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Stunning Video Footage Of Chernobyl Devastation Captured By Drone
With the Fukushima disaster having disappeared from all media coverage in recent months (and with the plan to encapsulate the radioactive plant in an ice sarcophagus recently scrapped, Japan has still to reveal what its plans are for dealing with the disaster area), the world occasionally needs a reminder of the waste land that follow when nuclear power goes horribly wrong.
For that we go back to the original nuclear disaster, Chernobyl, and US photographer Phillip Grossman who, while having taken numerous pictures of the radioactive sarcophagus and its surroundings in the past, has produced his most amazing work yet courtesy of a camera-equipped drone. It allowed him to use a high powered camera and get a bird’s eye view of the surrounding landscape.
The stunning result is shown in the video below.
Some further details: the American, who has always had a fascination with nuclear power plants (and perhaps even disasters as he grew up 11 miles away from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the worst nuclear disaster on US soil) talks to RT about his artistic vision.
"I think you are destined to repeat history if you don’t learn from it. So part of what I am doing with the documentation is really show people what happened. Lives were destroyed, families were torn apart."
Close up #Chernobyl Sarcophagus @Photoshop @LexarMemory @CanonUSAimaging @EnviroNewsTV @CBSSunday @photoaddicts pic.twitter.com/DKkPnbvS35
— Philip Grossman (@PGPImages) December 1, 2014
Grossman had experience as a pilot, which gave him a head start in terms of the pictures he was looking to take. He knew he had to take into account the overgrowth of trees and shrubs, which have grown unhindered for almost 30 years. He also mentioned that he heard bears and other wildlife are returning to the region due to the lack of human activity.
“I tried to remove bias and that’s what I love about photography and film making is that a picture is worth a thousand words. I would rather the person watching would make up their own mind.”
Another shot @60Minutes didn't show Flying @DJIGlobal as close as I could #chernobyl reactor complex @UAVHive @Airvid pic.twitter.com/WnyjI5N9Ks
— Philip Grossman (@PGPImages) November 25, 2014
The photographer was also given access to the control room at reactor number four, where the disaster on April 26, 1986 started. Time was of the essence given that the room was still highly radioactive following the accident. However, it was here that Grossman experienced one of his most poignant memories of the whole trip.
Another shot @60Minutes and @dannycooke didn't get in chernobyl Control Rm Reactor No. 4 @theguardianbiz @Gizmodo pic.twitter.com/4yJvS3FcaX
— Philip Grossman (@PGPImages) November 29, 2014
“We did manage to gain access to the control room and reactor No. 4. I was ecstatic that we were finally able to go. We were given very little time in there. I stood in there and was taking pictures and within about 30 seconds it dawned on me where I truly was.”
One place @60Minutes and @dannycooke did not go in Chernobyl, Ctrl Rm Reactor No. 4 @DSLRinformer @FilmTimelapse pic.twitter.com/dDblI6uHtY
— Philip Grossman (@PGPImages) November 29, 2014
Grossman also tried to portray the size of the city of Pripyat, which housed the employees and the families of those who worked at Chernobyl. The population was around 50 thousand and it was a large modern city. The photographer said the the average age of the population was around 25-26, so there were a lot of children and elementary schools and a lot of mementos.
“Walking through those buildings and seeing the children’s toys on the floor. Seeing the children’s beds where they napped was the most striking (thing). I had to be reminded that there had not been a war here and it was a little bit more comforting to know that people weren't murdered and killed there. This was a place of happiness for children and it’s no longer that way."
The American photographer has spent 34 days in Chernobyl and Pripyat during his trips there and has amassed around 30 hours of material. He is current looking to see if any US television companies are interested in broadcasting a documentary about the disaster zone, which he wants to produce.
“We managed to find a village on the outskirts which was relatively untouched and we walked into some of the buildings and some of the homes just to see what was there. I know people left one of the buildings because the calendar says May 3."
Flying @DJIGlobal over radioactive ship graveyard #chernobyl @ImagiDrone @UAVHive @thatdroneshow @atlantahobby pic.twitter.com/VH2JJhb3mb
— Philip Grossman (@PGPImages) November 26, 2014
“I took pictures of some family photos lying on the floor. I don’t know how realistic it would be to find those people, but I would love to and that’s kind of why I want to get the word out about the project.”
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Anybody who has played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has already been to Pripyat.
Same with Call of Duty 4. It's funny how much I recognize the place from the game.
The still pictures are much better. That video was boring.
The video allows one to appreciate the abundance of wild life.
Reminds me of Detroit, except that the wild animals leave humans alone.
Fukushima in the near future.
Japan in the near future.
showed the video to paw-paw
he said the photographer should visit paw-paw's hometown
it had a mill
Who the heck was that on the exhaust stack at the 2:01 mark of the video!?!
CRAZY...
That's what I was wondering...
Haven't ya ever seen the X-men? Why that was Wolverine. Or the guy who shoots lasers out of his arse.
pods
William Wallace? Wait, that was bolts of lightning.
Metallica did a video-song in fucking 1986 about Chernoybl. Their pics are far better, in my opinion.
'Welcome Home' (Sanitarium):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WElvEZj0Ltw
Have you plotted the location of Pripyat (Chernoybl) on a map and seen the way that it feeds all the freshwater drinking supplies to Kiev? In Cryllic translations of the Bible, the word 'Chernoybl' is supposedly used in place of the word 'Wormwood' (in The Book of The Revelation of John by His Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ).
That was him, operating the drone and viewing through the camera using a video helmet.
That must have been the guy taking the video of the drone flying over the stack, which is spliced into that sequence.
no big deal.
they have tours of chernobyl now, tour guides with geiger counters will take you around to the less radioactive areas. some areas are just fine, and others you can go to for a short time but dont want to hang around.
