Yeah I like the sentiment, but no Chernobyl absolutely did not have such a small effect. Minimizing these things, especially when so well known, just fucks up our position. Reality denial isn't an effective way to advocate or to make people aware of the horrors of capitalism. All it does is train the average person to assume left wing points are childishly exaggerated. This is, in part, why capitalist propaganda is so easy.

Here we just accept the official number and ignore all other effects. If we took the same path with the Bhopaal disaster, we'd have to ignore all the non-fatal poisonings and believe uncritically the official instant death count of just over 2,200 ignoring any deaths to come afterwards. That would be stupid

Chernobyl was a terrible disaster that harmed an absurd amount of people, de-homed thousands, and damaged the ecosystem of the wider area. Its effects and danger are still present to this day and could have been much, much worse if not for the work of those who fixed the massive fuck up.

Both the Bhopal disaster and the Chernobyl disaster were bred by incompetence, corruption, and a general failure to care for the worker and the general population.

Now, if we were to keep a leaderboard, capitalism wins by many miles in the awfulness department. That's the note we should take, that's the drum we should beat.

It wasn't socialism that caused Chernobyl. If the workers, those who built and conceived of the soviet nuclear reactors, were in charge they would have put in the safe guards they advocated for well before this disaster. They were not allowed to and the consequence was a meltdown. That's why we should give the power to the worker. The Bhopal disaster? Capital was the determiner for who had power, and those in power caused the disaster. It was the fault of capitalism as capitalism was allowed to build Union Carbide with little in its way.

Edit: Changed Russian to soviet, re-aranged paragraphs, added clarity

Fuck me...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

It's also posted in the !workingclasscalendar@lemmy.world: https://lemmy.world/post/39614927

Those are very conservative numbers for Union Carbide.

👋

I missed this, thank you for sharing.

Murder is only illegal if you're not a corporation or government. If you are its cool. Have fun, don't die...!

Tesseract vibes

I guess I'm one of the few.

Board representation for workers needs to be a universal rallying cry

Yet here you are

EVERY WORKER A MEMBER OF THE BOARD!

Im afraid of people i disagree with

UCC had participated in decades of previous instances of "environmental negligence in every part of the world", directing its "responsibility… to its shareholders", and numerous dealings with local and international political and economic powers.

Wait_its_all_about_shareholders_Always_has_been.jpg

When the corporate world is essentially the prisoners dilemma run by autocrats, what do you expect?

If the workers, those who built and conceived of the soviet nuclear reactors, were in charge they would have put in the safe guards they advocated for well before this disaster. They were not allowed to and the consequence was a meltdown. That’s why we should give the power to the worker.

if this can't happen in a communist nation, what hope is there for any other worker?

TIL Chernobyl has been re categorised as an oopsie

I learned about that on the Discovery Channel… but okay.

Union Carbide Productions

Awesome 90s underground rock

We remember

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JNkpkkulKcg&ra=m

My dad had just gotten me a hamster and we fed it lettuce that was affected. Fuckers killed my hamster. I'm just glad I didn't eat it I guess. Poor little guy, I was heartbroken.

more of an oopsie than a murder squad murdering people ig

Hey its the guy helping me find my gun

I'm one of today's lucky 10,000 for Bhopal. Horrific.

Russia was never communist. They were a dictatorship dressed up in communist clothing. If the workers ever controlled the means of production in a nation, I'd love to hear about it.

They only paid $470 million (equivalent to $1.03 billion in 2024)?? That's not even 56 k$ (2024) per person. What in the fuck.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-has-become-unexpected-haven-wildlife

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for wildlife, with species such as lynx, bison, and deer thriving in the area due to the absence of human activity for over three decades. This has led to a richer forest ecosystem and increased biodiversity, making it one of the largest nature reserves in mainland Europe.

Also even if you take the most exaggerated numbers about Chernobyl and Fukushima combined, it's still just something we should just ignore. It was a small blip. Per megawatthour produced, nuclear energy is still by far the safest energy, safer than solar (because people fall off of roofs).

Instead you're not just resisting, you're actually angrily rebuking and scolding OP's attempt to put these two catastrophes into perspective. You apply a double standard to how factually accurate a shitpost has to be vs the global capitalist propaganda machine.

Capitalist propaganda is effective.

As someone who was alive and nearly a legal adult at this time, I can say that the Bhopal disaster was widely reported on by mainstream media. It's not all that well-remembered today, but neither would Chernobyl be if not for that miniseries and the memes it generated. It's less the result of capitalist propaganda and more the result of our innate apathy towards what happens to brown people halfway around the world.

