To be fatal within days you need about 10,000 mSv of exposure. Even with heavy fallout, exposure would probably be around 10 mSv per hour.
If I saw that sign I'd be a hell of a lot more concerned than "oh, miniscule cancer risk later in life, meh, I guess I'll just slowboat this one".
Maybe not what was intended but that's how I see it
https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/radiatio...
In reality, a much larger danger are heavy radioactive isotopes that can be eaten/breathed in. E.g. you can walk in most of the Chernobyl areas, but don't you dare eating anything that grows there.
https://www.meti.go.jp/english/earthquake/nuclear/roadmap/pd...
You are permitted to drive through but not stop or get out of your car. I presume ordinary speed limits apply though, so no exciting post-apocalyptic signage.
THEY STILL DO!!!!
This is what drives me nuts about our politics: so many people seem to think we can flirt with the sort of nationalism (1) that led us into WWI and WWII. But, friends, that road leads to your death in every direction. Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing. Nuclear peace only works as long as all parties persistently work toward de-escalation, which can be measured by adherence to consensus and norms. Nationalism is antithetical to that posture. The iconoclast leaders of national populism are rooted in rulebreaking. They also tend to embrace strong foreign policy talk as a short term bolster to domestic support, again, antithetical to de-escalation.
Look at any white nationalist terrorist organization. These are people who risk their lives to blow up buildings (sometimes their own government's), commit assassinations. They are aware they are putting their own lives at risk, but they do so anyway because in their minds they are doing the only thing that makes sense. In a competition with belligerent nations, nationalist zealots are happy to die for the cause.
The only thing that can stop them is if the non-zealots, who are never as motivated, come out of the woodwork to stop them. As we've seen time and time again, most regular people just aren't willing to risk their own safety or standing in community to speak out against or fight against those who are doing wrong in their community. This is why nationalists win. They are way more inclined to get in people's faces than calmer, more rational folks. Easier and safer to go along with the crowd. And so goes a nation.
It's curious how nationalists, who often claim their stance is grounded in objective truths, almost always champion the nation of their birth.
I've heard the phrase "the more of the third world you bring in, the more similar your country will be to the third world".
And be there no mistake - the countries that these people call "third world" don't want European or American culture infiltrating their societies either.
Do you feel that your culture is better than that? Would you consider that an emotional attachment to your culture?
Edit: It was G.B. Shaw!
'Patriotism is the conviction that the country of your birth is superior to others because you were born in it.'
Here is an YLE-news article from as corrected by Claude that caught my eye & touches Syria, from last year:
"December 21, 2024
Works Cited
Visala, Hanna. "Analyysi: Erikoisinta Putinin neljän tunnin showssa oli paljastus, kenen kanssa hän mieluusti joisi teetä." YLE, 19 Dec. 2024, yle.fi/a/74-20132517.
"Results of the Year with Vladimir Putin." President of Russia, 19 Dec. 2024, en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/75909.
Note on Sources and Methodology This analysis examines two primary sources: Hanna Visala's article published by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Company) and the official transcript from the Kremlin website. All translations from Finnish to English are by the author, with original Finnish text provided for verification. In accordance with Journalistin ohjeet (The Guidelines for Journalists), particular attention has been paid to accuracy in source attribution and fact-checking (JSN Guidelines 7, 9, and 10).
Executive Summary This analysis examines YLE's December 19, 2024 coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual year-end press conference against the official transcript. Our investigation reveals significant discrepancies between the reporting and source material, raising important questions about journalistic practices in covering complex geopolitical events.
Methodology Our analysis employs systematic comparison of:
Direct quotations from both sources Context preservation Attribution accuracy Supporting evidence Omission patterns Key Findings 1. Unverified Attribution YLE's most significant claim lacks source verification:
YLE's text:
"Putin myös sanoi, että jos voisi palata ajassa taaksepäin, hän olisi aloittanut sodan jo aiemmin." [Translation: "Putin also said that if he could go back in time, he would have started the war earlier."]
