#radioactive exclusion zone

[rock-and-stone-dinnerbone]

A chunk of gold in the Radioactive Exclusion Zone

[kindlyfunkn]

Mine is the dense biozone, i love the unique plant-life (especially the big leaves that lift you up) + the big brain rocks, also the colour scheme is the most pleasing to me and it's cool when you dig and the dirt has red and blue on different facets it makes it look shimmery.

ALSO also the winding pits I like traveling up and down them making paths on the sides (also the thrill of one wrong move, and i plummet to my doom (THOSE WALLS ARE SLIPPERY)).

[homebrewstims]

Chernobyl Created the World's Rarest Dogs (part 1?)

Full shots + square versions

Though this isn't my footage, these are my gifs. See my terms of use BEFORE you reupload!

[nuclear-breakdown]

Favorite Videos, Movies, TV Shows About Nuclear/ Radioactive Topics

If reading isn’t your style, visual media is always an engaging way to absorb information. I have spent a fair amount of time scouring On Demand and YouTube for information on these subjects. Most focus on the dire consequences of nuclear power, as that is a lot more interesting to watch than explaining how a light water graphite-moderated reactor works. But, still, if you want to engage in more content around this topic, here are my top 5.

5. “Nuclear Explosions Compilation High Quality” by Dom Productions on YouTube- Just a small sampling of atomic bomb tests that were filmed over the years. All sources come from atomcentral.com, where a restoration expert named Peter Kuran fixes up the tapes and showcases them on the website. Witnessing the absolute power that these weapons have is both mesmerizing and horrifying. Well worth a watch if you can handle the repeated booms.

4. “The Babushkas of Chernobyl” by Holly Morris on Prime Video- The Exclusion Zone from the Chernobyl disaster is 30 kilometers from the reactor itself. Many people living in towns and villages were forced to flee their homes due to the unending threat of radiation. But there are some people who have defied the official government ruling and have returned to their homes located in the Exclusion Zone. Some have been named ‘babushkas,’ grandmothers who wish to be where they have always been, despite the potential dangers. A story of resilience and bravery, it is a fascinating watch to learn more about the real people who were affected by the Chernobyl disaster.

3. “A Brief History of: The Demon Core (Short Documentary)” by Plainly Difficult on YouTube- Plainly Difficult (John) has uploaded many videos regarding nuclear accidents. An underrated channel, I think this is the perfect video to begin exploring his stuff. This one hunk of plutonium is responsible for two deaths, hence its name. The circumstance behind both incidents is a harrowing tale, and John summarized it succinctly and with grace.

2. “I Got Access to Chernobyl’s Deadliest Area” by Kyle Hill on YouTube- Not many people get access to inside the New Safe Containment. The largest moving structure, this giant arch covers Reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl and the old Sarcophagus. He goes to places most people will never be able to see, coming along with a team of scientists. Accompanied by the constant screams of Geiger counters, Hill still promotes the positives that nuclear power can do for the world, if only we learn from our mistakes.

1. “Chernobyl” by Craig Mazin on HBO- To the surprise of no one, this award-winning production is a must-watch. While not completely accurate to the 1986 disaster, it still captures and shows the reality of the disaster. Incredible acting, enthralling soundtrack, beautiful scenery, and despite its faults on some factual points, the cultural impact this mini-series has had speaks for itself.

[hyenaswine]

this is such a strange question, or a strange way to phrase whatever question they're trying to ask. how long? certainly they're not trying to imply that the dogs have lived 37 years. do the chernobyl strays live longer than your average ukrainian feral dog? are they asking how the population has persisted? dogs reach sexual maturity & can start having puppies at around 6 months. exposure to the radiation in the exclusion zone isn't acute; it's something that's dangerous as it builds up in the body & generates cancers, depletes white cells, etc. they've survived because they can breed faster than the radiation can kill them, basically. it should theoretically make breeding itself less often successful (due to reduced fertility & increased fetal abnormalities) but these are dogs, there's a reason why they have large litters & can breed so frequently. life is designed to persist, it's a numbers game. anyway obvs i should just read the damn article but i really got stuck on the question itself.

also radioactivity technically isn't the problem here, since that's really just a measure of how dangerous they are to others. radiation can kill you without you yourself being radioactive & putting out radioactivity. radioactivity is more like contagion, but you don't HAVE to be contagious to be sick. the measure of the dogs' radioactivity isn't a measure of what radiation exposure has done to their bodies, is my point. it's just lazy wording but i feel like science writers need to be really specific to avoid spreading more misinfo about how all this shit works.

