# Vladimir Shevchenko's final Chernobyl footage **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 31, 2007, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladimir-shevchenkos-final-chernobyl-footage/431752 "2007-12-31T01:36:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2008, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladimir-shevchenkos-final-chernobyl-footage/431752/41 "2008-01-01T19:23:38Z")
Holy crap, **Broomstick**. Thank you for that enlightening response. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladimir-shevchenkos-final-chernobyl-footage/431752/42 "2008-01-02T02:31:18Z")
[QUOTE=olivesmarch4th] I’d like to view the video, but I’m kind of a pansy when it comes to human suffering. Is there anything graphic in it? [/QUOTE] Nothing graphic, unless you object to pictures of people working - he was documenting the work going on onsite. It is very upsetting if you stop to realize that literally every single person filmed was dead between hours after being filmed [the guys on the roof handling the graphite rods] to weeks or months. IIRC the longest anybody survived was something like 1.5 years for a few people that really didnt get that close in and only came into casual contact with environmental contamination [dirty clothing or dirty equipment.] Actually almost every single tool shown in use, vehicle and so forth was abandoned onsite. From what I heard from a few health physics techs was that even most of the dirty clothing was simply bagged up and left in barracks, with clean clothing being brought in. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2008, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladimir-shevchenkos-final-chernobyl-footage/431752/43 "2008-01-02T02:39:42Z")
Lest we forget, Chernobyl wasn’t the first Soviet nuclear disaster contaminating large areas. Forty years earlier there was Chelyabinsk/Kyshtym. It’s still not cleaned up, either, and it’s contaminated _worse_ than Chernobyl: > [@](#): > > In the late 1940’s, about 80 kilometers north of the city of Chelyabinsk, an atomic weapons complex called “Mayak” was built. Its existence has only recently been acknowledged by Russian officials, though, in fact, the complex, bordered to the west by the Ural Mountains, and to the north by Siberia, was the goal of Gary Powers’s surveillance flight in May of 1960. > The people of the area have suffered no less than three nuclear disasters: For over six years, the Mayak complex systematically dumped radioactive waste into the Techa River, the only source of water for the 24 villages which lined its banks.The four largest of those villages were never evacuated, and only recently have the authorities revealed to the population why they strung barbed wire along the banks of the river some 35 years ago.Russian doctors who study radiation sickness in the area estimate that those living along the Techa River received an average of four times more radiation than the Chernobyl victims. > In 1957, the area suffered its next calamity when the cooling system of a radioactive waste containment unit malfunctioned and exploded.The explosion spewed some 20 million curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere.About two million curies spread throughout the region, exposing 270,000 people to as much radiation as the Chernobyl victims.Less than half of one percent of these people were evacuated, and some of those only after years had passed. > The third disaster came ten years later.The Mayak complex had been using Lake Karachay as a dumping basin for its radioactive waste since 1951.In 1967, a drought reduced the water level of the lake, and gale-force winds spread the radioactive dust throughout twenty-five thousand square kilometers, further irradiating 436,000 people with five million curies, approximately the same as at Hiroshima. > In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing them to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl victims. > **[Chelyabinsk | LOGTV | Slawomir Grünberg](https://logtv.com/chelyabinsk/)** > > For forty-five years, Chelyabinsk province of Russia was closed to all foreigners.Only in January of 1992 did President Boris Yeltsin sign a decree changing that. Shortly afterwards, I made my first trip to this region, which later Western scientists... [http://faculty.oxy.edu/richmond/ENVR/chelyabinsk\_nuclear\_waste\_accide.htm](http://faculty.oxy.edu/richmond/ENVR/chelyabinsk_nuclear_waste_accide.htm) > **[Ozyorsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozyorsk,_Chelyabinsk_Oblast)** > > Ozyorsk or Ozersk (Russian: Озёрск) is a closed city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It had a population of 82,164 as of the 2010 census. > The town was founded on the shores of Lake Irtyash \[ru\] in 1947. Until 1994, it was known as Chelyabinsk-65, and even earlier, as Chelyabinsk-40 (the name is taken from the nearest city Chelyabinsk, which was a common practice of giving names to closed towns, plus the last digits of the postal code).\[citation needed\] Codenamed City 40, Ozyorsk was the birthpl... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vladimir-shevchenkos-final-chernobyl-footage/431752.md?page=2)