This statement appears nowhere in the official transcript, raising serious concerns about attribution standards.
2. The Kursk Situation YLE's portrayal:
"Kysymys siitä, milloin Kurskin alue 'vapautetaan Ukrainan joukoista', sai Putinin rykimään hermostuneesti. Putin vastasi, että 'potkimme heidät varmasti ulos', mutta ei sanonut tarkkoja päivämääriä." [Translation: "Question about when the Kursk area would be 'liberated from Ukrainian forces' made Putin cough nervously. Putin answered that 'we will definitely kick them out' but didn't give exact dates."]
Official Transcript:
"We will undoubtedly drive them out. There is no alternative. Concerning a precise date – I am afraid I cannot specify one at this moment. I have an understanding of the plans, which are regularly reported to me. However, it is not possible to declare a specific date. The troops can hear me now; if I were to specify a date, they would go to great lengths to meet it, potentially disregarding casualties. We cannot allow that."
The transcript reveals a strategic explanation for withholding dates, contrasting with YLE's interpretation of nervousness.
3. Economic Coverage YLE's coverage largely omits substantial economic discussions present in the transcript.
Official Transcript's Economic Data:
"Last year Russia increased its GDP by 3.6 percent, and this year the economy is expected to grow by 3.9 percent, or possibly even four percent... What this means is that our economy will have grown by eight percent over the past two years... Unemployment is at its all-time low of 2.3 percent. We have not experienced anything like this before."
This omission significantly affects readers' understanding of the complete context.
4. North Korea Claims YLE's assertion:
"Venäjän joukkojen rinnalla taistelevista Pohjois-Korean joukoista Putin ei maininnut sanaakaan. Ukrainan hyökkäys Kurskiin ja Pohjois-Korean joukkoihin tukeutuminen olivat selvästi odottamaton takaisku Putinin suunnitelmassa." [Translation: "Putin didn't say a word about North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces. Ukraine's attack on Kursk and reliance on North Korean troops were clearly an unexpected setback in Putin's plan."]
The transcript shows no context requiring discussion of foreign troops, instead detailing specific Russian units:
"Fighting alongside them are the 810th Marine Brigade of the Black Sea Fleet, the 76th and 106th divisions of the Airborne Troops, and motorised infantry of the Sever Group."
5. Syria Coverage YLE's characterization:
"Toinen kiusallinen aihe Putinille oli selvästi Syyria. Hän joutui vastaamaan yhdysvaltalaisen NBC-tv-kanavan kysymykseen Syyriassa 12 vuotta sitten kadonneen amerikkalaisen toimittajan kohtalosta. Putin yski kysymyksen päälle ja pyysi esittämään sen uudelleen." [Translation: "Another uncomfortable topic for Putin was clearly Syria. He had to answer NBC's question about the fate of an American journalist who disappeared in Syria 12 years ago. Putin coughed over the question and asked for it to be repeated."]
Official Transcript:
"Frankly, I have not met with President Bashar al-Assad after his arrival in Moscow. But I plan to do it and will certainly talk to him... I promise that I will definitely ask him this question just like we can forward this question to the people who are controlling the situation on the ground in Syria today."
6. Military Situation Assessment YLE's brief characterization:
"Putin näytti hyväkuntoiselta ja esiintyi varmasti vuosittaisessa tv-spektaakkelissaan. Hän kehui Venäjän taloutta – kuten aina – ja ylisti joukkojensa voittoja Ukrainassa." [Translation: "Putin appeared healthy and confident in his annual TV spectacle. He praised Russia's economy - as always - and praised his troops' victories in Ukraine."]
Official Transcript's detailed military assessment:
"The combat readiness of the Russian Armed Forces is the highest in the world today. I assure you it is the highest... As far as I know, the number of armoured vehicles destroyed in the Kursk Region has now exceeded the number of vehicles destroyed on the entire line of contact last year – in any case, these are comparable figures."