[once-and-future-alaskan]

The problem with wanting to introduce more independent/unaligned/minor states and powers to Følslava is I can only skirt the nuke issue so long.

For just about any industrialized nation, making a nuke isn't really that hard. All the science and information is out there, it's just acquiring the material that prevents universal global proliferation. Both because of its relative scarcity and extensive international law.

But in the case of entire worlds of independent states and countless more resource rich but unclaimed planets, the needed material is now abundantly common and free flowing.

I can't really just...not acknowledge that, ya know?

[mindblowingscience]

Microscopic worms that live their lives in the highly radioactive environment of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) appear to do so completely free of radiation damage. Nematodes collected from the area have shown no sign of damage to their genomes, contrary to what might be expected for organisms living in such a dangerous place. The finding, published earlier this year, doesn't suggest the CEZ is safe, the researchers say, but rather the worms are resilient and able to adroitly adapt to conditions that might be inhospitable to other species. This, says a team of biologists led by Sophia Tintori of New York University, could offer some insights into DNA repair mechanisms that could one day be adapted for use in human medicine.

Continue Reading.

[crashional-thinker]

ok fellas.

[snavian]

NEW POLL because the previous one has made me very curious!

[naomiknight-17]

#i probably come off sounding pretentious when i get excited about radiation incidents#like. uhm actually hiroshima was an airburst explosion so the fallout is minimal. chernobyl however exploded on the ground and included...#hot particles which blah blah blah

I Would Like To Hear More

@chasm-connected

Okay gosh uhm

I am not an expert in any way, but basically what I was referencing is how the different types of explosions (Hiroshima atom bomb air burst vs Chernobyl reactor meltdown) had drastically different levels of fallout

Let me preface by saying that this in no way is meant to minimize the real destruction, pain and suffering caused by the Hiroshima bombing - that is unspeakably heinous, but that is another post. This is specifically about the science of nuclear fallout

When the Hiroshima bomb exploded, it had not yet reached the ground. The heat and shockwave it produced were extreme and deadly, but the radiation did not stick around as long as one may expect. When that kind of explosion goes off in the air, radioactive particles disperse in the atmosphere and die out relatively quickly. Hiroshima today is a thriving metropolis - forever changed by its nuclear history but safe and livable!

Chernobyl, however, is another story entirely. The exclusion zone is still considered uninhabitable. One could visit and even spend a day or two in the area, but living there every day (as some people do, but again, that's another post) could have serious health effects. The ambient radiation levels are unsafe, even miles from ground zero.

Why?

Well. When the reactor exploded, it sent actual pieces of radioactive fuel into the atmosphere, which rained down all over the immediate area. Not particles that would disperse in the air, whole pieces of active fuel rods just... everywhere. There are still tiny bits of these rods and similarly radioactive materials from the explosion just... hanging out on and in the ground in Chernobyl, continuing to put out radiation. This is in addition to the core of the reactor that actually melted down, but that has been largely enclosed and shielded (though as it continues to slowly degrade there is a risk of further contamination to the ground/groundwater - another post!) The little hot particles everywhere? How do you shield or enclose them? How do you even find them all without putting people in danger? If you could, how long would it take?

There's more to it, of course, and if you want to learn more I highly recommend the Half Life Histories series of videos on YouTube by Kyle Hill. He's an actual scientist who can explain this stuff SO much better than I ever could.

[lensman-arms-race]

There appear to be fungi in the Chernobyl exclusion zone that actually use the radiation as an energy source. (We can't verify whether that's what they're doing, though. Because radiation dangerous!)

