Oh boy. Got a Discord again. discord.gg/KYAdxWbGEP This time around we’ve knocked it out of the park. Make sure to check it out and grab the piece of land you like best, before someone else does.
Ah, Chernobyl, the nuclear disaster that became the reason why many people oppose nuclear power. Despite missing the added context that Chernobyl’s poor management was to blame. Edit: since people have been saying it a lot in replies, yes I am aware that the equipment at Chernobyl was faulty and not up to code. However, I false believes that putting it under the umbrella of “poor management” was adequate enough to summarize why Chernobyl is a bad excuse for why people are against nuclear power.
It’s genuinely distressing that a disaster of that magnitude was only prevented because the firemen that charged into danger weren’t killed by the radiation until *after* they succeeded. But it also deepens my already great respect for the sort of people who do such dangerous work.
Remember the others. 1. The miners. They kept it from being a worldwide disaster. Officially, 1/4 of them died before 40(most were under 30). Realistically, based on records, it was 1/2. 2. The 3 guys who turned the valves on. They swam in radiation for an hour. All 3 lived long lives. 2 are still alive. 3. The "Masha" site workers. All of them died of cancer. They got exposed to extreme levels of radiation. They also cleared the site so the dome could be built. 4. The dome workers. It'll be 20 years before we really know how many died, but as of now it's a 40% cancer rate for site workers. 5. The Unit 1/2 workers. They kept Chernobyl open for over a year after the accident. 1000s died. 6. The Bridge of death. The Pripyat River Bridge was the single deadliest site of that evening of the accident. The entire neighborhood converged on the bridge to watch the fire. Everyone there, save Mila Ignatenko, who left the next day, died within 2 years. That was directly downwind of the accident. They were blasted by it. That's an area bigger than Rhode Island that you'll die going to for 200 years. The reactor itself can never be entered. Ever. It's the closest we've ever come to wiping out our entire planet. Frightening to think about.
@@thequixoticangler3364 Thanks for taking the time to compose all of that. My knowledge of this disaster is limited and everything you shared was new to me. The number of people that have to step up when a disaster occurs is mind blowing.
The firefighters at Chernobyl remind me of the passengers on Flight 93 during 9/11. It's tragic that they lost their lives, but by their brave actions they prevented an already awful day and scenario from being much, much worse.
No, thr disaster flatly couldn't reach the scale discussed here. Even if it had been left completely unattended, the meaningful impacts would still be localized. What happened pretty much is the worst case scenario.
3:40 new alternative history scenario; What if Gorvachev's birthmark was a perfectly detailed map of Mexico with major landmarks and highways that magically changed over time?
Honestly I'd love to see this as a two parter with your suggestion as the second part. Take a specific event, push it out to both extremes and look at the outcomes. "The crew in charge realizes the test conditions are dangerous and aborts the test in spite of political pressure. Now what?"
It would be a world where safety and new nuclear regulations wouldn't happen and soviet style reactors like Chernobyl would be in mass use and something would happen eventually.
I know close to nothing about the history, but I’d imagine that without Chernobyl being a wakeup call for nuclear plants to crack down on safety, there might’ve been a lot more incidents and Chernobyl-level meltdowns that result in more severe consequences and a larger social stigmatism towards nuclear energy.
Downside: we wouldn't be able to play Stalker in this timeline, as the programmers are either drafted into the Soviet Civil War, or emigrated to the West. Upside: You can LARP as a Stalker in the real Pripyat, firing live ammunition within the irradiated hellscape as you escape Soviet loyalists, seperatists, partisans and survivalists.
If you have never seen Pripyat, its both really cool and completely haunting. You cant help but feel youre being watched as you walk through a total ghost town left exactly as it was 40 years ago. You can go into the apartments and see children's toys left on the floor mid-play, kitchens still stocked, and cold war propaganda everywhere.
@@ynokenty I wonder how it looks now after the invasion. I mean, I imagine military troops sieging a place would clearly alter it, but at the same time I also think the Russian soldiers had to know where they were and how much contamination there still is around these days, enough to know not to start messing around with the place just because
@@nahuelma97 I don’t think the place got too damaged during fights. However, I believe everything is covered in mines so we wouldn’t be able to visit for at least a decade, or more
@@nahuelma97 > ru soldiers had to know where they were They were constructing trenches in the Red Forest and digging up probably the most radioactive soil around Chornobyl at the beginning of the invasion. When I was visiting, and our tourist bus was just passing by Red Forest, literally every Geiger counter was going crazy on the bus. Although devices were mostly silent during the trip, getting as crazy as this only several times in Prypiat. Even near the 4th reactor they were silent (that should’ve been probably the safest place in Zone).
great alternative, but you underestimate how stubern are humans. Even in out timeline, although the government prohibited people to come back to this region, the old residents did comeback. Drinking contaminated water and eating radioactive food. They didn't care, this was their home.
And HBO miniserie portrait that really well with that Babushka. "First was the White Russians, then years later, the germans, and even after that i' still here. Now you want me to get away because of something i cant even see?"
@@darthplayer5333 The appropriate response: "Yes... Did you miss the part about dying?" The quote sounds strong until you remember how many things you can't see that kill you: bacteria, viruses, toxic gasses (especially those with no smell), and yea, radioactive dust, all come to mind. That quote is peak stupidity disguised as noble strength.
@@prw56humans have the right to self determination. Yes, even if you disagree. Yes, even if its stupid. Yes, even if they're risking their life. The problem is when it affects other people. She would have stayed, and it wouldn't have affected anyone besides her.
@@slightlyuncomfortable I didn't say the person should be forced to comply, I said the logic they were following was idiotic. Hearing about someone ignorant doing something stupid and causing preventable harm to themselves and/or others is frustrating.
My parents recall getting alerts in the radio that they shouldn't eat any plant that grows out of the ground. My dad lived near the Matra mountains and my mom lived in the Kiskunság and they were still severely affected by it even though Chernobyl was more than 1000 km away.
As a baby born one month after the desaster, the cautious restrictions in public led to my parents avoiding travel that summer. ... Which is the reason that my grandfather who lived away and who died several months after the catastrophe, never got to see any of his eight grandchildren.
Here in Mexico thousands of children were poisoned because our government bought contaminated radioactive milk for the social welfare program, it's insane just how much damage it did even oceans away
Cody's scenarios are always top-notch, but I always love these little classic "what if" scenarios for specific little diversions in history - feels like an episode from a couple years back
@@6000. Its just I'm really tired of being corrected about things I already know, so I thought maybe if I put a disclaimer I wouldn't be corrected. But apparently that doesn't work either.
An important note to anyone who thinks nuclear is unsafe: this disaster could never have occurred in the west due to a completely different design scheme. In a western reactor, water was the coolant and moderator, meaning that if it boiled away, the reaction would slow down, not continue out of control.
@@iancastleton9052 There were zero deaths or injuries recorded with the Fukushima meltdown even to this day. 100% of injuries and deaths are attributed to the natural disaster and subsequent lack of power, but not the nuclear plant. It is a testament to the improved safety features of western reactors.
@@iancastleton9052 Fukushima ironically shows how well built western designs are even considering the negligence. 1. Fukushima was an older design. It was a gen 2 reactor (most are 2+ or 3). 2. 4th most powerful earthquake ever recorded and tsunami so powerful it killed 20,000 people. How many people died from radiation or the hydrogen explosion? There is one death which occurred 4 years later. Everyone else is still alive. More people were hurt/killed in displacement. Government forcing evacuation for fearing a Chernobyl like disaster (yet it was a nothingburger). 3. Fukushima is an example of all the worst possible situations resulting in the worst possible outcome and yet still they had 0 (or almost 0) deaths. You had corruption from the top. Most of the senior regulators within the nuclear regulatory agency were employed previous by the same companies they oversaw. 4. Also OP is not wrong. Although he didn't explain why. You still have to have cooling because even when the fission process stops it doesn't IMMEDIATELY end. It takes days to end and the process still can produce as much as 3% of it's maximum output during this process. What causes Fukushima is a failure to abide by 2011 international standard of best practices. Fukushima disaster would have been avoided if simply backup generators were not located nearer the cost and closer to the baseline. Why anyone thought that was a good idea in a tsunami/earthquake prone area is beyond me.