Systematic Issues Identified Attribution Problems:
Unverified quotes Interpretation presented as direct statement Absence of source verification for key claims Contextual Omissions:
Economic data Policy discussions Strategic context Qualifying statements Narrative Framing:
Emphasis on perceived weakness Selective quote usage Interpretative statements presented as fact Balance Issues:
Limited perspective presentation Omission of contradictory information Selective context application Recommendations for Improved Coverage Source Verification:
Direct quote verification Clear attribution standards Primary source consultation Context Preservation:
Complete quote inclusion Relevant background maintenance Balanced perspective presentation Interpretative Clarity:
Clear separation of fact and analysis Multiple perspective consideration Transparent reasoning for interpretations Conclusion This analysis reveals significant divergences between YLE's coverage and the primary source material. While editorial choices are necessary in news coverage, the extent of these divergences raises concerns about accurate public information dissemination. The findings suggest a need for more rigorous adherence to journalistic standards in complex geopolitical coverage.
Methodology Note: This analysis compared the complete Finnish language YLE article (Visala, YLE, 19.12.2024) with the official English language transcript from the Kremlin website (President of Russia, 19.12.2024). All translations of Finnish text were verified by native speakers. The analysis focused on verifiable content comparison rather than subjective interpretation."
Claude was given the transcript from Kremlin's site. YLE news is funded by Finland & supposed to not to be heavily biased, officially speaking.
>we can flirt with the sort of nationalism that led us into WWI and WWII
who are you speaking for? because nationalism didn't lead us, the US, into either world war; a desire on the part of our elected officials to save/preserve our democratic European allies did; that and a direct attack from the Empire of Japan.
>Mutually Assured Destruction is still a thing
yes, and thank God, because Mutually Assured Destruction is what we call that which has kept and keeps the peace. As far as nuclear weapons go, fear of being on the receiving end is what deters their use.
The Russians keep mentioning the use of nuclear weapons; it's important not to back down in the face of that, because if we do, it will only repeat and increase. Iran, well you have to decide if they are just a different ideology, or if they are a death cult. If they're just a different ideology, MAD will work there too; if they are a death cult, you should advocate that we mutually assure their destruction before they get any.
running around like a headless chicken setting the hands on a mythical clock does not achieve anything except scaring people, and people don't do their best thinking when scared.
Personally I understood "us" in this sentence as global citizen, people from Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa who had their grandfathers living during WWI and WWII.
I think the better question would be if China crossed the Yalu River today and joined the North Koreans to assault South Korea, what would the response of the US, South Korea, and Japan be? The latter two can trivially develop nuclear weapons if the US security situation degrades.
I think wielding nuclear weapons requires a baseline level of competence to exploit.
I still wouldn't want to be in Seoul or Tokyo if that happens though, and yes, there's a non-zero risk somebody somewhere gets trigger happy and things spiral out of control.
If the US sent its own troops to invade China today, do you think we be here to talk about it tomorrow? That would be no Cabinet war.
His mother was like a modern PR machine, and is the reason he has a mostly positive reputation. He left alot of dead Americans in the tracks of his journey to glory.
Crazy to think that we might have had a world with a unified democratic Korea and no North Korea had this not happened.
MacArthur was too cocky.
To say the least.
The statement was silent, of course, on the secret testimony of Marshall, Bradley, Vandenberg and Collins. MacArthur thereby escaped the injury the testimony would have done his reputation, but the secrets badly eroded his support among those who should have been loudest on his behalf. Alexander Wiley, Styles Bridges and the other Republicans were compelled by the revelations about America’s vulnerability to rethink their endorsement of MacArthur and the belligerent course he favored. They didn’t recant in public; they wouldn’t give Truman that satisfaction. But they no longer looked to MacArthur as a credible alternative to Truman on military strategy or in politics. They eased away from the general, and because the testimony was sealed, they never said why.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/redacted-testimony-fu...
Is Ukraine still sitting on a bunch of russian land?
The wars always start if and only if aggressor thinks that the they can “win” something over the force.