Even if it's not what these fungi are doing, it doesn't seem too outlandish that something might evolve to use radioactivity as its energy source. Wherever there's an energy source, something will evolve to exploit it.

What I'm getting at: mushrooms growing inside the Titans' core chambers. And of course they're glowing (in the Titan's core colour) and delicious. (Titan Camera's are probably the tastiest because when he uses his core flame, it cooks them nicely. 😆)

[jellysshitpoems]

Thoughts on the Chernobyl HBO miniseries (assuming you’ve watched it)? I really enjoyed it but I’ve heard that some big parts of it were inaccurate

Sorry this took awhile to get to I had classes all day

I really liked the show, a lot of it was fairly accurate, but it’s a tv show so of course some things were played up for dramas sake and shock value. The only part of it that really stuck out to me was the way they portrayed radiation poisoning, it’s not completely false I suppose… but its definitely not accurate lmao

It’s been awhile since I watched it, I prefer actual documentaries when it comes to real stories, but from what I remember they showed the firefighters skin as like translucent almost??? Which isn’t how that works. They also showed in one of the scenes a power plant worker bleeding immediately after holding a door open to which also isn’t accurate. Radiation sickness technically can cause bleeding like that, but it was way too soon for it to be happening. I could go on, but radiation sickness isn’t the most fun topic

The only thing I specifically disliked about the show was the public response, which isn’t really the fault of the creators. The amount of tourists doing stupid shit in the exclusion zone/Pripyat just makes me cringe. People moving untouched items, painting radioactive things ‘fun’ colours for cool photo ops, taking radioactive materials as souvenirs… awful. I even remember this one ‘sexy’ photo in a decontamination suit posted on instagram that was taken in the middle of the city. Its disrespectful. Not to mention A HEALTH HAZARD. But Chernobyl tourism is a different topic entirely.

Buy yeah, thinking back to the show radiation sickness is the only inaccuracy I can really remember, other then the miners getting naked in the tunnels, that didn’t happen, but it was funny so Ill give them that!

[5hrine]

Be Not Afraid

The first Angel emerged from the spirit reactor as it melted down. Though it looked not like any angel depicted in human art, or imagination, or suffering, any who looked upon it knew that this was an Angel, and it brought with it divinity.

It was born into immense devastation, apparently a necessity for its conception, though it had no memory of the shell from which it hatched. In retrospect, it is no wonder that an Angel would emerge from such a fundamental and destructive breaking. That is the nature of it – something must end for something else to begin.

That isn’t to say it did not resemble its previous self. Its wings were made from many overlapping shards of its core casing, each like a series of nested teeth, closer to fangs than to feathers. Warning text and diagrams useless to it now decorated bits of its wings haphazardly. Wires twisted around its limbs and chest, seeming to emerge from its skin but from invisible wounds. Its arms and legs sprouted cubic crystalline structures along them, resembling the fuel rods that once beat within it like a heart. Its eyes were pale and ever-shifting, made from the grains of salt which once ran through it like blood. Its talons dripped with an ichor that could only have been what remained of the soul that it was meant to exploit.

Its silver halo fractaled inward at all angles, entrancing and radioactive in equal measure; a reminder of its purpose, once upon a time.

Its first question after we were able to make our way into the exclusion zone was, “What is my purpose?” The team of marines and scientists struggled to answer its question, shocked as they were to find the source of the salt footprints which dotted the zone out from the former location of the reactor’s core. The last thing they expected to find was an Angel among the ash.

One of the team stood out from the rest. A corporal who, despite orders to the contrary, approached the first Angel without fear and held out her hand. “What would you like your purpose to be?” she asked as the rest of the team fell silent, enraptured. The Angel took her hand carefully, cautiously, as though afraid it might get hurt by this simple touch.

“I do not know.” it replied, voice a chorus of electricity and many simultaneous whispers. “Is it strange that I am afraid to answer?”

The corporal just shook her head and removed her coat. She placed it over the Angel’s naked shoulders, up under its sharp wings. She assisted it in cleaning off the remnants of its explosion, revealing the crystalline skin underneath layers of hot carbon dust. The Angel towered over her, and yet she was not afraid. Even as she pulled debris from between the layers of its wings, even as she removed loose wires from its matted hair.