"the worst nuclear disaster on US soil"
Otherwise known as the disaster that wasn't.
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html
The lesson is that all these disasters were generstion 0 or generstion 1 designs. We are now on genersstion four.
It's like comparing the Wright flyer to a 767
The problem is 50+ gen 1, 2 and 3 NPPs that are well beyond their expiration date, yet continue to run. We are now seeing the beginning of them all breaking down, and there will be containment breach in all of them, either passive breach or violent explosions - both amounting to the same release of lethal radionuclides. There are presently 6-7 NPPs worldwide in emergency shutdown, most in the US, and two additional NPP facilities downstream of a failing dam in the US Southeast.
Also, the new gen 4 and gen 5 NPPs are being built in third world shitholes, while the industrialized countries are shutting theirs down. Who in their right mind thinks that these new NPPs won't be built with every corner cut, under a blanket of massive corruption? It has already been shown that all the existing NPPs have had significant construction and safety corners cut, and that implementation of new safety protocols after Fukushima are zero.
There is no stopping the continued collapse of the global nuclear power structure, and we will all have to learn to live with increasing amounts of lethal radiation - such as enriched uranium and plutonium - in our atmosphere, oceans, food and drinking water, and the DNA and cellular destruction that goes with it.
767s crash, and new reactors melt down. It's call human error, and idiocracy in full motion means more to come. Much more.
BTW, where are the long term waste storage facilites? Still on site with open ponds and barrels stacked out in the rain. Great plan.
I'm not sure if that analogy is supposed to be comforting or disconcerting. I bet it is easier to survive a crash in a wooden plane starting at 20 miles per hour 30 feet off the ground than a jet 40,000 feet up at 500 miles per hour.
There was nothing wrong with Chernobyl. The human moron in charge let a disaster drill go too far.
That's the entire friggin point, pal. Know any nuke plants NOT run by human morons?
You are beyond stupid.
To stick with your comparison, a 767 cannot ever crash anymore?
Everything crashes. That's irrelevant. The question is how do we choose to get our energy, and what sacrifices are we willing to make to get that energy?
i don't know about 767, but a 777 can't crash, it can only be shot down by america's stooges in ukraine, while the corrupted western media keeps repeating western propoganda saying that russia or the separatists did it. and despite a preponderance of evidence that shows the american-installed govt in ukraine is directly responsible. notice how after the evidence started to come out showing america/ukrainian culpability, all of a sudden we stopped hearing about mh17 from the press, it went silent.
when will obama, biden, nuland, kerry, and their stooges in ukraine face charges for their mass murders?
Back to the re-education camp for you! I remember the China Syndrome with 'Hanoi' Jane and Jack Lemon came out just before the so-called disaster.
Release date, 3/16/1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Syndrome
So-called disaster, 3/28/1979.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
Rockefeller probably paid for the movie's production, just like he paid to have Carter(a former Navy Nuke, for Pete's sake) installed in '76.
The American people ate it all up! I lost all respect for one kid in class when he started wearing a "No Nukes' t-shirt. What a bunch of suckers.
Nah.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Project is brewing, and the Hanford facility is pretty bad as well (I have known several 'Hanford Downwinders' personally, and have had to go to the funerals of same). The TMI thingie isn't even a BLIP on the radar in comparison with the size and scope of these.
Now, Chernoybl and it's big brother Fukushima; THESE are really bad... the stuff in the CONUS isn't even worth mentioning here.
That has to be the creepiest place on Earth. Buildings all standing, but no people. Like they were all just poofed off the face of the planet some random Tuesday.
Not even Paul Krugman can look at that and be happy thinking about all the money that could be spent fixing the broken windows. No windows to fix. Like the whole city is just gone from a human/societal perspective.
Don't kid yourself. Krugman probably has wet dreams imagining printing fiat to rebuild that place. :-(
I don’t know. Seems he’s busy with Gaza, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Lebanon, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan…
According to Kevin Gosztola on May 6, 2013, There are “74 nations where the US is fighting or ‘helping’ some force in some proxy struggle that has been deemed beneficial by the nation’s masters of war.”
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/05/06/the-united-states-is-fighting-how-many-wars/
All I see is empty buildings. Looks just like one of China's 'Ghost Cities.'
[Still looks a lot nicer than Detroit...]
.
Which chinese ghost city is this one again?
UMM... Arcadia, Californicatia? K Street in D.C.?
NO. It's Nan-king (Peking, Bejing, whatever the fuck...).
I like your creative avatar pic. It's refreshing to see that the 'anonymous bag' thingie could actually be CUSTOMIZED. Tyler would be proud.
+1 and congrats for having a soul.
She's been providing awesome work for a lot longer than this guy...
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-land-of-the-wolves/
Well yeah, except that story is fabricated. Still.. it *is* a cool story.
http://open.salon.com/blog/mary_mycio/2011/01/21/the_chernobyl_biker_chi...
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/jul/06/world/fg-chernobyl6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Filatova#Hoax_allegations_and_response
Well, damn, what a shame. But she does some great writing with the photos and it's still very powerful stuff. I guess she's just not the stud she pretended to be.
What a great way to solve all the problems in Ferguson!
Think of the jobs!
Wormwood
I wonder if anyone makes radioactive absinthe from wormwood harvested inside The Zone?
"We irradiated some folks."
The only know cure for EBOLA ......
Hazmat suits for ALL our 'insiders'...
http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/mmab/papers/tn309/MMAB_309.pdf
https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9dfebeda308f15074b832bcf...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reaktor.svg
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/pags.html#pags
Send this video to FUKUSHIMA. denial is not the name of a river in Egypt.
I must have missed the stunning part. All I see is abandoned buildings reverting to forest.
