(Jun 23, 2019 07:49 PM)Leigha Wrote: if you haven't yet seen this HBO series, you must. It's riveting, and I'm blown away. I had read about what had happened there, but didn't realize the magnitude of it.
They had to evacuate a nearby small city in what is now Ukraine. Today it's a city of ghosts. Apparently most of the radiation cloud went northeast and a large part of southeastern Belarus is low-level radioactive today. It's a farming area and Belarus doesn't like to talk about it. Probably lots of that produce is on sale in markets in Minsk.
Quote:The radiation levels are still dangerously high there, many years later.
I guess dangerously high if you are worried about developing cancer decades out. I've wondered why they don't allow reasonably physically fit senior citizens back in. If these radiation-induced cancers take 20 years to develop and you are already 70... people that age aren't going to be having babies in the radiated zone either.
Even if human beings aren't going in and resettling the zone, others are. I've heard that the Chernobyl exclusion zone has become a giant animal refuge, with all kinds of animals (deer, bear, wolves) native to the area living there without having to worry about human beings. I guess that most animals' lifespans are shorter than ours, so that they will be dead before the cancer risk becomes real. They seem to be multiplying well, though they probably do suffer from more birth defects than normal populations of the same species.
(Jun 26, 2019 03:51 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Chernobyl sports team names : Glow Worms, Atom Splitters, Rems, Roentgens
Feel free to add your own
You made me smile with that one.