When it was finally clean, the corporal and the Angel talked for a long, long time. She learned that it remembered nothing before the moment of its rebirth. It wasn’t and then it was, living, feeling, breathing, seeing. It became clear that it could not be left there among the wreckage. It felt pain. It breathed. The Angel was brought home, among people. Before long new Angels walked among us, shown divinity by the first and from their own moments of contradictory explosion.

The trauma of the Angel’s birth left it innocent, unaware. Lacking suitable foundation, its understanding of the world fell out from under it as it became something new. It was left with no choice but to learn it all again through new eyes. It took patience and grace for it to come to terms with this. To give itself the space to learn. The corporal stood by its side the whole time.

This is, indeed, how you were born. From an ending you began. And you are just beginning - you must give yourself the grace to grow. You are an Angel, built from a moment or maybe more of suffering and your previous selves. You resemble them, perhaps.

But you are far more beautiful.

[hands0mejack]

Yesterday was the 38th anniversary of the tragedy at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Due to supervisor negligence during a routine test, Reactor 4 was unable to cool properly. [Too many cooling rods were removed and no one noticed] This resulted in steam explosions and ultimately a full meltdown. Of the 6,000 plant workers: 2 people lost their lives in the initial explosion, 237 were hospitalized (134 exhibited acute ARS and 28 died) and 100,000~ people had to evacuate their homes never to return. It will take years for the radioactive isotopes to decay. Projected cleanup year is 2065.

Before the Ukraine-Russia war, people were able to tour the city, staying well away from the 1,000 sq mi exclusion zone around the plant.

The most fascinating thing (to me) is the Elephants Foot. Its a large mass of radioactive and man-made materials that formed after the meltdown. The material flowed 49 ft to the southeast of the reactor and 20 ft below ground level. It melted through 6.6 ft of reinforced concrete before settling in the back of room 217/2.

Radioactivity near the Elephants Foot was approximately 80 to 100 grays per hour, delivering a 50/50 lethal dose of radiation (4.5 grays) within five minutes. Between May and November 1986, a shelter (the "Sarcophagus") was constructed to help seal the radioactive materials inside Reactor Number 4.

In 1996, Radiation Specialist Artur Korneyev took several photographs of the Elephants Foot. Some call him the most radioactive man in the world. Artur took up close photos of the mass and produced a very famous "selfie" seen below. The grainy effect is due to the high levels of radiation.

His current status is unknown, but in a 2016 interview he said he was working on construction of a $1.5 billion arch that, when finished in 2017, will cap the decaying sarcophagus and prevent airborne isotopes from escaping. In his mid 60s, he was sickly, with cataracts, and had been barred from re-entering the sarcophagus after years of irradiation.

Pictured below:

☆ Artur Korneyev with the Elephants Foot 1996

☆ View of the city of Pripyat with Chernobyl in the background 2009

☆ The "Sarcophagus" + a picture of the destroyed reactor right after the accident

☆ The "Red Forest" around Pripyat 2009

☆ A piglet with Dipygus at the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum

☆ Map of radiation levels around Chernobyl in 1996

☆ Radiation exposure to first responders at Chernobyl in comparison to a range of situations

[house-of-mirrors]

After a few years of playing skies, I finally did a proper exploration of the Clockwork Sun tonight and just... wow

I felt like I was walking into both an actively melting down reactor and the exclusion zone after. Everything bleached by poison light, pools of corrupted hours, the law distorted and radioactive and merciless. Something that will either kill you in the blink of an eye or make you wish you were dead while melting your brain into song

The dome shattering so suddenly that there wasn't even time to panic. Everyone inside instantly turned to glass, gone in a moment.

The engineers, devoted despite the utter futility of the job. The chief dedicated to the machine, to her machine; the team dedicated to London, and neither can be saved.

A peace that fights to overwhelm you. Prisoners bursting into song that rises in time with bursts of light. Two words repeated in a mad scrawl all over the walls. "It hates us." "A god cannot fail."