An uninhabitable region of formerly arable and productive land that will be this way for at least ten thousand years due to human damages that were easily avoidable by making the correct decisions isn't 'stunning enough' for you.
I suppose that images of the tens of thousands who are dying a torturous death due to cancers wouldn't be enough, either. You want to EXPERIENCE their deaths GRAPHICALLY, with pics of children who have cancerous tumors, and close-up pics of doctors cutting out the cancers, and all THAT.
Of COURSE, you are free to MIGRATE to this location, and experience all these things in person. Perhaps a little trip as a worker cleaning up Fukushima Dai-Ichi might be a learning experience, before deciding to get STUNNED by the ravages of the Chernoybl disaster.
You didn't miss ANYTHING (except your human life). PROZAC, much?
Wonder what Fukushima looks like after 3 1/2 years of uninterrupted meltdown?
Looks like Detroit....
One was destroyed by a horrible disaster that will remain a plague for generations- the other was just contaminated by radiation.
Detroit is worse.
Ah, No. You can go thru Detroit without a Geiger Counter.
You can go through Pripyat without a bulletproof vest.
And I don't believe the government BS about the linear no-threshold model for radiation. Life has been bathed in radiation for 3.5 billion years and responds by ramping up repair mechanisms.
People respond by believing government lies and worrying.
One of the dumber comments on here in a while.
I didn't down arrow you, but there is some truth to what he says. I mean, I wouldn't be foolish enough to build a condo in Chernobyl, but studies have show that people who live at higher altitudes get more background radiation than others and their immune system does respond positively to the environment. Google it. It's known as the immune response to carcinogenesis of low dosage radiation.
There are old people living in The Zone:
http://thebabushkasofchernobyl.com/
But I think it is much more hazardous to developing fetus, baby, infant, young children who are growing rapidly and absorb a lot of minerals, etc from the environment.
Radiation Hormesis.
Not "Fashionable" but as you mention, there is GOOD data to support this. The argument that the populations at higher altitudes have "become adapted" to higer levels of ionising radiation is not supported, in that "new" lowland migrants also show the same benefits after some years of exposure.
However - the benefits (mainly on cancer incidence / progression) are not that substantial, and there may be other factors involved (such as lower atmospheric breathable oxygen concentrations, hence higher red cell counts, and higher levels of circulating EPO). The jury is very much still out on this one.
And don't forget, that Grossman has spent 34 days there and been in some once very radioactive areas. The guy that has the show about the monster fish in rivers and lakes shot a show there last year.
Aside from a little landscape work and needing fresh paint, I thought it looked pretty good.
So tell us, how high are the stakes that Phillip Grossman dies of cancer or some other radiation related sickness within the next few years?
"And I don't believe the government BS about the linear no-threshold model for radiation. Life has been bathed in radiation for 3.5 billion years and responds by ramping up repair mechanisms."
No it has not. Humans have concentrated Radioactive materials by a million fold, beyond anything nature has ever dealt with. That said, There is nothing stopping you from moving to either Pripyat or Fukishima. Land is pretty much free in both regions.
"People respond by believing government lies and worrying."
No just the opposite. The Gov't are telling the People that Nuclear power is safe. Nuclear power is a "state" program as no sane company or individual without gov't money and support would ever consider it an option. All of the US Nuclear power plants have serious issues and most of them are leaking. The NRC has a policy of "Extended and Pray" They extended the licenses indefinately since there is no money to decomission these plants and the utilities need the cash flow generated from the plants just to keep maintaining them. Sooner or later one of the these reactors is going to fail caused by corrusion and neutron embrittlement and the US will have its own fukishima to deal with.
Is Hiroshima still a ghost city, by any chance ? I owned a car built there, until last year. What about Nagasaki ?
Angel of Joy: you are a dumb ass!
"Is Hiroshima still a ghost city, by any chance ? I owned a car built there, until last year. What about Nagasaki ?"
1. The Bombs dropped on Japan had a few Kilos of Fissile material. Nuclear reactors contain more than a ton. We are talking a factor of at least 1000 in terms of just the reactor core.
2. Nuke Plants need keep the spent fuel constantly cooled. If the spent fuel pool loses power the water starts to boil. If cooling isn't restored in about a week, enough of the water will boil off exposing the spent rods. The rods will react with the steam and catch fire. Loss of containment of a large spent fuel pool would render the area of NY state uninhabitable for about 1000 years.
3. The Two Nuke bombs dropped on Japan were air burst, which avoided any significant amount of fallout. Its when the Bombs detonate close to the ground or on the ground that they cause lots of fallout. More than 100K of Japanese died of exposure or died of cancer linked to radiation.
Linear No Threshold (LNT) is absolutely valid.
http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/pdf/10.1667/RR2629.1
http://www.ianfairlie.org/news/recent-evidence-on-the-risks-of-very-low-...
(just two of many studies that prove this)
Don't think a repressive government is restricting the industry. That might sound great here on ZH but it's just not true.
It's the nuclear industry and it's paid "scientists" that are trying to inject solid research over decades with bullshit.
Government? What government? The NRC is in bed with the industry, always has been.
http://www.foe.org/news/archives/2014-08-revolving-doors-at-the-nuclear-...
Nuclear (militairy) industry trumps government since Eisenhower. ANY government. He who has the nukes, makes the rules.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nb20121103d1.html
The W.H.O. (U.N.) is subservient to the IAEA (which is a PR arm of the industry).
http://lhalevy.audioacrobat.com/download/eb5073ca-87ee-356e-9812-2ac8eb4...
MIT doesn't want people to evacuate. Why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8YFe6Q08M8
There are psychopaths and idiots now trying to save their dying nuclear fission industry, with nonsense arguments.
