Thanks to a friend’s posting on Facebook, I just read the first ever sensible explanation of the reasons for Trump’s victory.
Short version: Forget red and blue states. It’s country vs. city. And the country is losing.
This should be mandatory reading to everyone, Democrat and Republican alike, trying to understand the reasons behind Trump’s “stunning upset”.
Here is the link again: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
Trump just won Ohio.
In the past hour, I managed to convince myself that Trump will win this election.
It’s another one of those moments when I am glad that I have no children and their future to worry about.
Like a little less than a century ago, once again the politics of divisiveness, hate and fear are gaining ground throughout the so-called “civilized” world. What it will lead to, I don’t know, but my pessimism is growing each day. The world has been peaceful and prosperous for too long.
But let me not mince worlds.
Those who forget the lessons of history are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past.
But you know what? Why should I care? I am in my fifties. I have no children to worry about. If you want to screw up the world by listening to the siren song of xenophobia and populism, the politics of fear and hatred, be my guest. Enjoy this brave new world of your own creation. Repeat the mistakes of history, this time with even more destruction, even deadlier weapons than ever before.
In any case, Putin must be having a really good day today.
It was 16 years ago today (well, technically yesterday, since it is now past midnight) that our very first cat, our much loved Marzipan, a perfectly ordinary tabby housecat, died.
And it was also 16 years ago today that a plurality of American voters cast their ballots for Al Gore, who nonetheless didn’t become president, because of the way the electoral college works and the way votes were counted in the Sunshine State of Florida.
Today, I am happy to report, none of our kittycats are in any imminent danger of dying, as they are all (as far as we know) in good health. The outcome of tomorrow’s election in the United States is unlikely to be influenced by the health of our feline companions, but still, I take it as a good omen: I desperately hope that the sane person makes it to the White House tomorrow night.
I am just back from a brief road trip to the Big Apple, aka. New York City.
I had three reasons to go there. First, I was invited to a Quora Top Writers meeting. Second, I have recently built a new backup server, to replace the one that has served me faithfully for many years, hosted by my good friend David who lives there. And third, I haven’t been to NYC in ages… and I am quite fond of that city.
I drove. The drive was pleasant and uneventful. The weather could not have been nicer. November indeed… it almost felt like summer! I was wearing a shirt the entire time.
Once the new server was installed (which went without a hitch), David and I visited a fantastic little place in Brooklyn: the Subway Museum. An out-of-service subway station has been converted into this museum, which allows them to host renovated subway cars that remain powered, complete with original lighting fixtures. You can walk through them, even sit down in them, and contemplate what it must have been like to ride the subway in Manhattan while the Great War was raging in distant Europe.
We also visited the new World Trade Center.
Although we didn’t have time to go up to the Observatory level, we did visit the 9/11 memorial. That sad day, which David and I both vividly remember (for instance, we were on the phone when I warned him as the second tower began to topple, which was visible on CNN, so he rushed to his office window in time to see with his own eyes as that tower, too, vanished in a billowing cloud of smoke), left an indelible mark on this great city.
I didn’t take any pictures at the Quora meeting. There were several attendees with professional photo gear… I am sure that the pictures they took will surface somewhere eventually. But I did meet some amazing people and had some very interesting conversations. A great evening, even though my voice is still hoarse from all the shouting (the restaurant had very bad acoustics.)
One of my guilty pleasures is watching dash cam videos on YouTube. On my way home, I was given the opportunity to produce a dash cam video of my own, as I witnessed a near miss right in front of me:
I was using my mobile phone as a dash cam throughout the trip. Not because I was hoping to catch an accident, but I thought it might be a good idea just in case, and perhaps it might even help me record some memorable sights.