It's a catch-22 anyway. NATO still really wants to de-escalate, but by allowing Putin to cross these red lines they show weakness to a person who values strength. However if they react violently to a crossed red line, they might trigger EU-wide or worldwide war (not necessarily nuclear).
I wouldn't want to be in the shoes of NATO leaders right now
It depends on how you define success I guess. The very fact that we're alive to have the option of giving everyone nukes just to see what happens means we've already found a measure of success. If everyone has nukes and they use them it means no more humans, which means no more wars, which I guess can also be seen as a success. World peace at last.
Japan would need to amend their constitution for that, and that is simply not happening. They have failed to amend their constitution for much more mundane objectives, let alone nukes.
As it is, Japan probably already has nukes that are all-but-assembled. Even if they don’t, they’re at most a handful of months away from taking whatever steps remain for a highly advanced industrial economy with existing nuclear infrastructure to finish building a bomb or two.
Remember, Sweden and Finland were staunchly against NATO membership until Russia invaded Ukraine.
Constitutions are not supposed to be absolute constraints. They are not supposed to prevent a country from doing what is reasonable or necessary, as long as people are willing to accept that it was reasonable and necessary.
This is a massive fail of world’s security and it is definitely not Trump’s fault. Blame horribly incompetent policies of Merkel, Obama, and Biden who are simply afraid of putin
And if China just wants to blow it all to bits, what was the point? They want to dominate the country and its people, not own a smoldering ruin.
> people like you are unable of critical thinking.
Even Putin doesn't parrot the Russian propoganda, the only ones still eating that out of the trough are Americans. Putin when interviewed by Tucker just talked of the history of the Soviet Union, and the strength and cultural ties of that block.
NATO expansionism as a justification for Russia's annexation of Ukraine is an excuse reserved only for those dumb enough to believe Russian propoganda.
Getting a ballistic missile to hit the continental US is the first of many problems they'll need to solve before I start losing any sleep.
They also need to be able to hit a location accurately.
And they need a hypersonic reentry vehicle capable of delivering a nuclear payload without disintegrating the bomb or prematurely burning up the explosives in it.
Those are incredibly difficult problems, and each one keeps getting worse.
The DPRK is absolutely a totalitarian, backwards, hermit kingdom. But we underestimate them at our peril.
And a proper failure gives an opportunity to disappear them.
Indeed, so hard that it took until 1957 for the US to master them....
Not trivialize the effort of making such rockets and reentry vehicles, but the North Koreans only have 6-10 countries to follow, at least two of which are semi-friendly to them and two more that they could crib tech from. Oh, and they have computers and it's not the 1950s anymore.
Especially with MAD, but with modern technology in general, caring about survival and prosperity of your own citizens means caring about peaceful coexistence with other countries.
In this context, a degree of nationalism is not bad and may in fact be important (if another country is being hostile and you do nothing, that is not a peaceful coexistence); it’s isolationism that is actually worrying: having every mature participant depend on each other is a great way to make them usually not want to eliminate each other.
My assessment is that it isn't.
The only MAD-able nation states in the 1980s were the United States and the Soviet Union.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian successor state has been unable to adequately maintain its military.
I have seen ample evidence that the entire Russian military apparatus is a fraud and no evidence that it is not. The examples are too many to list in total so here are some highlights:
1. A string of ballistic missile test failures.
2. Photographic evidence of the poor conditions of their ballistic missile submarine bases and the submarines themselves including submarines that are considered "active" but haven't left port in many years.
3. The halving in the last 30 years of the number of Rocket Armies and the reduction of Rocket Divisions within the Rocket Armies.
4. The reassignment of Rocket Army personnel, supposedly the highest-priority and most stringently-selected personnel in the Russian Armed Forces, for duty in Ukraine where they have very quickly been killed.
5. Obsolete equipment rendering their strategic bombing forces ineffective in the face of Ukrainian air defense systems to the point that no strategic bombers enter Ukrainian airspace, instead lobbing cruise missiles into Ukraine from outside the air defense envelope due to numerous airframes being lost to, quite frankly, an inadequate and patchwork Ukrainian air defense network.