"I need to get my family to the reach" was the part of it that most illustrated the terror for me. This whole region of the sky is going down once the machine fails. An empire built on folly and hubris.

I've always had a morbid interest in radiation disasters so... gonna be rotating this in my brain for a while. That horror game sure can horror!!!

And I am... thinking about the Clockwork Sun and the Broken Steward vs the Halved and Mr Barleycorn. What drives a mortal to such devotion?

[sqarletsworldlesswandering]

Worldless AU: Condemned Testing Area

This is my own riff on Octa's original ask about a Fallout-style AU. Have some assorted worldbuilding! Also note - For my own sake this operates on Eclipsed worldbuilding, just with a different cast of main characters.

VERY long post ahead:

The nuking of the constellations happens courtesy of our resident nuisance Worldless.

Long story short, TOFA cast “screw everything in that general direction” on the world in the format of a ball of radioactive Ouch, and things went downhill from there. 

There’s approximately a 2 day warning period of “Something Bad™ is about to happen” before ground zero. The first day there’s a ball of weird light and the beginnings of a weird green atmospheric haze. The second day there’s a lot more green, the light is much bigger, and it's unseasonably warm out. At the beginning of the third day, all hell breaks loose. 

Starfolk who realized what was going on - i.e. the lucky handful of sapients at the time and anything with an intelligence above the average tadpole - took cover (or... at least tried). They tried to run underground, tried to get underwater, a few tried to get higher up. A couple of the sapients tried going to the Inbetween on the off chance that it was immune. 

Those who went to high ground managed to get clear of the worst of the immediate damage from the shockwave, but got a heavy slough of radiation and a number of landslides after said shockwave. That radiation messed with their essence and rendered them sick for a while. They recovered eventually, but are still noticeably more feeble.

Those who found water or got far enough underground were largely fine, although some of the undergrounders had to reckon with cave-ins and debris. One unfortunate pair got trapped for a bit. Luckily - or perhaps unluckily - Starfolk don't exactly die of starvation or suffocation....

Those who went to the Inbetween were fine - the Inbetween protected them from the brunt of the explosion and created a weird safe zone from radiation.

However, it also got ripped open.

Now it’s this weird bubble zone mishmash of all the connected constellations. From the outside you can’t see much, from the inside you can sorta see a very distorted outside, and everything is through this weird golden yellow dusty haze. It’s also much brighter inside now, mostly a silvery grey, with a bunch of shards from the doors, and flora from each zone taking over the space. It can be used as a navigation hub still. 

Interestingly, the cyclical parts of it (i.e. east-west, north-south, and the bits between zones elsewhere) do still exist, and can be traveled through as normal, though they bear the same form as the hub now. However, the difference is you can also get from those areas to the hub by simply walking off the path in the appropriate direction. Your surroundings will shift suddenly, and you’ll be in the hub. 

Very nearly all of the world is enveloped in an effective exclusion zone, but some areas at the very fringes of some constellations - especially the ones that were blocked off in the conflict - have significantly less radiation and were the first to bounce back.

All of the Starfolk who were already alive when ground zero happened are…comparatively unmutated. Perhaps a little bit singed, rather irradiated, and possibly flattened into the ground, but still unmutated.

The new Starfolk are… not. 

Everything is now irradiated and largely reduced to rubble, and the environments show it. Toxic sludgy water, areas of completely scorched out land, crumbling structures taken out at the base by the shockwave, and of course mutations out the wazoo. 

E.g. the Sanctuary turns pretty sickly for a while, and all the platforms get rusted and crumbly. The Ravine is smoggy and all its water is ashy. The Bog is clogged up with steam and haze and the water is sludgy. The Forest is nearly leveled and what isn't flattened is still scorched, and there's no canopy anymore. The Golden Spire no longer has windows, it's base is heavily cracked and slowly crumbling, and it's starting to tip - it's been abandoned for fear of its toppling. The Silver Peaks are covered in cloud and haze, virtually unnavigable.

The Emerald Sanctuary is no more.

Water is largely unsafe for even Dark starfolk now, and flighted starfolk can't fly too high for fear of acidity and harsh electrical currents. Even the Lightfolk can't quite reckon with those.

