Stas Bush wrote:Going to the Ultimate Post-Apoc place, eh? Don't forget your suit and dosimeter, though there will be just one abandoned city - Pripyat... And don't miss the Graveyard - that must be one of the most amazingly atmospheric places on Earth. The feeling of Apocalypse and all the blah... well, you get the idea.
A Swedish paper, Aftonbladet, travelled to Pripyat with a woman who was evacuated from there in 1986. It was discovered that the woman's apartment (as well as the neighbor's apartments) had been looted of everything of value (even the electrical wiring had been removed). The police forces responsible for guarding the area were implicated to have been involved (it seems as if the city had been left untouched for about ten years after the disaster).
It's a fascinating story about the animals. I wonder how they'll do in the contaminated areas.
It's pictures of people living there (with captions that have some basic info) from the area. (I don't know how represantative it is for the population there.)
drachefly wrote:Note: this is one of the few cases where Iodine does actually help. Strontium-90 is one of the main radioactive elements in the area. Won't help with the Cesium-137, though.
Actually, iodine only helps immediately after such an accident. I-131 has a half-life of only eight days, so saturating the thyroid with stable iodine will prevent the uptake of I-131 during the relatively short period of time in which its presence is significant.
Wait a moment. I thought the purpose of Iodine tablets was to dislodge the Strontium, not the radioactive Iodine.
drachefly wrote:
Wait a moment. I thought the purpose of Iodine tablets was to dislodge the Strontium, not the radioactive Iodine.
It doesn't do anything against Strontium-90 and it really won't dislodge Iodine-131 already in your thyroids. All it does is take up space and limit absorption of the radioactive stuff. This also means it’s not instantly effective, you need to get your body saturated before it can begin to offer protection, and even then it only limits damage. The stuff is way better then nothing though and is especially good for children whom naturally will absorb greater quantities of any kind of iodine. Best to have it already on hand if your concerned about nuclear fallout.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Patrick Degan wrote:As an aside, this development is also yet another nail in the coffin for Creationism and its bastard stepchild, Intelligent Design —since adaptive evolution is clearly observable in what's going on in and around the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Except that it doesn't. Creationism doesn't contest that mutations and natural selection result in speciation. That has been observed, and the closest thing to being proven science gets. However, they contest the extrapolation of the observations that the minor changes allow for major changes over time. A cat might get a new fur color, but its' descendents will never be dogs.
Patrick Degan wrote:As an aside, this development is also yet another nail in the coffin for Creationism and its bastard stepchild, Intelligent Design —since adaptive evolution is clearly observable in what's going on in and around the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Except that it doesn't. Creationism doesn't contest that mutations and natural selection result in speciation. That has been observed, and the closest thing to being proven science gets. However, they contest the extrapolation of the observations that the minor changes allow for major changes over time. A cat might get a new fur color, but its' descendents will never be dogs.
The Creationist argument (one of them anyway) is that evolution cannot be valid since evolutionary changes aren't observable. When the hole was blown through this contention by pointing out the clearly observable adaptations and changes taking place in microorganisms, they resorted to the "microevolution" dodge to handwave away the issue and to continue the argument that "Goddidit" as the explanation for anything as complex as man and the higher animals. This atop the ludicrous "man evolving doesn't explain why there are still monkeys" crap which also gets tossed around as well as every other nutty argument, one of which you allued to in the cats/dogs example.
When ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets.
—Abraham Lincoln
People pray so that God won't crush them like bugs.
—Dr. Gregory House
Oil an emergency?! It's about time, Brigadier, that the leaders of this planet of yours realised that to remain dependent upon a mineral slime simply doesn't make sense.
—The Doctor "Terror Of The Zygons" (1975)
It's pictures of people living there (with captions that have some basic info) from the area. (I don't know how represantative it is for the population there.)