Regarding the radiated food: the family of my mom split during the divide of East and West Germany. The family in the East magically had access to *far* more food than normal directly after the disaster. All of them died of cancer. But not a single one of the West German part of the family even had cancer. So my guess is that the Soviet Union "donated" to or made a "good" deal with her "brother" states to get rid of the radiated food.
Not completely unique to the east. In Mexico there was an incident with irradiated milk powder that was made in Ireland. Despite multiple attempts to get rid of it, the agency that managed food imports put the irradiated milk on the market. There was a noticeable spike in cancer rates in children.
that is a preventive measure though. Romania handed out pills when the Ukraine war started for the case of an atomic bomb being used. Parts of Romania were in fact effected by the nuclear plant fiasco, also the place where I live, since this is where the rainfall happened. But another region was more effected, a work colleague of mine told the story of how her father and all the man he was out with out grilling with on May 1th and were hit by the rain eventually died of cancer.
@@Flesh_WizardIt's actually just iodide. It doesn't prevent anywhere near all radiation damage, but it does do a lot to protect your thyroid by causing your body to have so much iodide that it just lets the radioactive iodide produced by fallout pass through quickly. The thyroid is one of the more at risk organs from longer range airborne fallout.
The UN: " Look, we know this and your marriage/partnership with Ukraine is going very poorly right now. But you can't resort to that. I mean, who knows how things will be in a little over 36 years? There's hope."
I remember when the Ukraine...fiasco began in earnest, my buddy was really concerned that the elephants foot would be used as a weapon. It’s crazy how quickly that time passed.
@@LexYeenyeah at the time I couldn’t argue with it. Now it seems like it would be more valuable to keep to be able to go “ehh? Are we going to do it today U.S? Nah not today” *side eyes entire continent*
All of Europe is still concerned about Saporishshya - or at least, it should be. It's the place where Russian neglect at war could lead to just a similar desaster somewhere between RL Chernobyl and the ATL presented here. I'd say something there is more likely to happen than not.
14:44 I Thank you for using ERB once again, just like in your "The Most Underrated Era in History (In My Opinion)" video. You specifically used a clip of EpicLloyd as Gorbachev from "Rasputin vs Stalin", my favorite ERB video of them all.
Isn't the HBO show theory actually a steam explosion THE SIZE OF a small nuke which destroys the rest of the power plant from the leaking core melting into the pooled water underground? They never mention any sort of nuke.
Yes. That is what the theory is. People just run with “nuclear bomb” because they’re idiots. It would have been more like a giant dirty bomb. Which is really much worse.
Which is also the claim made by Soviet scientists at the time. Though some believe it was a gross exaggeration and others that it was entirely manufactured by the regime in order to spin a tale of a heroic victory in the aftermath of the disaster. Regardless the show had it right and Cody must’ve not been paying attention.
There was never any real chance of a steam explosion, that would've required the whole molten core dropping into a sealed container full of water, neither of which could happen as their were plenty of holes to vent pressure and the corium would've dripped slowly, like a volcano does into water
In a sense, but it wouldn't be an explosion, there seems to be this notion that the water supply is sealed containers, which they even mention that the fire fighters water hoses were draining back into those tanks. Would it have been bad? Sure! Would it have been a continent killer? Hell no.
Chernobyl did irreparable damage already. It turned people off from nuclear energy and ensured that Europe would continue being dependent on the latest strongman from that area of the world for energy.
Europe isn't dependent on the US for energy, unless you're referring to the UK or France (which I guess makes sense since they still "strongman" quite a lot in places like South America and Africa)
This would be horrible for humans but great for the wolves who would suddenly have a much bigger chunk of uninhabitable radioactive land to live in then they do in our timeline. (Chernobyl these days is basically a slightly radioactive national wildlife preserve with a thriving ecosystem).
They'll be having a great time until their pups get another non-functional ear, a blind third eye, and jaws that cause pain all their life due to radiation fucking up their genes
I think even Squatters live in the region. People don't realize that the radiation while sigificant isn't a big deal unless your actually near the source
@@chimera9818 It might quickly shrink though b/c people definetly will move back regardless of the residue radiation given it likley is fine in the outer parts.
Nuclear dystopia you say bunker societies you say One might even say "vaults" uh... I think you innadvertedly sold me a soviet fallout spinoff and I kinda dig it.
i remember my dad telling me a story about how here in poland during charnobyl everyone was given special medicine in liquid form to stop the possibility of dying from radiation or getting cancer (i heard that it wasnt very useful)
Iod, probably. A big problem from nuclear fallout is radioactive Iod as the body stores it in the thyroid. As a preventative measure, you can take high amounts of safe Iod so the body already has more than it needs
Using Revelations imagery is appropriate considering Chernobyl is named after a variety of wormwood, the name of the fallen star that poisons the land.
my grandfather was a fireman from LPSR, and he was needed to serve in the effort to extinguish the reactor, but for a blessing, he was relocated to Estonia as a ship was burning :D
Turkey is pugged in this scenario. Our government that time largely tried to convince public that radiation did not exist/was not that bad, and dumping products from Black Sea Region to public schools and military
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat I realised my mistake and fixed it but what I tried to refernce was Kenan Evren (who was president at the time) saying tradition was good for the bones.
Well it sounds like Greece might have been able to get that coastline back afterall, if only because there wouldn't be anyone to say otherwise. That is definitely a yikes.
If I had a nickel for every time Alternate History Hub discussed an alternate version of a science-related disaster from 1986, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice
Which is a shame, because from an infrastructure standpoint, the degree to which modern nuke plants are built borders on insane. I’m in IT for a company that has multiple nuclear power stations, and the redundancies built into them are multi-level. Anything involving safety or measurement of radiation levels have multiple backups, and if in the extremely unlikely case of all of them failing, the core goes into immediate shutdown.
True, but it's not nearly as taboo as it is in Germany, where the bulk of the voting populace literally views it as an actively leaking weapon. Nevermind the fact that more people die from windpower.
We understand but we realize our politicians can be bought and companies will prioritize profits over safety and people so it's scary because another Chernobyl situation could easily happen again here
Except it nuclear energy has spent the last 5 decades foolproofing the design of plants to prevent another Chenobyl. Even Chernobyl is full of failsafes(as we saw when Russian had the big brain idea of shelling the site, the whole thing shut down safely and locked dangerous materials behind walls of lead and concrete). The biggest risk currently is big oil muscling out nuclear development.
Due to the vastly increased fear of nuclear power in this timeline, decades later climate change could be much worse than it may become in our own timeline
Even without Chernobyl happening at all, nuclear power would still have patchy and troubled adoption. There was a marked decline in new reactor construction even before the accident. The main reason for that was the expense. Early nuclear promises in the 1960s of electricity bills being just pennies turned out to be baseless fantasy. Fission energy turned out to be very pricey compared to fossil fuel plants, and by the 80s the incredible cost of decommissioning old plants were becoming apparent. Natural gas was becoming a big player on the energy market and appeared to often the cleanliness at a fraction of the price.
I remember when this happened. The earliest news bulletin I remember was one from Switzerland (I think) reporting a possible nuclear accident in the USSR in April of 1986.
A few video ideas: 1066 - two videos: what if Harold Godwinson had won at Hastings and what Harald Hardrada had won at Stamford Bridge? What if the imperial federation had been formed? What if Japan had been partitioned like Germany or Korea after WWII? What if Bukahrin had suceeded Lenin?
The actual radiation around the exclusion zone is not nearly as high as people think it is. a lot of it has since been cleaned up. The radiation there is only slightly higher than normal background radiation in most places. Only specific places like the hospital or basement are especially radioactive.
There's only a few spots where it's concentrated enough to be lethal over the course of months or even years. They'd probably have a lower life expectancy, and any who get pregnant would be more likely to have, miscarriages, stillbirths, and birth defects, but someone living in Pripyat can absolutely have humans living there for significant periods of time. People shouldn't live there, but they absolutely can. Some actions, such as digging, would be significantly more dangerous than many others (since that will reveal a lot of material that's been carried deeper by rain, the surface would have a lower concentration). There's a reason a ton of animals live there. Hell, people are working very near the plant at any given time. Before the war a ton of civilians were involved in monitoring things and maintaining the new confinement building, and even with Russia's insane misuse of the exclusion zone (using it as effectively a military base and stationing artillery in the surrounding area, including the red forest, which contains some of the most dangerous areas outside of the confinement building), they've still let those people work there freely since they know that, if they fuck up bad enough there, the chances of the US and its allies getting directly involved to secure the site and protect NATO members in Europe from potential dangers rises significantly.