Fifteen years ago this morning, I was late going to bed. Very late. I was a night owl those days, and I was still up and working a few minutes before nine o’clock, when CBC Newsworld told me that an airplane hit the World Trade Center. I switched to CNN and their live coverage, in time to see the second tower hit. For a brief moment, I actually wondered if this was simply an accident, with someone flying a little too close to the action. It was hard to judge sizes on those television pictures, so I really did not realize at first that I was seeing a 767. The plane seemed so small. And the idea that someone was doing this on purpose was still too difficult to grasp.
I didn’t go to bed that day. Instead, I spent a fair bit of that time on the phone that morning with my friend David, whose office in Manhattan was just a few blocks away from the twin towers. We were on the line when the second tower fell. I saw it first: as the antenna began to sway, I knew what was coming. David watched it from his window. Later in the day, David and his wife were among the tens of thousands who were evacuated on foot from lower Manhattan; it was not until several days later that they were allowed back to visit their office.
Fifteen years. Young adults walk among us who are too young to remember that day. Thankfully, the world has not gone completely bonkers. Sure, air travel is even more unpleasant these days (not that it was such a pleasurable experience on September 10, 2011), and the consequences of America’s disastrous war in Iraq continue to impact the world. But there is no world war, and while the threat of terrorism remains with us, you are far more likely to die from falling down the stairs in your own home.
It was 25 years ago today that a Finnish chap by the name of Linus Torvalds made an announcement about a new operating system that he developed in the preceding few months. Nothing big and professional, he assured us, just a hobby project basically… but here it was, and he already got a command shell and the GNU C compiler working.
I have been using Linux for 23 of those 25 years. I became familiar with Linux when I took over sysop duties of the UNIX forum of the long defunct NVN (National Videotex Network).
I no longer have the original SLS (SoftLanding Linux) floppy images, though I am pretty sure even without checking they can be found in several archives online.
But I do have the announcement that I posted on the NVN UNIX forum page almost exactly 23 years ago, on September 1, 1993:
Welcome to the LINUX distribution on NVN! The UNIX Forum data library now contains the complete set of files making up the Softlanding Software (SLS) distribution of LINUX, the popular *FREE* UNIX operating system clone. The files are the most recent (version 0.99 patchlevel 12) as of today, August 28, 1993. The files were used by the UNIX SysOp to install a complete LINUX on an 80386SX20 PC, with 4 Mb of RAM, a 68 Mb and a 42 Mb MFM hard disk drive, an ATI VGAWonder super-VGA card with 512 kb video RAM, a Microsoft mouse, a 5.25" high density floppy drive, and a 3.5" high density drive, and an ATI2400etc/i internal modem. Brief assessment: it works like a charm. So well, in fact, that I decided to keep it and permanently convert my old 386SX to a LINUX host. I am already using it as a dial-in system for my friends and business associates. The files in this distribution are: readme.sls this file sls_info.zip miscellaneous text information files rawrite.zip needed to create the A1 bootable LINUX disk sls_a1_3.zip bootable floppy image for 3.5" 1.44 Mb drives sls_a1_5.zip bootable floppy image for 5.25" 1.2 Mb drives sls_a2.zip Minimum base system sls_a3.zip sls_a4.zip sls_b1.zip Base system extras sls_b2.zip sls_b3.zip sls_b4.zip sls_b5.zip sls_b6.zip sls_b7.zip sls_c1.zip Compilers sls_c2.zip sls_c3.zip sls_d1.zip Documentation sls_d2.zip sls_s1.zip Essential component source sls_t1.zip TeX sls_t2.zip sls_t3.zip sls_x1.zip X-Windows sls_x2.zip sls_x3.zip sls_x4.zip sls_x5.zip sls_x6.zip sls_x7.zip sls_x8.zip sls_x9.zip sls_x10.zip All the files named sls_Sn.zip must be uncompressed under DOS and copied onto separate floppies. The bootable LINUX floppy (disk A1) can be created from sls_a1_3.zip or sls_a1_5.zip using the RAWRITE program, supplied in RAWRITE.EXE. It is suggested that you download sls_info.zip first, for additional information. The files in this archive are text files readable under DOS (lines end with CR/LF instead of LF only as they do under UNIX). Please note that while the NVN UNIX does not (indeed, cannot) provide support for LINUX, I will be glad to answer any of your questions. Also, if you are interested in a specific program, application, or information file that is not included in the present distribution, please let me know and I will see if I can obtain and upload it. If you would like to run OSF/Motif on your LINUX system, you may not have to wait too long; I am planning to try and obtain Motif in the near future. Good luck with your installation and I hope that the next time you call, it will be with your LINUX system! UNIX SysOp
Before making this announcement, I already set Linux up on an old 386SX desktop computer that I was no longer using. Within a few months, this computer began to play a permanent role as my Internet server. Although it went through several hardware and software iterations, its basic identity remains the same: it’s the very same server on which these words appear.
