Russian Forces Suffer Radiation Sickness After Digging Trenches and Fishing in Chernobyl (independent.co.uk) 177
The Independent reports:
Russian troops who dug trenches in Chernobyl forest during their occupation of the area have been struck down with radiation sickness, authorities have confirmed.
Ukrainians living near the nuclear power station that exploded 37 years ago, and choked the surrounding area in radioactive contaminants, warned the Russians when they arrived against setting up camp in the forest. But the occupiers who, as one resident put it to The Times, "understood the risks" but were "just thick", installed themselves in the forest, reportedly carved out trenches, fished in the reactor's cooling channel — flush with catfish — and shot animals, leaving them dead on the roads...
In the years after the incident, teams of men were sent to dig up the contaminated topsoil and bury it below ground in the Red Forest — named after the colour the trees turned as a result of the catastrophe... Vladimir Putin's men reportedly set up camp within a six-mile radius of reactor No 4, and dug defensive positions into the poisonous ground below the surface.
On 1 April, as Ukrainian troops mounted counterattacks from Kyiv, the last of the occupiers withdrew, leaving behind piles of rubbish. Russian soldiers stationed in the forest have since been struck down with radiation sickness, diplomats have confirmed. Symptoms can start within an hour of exposure and can last for several months, often resulting in death.
Ukrainians living near the nuclear power station that exploded 37 years ago, and choked the surrounding area in radioactive contaminants, warned the Russians when they arrived against setting up camp in the forest. But the occupiers who, as one resident put it to The Times, "understood the risks" but were "just thick", installed themselves in the forest, reportedly carved out trenches, fished in the reactor's cooling channel — flush with catfish — and shot animals, leaving them dead on the roads...
In the years after the incident, teams of men were sent to dig up the contaminated topsoil and bury it below ground in the Red Forest — named after the colour the trees turned as a result of the catastrophe... Vladimir Putin's men reportedly set up camp within a six-mile radius of reactor No 4, and dug defensive positions into the poisonous ground below the surface.
On 1 April, as Ukrainian troops mounted counterattacks from Kyiv, the last of the occupiers withdrew, leaving behind piles of rubbish. Russian soldiers stationed in the forest have since been struck down with radiation sickness, diplomats have confirmed. Symptoms can start within an hour of exposure and can last for several months, often resulting in death.
Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:4, Insightful)
Possibly not. Cannon fodder aren't normally noted for their broad education.
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:5, Interesting)
I am confused what Biden has to do with this discussion?
Further:
“Since the beginning of the mission on January 7, we’ve served about 26,000 personnel more than 1.2 million meals. And of that, in .01% we’ve discovered the appearance of undercooked meals,” the National Guard spokesperson said.
this mission in question dates from January 7 2021 -- which was before the start of the Biden administration. The article in question is from March 3 2021, only six weeks into the Biden presidency, and presumably reporting issues that were weeks old. To the extent that Biden administration would even be relevant, you have to keep in mind that they were taking over from an administration that was actively hostile to the transition. It isn't surprising that there might have been minor food quality mishaps left over from the previous administration.
If you're comparing that to digging trenches in the disposal area for the most famous nuclear disaster ever, you're just fucking delusional, and I strongly suggest you double check that your account hasn't been compromised by Russian trolls.
Re: (Score:2)
I gotta ask, at what level do people get to say- this shouldn't even be on the president's radar and NOT associated with the administrations? I hope president's aren't dealing with crap like .01% of food being undercooked, or where troops dig trenches. They should be focusing on much higher level issues. There are people responsible and accountable for that low level crap. Not the presidents of any country.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Classic authoritarian apologist.
I don't recall any other president needing 25,000 national guardsmen either, because the outgoing president before them never attempted a multi-pronged coup to illegally retain power against the wishes of the voters through the use of violence and sedition.
Don't start anything, and there wouldn't be anything.
Also, literally nobody thinks that Biden is "the most popular president in history". Not even Biden himself. You know who he is more popular than? The twice-impeached
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:4, Informative)
Something like 20 years ago I watched a TV documentary about the state of Russian/Soviet nuclear things (probably on European cultural channel Arte). One old guy interviewed concluded the documentary with something like: "they (Russian military) are so uneducated (or incompetent), if a nuclear reactor parts appeared in front of their home door, they'd just shrug their shoulders and walk over it." It could have been just badmouthing but experience showed he was right.