I just want to say I really appreciate your writing. No padding for time, no repetition, no attempts to persuade the listener, and surprisingly no confusion about real vs fictional timelines. It feels like everything flows naturally, and that's so hard to do. Well done.
The only way it could get "patched up in the 70s" is if either the remaining Old Bolsheviks came together to pull off a counter-coup against the revisionist regime (like what they tried and failed to do in 1957), or if Deng's rise to power resulted in a geopolitical shift toward the Soviet Union rather than toward the West (like what China's been doing with Russia within the past 20 years).
What if, instead of increasing the percentage, the work done by the liquidators simply wasn't done, so the site remained uncovered for a much longer time?
Don’t forget about all the nuclear warheads contained within breakaway post-Soviet states and allies. Even in the mostly-peaceful breakup of 1991 there were still a lot of lost warheads during the transition period, now imagine if the breakaway states are now so hostile against each other due to scarcity pressures that it’d be entirely feasible that post-Soviet Ukraine would start nuking Moscow, potentially via clandestine or guerilla means. It’d make NK seem like the Vatican.
@@MerugafYou have to be a sociopath to think this way. Billions would die, and the world would be ruined. We're talking almost complete destruction of our planet.
plus, if Ukraine even considered that, then the USSR would do it back even worse, there is also the fact that no one would risk that, Nukes are often seen as a last resort in a war since the impact it could cause is too risky
Some lame long term damage to our timeline’s Chernobyl is that people try to use it as valid evidence that modern nuclear shouldn’t be used more when the Soviet Union’s corruption caused it. Fun fact: For the same power output, coal releases more than 10x the radiation that a nuclear power plant does.
It's unfortunate that nuclear energy has a bad stigma, since it is literally a dream come true. Cheap, environmentally friendly and economically better as it employs a lot more jobs than that of other fuels. But reality is very far from a dream, I'm afraid.
Oh yeah, it's a great dream. If you stick you head in the sand and ignore all the problems down the line with waste, which we DO NOT have a safe way to store indefinitely, nor a way to prevent future civilisations from digging it up (on accident or out of curiosity) - but that's the future's problem, right? Oh and I guess it's a dream where mismanagement, which happens all the time and will continue to because we are flawed humans in flawed systems, can cause catastrophes THIS bad. Or Tsunamis, earthquakes, things we don't have any way to prevent and only limited ways to protect from. Guess we'll just... cross our fingers and hope it doesn't happen! But well, it is very cheap, so I guess that makes up of it lol.
@@RafaelAhlertwhich is basically how it is with modern (western built) reactors, plus incredible levels of design safety in comparison to the RBMK - If you treated a modern reactor core with the same level of disregard Chernobyl Unit 4 got in its last hours of life, you'd get an emergency shutdown, activation of emergency cooling systems, and a report filed to the IAEA - Plus consequences for the personnel, I'm sure - But I would also not be surprised if the reactor was left undamaged and went back into operation shortly thereafter. I mean, if you exclude incidents like "a worker fell in a hole and electrocuted himself" or "a generator fell on a worker and crushed him to death" (aka accidents that aren't specific to nuclear power plants) there hasn't been a death from a nuclear accident in the US since 1964 (an error at a fuel processing plant lead to accidental criticality and killed one worker) - Or since 1961 if you only count reactor accidents specifically (the SL-1 incident, where a control rod that was operated by hand on an experimental reactor was pulled out way too far and resulted in the death of the operators). It's worth noting that SL-1 was also the first ever fatal incident in a US reactor specific to the nuclear core itself. In other words, the total death count caused by nuclear accidents in US reactors is... Three. Now, maybe that's an anomaly, maybe not - But clearly it's very possible and very practical to safely operate nuclear reactors, if you make sure to enforce the correct standards.
4:41 Wait, I thought the HBO show was taking about a thermal steam explosion? That once the meltdown reached the groundwater, the resulting steam explosion would destroy all the reactors.
The show portrays a concern with hot sand and boron reaching large pools of water that were in the building. That's why the three divers had to go in. They didn't think this steam explosion was a certainty but they weren't willing to take a chance. It wasn't until years of research later that we realized the sand and boron had probably already reached those pools but was falling slowly enough there wasn't a sudden steam explosion. The ground water was a separate concern which required the miners and the installation of cooling pipes under the building.
@@MichaelfromtheGraves Isn't that separate concern with the water table that was the biggest threat? Because that would cause the massive thermal explosion that everyone was freaking out over?
@@Edax_Royeaux No, ground is a super thermal insulator / regulator, and groundwater is mixed in with all kinds of dirt, rock etc... it isn't a big puddle under ground. Pouring super heated stuff on / into ground water would not cause and explosion. The problem with it getting into groundwater is contamination since water flows and diffuses and most groundwater is part of the general watertable that connects it to lakes, rivers, etc.. in the region. It is very difficult to control the spread of any pollution that gets into ground water.
Even if 100% of the reactor had melted down into the floor (instead of a substantial portion also being thrown upwards), there simply isn't enough nuclear material in reactor 4 and it isn't hot enough to cause that big of a secondary explosion. Also, with the containment vessel breached it would be difficult to probably impossible for the steam to build a high enough pressure... although of course if the meltdown did create a lot of steam the highly radioactive fog that resulted would be a catastrophe all its own and possibly necessitate shutting down the other reactors since no one could approach them.
Incredible job. I could only make it 14 minutes into the video before I had to turn it off from how much it made my stomach churn. The minute you started talking about the children I knew I couldn't go any further.
I just want to add one thing, I believe that Austria would be hit harder that you think. Vienne is in the far east of Austria and IS only 1000 km or 620 miles from Pripyet and had a population of close to 1.5 Million at the time.
"blown up" - it should be emphasized that first explosion was a steam explosion. And while the U was radioactive and sustaining fission, it was not a nuclear bomb as in Hiroshima. The firefighters are fighting _chemical_ fires.
Here in South-Germany are still regions (mainly the elevated ones) where Boars who have been shot by Hunters have to be thrown away, because their radiation poisoning is still too high.
My GF's grandfather was a liquidator. He died in his 50s from radiation poisoning, her whole family on mother's side was evacuated as the village they were living in was in one of the zones that was hit the hardest. All of her family (mother's side) has a heightened risk of cancer, her mother had thyroid cancer and it had to be removed and she, despite being born nowhere near the Chernobyl disaster both terms of time and place still has to undergo regular medical checkups and has plethora of health issues
"The only russian and ukrainian people left would be either abroad or in bunker societies." So, all of siberia gets wiped off the map? Not to mention that it would be hugely optimistic to say that absolutely everything west of the urals would become inhospitable. Also, the wind blew radiation west. Is the wind direction changed in this scenario?
My feelings too. Throughout the video, I never got the vibe like a catastrophe of truly apocalyptic proportions was actually under way. Millions of people dead, pan-Soviet war as a result? Sure, possible. The entire European part of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus left uninhabited? Ummm, why? This honestly sounds more like a Spanish flu-type outbreak: sure, tragic and spoken of for years in hushed tones... but state-shattering in its scope? Nah.
To be honest if there was a 60% reaction in Chernobyl, the firefighters would get radiation poisoning faster (in theory) the effects of A.R.S would show up until a week or two after. It largely doesn’t matter how much Sv someone reserves the effects still wouldn’t show up until a week after at least.
Contrary to popular belief Gorbachev’s policy was not the primary factor in USSR’s collapse. By that time it was already imploding economically. In 1987 the ships were already being arrested in ports for not keeping up with payments. USSR was bankrupt. Gorbachev just tried to secure more funds by liberalising and making USSR more atteactive for foreign investment. You can read more in E. Gaidar’s “Collapse of an Empire”
One consequence: no one ever hears of Socrates or his student Plato. Why? Well, Socrates would still have been known as a local gadfly in Athens, but he became a much bigger deal as someone to be taken seriously precisely because Athens had its humiliating defeat. Socrates comes along and questions Athenian tradition and culture just when things are at their most sensitive, particularly after the Rule of the Twenty. Here you have a guy who hates democracy and doesn't think the traditional myths are true, and he likes elitist caste systems like Sparta. Oh, and he has a big following among the youth of the aristocrats. So if Athens wins, his following is much smaller. People aren't as aggreived at his attacks on Athens traditions. His connection to Alciabades isn't a big deal, especially if Alciabades stayed loyal to Athens. So he isn't put on trial, he's not executed, and not martyred. At best he becomes a footnote to history, only known to specialists who know of him as a guy satirized in Aristophanes the Clouds. That takes Plato out the timeline likely (unless he just becomes yet another Pythagorean), and with that, one of the major influences on Christianity - no neoplatonists, no Paul of Tarsus. Oh, and no Alexander the Great - no Aristotle to tutor him, and Greece is more united around Athens when Macedonia kicked up trouble. So, yeah, incalculable consequences.
