Russian Troops Suffer Acute Radiation Sickness After Digging Chernobyl Trenches

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-troops-suffer-acute-radiation-sickness-after-digging-chernobyl-trenches?source=articles&via=rss

by trhway • 4 years ago

10 14 4 years ago

thedailybeast.com

trhway5• 4 years ago

“Not surprisingly, the occupiers received significant doses of radiation and panicked at the first sign of illness. And it showed up very quickly.”

A dose which shows quickly is usually pretty high, in the ballpark of lethal.

Local reports suggest that seven buses with the zapped troops arrived in Gomel early Thursday. Journalists on the ground have also reported “ghost buses” of dead soldiers being transported from Belarus to Russia under the cover of dark.

The soldiers there haven't used any PPE. Not even masks. One of the main danger there isn't gamma rays, it is ingestion and inhaling of alpha and beta emitters. By digging into and driving tanks over they disturbed and raised a lot of dust of all those layers of highly contaminated soil. The Red Forest where they did a lot of that digging and driving is where the massive amount of staff was dumped by wind right after leaving the blown reactor.

detaro• 4 years ago

And unlike the quote, I think that would actually be pretty surprising at that level. Getting lots of nasty from digging into your lungs is one thing, but what it causes are headlines in a few years about cancer rates, not Acute Radiation Sickness. For that, you need to find some seriously hot stuff.

trhway5• 4 years ago

The Russian forces there didn't have dosimeters. And the Red Forest is really where the stuff was falling right out of the reactor.

I think even just undisturbed background level there is about several milli-R/hr. So, in a month you'd get several Roentgen. From some sources - the levels once disturbed would shoot to the scale of 100-200 milli-R/hr. That is 100-200 R/month. Those level do produce ARS with some deaths.

phendrenad2• 4 years ago

What the hell were they doing that close to Chernobyl anyway?

trhway5• 4 years ago

Several things:

- important halfway point on the shortest way to assault Kiev. Keeping that point is necessary to control that route. Staying close to the power plant provides safety from direct Ukrainian attack.

- established weapons and ammunition storage that close to Kiev and which is again guaranteed not to be attacked directly by Ukraine

- creating evidence of Ukraine's work on nuclear weapons

trinovantes• 4 years ago

It's also compounded by the fact that some of them may not even know what Chernobyl is due to state propaganda erasing the dark parts of their history

https://metro.co.uk/2022/03/31/chernobyl-withdrawn-russian-t...

Another said a soldier sent to work alongside them in the facility ‘did not have a clue’ about the notorious explosion at the plant, one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.
He said: ‘When they were asked if they knew about the 1986 catastrophe, the explosion of the fourth block (of the Chernobyl plant), they did not have a clue.
‘They had no idea what kind of a facility they were at. We talked to regular soldiers. All we heard from them was, “It’s critically important infrastructure”. That was it.’

robocat2• 4 years ago

This[1] Twitter thread[2], says it is probably bullshit.

“Reminder: Experts all agree there's no realistic way to get a high enough dose to cause Acute Radiation Syndrome in the #Chernobyl area, even in the Red Forest.” with link to expert opinion.

And it says troops are most likely normal casualties being treated normally, but in a facility that also deals with “nuclear medicine” which is the cause of the rumour (“nuclear medicine” == scans or cancer treatments, I guess).

[1] https://twitter.com/jrmygrdn/status/1509516246852767747

[2] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1509516246852767747.html

trhway5• 4 years ago

you're spreading obvious not truth.

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

"In 2005, radiation levels in the Red Forest were in some places as high as one roentgen per hour (~9 mSv/h), but levels of ten milliroentgens per hour were more common. "

And that even without disturbing the soil which has been bringing levels into the hundreds milliroentgens per hour. ARS appears when the dose reaches around 50 roentgens.

And that is without taking into consideration the huge damage, which at those amounts could on its own lead to prompt symptoms, from the ingested and inhaled alpha and beta emitters from the disturbed soil.

“Reminder: Experts all agree there's no realistic way to get a high enough dose to cause Acute Radiation Syndrome in the #Chernobyl area, even in the Red Forest.” with link to expert opinion.

when it comes to Chernobyl there are tremendous number of such "experts", some politically motivated, some just plain morons bubbling and repeating incoherent stuff and obvious lies.

Arnt• 4 years ago

I want to digress here. https://nitter.net/clairecorkhill/status/1509487011866058764... is an expert saying "being in the red forest" and I don't doubt the accuracy and veracity of that. Don't blame the experts, not even the self-proclaimed ones, blame the people who mangled and misquoted and ended up with "experts all agree there's no realistic way to get a high enough dose".

As if digging ditches were an unrealistic activity for soldiers.

greenyoda• 4 years ago

The article says: "The troops, who dug trenches in a contaminated Red Forest near the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history, are now reportedly being treated in a special medical facility in Gomel, Belarus." That site in Gomel can be found with a quick web search: http://www.rcrm.by/eng/center.html - and their mission is: "health improvement of the population exposed to multi-component and prolonged radiation effects following the Chernobyl catastrophe including other negative anthropogenic and man-caused environmental factors."

So, it's not an ordinary hospital, and if lots of Russian soldiers were indeed taken there, it indicates that they might have needed care for radiation sickness.

robocat2• 4 years ago

Fair call - that sounds more like they did get radiation poisoning.

Hard to tell fact from fiction, but I will be more careful to vet information before passing it on.

Russian Troops Suffer Acute Radiation Sickness After Digging Chernobyl Trenches

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