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:5, Interesting)
Something like 20 years ago I watched a TV documentary about the state of Russian/Soviet nuclear things (probably on European cultural channel Arte). One old guy interviewed concluded the documentary with something like: "they (Russian military) are so uneducated (or incompetent), if a nuclear reactor parts appeared in front of their home door, they'd just shrug their shoulders and walk over it." It could have been just badmouthing but experience showed he was right.
Back in '93(?) I was working in a steel mill in Magnitogorsk, in Siberia. There was a digital display in the in center of town that showed the time, the temperature, and .. the radiation count. While I was there, there was a nuclear accident somewhere near Chelyabinsk (about 100 miles NE of us). We only found out from people back in the West telling us. It wasn't mentioned on any of the local news.
Given the state of their steel mills at the time I wouldn't be surprised about the quality of their nuke programs.
Re: Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:2)
Re: Book about U.S. management of nuclear power (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, even nearly 40 years after Chernobyl we still have classic Soviet whataboutism when Chernobyl is discussed. They did the exact same thing in 1986 after trying, and failing miserably, to cover up what had happened at Chernobyl. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) briefly acknowledged the Chernobyl incident without providing any details and then immediately launched into discussions around US nuclear incidents like Three Mile Island.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Whataboutery: the missing mod classifier.
Re: (Score:2)
"Offtopic" comes to mind.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Covered how? The official statement was that it was human error that led to a locally relevant mishap. That's kinda far off the real issue, which is a severe systemic flaw in the reactor design, faulty manuals that gave people the wrong instructions what to do and a nuclear catastrophe that resulted from it which will make the northern Ukraine and southern Belarus uninhabitable for the next couple hundred, potentially thousand, years.
Re:Book about U.S. management of nuclear power (Score:5, Informative)
he book tells the history of the Hanford Nuclear power plant.
If it does, then it's lying. Hanford was never a power plant. It was a WW II/early Cold War plutonium production facility for the military. It was built and operated before any nuclear safety standards existed.
Re:Book about U.S. management of nuclear power (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not saying that Hanford doesn't need cleanup and long term monitoring.
But Chernobyl is something else. Let's put it this way - people hunting deer in Minnesota don't have to worry about radioactive game from radiation released at Hanford in Washington State. However, even to this day, some areas of Germany have boars that are too radioactive to safely consume due to radiation released at Chernobyl in Ukraine.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:5, Informative)
It's a shame that the Russian forces missed out on the excellent HBO series 'Chernobyl', about an incident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Chernobyl. I mean, surely they've heard of it?
When we had reports last year of Russian troops actually dying from what they had done in Chernobyl, this question was asked. And the answer was that the Russian government doesn't allow Chernobyl to be taught in schools because it makes the Soviet Union, and by extension Russia as they actually ran the Soviet Union, look bad. So apparently Russian kids grow up never hearing about this.
I can personally testify that Ukrainians definitely know about Chernobyl. I went to Ukraine multiple times in the 2000s and the subject came up some in my travels there.
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:4, Interesting)
When you talk about 'Russians' here, you may think of them as educated citizens from Moscow, St.Petersburg, Yekaterinburg,... and while their sources of information may have been reduced (certainly over the last year) you can expect them to know about the accidents and the dangers of exposure to nuclear radiation.
But when you talk about 'Russians' in the sense of ru. soldiers you must realizes that many of those have been drawn from minority regions far off, colonies of the ru. empire. It's those guys who didnt know what a water closet is (and shat next to it into the drain after invading Ukrainian cities) and among them the knowledge about the Chernobyl accident may be scarce.
The officers should have known but they apparently don't give so much for the life of the 'meat'.
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, my first thought was.."WTF is a water closet"?
I'm guessing from context, that is what you call a bathroom?
I've never heard the term "water closet" before....
May I ask what country you are from/reside in?
Serious question....thank you in advance.
Re: (Score:2)
WC, the typical abbreviation for toilets in most countries in Europe.