Nice scenario, though as someone with Masters in nuclear engineering, I have to point out that it would be impossible for larger % of uranium in the reactor to explode. There is some complicated laws in nature in work, but there is a reason you need >90% U-235 to build a uranium nuke, like the one used in Hiroshima. With nuclear power plant level enrichment, most of the uranium simply won't explode.
By no means is the HBO show an example of rigorous historical accuracy, but what is Cody referring to with "the ludicrous theory proposed by the HBO show, in which a thermonuclear blast blows up all four reactors"? Is there a scene I'm forgetting where characters are talking about how it could have been hypothetically worse?
I once tried to make an alt history scenario where Chernobyl was used as a ploy by the USSR to try and defeat the West, blaming Western spies for the tragedy. Pushing the "7 days to the Rhine" campaign and World War 3.
Such an approach would fail miserably. The USSR could barely fight a proxy war in Afghanistan, they had absolutely no business attempting a full on global war at this point. Not only would NATO completely destroy them within weeks, many of the border states would likely disobey and fall into revolution.
I am Romanian. My family lives in an area very close to the Danube and my grandparents were really scared back then about the water. My paternal grandma still remembers the day they were issued Iodine Pills at the factory she worked at to give to her whole family.
2022 Actual Russia: Ah yes, we must occupy Chernobyl to free innocent, radioactive Laika puppies from Ukraine in special 3-day operation. 2022 Alternative Russia: Nah bruh, that's all Ukraine, they can keep Chernobyl.
The “inexperienced” crew were following orders from the deputy chief engineer Dyatlov. It was his hubris alongside the design flaws of the reactor that caused the accident not the inexperience of the operators.
Corium shares the strange property that liquid sodium chloride has with water. It explodes when it falls into a body of water. The Japanese reactors are a different story all together. water couldnt even get close to the liquid corium in the reactors.
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
Oh boy. Got a Discord again. discord.gg/KYAdxWbGEP This time around we’ve knocked it out of the park.
Make sure to check it out and grab the piece of land you like best, before someone else does.
no. suc my mushroom >:(
Discord gang
Carl Clank says #discordgang
is this a remastered video? if it is, then please make an updated video on what if Persia conquered Greece? 😊
Having nuclear power plants will always the peak of our society
Ah, Chernobyl, the nuclear disaster that became the reason why many people oppose nuclear power. Despite missing the added context that Chernobyl’s poor management was to blame.
Edit: since people have been saying it a lot in replies, yes I am aware that the equipment at Chernobyl was faulty and not up to code. However, I false believes that putting it under the umbrella of “poor management” was adequate enough to summarize why Chernobyl is a bad excuse for why people are against nuclear power.
A chunk of them being on the far-left makes it more ironic.
Yeah what most people don't realize is the safety standards and nuclear technology have greatly improved since the 80s
Nuclear energy is ironically cleaner lol, but of course it has its bad affects if a disaster were to occur
@@The_Midnight_Bear Yea as Leftist who have Common sense
@@The_Midnight_Bear its a little naive to think its mostly hippies who were/are against nuclear power planet.
3:40 Gorbachev's birthmark is just Mexico lol
I just realized lmao
I always thought it looked more like some Greater Korea which Controls Taiwan
Like in the grand Budapest hotel
Viva Gorbachev!
Grand Budapest Hotel reference
The lack of outro makes this video strikingly haunting
Absolutely
That was completely unexpected
And it worked to make me shiver
it's funny how much the Jimmy skits add relief to the stories
it made it comwdic to me, im just listening and sudeenly it stops LOL
All of it is haunting!
It’s genuinely distressing that a disaster of that magnitude was only prevented because the firemen that charged into danger weren’t killed by the radiation until *after* they succeeded. But it also deepens my already great respect for the sort of people who do such dangerous work.
Remember the others.
1. The miners. They kept it from being a worldwide disaster. Officially, 1/4 of them died before 40(most were under 30). Realistically, based on records, it was 1/2.
2. The 3 guys who turned the valves on. They swam in radiation for an hour. All 3 lived long lives. 2 are still alive.
3. The "Masha" site workers. All of them died of cancer. They got exposed to extreme levels of radiation. They also cleared the site so the dome could be built.
4. The dome workers. It'll be 20 years before we really know how many died, but as of now it's a 40% cancer rate for site workers.
5. The Unit 1/2 workers. They kept Chernobyl open for over a year after the accident. 1000s died.
6. The Bridge of death. The Pripyat River Bridge was the single deadliest site of that evening of the accident. The entire neighborhood converged on the bridge to watch the fire. Everyone there, save Mila Ignatenko, who left the next day, died within 2 years. That was directly downwind of the accident. They were blasted by it.
That's an area bigger than Rhode Island that you'll die going to for 200 years. The reactor itself can never be entered. Ever.
It's the closest we've ever come to wiping out our entire planet. Frightening to think about.
@@thequixoticangler3364 Thanks for taking the time to compose all of that. My knowledge of this disaster is limited and everything you shared was new to me. The number of people that have to step up when a disaster occurs is mind blowing.
The firefighters at Chernobyl remind me of the passengers on Flight 93 during 9/11. It's tragic that they lost their lives, but by their brave actions they prevented an already awful day and scenario from being much, much worse.
@@thequixoticangler3364there was never a bridge of death, that was a story people took as fact.
No, thr disaster flatly couldn't reach the scale discussed here. Even if it had been left completely unattended, the meaningful impacts would still be localized. What happened pretty much is the worst case scenario.
What's crazy is the other 3 reactors on sight produced electricity for almost 20 years after the explosion.
On site*
3:40 new alternative history scenario;
What if Gorvachev's birthmark was a perfectly detailed map of Mexico with major landmarks and highways that magically changed over time?
He'll be classified as an SCP
Like how in Harry Potter, Dumbledore has the London Tube map on (I think) his leg
You’re making me think of this Ray Stevens song Surfin U.S.S.R. and its music video where Gorbachev’s spot does look like a map.
It's a map of Afghanistan.
@@misterwhipple2870no it's not
What if Chernobyl did *not* happen?
It would turn our view on nuclear power different.
Honestly I'd love to see this as a two parter with your suggestion as the second part. Take a specific event, push it out to both extremes and look at the outcomes. "The crew in charge realizes the test conditions are dangerous and aborts the test in spite of political pressure. Now what?"
A world where only Fukushima happened?
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeatmaybe Fukushima is the real chernobyl because of how nuclear power will be treat it if chernobyl didn't happend
It would be a world where safety and new nuclear regulations wouldn't happen and soviet style reactors like Chernobyl would be in mass use and something would happen eventually.
I know close to nothing about the history, but I’d imagine that without Chernobyl being a wakeup call for nuclear plants to crack down on safety, there might’ve been a lot more incidents and Chernobyl-level meltdowns that result in more severe consequences and a larger social stigmatism towards nuclear energy.
Downside: we wouldn't be able to play Stalker in this timeline, as the programmers are either drafted into the Soviet Civil War, or emigrated to the West.
Upside: You can LARP as a Stalker in the real Pripyat, firing live ammunition within the irradiated hellscape as you escape Soviet loyalists, seperatists, partisans and survivalists.
But no respawning or saving/reloading your game.
@@louisduarte8763 So hardcore mode?
Even better@@concept5631
ukraine used to try to get volunteers by letting them larp as STALKERs during the donbas war.
You realise that Stalker was ripped off from a book, the game just changed the surroundings to the Chernobyl zone because it suited.
If you have never seen Pripyat, its both really cool and completely haunting. You cant help but feel youre being watched as you walk through a total ghost town left exactly as it was 40 years ago. You can go into the apartments and see children's toys left on the floor mid-play, kitchens still stocked, and cold war propaganda everywhere.
So glad I visited before the invasion - what a life changing experience!
