know exactly how close she was, but they were close enough to be affected by the radiation. She's the only one still alive that was on that trip, and has been battling cancer for the last 10 plus years. Everyone she was on vacation would died from cancer. She spent countless time in money,

Starting point is 01:22:49 trying to find a cure and based on 10, or based on different DNA related tests she's done. Recently, the determiner cancer was definitely tied, or is definitely tied to that terrible event. I wish I had more info for you, but it's a touchy subject for her, so it's not something she mentions often. I appreciate your podcast and comedy.

Starting point is 01:23:05 Also, grow up in a rural area and your podcast has helped me open my eyes to the world around me. Thanks for what you do, Jake and Indy. Man, thank you, Jake and Indy. This touched on what I spoke about earlier, man. So hard to determine exactly who was affected by this event. Some studies say only 4,000 deaths, you know, not only is it a terrible amount. Others point to 100,000 and more.

Starting point is 01:23:23 Who knows what the deaths you mentioned, you know, were captured in it a terrible amount. Others point to 100,000 and more who knows of the deaths you mentioned. You know, we're captured in any of these Chernobyl related studies and statistics. Man, and again, you know, this really wants to make me invest in solar power for the future. Nuclear energy may be cleaner, you know, in some ways in fossil fuel energy. But man, neither comes close to being as safe as harnessing sweet Nimrod's eye power. So now, couple cool updates on last week's Belski brothers, the first very personal story. One of many I've heard that makes me really question how any reasonable person could deny the holocaust.

Starting point is 01:23:54 This is from Chim Shalor. And Chim says, wow, just listen to the Belski brother episode. I've written it before, but right off the bat, I can tell you, this may be long-winded. There are a few thoughts I need to share. As mentioned in my last email, I'm a religious Jew. I grew up in Pittsburgh where a number of Holocaust survivors lived and they would occasionally come and talk at my school. I want to share two stories to further illustrate some of what you mentioned in the episode.

Starting point is 01:24:18 The first man Sam was 12th and he had gone to learn with one of his teachers. When he got home, I had gone out to learn. His family was gone. He never saw his parents' resemblance again. He escaped during one of those death marches, you mentioned. As they were being heard of through the woods, he and two friends broke out in a dead run. He eventually passed out from exhaustion and was found by Russian soldiers who saved him. When the war ended, he was 18 years old, almost 6 feet tall, and weighed less than 90 pounds.

Starting point is 01:24:43 The second man, Jack, was liberated by the American Army. When they would liberate a concentration camp, the Army would bring in medical staff as well as food, blankets, and other provisions. It was generally a few days before trucks could then take them out of the camp, but many people did not leave on their own during this time. One night, an American soldier came across Jack and a few others attempting to dig a hole under the fence, using spoons and their bare hands. The soldier asked Jack why they were doing this to front gate was open.

Starting point is 01:25:09 Jack responded that when you spend over four years being told daily that you will never walk out of this place alive, you treat that as gospel. It wasn't just our bodies that were imprisoned, it was also our minds. I've never understood why other minority groups disliked you so much. We came to this country looking for the same opportunities to make a better life for ourselves, to free ourselves from religious persecution as well as persecution based on skin color, sexual orientation, or political limits.

Starting point is 01:25:32 The Jewish holiday of Passover is coming up, where we commemorate our Exodus from Egypt. We mentioned during the Passover ceremony, called a cedar, how we have faced people in every generation attempting to wipe us out. I'm proud of my heritage, I'm proud of the way I was raised, for the most part, I think that racism and anti-semitism come from a similar place, which is fear and misunderstanding.

Starting point is 01:25:50 Yeah, couldn't agree more. Live it in New York City and write it a subway. I've been threatened and called a Fag Jew, but I've also had open, honest and meaningful conversations with people that don't look like me or believe what I believe that I've felt to be meaningful and real progress. I think what you do and what you bring to it us each week is worth more than you or any of us can know at the stage, but bringing people together from all walks of life that are curious and want to learn and be better is such a powerful thing.

Starting point is 01:26:14 Good on you. I'll repeat that I've been a fan for years and it's very cool feeling to respect and look up to you, especially with so much divisiveness and darkness in the world. We need more people in the public to be like you. This is the same. There's a saying in the Talmud, which is one of our central texts, that when you save a life, it is though you saved the entire world.

Starting point is 01:26:31 Hail, Nimrod, Praiseful Jangles, and you. You keep on sucking. Ah, that's beautiful. Hi, I'm Shalor. I think I've seen that right. I'm trying to get a little better. Thank you for sharing that wonderful story, man. Powerful stuff, brother.

Starting point is 01:26:42 We're an amazing community we have. You're right. I'm proud to be part of it. Yeah, not easy for me, man. I get so judgey all the time. Well, the edits of the internet, you know, I get judgey on ignorant, ignorance, but I feel like I should.