Bathroom is where you take a shower and brush your teeth or shave, toilet is the room where you dump your load and the thing you sit on is what I called the water closet (as opposed to just a hole in the ground.)
WC even has it's own emoji button so it cannot be that unusual
Re: (Score:2)
"Water Closet" is the technical term for the plumbing fixture that is commonly referred to as a toilet. I work designing plumbing systems (among other things) in the US, and all plans and specifications I have seen in the last 42 years refer to it as a water closet. Any plumber, architect, engineer, or contractor in the construction business would understand what a water closet is, even though most lay people don't seem to know that term. I understand t
Re: (Score:3)
You mean when Yeltsin was still in power?
Re: (Score:2)
The question is, who in Russia knows about it? Russia is a vast country with very, very different levels of information, so to speak. If you compare Petersburg with some of the smaller towns in the far east (i.e. where most of the gang-pressed fighters come from because information travels very slowly there and they don't have a lot of options to organize an actual resistance when they notice that their sons and brothers get slaughtered by the dozen for nothing), you'll find that a lot of people in the latt
Re: (Score:2)
Okay. How many people actually saw that movie?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think anyone of us knows how widely the information about Chernobyl was disseminated.
Re:Guessing they don't get much neutral tv (Score:4, Interesting)
Apparently even Putin himself does not use the internet at all, and does not watch TV or any western media. He only watches and reads his own propaganda in traditional format. He's as ignorant about what's really going on as he's causing ordinary Russians to be.
Re: (Score:3)
Surely they've heard of it?
Sadly no. One of the correspondents I saw on the news mentioned that the whole thing is still taboo in Russia, as a stain on the national identity. It's not taught, it never existed.
CIA PIGDOG LIES!!! CHERNOBYL GREAT SOVIET VICTORY! (Score:3)
Russian TV to air its own patriotic retelling of Chernobyl story [theguardian.com]
Russian version will revolve around role of a CIA agent before the nuclear accident
...
"There is a theory that the Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that on the day of the explosion an agent of the enemy's intelligence services was present at the station," Muradov told the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which said the show "proposes an alternative view on the tragedy in Pripyat".
State-run television and Russian tabloids have accused the HBO series of bias by papering over the heroic acts of Soviet emergency workers, the so-called "liquidators".
"Chernobyl did not show the most important part - our victory," ran one headline in Komsomolskaya Pravda, the country's most popular daily.
Another article by the prominent war correspondent Dmitry Steshin in the same paper claimed the show was filmed in order to sabotage overseas sales of nuclear energy technology by the Russian state company Rosatom.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1... [imdb.com]
The action takes place from April to December 1986. The Ukrainian department of the KGB of the USSR becomes aware of the interest shown by foreign intelligence services in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
To establish the whereabouts of an experienced CIA officer, Albert Lenz, who is suspected of espionage, on the territory of Pripyat, Lieutenant Colonel of military counterintelligence Andrey Nikolaev arrives in the city.
Did they dig deliberately? (Score:3, Interesting)
US soldiers in hopeless wars, such as the Vietnam and Korea conflicts sometimes shot their own toes off or gave themselves other injuries to be sent home. If simply digging or drinking the water in these contaminated eras gets a medical discharge, it's a risk that a conscripted soldier might take.and consider it safer than deserting, and safer than remaining on the front lines.
Re: (Score:2)
The Russians were in Chernobyl at the start of the invasion and left when they failed to take Kiev.. These were professional soldiers long before there was a draft.
Re: Did they dig deliberately? (Score:2)
They may meet the dictionary definition of a professional employee, in that that signed a contract to the job.
But they don't meet the definition of most in Europe, would consider a "professional soldier" .
Even their "Special Forces" aren't even trained to the level of a western army.
One of the biggest issues with the war in Russia, isn't that they are doing it, it's how poorly it's going. Russian citizens/bloggers and even some TV/radio people are asking the question, where did the trillions of Rubles go th
Re: (Score:2)
Even their "Special Forces" aren't even trained to the level of a western army.