There's a sort of "information bubble" in this area of the industry, where they all ape the same lies, over and over again.
Like this baboon of a man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2syXBL8xG0 I'd laugh at this piece of shit, if it weren't so damn sad.
He uses the same faulty argument that we've been "bathed radiation". This is nonsense.
The issue is with tiny radioactive particles that enter the environment, and the foodchain. And cause genomic instabillity.
These particles, when in the body kill cells and cause other cells to replicate with mistakes. These particles have NOT been present in our environment, until 1945 and therefore our bodies (and that of many animals) don't know how to recognize them as harmful, or get rid of these.
Of course the body has self repairing mechanisms (like the endo-cannabinoïd system) but the "hormesis" theory is just something they made up.
It is not comparable to sunlight (UV radiation) or even external radiation. Our bodies are capable of handlng short bursts of external, relatively high level gamma or beta, but not a sustained, low dose of alpha, coming from a particle in the lungs to take an obvious example.
As for Chernobyl?
Read this book: Everything is in there. This was the science advisor to the highest ranks in the Kremlin.
www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov_Chernobyl_book.pdf
As for the Chernobyl wildlife, read this letter:
"Dear *****
Hopefully there will be some more comprehensive coverage of this latest?paper that includes some discussion of the broader picture that includes?the context for how such “positive” responses have evolved and how they?are not unexpected given the intensity of “unnatural” selection (i.e.?Negative effects) imposed by the radioactive contaminants in the area.
Let me start by saying the Dr. Galvan is a very bright and hard working?young biologist whose scientific credentials are impeccable, in fact?beyond excellent. Through his hard work he has managed to find these novel?and potentially very important responses in natural populations that have?never been seen before. His credentials are beyond reproach in every way?and we are very grateful for his very significant contributions to this?evolving study of wildlife in Chernobyl and Fukushima. My only regret is?that we don’t have the resources to find more creative, bright, hard?working young biologists like him to help us with these studies.
Below are some quotes that I am sharing related to the current study on?adaptation that puts things into an evolutionary context:
“Our previous studies in Chernobyl show a wide array of negative?consequences of exposure to radiation for most species. However, the?species that are remaining appear to have either evolved or are?pre-adapted to the contaminants through increased allocation of?antioxidants as a defence against the radiation. Some of these birds even?show reduced levels of genetic damage in areas of intermediate?contamination perhaps reflecting an effect of acclimation to the?radiation. It remains to be shown experimentally whether all birds show?such a response, or just the ones that are surviving under these hazardous?conditions.
“These observations do not suggest that these birds are not negatively?impacted overall – our previous studies show significant increases in?cataracts, tumors, reduced fertility, and smaller brain sizes, even in?these birds that show some level of adaptation. However, the “unnatural?selection” imposed by radiation appears to favor individuals with the?ability to allocate antioxidants towards protection from ionizing?radiation, and this is not surprising given the strength of the negative?effects in the hottest parts of the Chernobyl Zone.
“Comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl suggest that 20+ years of?selection has led to smaller negative impacts on population growth rates?in Chernobyl than for the same birds in Fukushima four months after the?disaster further supporting the hypothesis that natural selection has?favored individuals that have allocated antioxidants towards the defence?of cellular damage caused by ionizing radiation.
“This latest paper may be a little confusing to some as it appears to?contradict some of our previous findings. However, these two messages are?not contradictory and positive and negative responses are not mutually?exclusive when it comes to evolution by natural selection in the face of?environmental stress. These latest observations simply suggest that?evolution is proceeding as expected, all the more so given the intensity?of selection we have previously documented. Negative fitness consequences?of the radiation provide the evolutionary “pressure” for organisms to?evolve adaptations in the face of this stress.”
In short, “positive” (as in adaptive) responses are an expected outcome of?the negative pressures exerted by the elevated radiation levels in these?regions. Given all that we know about evolution, it would be surprising if?we didn’t see adaptations arising in this way.?I hope this is helpful??Best wishes,
Tim
–?Dr. Timothy Mousseau?Professor of Biological Sciences?University of South Carolina?Columbia, "
That's like calling oxygen poisonous - Oxygen in fact does harm you by oxidizing things in your body that shouldn't be (that's why are for example blueberries are called antioxidants), but usually your body can handle that. And you cannot live without oxygen.
Radiation is not needed, but for other reasons you can never be kept completely away from it, so the analogy stands and theoretic discussions towards a lower (non) threshold are useless.
reptil,
always great to read your posts. thank you, and +100 for the reference to Dr. T. Mousseau.
Exactly.
John Stossel went over there a few years ago. He showed how life was going on just fine w/o people. He even showed there was no extra radiation until you got to the front door of the plant. He interviewed one old woman who had refused to leave and was still living at her home. She was a pensioner in 1986, too! Big oil wants everyone to believe the horrors of nuclear power. Except for the plant workers and Soviet soldiers, who worked unexposed, it doesn't hold a candle to the carnage seen in Iraq or Libya.
But if you go through Detroit with a geiger counter, you will find high and increasing levels of radiation from Fukushima. And, there is an NPP on Lake Michigan having some serious problems right now:
"A coalition of environmental groups and concerned local residents has intervened against Entergy Nuclear's License Amendment Application (LAR) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at its Palisades atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in southwest Michigan.
The LAR seeks to apply an alternate reactor pressure vessel (RPV) fracture toughness rule (10CFR50.61a, instead of the current 10CFR50.61). If successful, the intervention could force the permanent shutdown of the 44-year-old nuclear power plant.
The coalition cites the risk of catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity to the environment due to Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS) fracturing the embrittled RPV, causing a Loss-of-Coolant-Accident (LOCA), core meltdown, and containment failure.