@@ynokenty I wonder how it looks now after the invasion. I mean, I imagine military troops sieging a place would clearly alter it, but at the same time I also think the Russian soldiers had to know where they were and how much contamination there still is around these days, enough to know not to start messing around with the place just because
@@nahuelma97Bomb damage, rumble, destroyed buildings
@@nahuelma97 I don’t think the place got too damaged during fights. However, I believe everything is covered in mines so we wouldn’t be able to visit for at least a decade, or more
@@nahuelma97 > ru soldiers had to know where they were
They were constructing trenches in the Red Forest and digging up probably the most radioactive soil around Chornobyl at the beginning of the invasion. When I was visiting, and our tourist bus was just passing by Red Forest, literally every Geiger counter was going crazy on the bus. Although devices were mostly silent during the trip, getting as crazy as this only several times in Prypiat. Even near the 4th reactor they were silent (that should’ve been probably the safest place in Zone).
great alternative, but you underestimate how stubern are humans. Even in out timeline, although the government prohibited people to come back to this region, the old residents did comeback. Drinking contaminated water and eating radioactive food. They didn't care, this was their home.
And HBO miniserie portrait that really well with that Babushka.
"First was the White Russians, then years later, the germans, and even after that i' still here. Now you want me to get away because of something i cant even see?"
@@darthplayer5333 The appropriate response: "Yes... Did you miss the part about dying?" The quote sounds strong until you remember how many things you can't see that kill you: bacteria, viruses, toxic gasses (especially those with no smell), and yea, radioactive dust, all come to mind.
That quote is peak stupidity disguised as noble strength.
@@prw56humans have the right to self determination. Yes, even if you disagree. Yes, even if its stupid. Yes, even if they're risking their life. The problem is when it affects other people. She would have stayed, and it wouldn't have affected anyone besides her.
@@slightlyuncomfortable I didn't say the person should be forced to comply, I said the logic they were following was idiotic.
Hearing about someone ignorant doing something stupid and causing preventable harm to themselves and/or others is frustrating.
And they'd die.
My parents recall getting alerts in the radio that they shouldn't eat any plant that grows out of the ground. My dad lived near the Matra mountains and my mom lived in the Kiskunság and they were still severely affected by it even though Chernobyl was more than 1000 km away.
As a baby born one month after the desaster, the cautious restrictions in public led to my parents avoiding travel that summer.
... Which is the reason that my grandfather who lived away and who died several months after the catastrophe, never got to see any of his eight grandchildren.
Here in Mexico thousands of children were poisoned because our government bought contaminated radioactive milk for the social welfare program, it's insane just how much damage it did even oceans away
My parents couldn't eat certain things in Italy for a year
@@Enyavar1 That's a shame.
@@Enyavar1I don't know if you're religious, but I'm sure he'll get to see all of them one day, somewhere else. :)
Cody's scenarios are always top-notch, but I always love these little classic "what if" scenarios for specific little diversions in history - feels like an episode from a couple years back
Man Stalker is so cool, I wish Chernobyl was real
bruh
(yes I know this is a joke so nobody needs to correct me)
@@JerryCan101 retard
(There didn’t correct you)
@@JerryCan101it isn’t a joke bro, stop acting unserious
@@6000. Its just I'm really tired of being corrected about things I already know, so I thought maybe if I put a disclaimer I wouldn't be corrected. But apparently that doesn't work either.
Yes, unfortunately nuclear power is just a fantasy. 😂
An important note to anyone who thinks nuclear is unsafe: this disaster could never have occurred in the west due to a completely different design scheme. In a western reactor, water was the coolant and moderator, meaning that if it boiled away, the reaction would slow down, not continue out of control.
This should be on top of
What about the 2011 nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima in Japan, which occurred with General Electric (i.e. Western) designed reactors?
@@iancastleton9052 There were zero deaths or injuries recorded with the Fukushima meltdown even to this day. 100% of injuries and deaths are attributed to the natural disaster and subsequent lack of power, but not the nuclear plant. It is a testament to the improved safety features of western reactors.
@@iancastleton9052 Fukushima ironically shows how well built western designs are even considering the negligence.
1. Fukushima was an older design. It was a gen 2 reactor (most are 2+ or 3).
2. 4th most powerful earthquake ever recorded and tsunami so powerful it killed 20,000 people. How many people died from radiation or the hydrogen explosion? There is one death which occurred 4 years later. Everyone else is still alive.
More people were hurt/killed in displacement. Government forcing evacuation for fearing a Chernobyl like disaster (yet it was a nothingburger).
3. Fukushima is an example of all the worst possible situations resulting in the worst possible outcome and yet still they had 0 (or almost 0) deaths.
You had corruption from the top. Most of the senior regulators within the nuclear regulatory agency were employed previous by the same companies they oversaw.
4. Also OP is not wrong. Although he didn't explain why. You still have to have cooling because even when the fission process stops it doesn't IMMEDIATELY end. It takes days to end and the process still can produce as much as 3% of it's maximum output during this process.
What causes Fukushima is a failure to abide by 2011 international standard of best practices. Fukushima disaster would have been avoided if simply backup generators were not located nearer the cost and closer to the baseline. Why anyone thought that was a good idea in a tsunami/earthquake prone area is beyond me.
(Laughs in Three Mile Island)
Regarding the radiated food: the family of my mom split during the divide of East and West Germany. The family in the East magically had access to *far* more food than normal directly after the disaster. All of them died of cancer. But not a single one of the West German part of the family even had cancer.
So my guess is that the Soviet Union "donated" to or made a "good" deal with her "brother" states to get rid of the radiated food.
Not completely unique to the east. In Mexico there was an incident with irradiated milk powder that was made in Ireland. Despite multiple attempts to get rid of it, the agency that managed food imports put the irradiated milk on the market. There was a noticeable spike in cancer rates in children.
Sounds like genocide to me.
My mom was living in Poland at the time of Chernobyl, she told me about how they had to take pills to prevent sickness from radiation
my geography teacher whos polish said that too
that is a preventive measure though. Romania handed out pills when the Ukraine war started for the case of an atomic bomb being used.
Parts of Romania were in fact effected by the nuclear plant fiasco, also the place where I live, since this is where the rainfall happened. But another region was more effected, a work colleague of mine told the story of how her father and all the man he was out with out grilling with on May 1th and were hit by the rain eventually died of cancer.
Rad X
I heard stories about some "weird clouds" - though that may be some overactive imagination from my relatives.
@@Flesh_WizardIt's actually just iodide. It doesn't prevent anywhere near all radiation damage, but it does do a lot to protect your thyroid by causing your body to have so much iodide that it just lets the radioactive iodide produced by fallout pass through quickly. The thyroid is one of the more at risk organs from longer range airborne fallout.
Right at 8:04 when He asked "How would the Soviet Union respond?" I got an ad for the Suicide Hotline.
Funniest ad break ever. 😂
hope you didnt have personalized ads on
The UN: " Look, we know this and your marriage/partnership with Ukraine is going very poorly right now. But you can't resort to that.
I mean, who knows how things will be in a little over 36 years? There's hope."
the way you capitalized He implies Cody is God
@@rodrikforrester6989He isn't?
SAME, I got an ad for Lifeline (Australian suicide hotline)
I remember when the Ukraine...fiasco began in earnest, my buddy was really concerned that the elephants foot would be used as a weapon. It’s crazy how quickly that time passed.
I mean,
at the time, valid concern.
@@LexYeenyeah at the time I couldn’t argue with it. Now it seems like it would be more valuable to keep to be able to go “ehh? Are we going to do it today U.S? Nah not today” *side eyes entire continent*
@LexYeen not really, a dirty bomb is the most impractical weapon there is
lmao imagine
just launch it into kremlin with a really big catapult
All of Europe is still concerned about Saporishshya - or at least, it should be. It's the place where Russian neglect at war could lead to just a similar desaster somewhere between RL Chernobyl and the ATL presented here.
I'd say something there is more likely to happen than not.
14:44 I Thank you for using ERB once again, just like in your "The Most Underrated Era in History (In My Opinion)" video. You specifically used a clip of EpicLloyd as Gorbachev from "Rasputin vs Stalin", my favorite ERB video of them all.
Ooo do the Fukushima reactor next. It would be especially interesting considering the geopolitical tension that area is constantly under
Isn't the HBO show theory actually a steam explosion THE SIZE OF a small nuke which destroys the rest of the power plant from the leaking core melting into the pooled water underground? They never mention any sort of nuke.