The New York Times Magazine published an extraordinary report about the recent history of the Middle East.
Civilians fleeing Basra, 2003 – The New York Times
Titled Fractured Lands: How the Arab World Came Apart, it presents a comprehensive review of the recent history of Arab lands, ranging from the heyday of secular despots in the 1970s, through America’s ill-fated war in Iraq in 2003, to the present-day civil war in Syria, the fight against ISIS, the ongoing disintegration of Libya. It offers insight through the personal stories of some select characters, including a Kurdish doctor, a day laborer turned ISIS executioner, or a civil rights matriarch.
It is a very long report, filling an entire issue of the magazine. I just read it. It was well worth the time.
The one thing this report failed to offer is a ray of hope. Something that would stop the endless cycle of violence.
Having visited a virtual version of the ghost city of Pripyat recently, last night I thought I’d check out Google Maps. After all, they do have Street View from Pompeii, from inaccessible mountain villages in Nepal, even from places in Antarctica… why not Pripyat?
And sure enough, they do have coverage of Pripyat, much to my no small astonishment. Recent pictures, too, taken in June 2015. You can visit the Pripyat city centre, enjoying the view of the still standing Ferris wheel:
visit a (presumably) radioactive scrap yard:
or for that matter, visit the nuclear power plant itself, complete with new sarcophagus, still under construction:
The city is completely abandoned. However, there are signs of life at the power plant: a few cars, even people occasionally appear in the Street View pictures.
I have never been to the ghost city of Pripyat, evacuated in the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
However, in recent days, I spent some of my free time fighting mutants, mercenaries, bandits and fanatics in and around a virtual version of Pripyat, in the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Call of Pripyat.
This game is the third installment in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, made by Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World.
And it is a damn good game (available without crippling DRM, courtesy of GOG.com; which is the only reason I purchased the game, as I do not buy DRM-protected crippleware.) The other two games are pretty darn good, too.
The games combine an iconic science fiction novella by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky with the realities of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (officially the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation.)
The novella, Roadside Picnic, is inspired by a vision of some careless visitors near a forest, who, after a brief stop, leave behind everything from trash to discarded spark plugs, perhaps a pocket knife or a forgotten transistor radio, or maybe even a pool of used motor oil. What do these strange, sometimes dangerous artifacts and anomalies mean to the forest’s animals? Now imagine a visit to the Earth by some equally careless members of an extraterrestrial supercivilization, with us playing the role of the forest’s fauna. What would we make of the often deadly, totally incomprehensible anomalies and artifacts? As such, the Visitation Zones become places of interest to all, including “stalkers”, freelancers who defy government restrictions and risk life and limb as they enter the Zone illegally to retrieve precious artifacts and substances from the Zone.
The novella was written 15 years before the Chernobyl disaster and its setting is a fictitious town in Canada. Nonetheless, the parallels between the novella’s fiction and Chernobyl’s reality are eerily striking: abandoned buildings, abandoned military equipment, locations with a dangerous buildup of radiation, not to mention what remained a still operating nuclear power plant for many years at the very center of the Exclusion Zone.