See the coalition's intervention filing here, including legal and technical arguments, as well as numerous examples of PTS regulatory rollbacks over the decades.
See expert witness Arnie Gundersen's declaration and CV here.
See eyewitness affidavits re: NRC's refusal to require metal samples to be analyzed here. See an extensive (yet still far from complete) compilation of Palisades' PTS-related documents here…"
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/
Pay attention to the 'NRC's refusal to require metal samples to be analyzed here'. The metal used for containment vessels used 4 decades ago was never designed to handle the radiation exposure this long. It is now brittle and cracking, and the best way to handle this is to not test, because there is nothing to be done about it anyway.
'Environmental groups' get their funding from competitors.
All were manmade, but Detroit was not an accident. First came the anarchists and the media jackals, and then came the globalists wielding her final destruction, offshoring the manufacturing base and jobs of this once great symbol of American industry and progress,
In his article this week, Thomas Sowell takes on the effects of violence in neighborhoods such as Ferguson, describing how they lead to long-term devastation. He asks” “What are the consequences to be expected from an orgy of anarchy that started in Ferguson, Missouri and has spread around the country?
His answer…
The first victims of the mob rampages in Ferguson have been people who had nothing to do with Michael Brown or the police. These include people — many of them black or members of other minorities — who have seen the businesses they worked to build destroyed, perhaps never to be revived.
But these are only the first victims. If the history of other communities ravaged by riots in years past is any indication, there are blacks yet unborn who will be paying the price of these riots for years to come.
Sometimes it is a particular neighborhood that never recovers, and sometimes it is a whole city. Detroit is a classic example. It had the worst riot of the 1960s, with 43 deaths — 33 of them black people. Businesses left Detroit, taking with them jobs and taxes that were very much needed to keep the city viable. Middle class people — both black and white — also fled.
Harlem was one of many ghettos across the country that have still not recovered from the riots of the 1960s. In later years, a niece of mine, who had grown up in the same Harlem tenement where I grew up years earlier, bitterly complained about how few stores and other businesses there were in the neighborhood.
There were plenty of stores in that same neighborhood when I was growing up, as well as a dentist, a pharmacist and an optician, all less than a block away. But that was before the neighborhood was swept by riots.
Who benefits from the Ferguson riots? The biggest beneficiaries are politicians and racial demagogues. In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young was one of many political demagogues who were able to ensure their own reelection, using rhetoric and policies that drove away people who provided jobs and taxes, but who were likely to vote against him if they stayed. Such demagogues thrived as Detroit became a wasteland.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/thomas-sowell/who-benefits-from-the-ferguson-riots/
No, first came the industrialist who built the most prosperous city in the USA. THEN came the utopian liberals and their labor union supporters who proceeded to destroy Detroit the "Atlas Shrugged" way. Weakened by this, it was an easy decision for the industrialist to move to more business-friendly foreign manufacturing environments. Offshoring was an effect, not a cause. Tennessee is not offshore.
But Mexico is.
The industry moved so they could pollute with impunity.
You cannot begin to imagine what the skyline near Ford's Rouge plant looked like at night, circa 1970. Flames of all colors shooting out from stacks, smoke so thick you could feel it on your skin. Any cars parked nearby had all the paint blister off the horizontal surfaces. The smell.
Those countries that have taken those industries in are paying and will pay for many years to come the price in terms of a degraded environment.
You cannot have a manufacturing industrial base which operates at a profit level acceptable to the oligarchs and a livable environment.
I think your paradigm is a bit outdated now. I work at an auto parts mfg. We supply all the OEMs. We have over 10,000 associates, split among three plants, in just one state in Mexico and you'd be surprised at how clean our operations are, at how little scrap leaves our plants. We have teams who are rewarded to look for ways to lessen our impact on the environment. The OEMs, our customers, urge us to perform at ever-higher standards.
Here ya go...
https://www.google.com/search?q=pollution+in+china&biw=1530&bih=891&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=pZSAVOHYFoWkyQSWxoGwBg&ved=0CCYQsAQ
The photographic evidence is good, but not universal in application.
+1 great post JR...
JR, who would be downvoting you for that post? This website has too many leftist statists masquerading as something else.
I dont care for the silly voting system around here, but I didn't care for JR's post. "Anarchists" didn't bring Detroit down. That makes no sense, then you think "leftist statists" disagree with that. OK, whatever you guys say!
The irony is most posters on Zero Hedge work in the financial sector. Manufacturing was offshored, then America and the Eurozone went toward a Financialized economy where they export their financial instruments to the third world. I can tell by reading most of the posters on here, that factory work would be "beneath them", yet they whine about the lack of manufacturing jobs, jobs, jobs in the same breath.
Guys, enjoy your cubicle dwelling jobs, jobs, jobs in the financial sector. As bad as TPS reports are, they are better than riveting the same rivet 8 hours a day. Come on now, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
That's what cracks me up more then anything on here. You have white collared workers whining about the lack of $8 an hour factory jobs in the good ol USA, that they wouldn't be caught dead filling out a job application for. It's ironic and funny. They work in finance, then they complain that the economy is too financial, yet that's what pays their bills.
China might be an "economic powerhouse" with their sweatshops, but wearing masks just to breathe isn't my idea of "wealth". Be glad that unregulated pollution got exported with it.
+1 TheSculptor Yours was the best reply.
I'm not real smart like you but I never really pigeon-holed folks posting here to any certain profession or discipline. I see good views and discussions on a wide variety of topics, not just topics about the financial world. Tyler is a fast reporter too.
And yer dadgum right. I'm proud to work in a factory in the US here.
Ferguson
Looks like Detroit....
....minus the traffic.
it's a helluva way to boil water....
Sure that isn't Detroit?