I find any military that claims to have thousands of nuclear warheads ready to launch but cannot feed or clothe its infantryman to be, as the kids put it, "sus".
Finally, they seem to have shifted their rhetoric to absurd doomsday weapons because they know we know that their nukes are shit so they have to come up with "nuclear tsunami torpedoes" and "nuclear doomsday cruise missiles" which are, I'm telling you as an engineer not a poly-sci major who grew up on Cold War fetishism and is now an "analyst", impossible fantasies.
So you have the nuclear triad: submarines, bombers, and land-based ballistic missiles.
Their subs are rusting hulks that rarely leave port, and those that do are at Kursk/Moskva levels of readiness.
Their bombers can't even operate over Ukraine, a nation subsisting on single-digit percentages of obsolete NATO equipment.
Their land-based ballistic missiles keep blowing up on the ground. Even their saber-rattling launch before Biden's trip to Ukraine, something that they would want to get right, exploded on the launchpad.
Let's be very clear: they still have nuclear weapons.
But MAD is MAD. Annihilation. Extinction. Not "fuck this is bad", but "fuck we're all doomed, permanently, forever".
MAD doesn't mean NYC gets nuked, MAD means all human life on earth ends for all practical purposes with only scattered bands of irradiated survivors in the southern latitudes.
Russia is almost certainly incapable of MAD.
They should be thought of and treated like North Korea with oil, not the Soviet Union 2.0.
O, no someone claims things are failing. Look people have been saying that for thousands of years it doesn’t actually mean it’s true.
I would argue the West was at its peak in the mid to late 20th century when we were so awesome we conquered the god damn Moon, made transcontinental, transoceanic and even space travel quick and mundane, invented the microprocessor, and then finally invented a communication system that connected the entire world.
Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline.
The world becomes more tumultuous every year, the East is clearly catching up and has in some aspects already surpassed the West, the Middle East is a bigger tinderbox than humanity has ever known, and liberal values like free speech and equal opportunity have become decisively unpopular.
A paradigm shift is coming, probably this century within most of our lifetimes, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to smell that.
> space travel quick and mundane
Space travel was rare and extremely expensive until very recently when we’ve made huge strides. And this isn’t just a singular SpaceX thing the from ion engines to basics like solar panels things have been steadily improving.
IMO the Apollo program was less impressive than many recent missions like DART. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Asteroid_Redirection_Te...
You want to push new boundaries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe
As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia.
But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same.
> Turn of the 21st century onwards has been a slow but steady and undeniable decline.
Again we’re better off economically, militarily, and technologically in 2025 than 2000, 1980, 1960 let alone any point before then. The diseases of the rich have become commonplace and we view that as a failure rather than the underlying progress that it is.
Air travel has been mundane for at least the better part of a century now. Just to remind us all how old we are: The Boeing 747 first flew in 1969 and went into initial service with Pan Am in 1970, that's 55 years ago.
>Space travel was rare and extremely expensive
I said quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades. Nobody talks about going to space anymore unless something is particularly novel.
>As to culture and militarily some of this depends on how western you view Russia.
Russia was never considered Western: Politically they have been considered east of Eastern Europe since ye olde days and "Second World" post-WW2. Religiously they were always the Russian Orthodoxy and the various Orthodox Churches all have eastern-to-Europe vibes.
>But, the US was cautious of China all the way back in the Korean War well before Vietnam when we did the same.
And arguably not cautious enough, including to this very day.
>we’re better off economically,
The stock market is having the time of its life, but that isn't entirely reflective of the real economy.
Remember that Harris lost this election ultimately because of the bad (or at least perceived as bad) economy.
>militarily
A lot of Western military still uses hardware from 50 years ago, and even the so-called latest is 20-ish years old on average.
I also question the real efficacy of Western militaries when placed in an actual peer war. We talk big, but the US has also lost practically every single war in the modern era against inferior enemies.