This, then, is the setting of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games: The Zone, its abandoned industrial facilities, farms, vehicles and equipment, the town of Pripyat, even the nuclear plant itself, complete with its sarcophagus. In the fictitious storyline of the games, the 1986 disaster was followed by another man-made disaster some 20 years later, as the Zone, now largely uninhabited, was used as a place to conduct secret, often unsanctioned research.
Near the end of the third game, the player is presented with a choice of being part of an evacuation (which ends the game) or staying in Pripyat. I opted to stay. (OK, I had a saved game, so of course I could explore both scenarios.) After the helicopters left, I still had to dispatch a few enemies… but after that, there I was, standing in the middle of a square in Pripyat in the dead of night, with no friends, not even enemies, just silence occasionally broken by the howl of mutants in the distance. My safe house was gone, all I had was the equipment I carried… and I was alone.
I was honestly surprised by the intensity of this feeling of loneliness coming from a computer game.
Anyhow, I survived, morning came, and I was able to explore parts of Pripyat that I did not visit during the more intense game playing earlier. And thus, I happened upon a famous Pripyat landmark, the town’s never used Ferris wheel:
The Ferris wheel, along with the rest of Pripyat’s brand new amusement park, was set to open on May 1, 1986; unfortunately, the power plant disaster on April 26 scuttled those plans.
Sadly, I was unable to explore the Ferris wheel up close; it is located outside the region of Pripyat that is accessible to the player. But the area that can be explored is huge and terrifyingly gloomy, looking a little bit like pictures from North Korea:
As to the abandoned Soviet-era facilities, here is a splendid example:
Hey, when I took that screen shot, the Sun was almost shining!
The Sun was not shining, though, when I visited the Chernobyl nuclear plant in one of the earlier installments of the game:
But what a place it was. Mostly quiet deadly, even with the best equipment my game persona could muster.
Oh well, it was fun to play these games. Time to get back to work, though.
Not sure how I landed on this page (maybe I was reading too many gloomy assessments of the post-Brexit world?) but here it is anyway: An incredible collection of dioramas by artist Lori Nix, titled The City, depicting a post-apocalyptic world:
A world without humans. Scary visions. Real life examples exist, of course, in places like abandoned sections of Detroit or the Zone around Chernobyl, to name just a couple of prominent ones.
Recently, someone on Quora asked where one would place a time capsule to survive a trillion years. Yes, a trillion. Ambitious, isn’t it? Meanwhile, we have yet to learn how to build things that survive a mere thousand years or less. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that humans constructed, or can construct, that will survive in any recognizable form for a trillion years, be it on the Earth, in space, or on another planet.
I just came across the wittiest explanation yet of the Brexit fiasco.
It would be funny, too, if it weren’t so painfully true. This particular paragraph says it all: “To recap: One old university friend pushed the country to a constitutional and economic crisis to gain power from another old university friend, but got stabbed in the back by a third old university friend, at which point he decided not to bother after all. GOOD TO KNOW IT WAS ALL WORTH IT.”
Fortepan is an amazing Hungarian archive of historical photographs.
Recently, a new batch of pictures was uploaded, from the archives of Budapest Police. The pictures were uploaded without commentary; all we know is that they originate from the late 1950s and the early 1960s.
As I browsed through the images, one of them in particular caught my attention, taken in the year of my own birth no less:
I don’t think I need to elaborate. This was not meant to be an artistic photograph, just documentary evidence in a police file. Still… it’s been a while since I last saw a picture that expresses desperation so powerfully.
I wonder who was the unfortunate person whose belongings are seen here. I wonder what drove her to this fateful moment. I wonder if she survived. No information is provided other than a registration number, HU.BFL.XV.19.c.10: When I Google it, all I learn is that this picture belongs in a collection of crime scene negatives, taken between 1956 and 1992 and stored in 93 small boxes at the National Archives of Hungary.
Breaking news on CNN: Elie Wiesel is dead.