I saw a discussion by "Operator Starsky" on YouTube, who is a media officer with Ukraine National Guard, who has started blogging about the war. He was actually part of the initial force that ran into Russian "special forces" during initial fight for the Antanov airport [wikipedia.org] north of Kyiv the first day of the war. He gives a first-person account of the initial stages of one of the first and most critical battles of the war>/a>. [youtube.com]
He wasn't very impressed with their "special forces". Fascinating listening f
Re: (Score:2)
From what I gather, the extra money the Red Army got went mainly into materiel, not troop training. The Russkies didn't lose steam because they didn't have the right equipment, but because, to hear an American general tell it, the invasion was designed by spooks, not military men. So they put their troops on the roads which the Ukrainians blocked with burning Russian tanks and trucks. They also choose to do it during when winter was turning into spring. So when they got off the roads, they sank in the mud.
A
Re: (Score:3)
The majority of the money went into materiel, but what kind is the question. Quite a bit went into yachts and whirlpools on them rather than into military hardware.
Re: (Score:3)
From what I gather, the extra money the Red Army got went mainly into materiel, not troop training.
That's because you can't steal and resell troop training.
Re: (Score:2)
Russian citizens/bloggers and even some TV/radio people are asking the question, where did the trillions of Rubles go that were spend over the last 15 years to "modernize" the Russian military
That is an unpatriotic question Friend Citizen, please fill out Form 201-Alpha-54-B and report to your nearest termination centre immediately. Perhaps your next clone will do better?
Re: (Score:3)
US soldiers in hopeless wars, such as the Vietnam and Korea conflicts sometimes shot their own toes off or gave themselves other injuries to be sent home.
I think pretty much the entire population of South Korea and the UN troops who served there - mostly Americans, yes - would disagree with your assessment that it was a "hopeless war".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At least Klinger still did his job and didn't compromise the effectiveness of the 4077th, along with entertaining everyone there.
Re: (Score:2)
That might happen deep into the war when things are looking hopeless, not in the first week.
Re: (Score:2)
For non-Russian conscripts, they looked pretty desperate from the first day. Desertion has been a problem among them since they entered Ukraine, especially for the troops who are not ethnically Russian. It's hard to be sure of the numbers, but there are credible reports like this from western news agencies:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u... [cbsnews.com]
The soldier describes _precisely_ the "shoot yourself in the leg" approach used by his colleagues to avoid serving Russia in Ukraine, and wide
Re: (Score:3)
I think a key reason was that they were told, even well into the war, that they are going on a training mission in Belarus. There were soldiers who desperately reported that the "others" are apparently using live ammo and that the training lead should tell them to stop shooting immediately because they're using real ammo.
Quite frankly, if you send soldiers into a battle with this kind of "preparation", do you really wonder why they are by no means emotionally and psychologically ready to fight?
Re: (Score:3)
I somehow doubt that many people would cripple themselves. And beyond that if they were digging trenches they were probably being ordered to dig trenches by their officers.
Russia just doesn't know how to fight a war. This is what happens when you have a dictator in charge. Strong men are good at hold
Re: (Score:2)
I think that the Great Putini was trying to kill two birds with one stone, i.e., taking Ukraine but emptying Russian prisons of miscreants that certainly are not assets to a modern Russia. And for the cherry on top, he's rounding up unbelievers and sending them to prison figuring if he makes their lives difficult enough, they too will agree fighting the Ukrainians is better than rotting in prison.
Re: (Score:2)
Only problem is that this last bit isn't working. Even the Russian soldiers noticed that yes, they'd only have to serve 6 months and their prison sentence is over... but it soon became obvious that the average life expectancy of such a piece of meat is less than a day. Not 6 months.
And soon people stopped "volunteering" for the front lines. That's why they stopped recruiting in prisons: Even prisoners are not desperate enough to agree to this.
Re: (Score:2)
US soldiers in hopeless wars, such as the Vietnam and Korea conflicts sometimes shot their own toes off or gave themselves other injuries to be sent home. If simply digging or drinking the water in these contaminated eras gets a medical discharge, it's a risk that a conscripted soldier might take.and consider it safer than deserting, and safer than remaining on the front lines.
Not likely. Chernobyl was practiced in advance of the invasion and was invaded mostly by regular Russian forces on day 1 of the invasion. Ukrainians at Chernobyl at the time were continuously attesting to persistent suicidal tendencies of the invaders.