Obligatory, there’s a Behind the Bastards about this, a pretty good one

The working classes were the dictators of production and distribution in the USSR, production was collectively owned and democratically planned.

Critically, the working classes were in charge of Chernobyl. Their mistakes were mistakes made by workers. The worker is not infallible.

What do you think the Chernobyl series was exactly, and why do you think it was made?

that's a fascinating take; what makes you believe this?

Alive for neither; one of those is taught in US history classes, the other is not. The miniseries gave it a resurgence for sure, but even before that "Chernobyl" has been a proper noun on the list of key words to associate with the Cold War.

I think like most men my age i found out about Chernobyl because of COD where its a unique setting due to the type of damaged caused and the exclusion zone around it. Sure call that american propganda but im pretty sure that was an SAS mission.. /s

Sure propoganda is a thing on both sides but i probably would know about bhopal if it had a similar effect, i certainly know about 3-mile island..

I think Soviet propoganda must also have been very effective because in 2022 Russian soldiers DUG IN (like trenches) in the forest around Chernobyl because they didnt know what it was...

lol. Spitting out propaganda on a thread about it… Libs gonna lib. you found out about this place because of a video game, and now you’re projecting your lack of knowledge on to people who are literally in the area and know more about it than you do. And they say America's education is down the drain…

There is a miniseries about Bhopal on Netflix. It’s done in a similar fashion to the Chernobyl one.

Idk how accurate it was though, but they did not portray union carbide positively

I knew about Bhopal, but I didn't know it was Union Carbide. Fun fact: Union Carbide ran the Oak Ridge enrichment site for the Manhattan project. They also created the largest American industrial disaster with the Hawk's Nest tunnel disaster. It killed over 700 miners from silicosis by ignoring safety practices. They were bought by Dow Chemicals in 2001. I guess Dow didn't like the competition in the "be a horrible chemical company" market.

Lol hurr hurr im 14 and can accept that both sides bad, only murica bad...

Im not American, and i can name easily a dozen horrible things that the US government has done, whats funny is i can actually name less horrible things that the soviet union did because i know less about it. So is that american propaganda not doing its job or soviet propoganda doing its job really well (of course the had no progoganada only a lib would believe that)

I was i had seen which community this was posted in before i commented, i thought id blocked all the cringe middleschooler chat rooms.

It's because of the potential. Had Chernobyl gone extra wrong (eg had the people in charge there not responded correctly), millions could be hurt, and not just in the Soviet Union. It also dominated the news for months in Europe, with the memory of having to throw away certain homegrown vegetables due to radiation being engraved into the collective consciousness.

Additionally the Bhopal catastrophe happened to Indians and people in the West generally care little for them, due to racism and distance.

Then why bother commenting if you’re just gonna be immature? You think geopolitics is as simple as “both sides bad?”

Propaganda can mean any information, it can be a good thing if it teaches you the truth… my favorite example is with Vaccines, you can describe trying to convince people that vaccines are medically good for you as “pro vaccine propaganda” and you’d be correct. I think there should be propaganda based around certain things, politically, medically, etc.

Propaganda is just information that is trying to get you to believe something or think a certain way. It’s bad if it’s a lie, but it can be useful like for vaccines or for example teaching people that the working class deserves more and has been awarded more in the past. That is propaganda, and you should be using it on people around you because it’s true, and the more people that know the truth the better the world is. Is that easy enough to understand?

Your historical analysis is very American coded and that’s coming from me in the heartlands, buddy. & that is not a compliment.

Wow!... Your original comment was so hostile and insulting out of nowhere and your asking me why im being immature? Take a look in a mirror sometime.

But youre right ill stop, if you cant even recognize that what point is there in talking to you?

Related:

in the end estimated 50-60.000 people died from cancer related to Chernobyl.

What about Dow chemical, or Monsanto?

No, it's because it made excellent propaganda, lol.

and i can name easily a dozen horrible things that the US government has done

Lmao, lookout guys, we got a history buff on our hands!

You mean the workers that control the means of production in socialist China??

You could try harder. Makes no difference to me which one of us looks stupid, you don’t even seem like you believe in what you’re claiming.

I don't want to be the guy arguing on the Internet, but just read the Wikipedia article on communism here. When the Russian people toppled their last monarch, they never actually went full communism.