Yes. That is what the theory is. People just run with “nuclear bomb” because they’re idiots. It would have been more like a giant dirty bomb. Which is really much worse.
Precisely! It wasn’t a potential nuclear explosion. It was a very powerful steam explosion ejecting the rest of the site into the atmosphere
Which is also the claim made by Soviet scientists at the time.
Though some believe it was a gross exaggeration and others that it was entirely manufactured by the regime in order to spin a tale of a heroic victory in the aftermath of the disaster.
Regardless the show had it right and Cody must’ve not been paying attention.
There was never any real chance of a steam explosion, that would've required the whole molten core dropping into a sealed container full of water, neither of which could happen as their were plenty of holes to vent pressure and the corium would've dripped slowly, like a volcano does into water
In a sense, but it wouldn't be an explosion, there seems to be this notion that the water supply is sealed containers, which they even mention that the fire fighters water hoses were draining back into those tanks. Would it have been bad? Sure! Would it have been a continent killer? Hell no.
Chernobyl did irreparable damage already. It turned people off from nuclear energy and ensured that Europe would continue being dependent on the latest strongman from that area of the world for energy.
Europe isn't dependent on the US for energy, unless you're referring to the UK or France (which I guess makes sense since they still "strongman" quite a lot in places like South America and Africa)
@@chrisgaming9567 He meant Putin.
@@chrisgaming9567he was talking about Putin and russia not the US
The biggest CIA operation in history.
@@stlawstlaw7585 my guy the Soviets would know if the CIA was going do something they had more spies in the states then the states themselves
This would be horrible for humans but great for the wolves who would suddenly have a much bigger chunk of uninhabitable radioactive land to live in then they do in our timeline. (Chernobyl these days is basically a slightly radioactive national wildlife preserve with a thriving ecosystem).
The depopulation of CEE is occurring though.
Just a bit slower in our timeline, though accelerated by the war in Ukraine.
They'll be having a great time until their pups get another non-functional ear, a blind third eye, and jaws that cause pain all their life due to radiation fucking up their genes
I think even Squatters live in the region. People don't realize that the radiation while sigificant isn't a big deal unless your actually near the source
The only good in that timeline is the formation of the largest wildlife reservation on earth
@@chimera9818 It might quickly shrink though b/c people definetly will move back regardless of the residue radiation given it likley is fine in the outer parts.
Cody, this has to be one of my favorite videos of your works. This feels like a legit horror scenario.
Nuclear dystopia you say
bunker societies you say
One might even say "vaults" uh...
I think you innadvertedly sold me a soviet fallout spinoff and I kinda dig it.
Metro 34 is the video game of Soviet Moscow fallout in the subway
Atom RPG is more what you'd look for
the sequel is even called “the fallout wars”
METRO 2033 IS REAAALLLL!!!
🎵Atom bomb, baby, atom bomb! I want her in my wigwam. She's just the way I want her to be, a thousand times hotter than TNT!🎶
i remember my dad telling me a story about how here in poland during charnobyl everyone was given special medicine in liquid form to stop the possibility of dying from radiation or getting cancer (i heard that it wasnt very useful)
Iod, probably. A big problem from nuclear fallout is radioactive Iod as the body stores it in the thyroid. As a preventative measure, you can take high amounts of safe Iod so the body already has more than it needs
Old aperture pfp?
I remember my mum telling me this, and a lot of polish people told me this. I think it was iodine, and it was really bitter
Using Revelations imagery is appropriate considering Chernobyl is named after a variety of wormwood, the name of the fallen star that poisons the land.
Where's are those images?
Ironic
my grandfather was a fireman from LPSR, and he was needed to serve in the effort to extinguish the reactor, but for a blessing, he was relocated to Estonia as a ship was burning :D
A lucky man.
Those firemen were absolute heroes.
ik o7 to every man who lifted a single rock there@@alanpennie
Firefighters are pretty heroic in general.
"Fifty-thousand people used to live here, now it's a ghost town".
Except for the mutated humans living underground and in the forests.
Nice video! Nuclear fallout makes me wonder about the hypothetical of “What if Y2K actually happened?” where people really had a fear of it.
So, the Stalker games would have a different storyline
Nonono. We’ll _be_ the stalker games
They'd just be seen as documentaries in video game form
Stalker would be just The Sims
Stalker would be real, kinda. I doubt there will be any anomalies
They say every time an emission occurs or someone makes a wish at the wishgranter, the zone expands several kilometers.
Video idea: What if FDR lived to finish his fourth term?
Or even if he lived for just one extra year.
Even better: what if FDR was immortal?
I hate FDR
@@l0lLorenzol0lI hate Reagan
@@mitchconner403i hate mao zedong
Turkey is pugged in this scenario.
Our government that time largely tried to convince public that radiation did not exist/was not that bad, and dumping products from Black Sea Region to public schools and military
“Hey, that power source that doesn’t exist? It sucks”
@@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat I realised my mistake and fixed it but what I tried to refernce was Kenan Evren (who was president at the time) saying tradition was good for the bones.
Well it sounds like Greece might have been able to get that coastline back afterall, if only because there wouldn't be anyone to say otherwise. That is definitely a yikes.
Back to back releases. I love it! You outta give yourself a break, if you need one. Either way, we're happy. 😊😊😊
Can never get enough of going down Chernobyl rabbit holes so appreciated this ep.
If I had a nickel for every time Alternate History Hub discussed an alternate version of a science-related disaster from 1986, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice
With one involving Big Bird no less. Hilarious
He also has an old video about if the Chernobyl disaster didn’t happen.
Wow, never heard that one.
So funny 🙄
@@balabanasireti lemons
@@balabanasiretiI hate that joke
this video genuinely feels terrifying
Who knew how bad it could have been?
Everyone in Europe is indebted to those firemen.
so dystopian
in the uncanny valley
“In this timeline Nuclear Power would become a taboo”
I mean in the US, it still is to a lot of people who don’t understand nuclear power.
Which is a shame, because from an infrastructure standpoint, the degree to which modern nuke plants are built borders on insane. I’m in IT for a company that has multiple nuclear power stations, and the redundancies built into them are multi-level. Anything involving safety or measurement of radiation levels have multiple backups, and if in the extremely unlikely case of all of them failing, the core goes into immediate shutdown.
True, but it's not nearly as taboo as it is in Germany, where the bulk of the voting populace literally views it as an actively leaking weapon.
Nevermind the fact that more people die from windpower.
We understand but we realize our politicians can be bought and companies will prioritize profits over safety and people so it's scary because another Chernobyl situation could easily happen again here
Except it nuclear energy has spent the last 5 decades foolproofing the design of plants to prevent another Chenobyl. Even Chernobyl is full of failsafes(as we saw when Russian had the big brain idea of shelling the site, the whole thing shut down safely and locked dangerous materials behind walls of lead and concrete). The biggest risk currently is big oil muscling out nuclear development.
yeah, i'm from brazil but until two years ago i just thought they threw uranium and water in a box and just caught the radiation
Due to the vastly increased fear of nuclear power in this timeline, decades later climate change could be much worse than it may become in our own timeline
Even without Chernobyl happening at all, nuclear power would still have patchy and troubled adoption. There was a marked decline in new reactor construction even before the accident.
The main reason for that was the expense. Early nuclear promises in the 1960s of electricity bills being just pennies turned out to be baseless fantasy. Fission energy turned out to be very pricey compared to fossil fuel plants, and by the 80s the incredible cost of decommissioning old plants were becoming apparent. Natural gas was becoming a big player on the energy market and appeared to often the cleanliness at a fraction of the price.
Climate change is already an existential threat.
I remember when this happened. The earliest news bulletin I remember was one from Switzerland (I think) reporting a possible nuclear accident in the USSR in April of 1986.
3:42 why is gorbachev's mark a sideways mexico😂
Guessing it’s a Grand Budapest Hotel reference
A few video ideas: 1066 - two videos: what if Harold Godwinson had won at Hastings and what Harald Hardrada had won at Stamford Bridge?
What if the imperial federation had been formed?
What if Japan had been partitioned like Germany or Korea after WWII?
What if Bukahrin had suceeded Lenin?
Even though there is a substantial exclusion zone to this day, there is still a bit of a community that live near Pripyat as self exiled scofflaws.
I believe they live in Chernobyl (which is further away from the power plant), as I've heard that Pripyat is inimical for sustained human life?