Re: Did they dig deliberately? (Score:2)
This was at the beginning of the invasion when Russians believed they would take Kyiv quickly and the whole thing would be a walk in the part that was over in a few weeks. They didnâ(TM)t know at that point that they were going to get their arses handed back to them. These people werenâ(TM)t even on the front line and might not even have heard the bad news. So why would they be self mutilating at that point?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't insist on the theory. According to former Russian troops, it was very obvious, very quickly, that the invasion was a disaster.
Re: (Score:3)
Oh c'mon, he said he went through his own Vietnam in the 70's dodging venereal disease....the Horror, the Horror...
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't call it dumb, call it uninformed. The average Russian soldier you see right now in Ukraine is from the far East of Russia. The Russian army prefers to send its minorities to the slaughterhouse. Why, you thought systematic racism is a Western trait?
And these people are usually, to put it mildly, badly informed and educated. They have very little information what's going on in the world and how quite a bit of technology that we take for granted work, let alone what nuclear power and reactors are.
Th
Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Couldn't happen to a better group of guys. Good luck with that.
Dupe (Score:3)
Not just from /., but from the Independent.
This is the same story from last year [slashdot.org]. I can understand if it was an update with some new information, but it's just the same facts from last year.
In fact, the latest update is:
On 1 April, as Ukrainian troops mounted counterattacks from Kyiv, the last of the occupiers withdrew, leaving behind piles of rubbish.
Of course, that's 1 April 2022, which you'd think they'd mention if the story was written in 2023.
I suspect this was written in April 2022, sat in a publishing queue for over a year, and then some editor at the Independent saw it, misread the date, and hit publish.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect this was written in April 2022, sat in a publishing queue for over a year, and then some editor at the Independent saw it, misread the date, and hit publish.
Nope, the math doesn't work.
The story refers to how Chernobyl "exploded 37 years ago" - on "26 April 1986". 1986 + 37 = 2023.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect this was written in April 2022, sat in a publishing queue for over a year, and then some editor at the Independent saw it, misread the date, and hit publish.
Nope, the math doesn't work.
The story refers to how Chernobyl "exploded 37 years ago" - on "26 April 1986". 1986 + 37 = 2023.
Somebody must have corrected the math without realizing that it was a year-old story. Chernobyl is north of Kyiv, near the border of Belarus. The entire northern front was abandoned more than a year ago on April 1, 2022, when Russia gave up trying to take over Kyiv, and unless all the war maps are wrong, they haven't been back.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the article itself says "On 24 February 2022, Russian forces crossed into Chernobyl from Belarus, where they remained for five weeks." So this is very much a late story....
Re: (Score:2)
[..] I can understand if it was an update with some new information, but it's just the same facts from last year.
In fact, the latest update is:
Well, you're scratching at the surface of propaganda and its methods here, but its not the same story-- they added that it was now confirmed by...checks notes..."the authorities", whose/what authorities? authority of what exactly and so forth is sort of important here, but that's the new part of the story and supposedly why its being re-run, they added "authorities have confirmed" and its a new story.
Re: Dupe (Score:3)
The dictionary of propaganda might be met by both sides, but the levels are so far apart, that ones relatively 0 and the other infinite
Re: (Score:2)
You might now want to explain
1) How this is in any way relevant to the story at hand.
2) How someone claiming he/she/it/whatever has whatever gender is in any way on the same level of information distortion as what's going on in terms of propaganda in a war.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My apologies - I stand corrected! I thought "vniuersalis" should have been "universalis". And when I first did a search to supplement my rusty high school Latin, I was unable to find the quote. Just now I searched for the phrase "obligationis vniuersalis" and found lots of results.
I've just spent a while searching and trying to figure out how - even via 18th century German - any letter remotely sounding like an "f" belongs at the beginning of a word whose original pronunciation was fairly close to how we pr
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for all the fish (Score:2)
Blinky says hi.
Looks like they had a run-in with karma. (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
They might be forgiven their ignorance for the environment in which they were born, raised, and mostly isolated... but they were still happy to go kill their neighbours and take their land and property.
