I mean, the Elephantâs Foot is very very dangerous, but it wouldnât kill you instantly. When it was first created about a minute of exposure would give you a fatal dose (x, x). That number is now around one hour. And yes, that photo was taken with mirrors, but you know which one wasnât?
Yeah, this is a selfie. The guy set the timer on the camera and went and stood by it, and it produced this horrifying image that now haunts my dreams. The reason all the photos from Chernobyl are grainy and poor-quality, by the way, is due to radiation. The cameras were fine; radiation just⊠does that.
Anyway, that guyâs name is Artur Korneyev- and I use âisâ because heâs still alive! He helped to build the original sarcophagus which encased reactor 4 after the meltdown, and kept going back inside with reporters to be like âlook how fuckin weird this isâ. He helped plan the New Safe Confinement which now surrounds the sarcophagus, and would probably have helped build it too if they didnât full-on ban him.
âKorneyevâs sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his lifeâs work. âSoviet radiation,â he joked, âis the best radiation in the world.ââ
Possibly the coolest guy alive? Iâm tempted to think so.
Honestly, I feel like Chernobyl has been shunted into this category of like, âa lot of innocent and naive people died horriblyâ, when in reality a lot of tough as fuck people saved everybody else. The oft-told story of the âsuicide missionâ to dive into the reactor and open the valves of the pool? Yeah, all three of the men who dove lived. One died in 2005 of heart failure; the other two are still alive.
A total of 31 direct and 15 indirect deaths are thought to have occurred from the Chernobyl disaster. Long-term deaths are⊠difficult to measure. Oh, and thereâs a few hundred people still living in the exclusion zone.
If youâre at all interested, I really recommend reading up about Chernobyl- and, in particular, what was done to contain it and deal with the radiation. This is a beautiful write-up, and the wiki page is also worth checking out. A lot of people did absolutely incredible work and it goes unrecognised most of the time.
And yeah, fungus is always the fucking weirdest.
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