The actual radiation around the exclusion zone is not nearly as high as people think it is.
a lot of it has since been cleaned up.
The radiation there is only slightly higher than normal background radiation in most places.
Only specific places like the hospital or basement are especially radioactive.
You get more radiation from riding on a plane than working in a power plant so I assume those people are fine nowadays.
There's only a few spots where it's concentrated enough to be lethal over the course of months or even years. They'd probably have a lower life expectancy, and any who get pregnant would be more likely to have, miscarriages, stillbirths, and birth defects, but someone living in Pripyat can absolutely have humans living there for significant periods of time. People shouldn't live there, but they absolutely can.
Some actions, such as digging, would be significantly more dangerous than many others (since that will reveal a lot of material that's been carried deeper by rain, the surface would have a lower concentration).
There's a reason a ton of animals live there. Hell, people are working very near the plant at any given time. Before the war a ton of civilians were involved in monitoring things and maintaining the new confinement building, and even with Russia's insane misuse of the exclusion zone (using it as effectively a military base and stationing artillery in the surrounding area, including the red forest, which contains some of the most dangerous areas outside of the confinement building), they've still let those people work there freely since they know that, if they fuck up bad enough there, the chances of the US and its allies getting directly involved to secure the site and protect NATO members in Europe from potential dangers rises significantly.
This is probably the best video you made in a while
I just want to say I really appreciate your writing. No padding for time, no repetition, no attempts to persuade the listener, and surprisingly no confusion about real vs fictional timelines. It feels like everything flows naturally, and that's so hard to do. Well done.
I'd love a vid on if the Sino-Soviet split never happened or was patched up in the 70s
Sup my man
@@sergioventura2595 I will never give up
@@conserva-chan2735 It will happen some day
The only way it could get "patched up in the 70s" is if either the remaining Old Bolsheviks came together to pull off a counter-coup against the revisionist regime (like what they tried and failed to do in 1957), or if Deng's rise to power resulted in a geopolitical shift toward the Soviet Union rather than toward the West (like what China's been doing with Russia within the past 20 years).
That was a rather abrupt ending. I wonder if it has anything to do with the final length of the video being 20:20
Erm it actually ends at 20:21 🤓
5:05 _oh boy_ you aren't messing around when it comes to changing variables.
What if, instead of increasing the percentage, the work done by the liquidators simply wasn't done, so the site remained uncovered for a much longer time?
Don’t forget about all the nuclear warheads contained within breakaway post-Soviet states and allies.
Even in the mostly-peaceful breakup of 1991 there were still a lot of lost warheads during the transition period, now imagine if the breakaway states are now so hostile against each other due to scarcity pressures that it’d be entirely feasible that post-Soviet Ukraine would start nuking Moscow, potentially via clandestine or guerilla means. It’d make NK seem like the Vatican.
If only...
@@MerugafYou have to be a sociopath to think this way. Billions would die, and the world would be ruined. We're talking almost complete destruction of our planet.
They didn't have the means to launch them. They only had possession of the nukes not the control of them.
plus, if Ukraine even considered that, then the USSR would do it back even worse, there is also the fact that no one would risk that, Nukes are often seen as a last resort in a war since the impact it could cause is too risky
Ukraine couldn’t launch the nukes. All the launch codes were in Moscow. That’s why IRL Ukraine gave up its nukes.
Some lame long term damage to our timeline’s Chernobyl is that people try to use it as valid evidence that modern nuclear shouldn’t be used more when the Soviet Union’s corruption caused it. Fun fact: For the same power output, coal releases more than 10x the radiation that a nuclear power plant does.
It's good that you can do episodes occasionally on these uplifting, optimistic scenarios
This felt like an sharp increase in video production quality, love to see it
Prypyat is one of the worst disaster in human history, thinking how much worse it could've been is absolutely tragic.
-Discord gang.
It's unfortunate that nuclear energy has a bad stigma, since it is literally a dream come true. Cheap, environmentally friendly and economically better as it employs a lot more jobs than that of other fuels. But reality is very far from a dream, I'm afraid.
Oh yeah, it's a great dream. If you stick you head in the sand and ignore all the problems down the line with waste, which we DO NOT have a safe way to store indefinitely, nor a way to prevent future civilisations from digging it up (on accident or out of curiosity) - but that's the future's problem, right?
Oh and I guess it's a dream where mismanagement, which happens all the time and will continue to because we are flawed humans in flawed systems, can cause catastrophes THIS bad. Or Tsunamis, earthquakes, things we don't have any way to prevent and only limited ways to protect from. Guess we'll just... cross our fingers and hope it doesn't happen! But well, it is very cheap, so I guess that makes up of it lol.
I have a small feeling that it’s not the nuclear energy itself people are worried about but another poor management situation again
Nuclear energy should be Very Very Scrictly Supervised And have checks very often instead of being abolished in my opinion
@@RafaelAhlertwhich is basically how it is with modern (western built) reactors, plus incredible levels of design safety in comparison to the RBMK - If you treated a modern reactor core with the same level of disregard Chernobyl Unit 4 got in its last hours of life, you'd get an emergency shutdown, activation of emergency cooling systems, and a report filed to the IAEA - Plus consequences for the personnel, I'm sure - But I would also not be surprised if the reactor was left undamaged and went back into operation shortly thereafter.
I mean, if you exclude incidents like "a worker fell in a hole and electrocuted himself" or "a generator fell on a worker and crushed him to death" (aka accidents that aren't specific to nuclear power plants) there hasn't been a death from a nuclear accident in the US since 1964 (an error at a fuel processing plant lead to accidental criticality and killed one worker) - Or since 1961 if you only count reactor accidents specifically (the SL-1 incident, where a control rod that was operated by hand on an experimental reactor was pulled out way too far and resulted in the death of the operators).
It's worth noting that SL-1 was also the first ever fatal incident in a US reactor specific to the nuclear core itself. In other words, the total death count caused by nuclear accidents in US reactors is... Three.
Now, maybe that's an anomaly, maybe not - But clearly it's very possible and very practical to safely operate nuclear reactors, if you make sure to enforce the correct standards.
It's more so that fossil fuels are less fatal than Radiation if a crisis occurs, plus nuclear energy can at times be very and I mean very unstable
That end cut was brutal
Ty for the lighthearted video to start off the weekend ☺️
4:41 Wait, I thought the HBO show was taking about a thermal steam explosion? That once the meltdown reached the groundwater, the resulting steam explosion would destroy all the reactors.
The show portrays a concern with hot sand and boron reaching large pools of water that were in the building. That's why the three divers had to go in. They didn't think this steam explosion was a certainty but they weren't willing to take a chance. It wasn't until years of research later that we realized the sand and boron had probably already reached those pools but was falling slowly enough there wasn't a sudden steam explosion. The ground water was a separate concern which required the miners and the installation of cooling pipes under the building.
@@MichaelfromtheGraves Isn't that separate concern with the water table that was the biggest threat? Because that would cause the massive thermal explosion that everyone was freaking out over?
@@Edax_Royeaux No, ground is a super thermal insulator / regulator, and groundwater is mixed in with all kinds of dirt, rock etc... it isn't a big puddle under ground. Pouring super heated stuff on / into ground water would not cause and explosion. The problem with it getting into groundwater is contamination since water flows and diffuses and most groundwater is part of the general watertable that connects it to lakes, rivers, etc.. in the region. It is very difficult to control the spread of any pollution that gets into ground water.
Even if 100% of the reactor had melted down into the floor (instead of a substantial portion also being thrown upwards), there simply isn't enough nuclear material in reactor 4 and it isn't hot enough to cause that big of a secondary explosion. Also, with the containment vessel breached it would be difficult to probably impossible for the steam to build a high enough pressure... although of course if the meltdown did create a lot of steam the highly radioactive fog that resulted would be a catastrophe all its own and possibly necessitate shutting down the other reactors since no one could approach them.
If it reaches the groudwater you get the China syndrome. Very, VERY bad!! Radioactive steam coming out the f the ground for miles around.
You shaped cartoon Gorbachev's port wine stains like Mexico. I noticed that. That was great. Loved it.
Thank you for teaching me what a port wine stain is! I never knew what it was called 😂
Incredible job. I could only make it 14 minutes into the video before I had to turn it off from how much it made my stomach churn. The minute you started talking about the children I knew I couldn't go any further.