I was in Pripyat and shot Zakhaev with a Barrett M82 back in 1996.
I remember it taking a few tries. Lots of wind.
Its amazing how nature is taking it back....all the trees......
ZH hyperbole aside, that is the only real stunning thing about the video, not the abandoned buildings.
Nature goes on, people continue to suffer from their mental aberrations.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/life-after-chernobyl-serg...
I don't know, I kinda think it is impressive how well those buildings have stood up to 30 years without maintenance. Those cars on the ferris wheel look pretty solid.
I noticed no rust! Were they made out of aluminum?
If you pause the video right as the drone is flying over, you can see there is surface rust on the top-most car. It looks like high quality steel with lead paint.
Good point. I once read that we, as humans; are at war with nature. If we don't keep her at bay she will reclaim everything. I wonder how many years it will take before there is no trace of humans having lived there? What a melancholy place.
Eventually all the heavy equipment and steel structures will be dust. The concrete broken by weeds and totally overgrown. We can sure mess up nature in places but she will be here long after we are gone.
I have a lady friend whose son is totally fascinated by Chernobyl. His dream is to go there one day. Personally I would find visiting such a place quite disturbing.
Nothing to see here, move along comrade.
people are idiots for going near that dump
i would rather live in chernobyl than ferguson, or detroit, etc..
I find the difference in the MSM covering of events between Chernobyl and Fukushima to be amazing. I distinctly remember wall to wall coverage of Chernobyl when that disaster took place and now with Fukushima you hear nothing but crickets.
Once The "Great" Pacific Swamp takes form, it will be pretty hard to ignore. It dosent really help that the education facilities in the US pump out far more Sport Nutritianlists than sicentists though. On top of that, once you speak out againt nuclear or mention Fukushima, youll lose any shot of tenure and youll be labeled a conspiracy theorist. Politicians and CEOs run the scientific community as well as the institutes for higher education.
Kind of like what happens to teachers and students who understand fractional reserve banking and credit based money. At least those who have the integrity to speak out against it rather than looking to profit by it.
speaking of crickets... I see you're still alive. Weren't you due to expire from ebola by now?
I'm making an attempt to branch out and spend less time here. I get tired of the lame click bait articles. I wish Zero Hedge would go back to the quality articles they once had.
It's coming . . .
In '86 the MSM was using Chernobyl as propaganda to show the superiority of American technology to 'Russian' technology ie nothing like that could ever happen in a 'free' society
In 30 years the Russian website www.zerohedgesky.comsky will be showing drone camera footage of Ferguson and Detroit to illustrate the superiority of a 'free' society as opposed to an oligarchical society
Wait, you don't think Russia is an Oligarchy? Isn't Putin the richest man in the world, or pretty close?
Dr. Engali
You can hear those crickets because they are the size of Toyotas now in Fukushima.
Remember how cheap oil was? There's a connection.
Tom Anderson: "George W is that contributer that was whackin off in that nuclear disaster thread. He was wanking and wanking....".
Man, two this week George!
Go for some Fuku-porn and you'll have yourself a FAP-Trick!
Fap trick lmfao'd off the shitter
Looks like nature to claim back what mankind destroid.
It can't be that bad if trees are growing.
Does anybody else have an urge to play paintball in one of those abandoned buildings?
Dude, didn't you know? Fuku gonna kill us all, irradiated the west coast man. Eatin them carrots and almonds with roetenkins and shit.
It's all normal there for 99% of territory but there is still radiation in local sectors and you can't burn trees or dig ground because this material have radiation inside them.
enenews.com
Latest Headlines: 01:26 PM EST on December 3rd, 2014 | 95 comments CNN: Urgent – Emergency repairs reported at largest nuclear power plant in Europe — Prime Minister: I know that a nuclear accident has occurred (VIDEO)
01:32 PM EST on December 2nd, 2014 | 179 comments Official back from Fukushima: Invisible blanket of death covers everything… it’s a nightmare — LA Times: Parents suspect heart defects related to Fukushima — Former WHO expert blasts U.N. Fukushima report, warns of cancer spike (VIDEO)
03:35 PM EST on December 1st, 2014 | 157 comments ‘Worst Case Scenario’ has happened at US nuclear site — Robert Redford film predicted 2014 WIPP disaster: Plutonium release due to chemical reaction in burst nuclear drum is ultimate catastrophe… Most significant issue is combustible waste exposed to high heat, everyone understands that (VIDEO)What ever happened to the nuclear dump on the IL/Mo border that had an underground fire going last year? Last I heard it was in danger of an airborne breach of some sort and then....nothing.
WIPP in Carlsbad, NM:
“Patented explosives” reported inside plutonium waste drums at US nuclear facility — TV: So volatile, experts comparing it to ‘bomb’ — Official: I’m appalled we weren’t told about real and present danger — Over 5,000 drums a threat — Invisible reactions may have already occurred'http://enenews.com/investigation-patented-explosives-drums-plutonium-was...
Yes, it looks like Detroit, but ... safer.
Chernobyl, Detroit, dangerous places.
When will a drone dare venture near Kim Kardashian's ass?
It landed, and then bounced off about a mile into the air, twice. Then it got lost in a crack and the sun's rays could not get to it, so now it is a powerless drone, stuck in the crack.
It was in the news.
No need to, I can see it from my porch here in Alaska.
Amazing how the trees and vegetation will eventually take over and reclaim everything.
For anyone with a garden. Not amazing.
How about doing a drone fly over Detroit and we can compare.
probably not..because the guy flying the drone would be shot and robbed
"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds"
J Robert Oppenheimer
Shiva
Population control, just don't tell anyone.
One must wonder how many more Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters will (be allowed to) occur before mankind finally accepts that the present day crop of nuc power plants are more or less faulty in design/siting/maintenance etc?