What a life. What a story. Fewer and fewer people remain who can give a first hand account of the horrors that took place in Nazi death camps. I can only hope that it does not mean that history, once forgotten, gets to repeat itself.
Bold prediction time: After all the hoopla, I am increasingly of the opinion that the Brexit will not happen.
David Cameron broke his promise (or was it a threat?) that in case of a Leave vote, he’d invoke Article 50 talks right away. He didn’t. Rather, he left it to his successor after announcing his resignation.
And “it” is best described as a hot potato and a poison pill rolled into one. Campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, even Brexit’s most ardent supporters know the consequences. First and foremost, a very real possibility of the United Kingdom breaking up. I don’t think there is a British politician out there who wants to go down in history as the person who engineered that breakup. Then there are the economic consequences, some of which are already being felt as the pound collapsed, stock markets tanked, and companies either put plans to make investments in the UK on hold or announced plans to move elsewhere.
And it is true that in the United Kingdom, parliament is sovereign and a referendum is not binding. The UK parliament was against Brexit, and I don’t think that has changed. So if a future government wants parliament’s consent to begin Article 50 talks, they are unlikely to get it. And without such consent…
I suspect that the next three months will be spent trying to figure out a way to annul or ignore the Brexit result, either through a new referendum or through some other means. These months will still be incredibly damaging to the UK economy, and represent a crisis that the EU needed like a hole in the head. But in the end… Brexit just won’t happen.
That’s my fearless prediction for tonight. And for once, I actually hope that I am right. With fingers firmly crossed.
England only ever had one king named John: John of the Angevin dynasty, also known as John Lackland. Legend has it that his rule was so reviled, it was decided that no royal would ever use the name again.
I am wondering if the name David might be similarly “retired”, now that freshly resigned British PM David Cameron is set to go down in history as the petty, opportunity political leader whose nearsighted election ploy resulted in the eventual breakup of the United Kingdom, not to mention the possible unraveling of the grand vision of a united Europe.
Of course this assumes that there will still be something like a rump United Kingdom of England and Wales for future historians to reside in. But for all I know, by then Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson might end the monarchy altogether, turning the much diminished UK into a republic instead, perhaps with himself installed as president for life.
Or perhaps by then, Europe goes up in flames again. Who knows? All that dissatisfaction that led to the Leave vote (and that fuels populist campaigns elsewhere, like Trump’s in America) tells me only one thing: 70+ years of peace and prosperity is too much of a good thing, it’s too boring.
And it happened before, a century ago. A once proud and mighty Europe, following a century of peace of a kind not seen since Roman days, a century of progress and prosperity, plunged into a war of unspeakable destruction, followed by an even worse war a mere two decades later.
Increasingly it appears that a majority of Brits are opting to vote Leave in the “Brexit” referendum.
Sadly, this is what I was expecting to see, even though I was hoping to be proven wrong.
But populist xenophobia seems to have won the day. A rhetoric about foreigners taking over the country prevailed over the message of hope and unity. Fear of foreigners stealing jobs, corrupting schools, overwhelming the health care system, contributing to crime. And this combination of populism, isolationism and xenophobia has a name: fascism. Maybe a kinder, gentler, milder, 21st century version of fascism, but fascism nonetheless.
To be sure, I am not suggesting that anyone who voted Leave is a fascist. Of course not. But what tipped the balance, in my reading, is the populist rhetoric: promises to restore past glories through scapegoating and economic/political isolationism.
In the end, none of that will happen, of course. I expect that the immediate impact of the Brexit vote on the world economy will be grave; the long-term impact on Europe, even worse, and the UK economy will tank. (The pound is tanking already). On the political side, the Brexit vote may trigger a chain reaction in Scotland and Northern Ireland. And on the old Continent, this may be the beginning of the end of this grand experiment of uniting people from the Atlantic coast to the Russian border. What can I say… it was a nice dream while it lasted.