Starting point is 01:26:52 But it's in general, man. I get why, you know, it's so hard for us all to kind of get along together, you know? It's like, it takes a lot of fucking effort. It's so easy to be like, you know, what fuck those guys? It's so easy to go live there on your head. And yes, these stories, man, need to be continuously told forever so people don't forget. So easy to go out there on your head. And yes, these stories man need to be continuously told

Starting point is 01:27:06 forever so people don't forget. So easy to forget the sins of our past. Just keep repeating them. That's my main goal with all this. I just wanna not be as dumb. I'm just trying to be less dumb as I get older. Now, interesting language update regarding my judgment of the bookkeeper of Auschwitz referring to a Jewish child

Starting point is 01:27:21 as it from an anonymous sucker. And a lot of people actually wrote in with his same update. This is anonymous sucker saying, here come the spoons mother sucker. I love your stand up in the podcast for the record Nazis were and our vile filth deserved to rot in the ass hole of Bojangles for many attorneys as possible for as many attorneys as possible. That being said, in the interest of education and accuracy, I want to give you some insight into what could and to what that monster from the death camps, not going to use his name, could have used,

Starting point is 01:27:50 like why he may have used the word it to describe a child. Besides the fact that he was a speckable piece of crap and deserves to suck the balls of bojangles while Luciferina rams and over-sized spiked mace up his a ask for eternity without loop of course. In the German language, there are three articles assigned every noun, dare, which is masculine, D, feminine, DAS neutral. Interestingly, the articles used for the common words for children or as follows, dare for younger, for boy, the pronoun used air, pronounced air translates to he, DOS for kind, the pronoun S translates to it, DOS is for Machen, the pronoun translates to it as to it as well, funny that it doesn't translate to he or she.

Starting point is 01:28:34 So I appreciate how much research you put into the stock and want you to be accurate. So I thought I would send some info your way, keep up the great work, hope to catch one of your shows live some day anonymous. So thank you, yeah, love that, thank you very much. As an interesting and important point regarding translation in general man, language B doesn't always have a perfectly corresponding word for a term from language A. Hence the phrase lost in translation man. Language is so fragile, so incomplete in so many ways. We're just, you know, we're all these fucking meat sex. We're roaming around, you know, and are amongst our various tribes and our various corners

Starting point is 01:29:05 of the globe, just trying to express our feelings as best we can and always failing to some degree. You know, always falling a little short. Now, little silliness from last week, this has really made me laugh, from Zucker, Zach Gentry. Zach says, I just wanna say I used my 30% off at the Chikotilo Wrestling class and I'm gonna have to give it a two star review

Starting point is 01:29:26 It's located across the street from David Ike's subs and sudshop. They have an amazing sandwich. There's made from Lizard meat And the resting classes, you know, I walk in I was met with the pleasant aroma of what I can only imagine is exactly what Soviet Russia smells like Not knowing exactly what to study first. I decided to go through the armbar take-down class We're partnered up man-on-man and we're taught that once on the ground we're supposed to mash our cocks Not knowing exactly what to study first, I decided to go through the Arnbar take down class. We're partnered up, man on man, and we're taught that once on the ground, we're supposed to mash our cocks while breathing heavy, hovering over our partner. And I thought that was weird, but I'm new to wrestling. So what do I know?

Starting point is 01:29:57 Anyway, after a week, all the classes all I've learned is how to dispose of bodies poorly and how to have a grown man mash his cock near my face. And so I asked for a refund but was told they don't give refunds. Just all you should know, not worth the $799, 99 price. After our 30% off, probably would return if they did lower the price. Man, fuck, sorry, buddy, sorry, Zach, I apologize.

Starting point is 01:30:21 That's really frustrating to hear about Cheek of Tool's Rass on Academy. I just, I wish it would behave up to the standards of a normal time sucks sponsor, man. I don't know a lot about rass on either, but it does seem like there should be more too rassling than getting a cockmatch in your face and just disposing poorly of bodies.

Starting point is 01:30:36 So I hope with the very least you got that free limp straw water bottle and I hope you enjoy it. So sorry, Zach, which I could give you a refund myself, man. Good to hear though about David Ike's subs and suds, though. Look forward to that lizard sandwich. I'm gonna have to grab one of those. And I look forward to more updates

Starting point is 01:30:51 from you cool sons of bitches during next week's suck. Thanks, time suckers. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, time suckers. I need a net. We all did. Have a fantastic week suckers. Don't worry, The next week's topic is gonna suck in the wrong way

Starting point is 01:31:07 It's just folks not being the cold to curious don't drink any radioactive water Don't plan a glowing sandbox and keep on sucking Yeah!

Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 79 - The Chernobyl Disaster: What, Why, and How Bad Was it?

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