Worthwhile thread/link from GD

[XemaSab]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x444191

Photos of the Chernobyl area now.

[billyskank]

1. This bit scared me

"Only a very small amount of the radiation inside of there had so far actually escaped. More then 90% is still under sarcophagus. I heard with all the concrete they put down, the construction became heavy.. some day it may fall down, get in subterranean waters and leave Europe with no water."

:scared:

[XemaSab]

3. THAT'S the bit that scared you?

The whole thing scared me!

Crazy, crazy stuff.... that whole city just totally abandoned. Stuck in 1986. When she says it's like Pompeii... it's going to be totally untouched for 500 years. Whatever's left is going to be a treasure trove of life in Soviet Russia.

[billyskank]

7. I didn't read much

I am a bit pushed for time.

[XemaSab]

8. Pushed for time, eh?

How so?

[billyskank]

13. I had to get to work

:hi:

[Oeditpus Rex]

2. Wasn't that site exposed for something a couple of years ago?

Like she didn't really take the photos or something?

No big deal; they're still very compelling. I've just got a bug in my brain that says something wasn't quite kosher.

[XemaSab]

4. I don't know anything about that

All I know is that the photos are pretty grim.

[Oeditpus Rex]

5. Yeah... I remember looking at 'em

and just thinking, "Holy shit..."

And of how close Three Mile Island came to that. :scared:

[XemaSab]

6. It's really sobering to see disasters on that scale

strike modern cities.

But we can rebuild Manhattan and New Orleans, just like San Francisco was rebuilt.

We're coming up on the anniversary of that, aren't we?

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. The SF earthquake?

April 18... the centennial.

http://www.sfmuseum.org/1906/06.html

I'm sure San Francisco has something planned, though I haven't heard anything.

I also think of cities destroyed in WWII, such as Dresden, Tokyo, et al. Those are even more sobering because the destruction was intentional, at the hands of man.

[XemaSab]

10. Oh yeah

Hiroshima... I had a friend who was at the Hiroshima memorial on September 11th. :(

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. Somehow, I don't feel as badly about Hiroshima

and Nagasaki as I do about Dresden, and Tokyo and other Japanese cities that were destroyed by incendiary bombs — I suppose because the initial carnage in a nuclear attack is immediate and painless.

But to have one's entire city destroyed by fire from repeated nights of hundreds of airplanes dropping bombs...

Of course, I should add London, Coventry and others to the list.

Many Americans, I think, have no idea how fortunate we've been. I also think one of the reasons for the continued outrage over 9.11 is that it was a first for us. Older Europeans and Japanese are well acquainted with such horrors.

[XemaSab]

12. I think it's also the reason why Americans are so quick to

bang the war drums... we haven't seen a war on our soil since the Civil War, and even the horror of that has been mostly forgotten. I don't think textbooks really convey the sheer awfulness of it, and Atlanta was the only big city destroyed, no? The war was fought out in the country, for the most part, and civilian casualties from fighting were very low.

You read FReepers and either they don't care about civilian casualties or they just don't understand what it means to drop bombs into the houses of innocent civilians. I think our technology has gotten SO out of hand, where we can level a whole city in order to kill one person and not even know if the person was actually killed. :(

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. Another element of that

was the parade of video we saw during the first Gulf War and continue to see of missiles guided by laser, infra-red and TV cameras making neat, clean surgical strikes. Not coincidentally do these resemble a video game on a cockpit monitor, and they seem to have led many to think war is little more than that.

Of course, we also have many people who simply consider our "enemies" to be sub-human, so killing them is okay.

[Robeson]

14. The statue of Prometheus is so ironic, for a city that continually dies...

...each day, Zeus had an Eagle tear into the side of Prometheus, to eat out his liver. Each night the wound would heal. The next day, it would start all over again. How symbolic to have that statue in that city.