>technologically
Nearly all of the bleeding edge technology is manufactured in the East. Even if the West produces the ideas on paper, it's the East which actually turns them into practical and tangible reality.
Also, new isn't necessarily better. Russia and Ukraine are both demonstrating quite viciously that dumb-and-cheap might be better. Ukraine has already called out the M-1 Abrams as useless in today's battlefields without certain modifications, which the US military and industrial complex are refusing to entertain.
Aircraft are a durable good, 20 year old aircraft are in regular service even today.
> quick and mundane which the Space Shuttle accomplished in spades.
Again perception not reality, from 1981 to 2011 each shuttle averaged roughly 1 flight per year. The program was paused twice for multiple years after each failure.
It was very much still an experimental program where they where they constantly tweaked things not a mundane just do everything the same every time kind of thing. “Shuttle main engines 104 percent” because the RS 25 went through a series of upgrades. FMOF, Phase I, Phase II (RS-25A), Block I (RS-25B), Block IA (RS-25B), Block IIA (RS-25C), Block II (RS-25D): First flown on STS-104.
> Russia was never considered Western
So rather than falling, that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.
> perceived as bad) economy
Perception has become wildly devoid of reality. The US economy handled COVID amazingly well, but we’ve become so used to success we don’t even understand what it means to suffer minimal issues. We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like, that’s about the opposite of failure.
Yeah, and also in 1969 air travel was already mundane.
>that suggests an overall trend of political ascendancy of the west through at least the fall of the USSR in 1991.
I did argue the peak of the West was in the mid to late 20th century.
>We’ve had such long term success we’ve forgotten what failure looks like.
The 2008 Great Recession was the latest significant failure, though even that was actually pretty mild as failures go.
Nonetheless the economy today is bad, because Main Street says it's bad. Complaints of inflation, stagnant wages, rising costs of living, among others are all real.
I suppose if there's any consolation, at least a head of cabbage doesn't cost around $7 dollars here (yet?) unlike in Japan.[1]
Recessions are benchmarked relative to the years around it not overall economy by historic standards. At the peak of 2008’s recession things were still doing quite well. 10.0% unemployment and 5.1% drop in GDP from the peak is tiny.
It doesn’t even qualify in the top 10 US recessions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions_in_the_Unit...
There are other producers in "the West".
What the RUSI report(s) stated was that Russia is hitting the limits of production and will be bound by material input constraints (chromium, etc) and is ripe for supply disruption, whereas "the West" is ramping up production capaicty and can easily exceed that of Russia.
A population of people of shared blood and history sharing a homeland in pursuit of common values and ambitions, violently defending it from foreigners whenever necessary.
Not a soulless economic zone where foreigners are treated like royalty by traitors and treasonous authorities.
The rhetoric of the anti-nationalists is generally implicitly or explicitly "internationalist". In early Communist organization names they often used the word "international" and I think they even have a toe tappin' song by that name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDbatoAvuB4
And if you doubt the second part "are often pro-war" this is the doctrine of divide and conquer, civil war (called "class war") in which the target of their anti-nationalist colonialism is provoked into disorder before the "forces of liberation" can swoop in and expand the mother country.
This has been endlessly documented in many places. Probably one of the better ones is George Orwell's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homage_to_Catalonia
WW1 kicked off due to a royal getting murdered in broad daylight which triggered a cascade of alliances. Nationality had nothing to do with it.
WW2 kicked off due to the victors of WW1 raping Germany so bad they had nothing but nationalism to hold on to. American nationalism also initially wanted nothing to do with WW2, begrudgingly started helping behind the curtains once the UK became endangered and then went "Yeah, fuck this noise. Y'all will be infamous." once Japan started playing funny tunes.
Nationalism is both good and bad, namely too much of it is a bad thing like everything else in the world while too little of it is also a bad thing akin to malnourishment.
The murderer Gavrilo Princip was a Serbian nationalist, who committed the murder for nationalist reasons.
Everyone was itching for a fight, all for incredibly stupid, selfish reasons, and unleashed a war that butchered an entire generation of Europe's youth. Three of the five major belligerents had their governments overthrown, and that was two too few.