The sudden end of the video caught me off guard, i actually thought I clicked something at first.
I just want to add one thing, I believe that Austria would be hit harder that you think. Vienne is in the far east of Austria and IS only 1000 km or 620 miles from Pripyet and had a population of close to 1.5 Million at the time.
Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland also aren't that far, Hell, given the scale of the disaster, could it reach Saxony and Czechia?
"blown up" - it should be emphasized that first explosion was a steam explosion. And while the U was radioactive and sustaining fission, it was not a nuclear bomb as in Hiroshima. The firefighters are fighting _chemical_ fires.
Did you put Mexico on Gorbachevs head to make his birthmark lol
I came here to say this
Yes he did
Here in South-Germany are still regions (mainly the elevated ones) where Boars who have been shot by Hunters have to be thrown away, because their radiation poisoning is still too high.
My GF's grandfather was a liquidator. He died in his 50s from radiation poisoning, her whole family on mother's side was evacuated as the village they were living in was in one of the zones that was hit the hardest. All of her family (mother's side) has a heightened risk of cancer, her mother had thyroid cancer and it had to be removed and she, despite being born nowhere near the Chernobyl disaster both terms of time and place still has to undergo regular medical checkups and has plethora of health issues
Heavy. Good perspective on how this could have been a lot worse.
Is it me or did that end really abruptly? No shade, loved the video. Just felt really sudden.
"The only russian and ukrainian people left would be either abroad or in bunker societies."
So, all of siberia gets wiped off the map?
Not to mention that it would be hugely optimistic to say that absolutely everything west of the urals would become inhospitable.
Also, the wind blew radiation west. Is the wind direction changed in this scenario?
My feelings too. Throughout the video, I never got the vibe like a catastrophe of truly apocalyptic proportions was actually under way. Millions of people dead, pan-Soviet war as a result? Sure, possible. The entire European part of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus left uninhabited? Ummm, why? This honestly sounds more like a Spanish flu-type outbreak: sure, tragic and spoken of for years in hushed tones... but state-shattering in its scope? Nah.
To be honest if there was a 60% reaction in Chernobyl, the firefighters would get radiation poisoning faster (in theory) the effects of A.R.S would show up until a week or two after. It largely doesn’t matter how much Sv someone reserves the effects still wouldn’t show up until a week after at least.
And to be honest, videos like these can just spread more misinformation about how dangerous nuclear reactors are.
Contrary to popular belief Gorbachev’s policy was not the primary factor in USSR’s collapse. By that time it was already imploding economically. In 1987 the ships were already being arrested in ports for not keeping up with payments. USSR was bankrupt. Gorbachev just tried to secure more funds by liberalising and making USSR more atteactive for foreign investment.
You can read more in E. Gaidar’s “Collapse of an Empire”
Scenario idea: What if Athens won the pelaponesian war?
Good fcken idea
One consequence: no one ever hears of Socrates or his student Plato. Why? Well, Socrates would still have been known as a local gadfly in Athens, but he became a much bigger deal as someone to be taken seriously precisely because Athens had its humiliating defeat. Socrates comes along and questions Athenian tradition and culture just when things are at their most sensitive, particularly after the Rule of the Twenty. Here you have a guy who hates democracy and doesn't think the traditional myths are true, and he likes elitist caste systems like Sparta. Oh, and he has a big following among the youth of the aristocrats. So if Athens wins, his following is much smaller. People aren't as aggreived at his attacks on Athens traditions. His connection to Alciabades isn't a big deal, especially if Alciabades stayed loyal to Athens. So he isn't put on trial, he's not executed, and not martyred. At best he becomes a footnote to history, only known to specialists who know of him as a guy satirized in Aristophanes the Clouds. That takes Plato out the timeline likely (unless he just becomes yet another Pythagorean), and with that, one of the major influences on Christianity - no neoplatonists, no Paul of Tarsus. Oh, and no Alexander the Great - no Aristotle to tutor him, and Greece is more united around Athens when Macedonia kicked up trouble. So, yeah, incalculable consequences.
When I first read this I thought it said "what if aliens won the Peloponnesian war"
@@jadegecko same lol
Good hunting, Stalker.
So it’s STALKER setting more or less
Nice scenario, though as someone with Masters in nuclear engineering, I have to point out that it would be impossible for larger % of uranium in the reactor to explode. There is some complicated laws in nature in work, but there is a reason you need >90% U-235 to build a uranium nuke, like the one used in Hiroshima. With nuclear power plant level enrichment, most of the uranium simply won't explode.
I thought he just meant more material is released by the initial explosion, not that more of it explodes
Video idea: What if Yugoslavia never broke up? (Perhaps Tito named a successor or Slobodan Milosevic never came to power)
You know this topic idea is glowing
It's positively radiating.
By no means is the HBO show an example of rigorous historical accuracy, but what is Cody referring to with "the ludicrous theory proposed by the HBO show, in which a thermonuclear blast blows up all four reactors"? Is there a scene I'm forgetting where characters are talking about how it could have been hypothetically worse?
Yes, the Chernobyl show makes baffling claims about the reactor producing a nuclear explosion that would render half of Europe uninhabitable.
@@PlatinumAltaria I think I found the scene being referenced: ruclips.net/video/CjM_97uKedQ/видео.html at about 1:45
@@PlatinumAltaria
Not that baffling.
This video indicates how it could have happened.
@@alanpennie You need to actually listen to the video.
was there an ending that got cut? This video just stops abruptly
I think that was on purpose.
Also, hi, Weasel.
@@ProGremlinPlayer yo
I once tried to make an alt history scenario where Chernobyl was used as a ploy by the USSR to try and defeat the West, blaming Western spies for the tragedy. Pushing the "7 days to the Rhine" campaign and World War 3.
the Soviets would be fighting both the afghans and the west at the same time
Such an approach would fail miserably. The USSR could barely fight a proxy war in Afghanistan, they had absolutely no business attempting a full on global war at this point. Not only would NATO completely destroy them within weeks, many of the border states would likely disobey and fall into revolution.
Video ends abruptly
the radiation gottim 😢
Scenario Idea: What if Cyrus The Great never existed?
You monster, you are a genius
One way to make any alternate historian suicidal is to make them work on a PoD set in Antiquity.
Now that's a biggun
Nice, an alternative history intro to an already alternative history video.
Never forget 3 armed Chernobyl men, sounds like a cartoon network episode.
Do a video about "What if Harambe had converted to Islam?"
I, the Igor Nesterenko, fully and truly support this idea!
Halalbe?
15:54 music for this chapter is called “Beyond the Western Hills”
I am Romanian. My family lives in an area very close to the Danube and my grandparents were really scared back then about the water. My paternal grandma still remembers the day they were issued Iodine Pills at the factory she worked at to give to her whole family.
2022 Actual Russia: Ah yes, we must occupy Chernobyl to free innocent, radioactive Laika puppies from Ukraine in special 3-day operation.
2022 Alternative Russia: Nah bruh, that's all Ukraine, they can keep Chernobyl.
16:17 this is the moment I realised Gorbachev's birthmark was the map of Mexico💀
Guys I just recently noticed Cody from Pointlesshub is the same Cody from this channel, how did it take so long for me to notice?
i think they're actually cousins
@@derevianne1108 I think Cody has another channel with his cousin, and his cousin has his own channel.
@I-io8ee ohh its his brother I thought it was his cousin
You need to do a part 2 for this.
Well that ended suddenly. Fitting of the horror of such an event.
17:32 did anyone notice that the red…thing on Gorbachev’s head is actually a red map of Mexico? Look closely!
0:18 So that's where they got the inspiration for the X-Men
Didn't they debut in the 60's
I’ve never seen a long form youtube video that straight up just ENDED before. It’s fun
The “inexperienced” crew were following orders from the deputy chief engineer Dyatlov. It was his hubris alongside the design flaws of the reactor that caused the accident not the inexperience of the operators.
13:57 ..."radioactive iodine which would cause pounding headaches and thyroid cancel"
😅😂
Corium shares the strange property that liquid sodium chloride has with water. It explodes when it falls into a body of water. The Japanese reactors are a different story all together. water couldnt even get close to the liquid corium in the reactors.
Kinda funny how the cold war basically ended with the USSR accidentally nuking itself.
You think I didn't notice, but I did, you used Mexico for Gorbachev's birthmark, funny as hell!
i feel like this should have a part 2 showing the global change of such a thing.