• The KillerFrogs

OT: Chernobyl documentary

FrogAbroad

Full Member
The Science Channel has produced a documentary I found exceptionally well-done and totally fascinating. It's "Chernobyl: Secrets, Lies and the Untold Stories."

I'm watching it the second time this week. A great deal of "just the facts, m'am" narrative, but also personal interviews with individuals who went through the nuclear catastrophe and, somehow, managed to survive. Overall, this is one of the best documentaries I've seen, and well worth the 4 hours I'm investing on it this week.

I'm not much of a television viewer any more, but this looked interesting so I tuned in...and after about 20 minutes could not have been pried away from the screen. I'm glad I made the time to view it. I recommend it, on cable or at the channel's website.

And now you may return to your regular sports entertainment forum...
 

FrogUltimate

Active Member
Not Great Ok GIF by Sky España
 

froginaustin

Active Member
The Russians apparently had a motorized infantry formation camped on the hottest part of the reactor grounds for about 4 - 6 weeks. It'll be interesting (ugh - an interest I would wish on no one) to see what grows in them in the next few years, or whether or not any that go home make babies with no arms or legs, etc.
 

hometown frog

Active Member
The Russians apparently had a motorized infantry formation camped on the hottest part of the reactor grounds for about 4 - 6 weeks. It'll be interesting (ugh - an interest I would wish on no one) to see what grows in them in the next few years, or whether or not any that go home make babies with no arms or legs, etc.
To include digging trenches in the hottest parts of the exclusion zone. Really makes you question what Russian leadership is thinking.
 

Limp Lizard

Full Member
Another good biography just put out was about Benjamin Franklin. Ken Burns, so it is very thorough: two 2-hour episodes. As one of the historians says, you get the feeling that Franklin was the only Founding Father with a sense of humor.

On the Russian thing, well, Putin was KGB, and follows Stalin's disregard for the lives of his own citizens.
 

BrewingFrog

Was I supposed to type something here?
On the Russian thing, well, Putin was KGB, and follows Stalin's disregard for the lives of his own citizens.
Taking the train through the Fulda Gap to Berlin back in the day was always fun. There was a nuke plant of Chernobyl vintage along the way, that looked to be in worse shape. There were signs beside the tracks that advised us to close our windows as we passed the place. We also passed a petrochemical facility, the shape of which caused me to just about put my fingers in my ears Wile E. Coyote-style and wait for the big explosion. I remember returning home and watching a news report about some Environmental protest and thinking, "Why the hell are they protesting here? Haven't they seen the horrors over there?" Of course, the Russians were bankrolling the Environmentalists then. They are bankrolling the Greens now. The Russians were more brutish and cruel than we can really imagine, and I don't think they've changed much in the intervening 30-odd years...
 

Virginia Frog

Active Member
Another good biography just put out was about Benjamin Franklin. Ken Burns, so it is very thorough: two 2-hour episodes. As one of the historians says, you get the feeling that Franklin was the only Founding Father with a sense of humor.

On the Russian thing, well, Putin was KGB, and follows Stalin's disregard for the lives of his own citizens.
Ben Franklin, man that guy had nine lives. He lived an incredible life with purpose - more than the C Note that we all love. What I find amazing is the number of years he spent in England on more than one occasion (away from his wife and she apparently didn't object - well they were never actually married since she couldn't obtain a divorce from hubby #1 and bigamy was punishable by 39 lashes and life imprisonment, wowza!)

The Ben Franklin House in London is a tourist attraction and the only BF residence remaining: https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/.

(The "new" Museum of The American Revolution in Philly is roughly where the country's first/Franklin's once "paid" and precursor to today's free library stood (sorry for such an awkward sentence.). - I haven't been but may go sometime this summer.)

 
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Brog

Full Member
Another good biography just put out was about Benjamin Franklin. Ken Burns, so it is very thorough: two 2-hour episodes. As one of the historians says, you get the feeling that Franklin was the only Founding Father with a sense of humor.

On the Russian thing, well, Putin was KGB, and follows Stalin's disregard for the lives of his own citizens.
Us older folk (is 91 "older"?) understand exactly his quotation from the last month he lived. "People who live long drink at the cup of life to the very bottom and must expect to find some dregs." The dregs come in a variety of forms, believe me.
 

HG73

Active Member
View attachment 11234
Not so humble brag with a picture of myself back in September visiting Pripyat/Chernobyl. Most fascinating place I've ever been to. I pray when this war is over it is still assessable to outsiders. Need to check out this science channel doc, and agree that the HBO series was incredible.
Izzat some kind of amusement park ride in the background?
 

Austintxfrog94

Full Member
Izzat some kind of amusement park ride in the background?
Yes, it's the ferris wheel in the town of Pripyat, fairly popular tourist picture-taking spot. They had built an entire amusement park in the town for the kids. Pripyat is where everyone lived that worked at Reactor 4. Seeing the reactor is interesting but doesn't make for great pictures with the giant sarcophagus covering it. (below)IMG_0726 2.jpeg
 
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