The answer to your question is presently taking place. Probably by mid-'15.
Do you think people will accept it and calmly prepare for the inevitable, or will there be mass panic?
Take a look at these photos of someone who rode thru it on motorcycle
(follow NEXT PAGE at bottom of each page)
Ghost Town - Introduction .
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/
LAND OF THE WOLVES.
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-land-of-the-wolves/
A lot of references to worm wood in that second one. Isn't that what they make Absinthe from? I wonder what it would be like if made from Chernoble worm wood???
Hate to shatter the illusion, but Ellena is a fraud.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp
Whoops.
And yet every Nation is pushing for more Nuclear ?
ALL radioactive waste should be stored in our Central banks with Bankers locked in vault to safe guard the Radiation !
These are clever guys you are talking about. They will easily manage to lose that waste and dump it on the unsuspecting public ...
Looks like the trees are thriving there.
Send Pelosi, Boxer, Feinstein, Reid, Holder, Sharpton, Jackson, McConnell, Bohner, Clintons and Bushs, you get the picture, to Chernobyl to Narrate and take pictures for the Documentary...
It is heartening to see nature rebound even in such a poisoned enviroment
"And in the course of my preparation for this book, I rather casually reviewed what had happened at Chernobyl, because I regard Chernobyl as the largest manmade disaster that I knew about. What I discovered stunned me. Chernobyl was a tragic event, but nothing remotely close to the global catastrophe that I was imagining. About 50 people had died in Chernobyl, roughly the number of Americans that die every day in traffic accidents. I don’t mean to be gruesome, but it was a setback for me. You can’t write a novel about a global disaster in which only 50 people die.
I was undaunted. I began to research other kinds of disasters that might fulfill my novelistic requirements, and that’s when I began to realize how big our planet really is and how resilient its systems ordinarily seem to be. Even though I wanted to create a fictional catastrophe of global proportions, I found it hard to come up with a credible example. I couldn’t actually come up with anything that I would believe, so in the end, I set the book aside and wrote something else.
But the shock that I had experienced reverberated in me for a while, because what I’d been led to believe about Chernobyl was not merely wrong. It was astonishingly wrong. Let’s review that for a minute.
These are the low estimates of immediate Chernobyl deaths as a consequence of the actual incident, and you see here the UPI in 1986, at the time of the disaster, predicted that there would be 2,000 immediate deaths.The New York Post thought there would be 16,000. The Canadian Broadcasting Company in ’91 thought there would be that many, and you see the BBC and The New York Times in 2002 predicting at the low end 15,000 deaths. Their estimates were 15,000 to 30,000 deaths.
Now, there was a UN commission in 2000 that suggested that the catastrophe was nowhere near that proportion, and as you can see, the next UN commission in 2005 doesn’t really show up on the graph, because the total numbers are 56.
Now, to report that 15,000 to 30,000 people are dead when the actual number is 56 represents a very large error.
To get some idea of just how big, let’s imagine that we lined all the victims up in a row. If 56 people are each represented by one foot of space, then that’s probably the distance from me to about the second table here, something like that. Fifteen thousand people is three miles away. It seems difficult to make a mistake of that scale.
But of course, you’re probably thinking, we’re talking about radiation. What about long-term consequences? Unfortunately for the media, their reports are even less accurate here. Here you see CNN in 1996 was predicting future Chernobyl-related illness and death in a large swath that would go from Sweden to the Baltic to the Black Sea. It estimated three and a half million. The BBC, much more conservatively, estimated 50,000. Agence Press thought half a million. The Ukrainian Victim’s Group in 2002 estimated 150,000. The UN commission in 2005 decided that there would be about 4,000. That’s the number of Americans who die of adverse drug reactions in this country every six weeks. Again, a huge error.
But most troubling of all, according to the UN report, was that the largest public health problem created by the accident was the damaging psychological impact due to a lack of accurate information.
This was manifesting as—they said—negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative and dependency on assistance from the state. In other words, the greatest damage to the people of Chernobyl was caused by bad information. These people weren’t blighted by radiation so much as by terrifying, but false, information.
We ought to ponder for a minute exactly what that implies. We demand strict controls on radiation because it’s such a health hazard, but clearly Chernobyl suggests that false information can be a health hazard as damaging as radiation.
I’m not saying that radiation is not a threat. I’m also not saying that Chernobyl is not a genuinely serious event. But thousands of Ukrainians who didn’t die were made invalids out of fear. They were told to be afraid. They were told they were going to die when they weren’t. They were told their children would be deformed when they weren’t. They were told they couldn’t have children when they could. They were authoritatively promised a future of cancer, deformities, pain and decay. It’s no wonder they responded as they did.
In fact, we really need to recognize that this kind of human response is very well documented. Authoritatively telling people they are going to die can in itself be fatal.
You may know that Australian aborigines fear something called pointing the bone. A shaman shakes a bone at a person, sings a song, and soon after, the person dies. This is a specific example of a phenomenon generally referred to as hex death. A person is cursed by an authority figure and subsequently dies. According to medical studies, the person generally dies of dehydration, implying that they just give up. But the progression is very erratic, and shock symptoms may play a part, suggesting adrenal effects of fright and hopelessness. Yet this deadly curse is nothing but information, and it can be undone with information.
A friend of mine was an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York when a 28-year-old man from Aruba came in saying he was going to die because he’d been cursed. He was admitted for a psychiatric evaluation and found to be normal, but his health steadily declined while he was in the hospital. My friend was able to rehydrate him, balance his electrolytes and give him nutrients, but nevertheless, the man worsened. He insisted that he was cursed and that nothing could be done to prevent his death.