As another consequence, all the nebulas that Starlets were born get all messed up, and all the results are equally messed up -  

A chunk of the mutations are harmful, most of them are problematic but survivable, and a very very few are semi beneficial. 

Stars getting stuck together at formation, loose "genes" attaching to forming starlets, light and dark fusion and muddling of polarity, extra limbs and bits of shell, missing limbs and shell, body parts in the wrong place, discoloration, altered magic behavior, forms getting stuck permanently as physical or abstract, or worse yet an awkward half and half mixture of the two, all of which mean energy is being released too much or too little, altered essence in general that then messes with magic and energy....

Sometimes essence manifests externally and just bleeds, or they have weird holes in their shell, or areas where it's multiple layers thick and overlapping itself until something splits or gets too heavy.

Some extra limbs aren't even supported by an underlying extraction and just... burn energy without being very functional.

Starlets end up with extra and vestigial cores, vestigial limbs and shelling. Two or more starlets might get melded together, or one gets split in half or smaller until the shards of multiple starlets cluster together into into a chimeric parody of fusion.

Trouble is, starfolk don’t die of disease or age or anything. They just… continue to exist in pain. 

However, the Conflict is also effectively nullified, so sentience and sapience start coming into play again.

That said, there’s still a lot of hostility, because everyone’s confused and in pain and the effects of the conflict are still very present.

And, of course, most of them are the equivalent of wild animals. There’s deer and there’s bears. Every now and then, one wakes up into their full mind again. 

A group of sapients - mostly wanderers but some others - band together as a strange "rescue group" doubling as "mercy killers." They go around finding starfolk that are encumbered, incapacitated, or agonized by their mutations. If they can, they try to help them. See if there’s anything they can amputate or treat, any mobility aids they can make. If they can’t help, they kill it. If it’s sapient, they will always get permission first. They don't do it by absorption though - that's a surefire way to end up acquiring mutations. Instead, they've figured out a means of essence bleeding, and will put the starfolk into a heavy sleep before bleeding them out until they dissipate and reduce to their core. That core is then buried in a designated sarcophagus zone.

Life sorta… picks itself up from there. 

Oh, and then TOFA pulls an MCSM Romeo and decides to just… slap a rock ceiling over the place before starting over with whatever they do in their next iteration.

So now everything is super dark.

Well, except the Inbetween, that keeps its hazy yellow glow when you’re inside it. 

Oh, and there's no natural starlight anymore. Or day cycles.

Lots of bioluminescence starts comin’ up, and everyone realizes just how dark the sky is without stars.

Anything that needs light to grow either adapts artificial light or bioluminescence.

Thankfully most things don't strictly need oxygen or much light to grow, so there's that.

At long last, the worst of the active radiation dies off after a few decades, and the floral ecosystem recovers very quickly. The fauna and people... take a little longer. The Nebulas need a lot more time to recover.

The saving grace of survival lies in zones like the Sunglow Jungle, the Diopside Marina (ironically), the Twilight Tundra, and Amaranth Swamps. Because these areas got quarantined from the main set, the radiation damage doesn't hit them quite as hard, if only by a fraction. The areas adjacent to the Inbetween are about the same as elsewhere, but the very tail edges of the zones and some spaces in their middles are less damaged and recover quickly. The Swamps and Jungle in particular host a pair of Nebulas - one dark and one light - that were relatively safe from the radiation.

Some of the researchers in our "rescue crew" discover that if you can remove a developing starlet-core from its nebula and transfer it to a stable, uncontaminated one, the starlet can be mostly saved and come out close to normal.

The icing on the cake is that the transferred starlet has no negative impact on the nebula it's been moved to.

A few pockets of ecosystem explosion pop up as well.

The Lucerni, however, never quite recover fully.

Partly from the absence of starlight, and partly by the sheer damage already done to their populations by the Conflict, the Lucerni population is nigh nonexistent.

A couple adaptive strands pop up eventually, developed to grow on artificial light or other bioluminescence. These Lucerni don't glow quite so brightly, and appear in a variety of colors rather than mostly white iridescence.