As a consequence, you would find it very difficult to measure my empathy level for them. The only good Russian combatant in Ukraine is a casualty, and the ones who are alive but not only not combat capable but an actual drain on Russian resources due to their pain and suffering? Those are the best ones.
Re: (Score:2)
In any civilized army from the last 5k years or so, a live casualty would be evacuated and helped. But we're talking about Muscovy here. Those who can't go back into combat are shot by their own side.
Fishing? Come on! How dumb you have to be? (Score:2)
Digging trenches I understand.
If your supperior tell you to dig a trench and you do not do it, you end up in the military jail (or worse), and if you do not dig trenches and an attack comes, you may die.
But fishing? In chernobyl? Really? And eating said Fish? Darwin at his peak!
Re: (Score:2)
Given the state of Russia's military equipment one can only imagine what their field rations are like.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They did not necessarily know where they were, ground troops often don't unless they can read local signs. And they were starving. From reports, those troops were very dangerously underequipped, under-supplied, and under-fed.
Do stupid things, earn stupid prizes... (Score:2)
I guess being willfully ignorant about real dangers comes with some drawbacks.
Orcs gonna Orc (Score:2)
You can take the Orc out of Russia under the threat of imprisonment or death, but you can't take the Russia out of the Orc.
Can't be radiation sickness in the technical sense (Score:4, Informative)
I'm pretty sure The Independent does not know what radiation sickness means. Although I guess they must be forgiven as the term is commonly misused to describe any ill effect of radiation.
What they probably suffer from is chronic radiation enteritis. Radiation sickness in the fast & furious version, the stuff you suffer from when you are exposed to wild amount of radiation in a really short time. The firemen who fought the fires at Chernobyl in 1986 suffered from acute radiation poisoning aka radiation sickness. Today, you'd probably have to go and hug the actual core deep inside the concrete housing @ Chernobyl to get that level of exposure.
Bringing out a year old story... (Score:2)
I can't help but wonder if bringing up such an old (and frankly barebones) story is meant to distract from the fact that this war has devolved into an attritional slug-fest, one in which Ukraine cannot afford to keep fighting as is. It has already been a year in, and while Russia has no doubt taken some quite serious blows they are still very well in it and killing Ukrainian troops daily. Plenty of articles abound discussing the serious casualties Ukraine has taken just trying to hold Bakhmut, on top of dwi
Re: (Score:2)
So, to be clear, you're advocating for Western armed forces to go into Ukraine, set up a no fly zone and help them repel the Russians quickly to get this over and done with fast, right?
Re: Bringing out a year old story... (Score:2)
I mean, that is one way to do it. I understand however that doing so will incur various political risks, including the potential to escalate this conflict into an actual world war. Partaking in a war with the mentality that it will end quickly is peak arrogance that leads to more deaths.
Alternatively, NATO is perfectly fine with effectively sacrificing Ukraine if it means a weakened Russia in the long-term. A small country for a big country is a good trade putting aside any and all moral objections to the i
Re: (Score:3)
I suppose my comment was prompted in part by all the pro-Ukrainians cheering on about Russian deaths, while being seemingly oblivious to the cost it is incurring to Ukraine. It is as though they are living vicariously through another people, wanting to kill Russians but without risking their own neck out. I would not be surprised if after the war ended most of them effectively forget about the country and leave it to die out via demographic collapse.
Ultimately, Ukraine needs more help and faster and sooner, not less. The very slow process of approving each new stage of weaponry is maddening. There should have been HIMARS and tanks and fighter jets right at the start, but the US balked at sending them, and even blocked other countries from sending their own because they were scared of Russia's "red lines". Time has shown that Ruissia's red lines are just a load of Russian lies. There is no escalation they can realistically take in this war. When they se
Very light on details (Score:2)
Doesn't this strike everyone as being a bit light on details.
Of course everyone wants to believe it but "Authorities" mentioned in the articles weren't named. Diplomats from where, can we assume Russia it doesn't state or name any sources.
It might be true but I really can't tell.
That's some awful poetic justice (Score:2)
"Thick" (Score:2)
I believe that Ukrainian commanders have told us how they feel fortunate that their invaders are so stupid. I was not clear if they meant the grunts, the officers or their leaders!