And, I suspect, future historians will mark this day as the historic beginning of a process that may yet culminate in another European war in the decades to come. I am sure the Kremlin is celebrating tonight… but Russia may not come out of this as a winner, as geopolitics is no longer a zero sum game, if it ever was.
For now, North America remains an island of stability. But that may not be for long. This continent also produced its homebrew 21st century neo-fascist in the person of Donald Trump. And Trump has a better than average chance of winning the election this coming November.
Tonight is one of those nights when I am really glad that we have no children. Both of us in our fifties, we can afford to sit back and just spectate as the inevitable train wreck unfolds. It is still a devastating sight, but on account of our age, and the fact that we live in Canada, we are among those least likely to suffer the consequences.
Still… I desperately hope that I am misreading things, that my gloomy reading of the events is badly misguided. Maybe Europe will find a way to improve its unity after the British fiasco. Maybe the UK will find a way to strengthen its ties with the rest of the English speaking world. Maybe the economic shock will be short-lived and there will not be another Scottish referendum, much less one in Northern Ireland. Maybe.
But I wouldn’t bet any of our hard-earned savings on any of these maybes.
Exactly thirty years ago today, I grabbed a suitcase, a bag and my passport, and boarded a train from Budapest to Vienna, with the intent never to return.
A few hours later, I arrived at Vienna’s Westbahnhof, where I left my suitcase at the left luggage office and proceeded to Traiskirchen, to register as an East Bloc refugee. Thus, my new life began.
Little did I know in the summer of 1986 that in a few short years, the Berlin Wall would crumble; that most communist regimes would peacefully transition to pluralist democracies; or that even the mighty Soviet Union would come to an inglorious end after a failed coup.
And a good thing, too, as otherwise I might have stayed put. And then, I could have experienced from the inside what it is like to live in a country in which the great democratic experiment is faltering; one in which xenophobia (if not outright racism) prevails, fueled by a distorted view of history and a perpetual sense of victimhood.
Instead, I ended up a citizen of Canada. July 16 will mark the day of my arrival in Ottawa 29 years ago. I now call this city my home. My memories go back much further, as I had the good fortune to visit here back in the summer of 1973, when I was only 10. So although I didn’t quite grow up here, sometimes it almost feels like I did.
Of course I have not forgotten the city of my birth, Budapest. I love the history of that city, I love mundane things about it like its streetcars and other bits of its infrastructure. But it’s no longer my home. I feel like a stranger in town who happens to know the geography and speak the language… but who is far, far removed from its daily life. And sometimes, knowing the language is a curse: such as when I walk down the street and stop at a red light, only to overhear a young person yakking on her phone about that “dirty Jew”. Yes, such language, which I once thought was condemned to the cesspit of history, is not uncommon in Budapest these days, which breaks my heart.
So I consider myself lucky that I left when I did. I consider myself very fortunate that I had the opportunity to become Canadian.
Thirty years is a long time in a person’s life. Thinking back… I don’t really remember what I was like back in 1986. The world was a very different place, to be sure. The year I spent in Vienna… it was educational. At first, when I ran out of the small amount of money I had in my pockets, it was scary. But then… I found a job of sorts. I started to make some friends. People who owed me absolutely nothing were nice to me, helped me, offered me opportunities. And then, the same thing happened in Canada. First, my aunt and her family, who offered me a place to stay and helped me get started. Then, a mere three weeks after my arrival, a per-diem contract. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was vastly underpaid, but no matter: it was money, real money for professional work, not for washing dishes somewhere. And it allowed me to rent an apartment and begin my new life for real.
Many things happened since then, some good, some bad; but mostly good, so I have no complaints. It has been an interesting journey, which began with a first class ticket (who says a refugee cannot travel in style?) on the Wiener Walzer express train one early June morning in 1986.
Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin in 1928. He received the Nobel prize for his discovery in 1945.