To me, the Russian Revolution is The Worst Thing That Ever Happened, and I imagine we'd have a much better world if that match was never lit.
Worse than the war that spawned it, where 20 million people died over absolutely nothing in four years, and then when it resumed, another 70 million (with an unprecedented attempt at industrial extermination of an entire group of people thrown in for good measure)?
Worse than any of the other globe-spanning empires that plunged their subjects into decades and centuries of slavery and repression?
The Soviet empire, at its worst, only had 400 million people - a mere ten percent of the world's population - in thrall.
The world's history been awash in blood spilled by war, aristocracy and autocracy, imperialism and colonialism. It's rather hard to point at one of the middling empires and go - that one, right there, is definitely the worst thing in history.
But I think you underestimate the Russian Revolution. Without the Soviet Union, there is no Cold War, and there is no way China goes communist, stopping a number of genocides. The consequences are huge, and very hard to imagine.
You can even make an argument that without german communists, the Nazis don't take power in Germany, but I admit that's a stretch. And of course, in this alternative world other terrible things would happen.
Or, alternatively, there may have well been a communist revolution in the industrialized countries, as opposed to the agrarian backwaters that actually got them.
And China going communist can be blamed as much on things like the Opium wars, or Japan's imperialism, or the international repression of the Boxer rebellion or any of the other things that fueled a reactionary nationalistic fire in it. There's only so long you can keep kicking a country of nearly a billion people before someone gets it in their head to drive out the foreigners, and they usually aren't the type to be winning any peace prizes, if you get my drift.
It's all just a bunch of what-ifs. The only thing that we can know for certain is that the Soviet empire sucked, a lot, especially for its European subjects. Empires tend to. But its existence probably played a major role in decolonization - and wrecking other empires.
When I was young and the world was filled with anti-nuclear grimness, my father took me aside and told me I had nothing to worry about... until Josef Tito died. I didn't even know who that was. When he had been stationed in NATO, he'd served as squadron planning officer. He'd read SIOP and all the war plans, which he said were all ridiculous scenarios- except for Tito dying and Yugoslavia disintegrating.
He said NATO and the Warsaw Pact would go to war over the civil war. It would be impossible to stop as refugees and fighting would be everywhere and the Soviets would roll in.
He was absolutely dumbstruck how long Tito's grip from the grave kept the country together. When the Soviet Union fell, he said at least it won't be a nuclear war now.
While it wouldn’t stop ww3 it would remove one of the hot spots.
So bad that germany was the strongest economy in interwar Europe under ten years later? If anything, the allies was nowhere near harsh enough on Germany; the state should have been systemically dismantled and remade as an inoffensive rump state.
I miss those days.
Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.
Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.
On a US highway you can glance in the mirror and see a vehicle, and you can work on the assumption that it's not going (much) more than 65mph. Or see a gap and have a general idea of how long you know it will still be a gap. Having a massive variety in possible speeds harms that.
I think many people seem completely unaware about how fast a car at 110mph (for example) can appear. It's in the order of time it takes to check your blindspot and other mirror - there's a hard limit to how many directions you can be looking at one time after all. No amount of "Personal Driving Skills" or "Being More Aware" can help that if the timing is unlucky.
Probably for the best, they do have 80 mph speed limits now, but lots of drivers there still drive like there's no speed limit.
There are also some other roads that are not included in these figures because they are not classified as Autobahn, but Autobahn-like carriageways. Germany has around 3,350 km of them, a few without speed limit.[2]
[1] Source: ADAC report from 2024-04-22 (in German), see https://www.adac.de/verkehr/standpunkte-studien/positionen/t...
[2] For examples see the German Wikipedia article "Autobahnähnliche Straße" at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn%C3%A4hnliche_Stra%C3%...
Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.
They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.
Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).
If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
[1]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212135021.h...
[2]: https://jalopnik.com/iihs-finds-that-lowering-speed-limits-a...