My friend realized that this patient would, in fact, soon die. The situation was desperate. Finally, he told the patient that he, the doctor, was going to invoke his own powerful medicine to undo the curse, and his medicine was more powerful than any other. He then got together with the house staff, bought some head dresses and rattles, and danced around the patient in the middle of the night chanting what they hoped would be effective-sounding phrases. I think several of them were trying to remember their bar mitzvah.
The patient showed no reaction, but the next day, he began to improve. He went home a few days later, and I would say that my friend literally saved his life.
This suggests that Ukrainian invalids are not unique in their response, but the large numbers of what we might call information casualties represent a particularly egregious example of what can happen from false fears.
Once I looked at Chernobyl, I began to remember some other fears in my life that had also never come true, the population bomb, for one. Paul Ehrlich predicted mass starvation in the 1960s, 60 million Americans starving to death. That didn’t happen. Other scientists warned of mass species extinctions by the year 2000. Ehrlich himself predicted that half of all species would become extinct by 2000. That didn’t happen. The Club of Rome told us we would run out of raw materials ranging from oil to copper by the 1990s. That didn’t happen either.
It’s no surprise that predictions frequently don’t come true. But such big ones, and so many! All my life, I worried about the decay of the environment, the tragic loss of species, the collapse of ecosystems. I worried a lot. Poisoned by pesticides, Alar on apples, falling sperm counts from endocrine disrupters, cancer from power lines, cancer from saccharine, cancer from cell phones, cancer from computer screens, cancer from food coloring, hair spray, electric razors, electric blankets, coffee, chlorinated water. It never seemed to end.
Only once, when on the same day I read that beer was a preservative of heart muscle and also a carcinogen, did I begin to realize the bind that I was in.
But Chernobyl started me on a new path. When I began to research these old fears to find out what had been said in the past, I discovered several important things. The first is that there’s nothing more sobering than a 30-year-old newspaper. You can’t figure out what the headlines mean, you don’t know who the people are. Theodore Green, John Sparkman, George Reedy, Jack Watson. Who were they? You thumb through page after page of vanished concerns, issues that apparently were important at the time and now don’t matter at all. It’s amazing how many pressing concerns are literally of the moment. They won’t matter in six months, and certainly not in six years, and if they won’t matter then, are they really worth our attention now?"
- Michael Crichton
Michael didn't see the massive spike in Infant Mortality Rates, millions of unborn and new children that would have lived otherwise. Most of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and plant workers have died from radiation-induced illness, but no one looks at the Infant Mortality Rates.
The Infant Mortality Rates were going down in North American and Japan until Fukushima blew, then they started spiking dramaticlly upward until the governments shut down that reporting. Now anything released is heavily massaged, if it's even released at all:
"Certain types of biomedical research will be compromised by a change by the US Social Security Administration (SSA) in its policies regarding public release of death records, said Eugene H. Blackstone, MD, director of clinical investigations in the department of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.
Blackstone said the SSA’s Death Master File has been a fairly accurate and inexpensive source of data about all deaths in the United States, used by many researchers for epidemiological and long-term outcomes studies. The changes to the Death Master File will make it useless to researchers, but few are aware of this impending problem, he said.
“There is a general lack of awareness in the biomedical research community of this imminent change,” Blackstone said. “For those of us who depend on this for our research, we need to know that it will disappear.”
The problem: beginning on November 1 [2011, 8 months after Fukushima blew], the SSA will no longer make public the death records that it receives from the states. This means that 4.2 million death records of the 89 million archived by the SSA will be immediately withdrawn from public use. Going forward, an expected 1 million of approximately 2.8 million death records compiled by the SSA each year will be kept from public eyes."
http://newsatjama.jama.com/2011/10/19/changes-in-access-to-death-data-ma...
"It’s no surprise that predictions frequently don’t come true. But such big ones, and so many! "
If it bleeds, it leads.
Whatever sells copy. Whatever boosts ratings.
No mystery there. The real threat is that people become so inured to bad news that when a real crisis comes along, they have no idea how to respond.
Facing 2 right now. Fukushima: real world-ending crisis. Global warming: real world-ending crisis.
Ignorance+panic response: no such thing!!!
Actual truth: will fucking kill you.
Wall Street 2017?
Chernobyl was a cake walk compared to Fukushima.
He says we are doomed to repeat the past? WE already did, with Fukushima.
Focusing on Chernobyl and not Fukushima is like covering a local bar brawl when there is a war going on that hasnt been covered.
Big yawn here. Oh, I see CNN was involved. That must explain it. ZH needs to flag this as MSM content.
How would one make the Pacific Ocean a zone of exclusion?
"...and perhaps even disasters as he grew up 11 miles away from Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which was the scene of the worst nuclear disaster on US soil..."
Disaster? Three Mile Island? No one died. In fact it's still in operation.
Three Mile Island was well covered up:
'No One Died at TMI: The biggest lie'
"The nuclear industry is fond of claiming that no one died at Three Mile Island. This is contradicted not only by medical science but by medical evidence found in the only independent epidemiological study conducted since the disaster. Claims of no - or minimal - harm due to a nuclear "accident" recurred after the Chernobyl reactor disaster in 1986 and today as the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe continues. Given the medical consequences of prolonged radiation exposure even to low doses, the claim that "no one died" is not supportable. Furthermore, the nuclear industry uses a focus on deaths to obfuscate many radiation impacts, not all of which manifest immediately and which are not necessarily fatal."
http://www.beyondnuclear.org/tmi-truth/
'Investigation: Revelations about Three Mile Island disaster raise doubts over nuclear plant safety'http://www.tmia.com/node/222
'Too Little Information Too Late'
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/SFchp18.html
We broke some genomes.
and those that want to survive
Metro 2033
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc2hhef-Nzo