A Facebook friend shared his Nobel lecture. Particularly, the following quote:
“The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant. Here is a hypothetical illustration. Mr. X. has a sore throat. He buys some penicillin and gives himself, not enough to kill the streptococci but enough to educate them to resist penicillin. He then infects his wife. Mrs. X gets pneumonia and is treated with penicillin. As the streptococci are now resistant to penicillin the treatment fails. Mrs. X dies. Who is primarily responsible for Mrs. X’s death? Why Mr. X whose negligent use of penicillin changed the nature of the microbe. Moral: If you use penicillin, use enough.”
Fleming thus foresaw the dangers of emerging antibiotic resistance. Too bad the world failed to listen. Now, a growing number of people die from once treatable (e.g., post-operative) infections because the evolution of bacteria outpaced our ability to develop new antibiotics.
And just when you least expect it… Russia celebrates its victories in Syria over ISIL with a class act, an amazing concert by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra of St. Petersburg, held at the ancient amphitheater that is at the center of Palmyra’s Roman era ruins, badly damaged (not to mention desecrated with barbaric public executions) by the Islamic State.
Russia, of course, intervened not for reasons of altruism but because American indecisiveness offered them an opportunity to prop up Assad’s regime. Nonetheless, I much rather watch an amazing concert like this than public beheadings.
And the music was, in fact, amazing. It included a piece titled Quadrille, from contemporary Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Not Love Alone. I think I ought learn a little more about contemporary Russian opera.
The concert was carried live (of course) by RT, complete with a televised greeting by Putin. Not unlike a similar concert that the same orchestra held in South Ossetia, after Russia’s brief war with the Republic of Georgia a few years ago.
This is an eerie anniversary.
Thirty years ago today, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew to smithereens.
It’s really hard to assign blame.
Was it the designers who came up with a reactor design that was fundamentally unstable at low power?
Was it the bureaucrats who, in the secretive Soviet polie state, made it hard if not impossible for operators at one facility to learn from incidents elsewhere?
Was it the engineers at Chernobyl who, concerned about the consequences of a total loss of power at the station, tried to test a procedure that would have kept control systems and the all-important coolant pumps running using waste heat during an emergency shutdown, while the Diesel generators kicked in?
Was it the Kiev electricity network operator who asked Chernobyl to keep reactor 4 online for a little longer, thus pushing the planned test into the late night?
Was it the control room operator who ultimately pushed the button that initiated an emergency shutdown?
And the list continues. Many of the people we could blame didn’t stick around long enough: they died, after participating in often heroic efforts to avert an even greater disaster, and receiving lethal doses of radiation.
Some lived. This photo shows Arkady Uskov, who suffered severe radiation burns 30 years ago as he helped save colleagues. He, along with a few other people, recently revisited the control room of reactor 4, and were photographed there by Radio Free Europe. (Sadly, the photos are badly mislabeled by someone who didn’t know that “Arcadia Uskova” would be the name of a female; or, in this case, the genitive case of the male name Arkady Uskov. Thus I also cannot tell if “Oleksandr Cheranov”, whose name I cannot find anywhere else in the literature of Chernobyl, was a real person or just another RFE misprint.)
Surprisingly, the control room, which looks like a set of props from a Cold War era science fiction movie, is still partially alive. The lit panels, I suspect, must be either part of the monitoring effort or communications equipment.
It must have been an uncanny feeling for these aging engineers to be back at the scene, 30 years later, contemplating what took place that night.
Incidentally, nuclear power remains by far the safest in the world. Per unit of energy produced, it is dozens of times safer than hydroelectricity; a hundred times safer than natural gas; and a whopping four thousand times safer than coal. And yes, this includes the additional approximately 4,000 premature deaths (UN estimate) as a result of Chernobyl’s fallout. Nor was Chernobyl the deadliest accident related to power generation; that title belongs to China’s Banqiao Dam, the failure of which claimed 171,000 lives back in 1975.