[3]: https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k?si=mLYQIkwlHCDPr6ec
[4]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15143608/the-...
Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal
One of my favorite trivia is the scenario that a car going 50 mph sees an obstruction in front and slams on its brakes and stops just in time just tapping it. A car next to him going 70 mph sees the same object, has faster reflexes, and hits his brakes at the exact same spot of the road. He slams into the object at 50 mph.
Just the difference between 70 and 80 is the energy of going almost 40 mph.
No, kinetic energy is only quadratic in the velocity, E = ½ mv².
That's when the issue is stopping distance.
The issue on highways is that you have, for example, two cars in the left lane going 55 MPH and a third approaches going 70 MPH. One of the slower cars sees this and moves over but only at the same time as the faster car is changing into the same lane to pass on the right, so now both lanes are blocked, the faster car hits one of them and they're both edged off the road into a stationary object at highway speeds.
Does it matter if they hit the stationary object with significantly more energy? Probably not; dead is dead.
Meanwhile a significant proportion of accidents happen not because you couldn't stop fast enough but because you couldn't stop at all. Another driver side swipes you and rams you off the road and you're now three feet from a head-on collision with a utility pole; if you can even get your foot to the brake before impact it's not going to save you. You're driving on an apparently clear road in winter and come across a patch of black ice; your brakes have no effect and you're hitting whatever's in front of you at full speed. It's night, you're tired and you only realize there is a completely dark disabled vehicle in one of the travel lanes when you smash into it.
In cases like this the difference between 30 MPH and 50 MPH can mean a lot, but the difference between 55 MPH and 80 MPH is basically just "you're still dead".
Radioactive contamination is mostly dangerous from the alpha/beta emitting dust, not the gamma rays. The dust is only dangerous if you get it on you or stir it up and breathe it.
Trained crews with proper procedures and gear can manage a risk like that, your average citizen can't. And since there is a hazard, you're obligated to give correct advice - i.e. leave as soon as possible.
Also, how fast is "safe" when seemingly you'll regularly be encountering crashed cars from people who didn't make it?
Doing ~100 over the speed limit probably isn't considered safe, so I'd guess you don't.
It can be supervised at entry/exit points, which is what I infer from the text. A bit like the highway across East Germany to West Berlin during the Cold War.
There were many volunteers at Chernobyl, like the three engineers who went underwater to close the valves, many people fully understood the risks associated and still worked on it voluntarily. Lets not belittle their sacrifices by snide political commentary
There are currently 800+ "voluntary" prisoner who are working firefighters battling the wildfires in Southern California for less than $5-10/day risking higher injuries than professionals with limited healthcare.
Every country in times of need uses their prisoners as does Russia today for their war and they don't get treated the same as civilians in terms of rights.
Forced labor in high risk jobs is also true to every draft and conscription in every military ever, not just for soviet union or other oppressive regimes.
This is the social contract between a country and its citizens.
Nobody is dismissing the all firefighters in California as forced labor without choice in their sacrifice because some of them are prisoners who have limited choice as parent post was implying.
I think people who worked in Chernobyl deserve the same courtesy of considering all their sacrifices as voluntary independent of how they got there.
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On a side note we have the least standing to comment on forced work by prisoner in other countries, Slavery is still legal in the constitution for prisoners, we have the highest incarceration rates anywhere in the world even more than most regimes[1] in the world and for-profit prisons who charge prisoners from phone calls to soap a lot of money and also pay very little for the work they do while incarcerated .
https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contam...
US Army chemical weapons depot...they are disposing of some nasty stuff there. If there is a leak they shut down certain roads apparently.
I'd be the guy that reads, "This place is not a place of honor..." and think, good enough place to dig an outhouse as any then.
Judging by active discussion in comments and loyal followers, the website is a loved one. Kudos for keeping good community alive.
Apologies for inappropriate comment.
Not only autoplaying, but I've got my browser settings so screwed with and tuned that I haven't had a video autoplay on me in at least a year, and this one broke right through.
They should be proud. It's probably the most invasive ad on the web.