"Understood the risks" (Score:2)
I'm sure that the leadership in the army sat them down and outlined, with great care and sufficient detail, the zone involved and the ramifications of operating with in it.
There's no chance somebody waved an arm, pointed, and said something like, "Don't go over there."
Re: (Score:2)
Think of it as evolution in action...
Re: (Score:2)
Think of it as evolution in action...
The TV series covered that angle well too.
Re: (Score:3)
Not necessarily dumb, just selectively educated. According to plant employees, the Russian soldiers in the plant had never heard of the Chernobyl disaster. While I'm sure young, affluent, highly educated Russians from cosmpolitan cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg know all about it, but those kind of people don't become Russian contract soldiers.
"Poor and rural" doesn't mean *dumb*, but if you add "living in a dictatorship" you can't expect young Russian contract soldiers to know about events that happ
Re: (Score:2)
neither Ukraine or the Soviet Union are the same as Russia, so why would they be educated on nuclear disasters in Ukraine during the time of the Soviet Union in school?
Pretending the Soviet Union didn't exist, or that Russia wasn't running it, would be willfully ignorant on someone's part.
Re: (Score:2)
Because even I know about Chernobyl, when and how it happened and what the aftermath is like, and I'm way further away from it than Russia.
Re:Holy shit (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the roughly contemporary Three Mile Island was like 1 paragraph in one of my high school textbooks, we didn't learn all about it and I doubt many 20 year olds here know about it.
That's probably because TMI didn't render the entire Harrisburg metro area uninhabitable and is in fact still running today. The accidents aren't really comparable. Lots of people also don't know about the accident with the cesium-137 radiotherapy source in Brazil a few years later, but it was rated at the same severity. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only two accidents that most younger folks might be aware of due to just how bad they were.
Re: (Score:2)
They probably drank the water there, because the military's logistics, like seemingly most things with the Russian army these days, were not functioning and would have let them die of starvation. And they dug trenches because they were told to as their superiors don't give a shit about their lives.
Particularity the latter part is not at all uncommon in Fascism where people are meant to believe that
Re:An unlikely story (Score:4)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is the difference in the depth of the digging. Wild boar may dig in the dirt for roots and such to eat but they don't dig a meter or two into the dirt for a trench. The water soluble radioactive isotopes likely washed into the dirt from rain and other weathering, and this largely removed these isotopes from impacting the wildlife. Again I will point out I'm speculating but it makes sense. By digging deep in the dirt the Russian soldiers exposed the radioactive isotopes to the air again, and now
Re: (Score:3)
Most of the larger high-level stuff on or close to the surface was carted off a long time ago, what's left now is lots of smaller material at the surface, some of which is still very hot but maybe pinhead-sized so both very hard to find and also, due to the small amount present, not that dangerous if you're just walking past it. However there's also places where you get a disturbingly high reading but nothing is immediately obvious, which means there's something quite hot buried some way down. You don't w
Re: (Score:2)
The only person using the word "acute" here is you. Your post is correct but also off topic.
Re: (Score:3)
You're looking at averages. There are known to be hot spots once you leave the road.
Re: (Score:2)
you'd have to stay in the most unlucky of circumstances for 145 days to accumulate such a dose.
The war has been going on for ~430 days now ;-) :-P
Having said that, I do not intrisecally disagree with your points.
Re: An unlikely story (Score:2)
You must be unaware that Ukraine entombs modern reactor waste at the site.
The area directly near the dead reactor is very hot, but sharply contained (or rather, WAS...) as a consequence.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm no physician, biochemist, or lawyer but my guess is they are getting sick from heavy metal poisoning. Since this is largely rumors right now, and it is unlikely any examination by an unbiased source is going to happen soon, we are going to have to take guesses on what is really happening.
They saw the top blow off on a fission reactor where a large portion of the fuel is still U-238. The fuel may have been enriched, and fission products in the fuel, but it is still largely U-238. People that mine uran
Re: (Score:3)
That is one of the reasons uranium had been so interesting to the military.
Due to its high density it works well as kinetic-penetrator. If not used as a fin stabilized long rod penetrator that is fired with a sabot, a DU penetrator embedded in a more conventionally shaped projectile can contribute to the stability in flight, which