Doug: 0:28

And and I find that's why six toes are it's definitely better to have six toes than five on each foot no, I would.

Ron: 0:36

I would do that. If that was covered by my plan, I'd do that. You would add a toe yeah, 100 it's all about stability.

Doug: 0:46

Yeah, and I'll take it, and this toe goes on the heel Like that's the thing, oh, like a raptor.

Ron: 0:51

No, raptors don't have toes on their heels.

Doug: 0:53

It could be Like a little raptor I know what you're talking about Like a cat Like a little dewclaw.

Ron: 1:07

I want a that's evidence of witchcraft. I think that will burn you at the stake. They don't do that anymore.

Doug: 1:11

I think For now, but you don't know, your confidence is through the roof on that one. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today, thank, you for pulling us together, Doug. It's good to be here and it's good to think about the past and think about choices that we've made. Would you say that you, gentlemen, have?

Ron: 1:27

made some choices. Oh, I don't think it's good.

Don: 1:31

Don't make Ron go back, okay.

Doug: 1:36

That's behind me. Well, I have a question to lead us in today, as we often do. When was a time that you experienced a situation that needed to be covered up? Debatable if it even needs to be covered up at the end of the day. Right, I think honesty is always the best policy, but I think that the human experience often leads down that rabbit hole of cover-up situations. Or maybe, if you haven't been a part of it, has there ever been a time that you've seen a cover-up that? Or maybe, if you haven't been a part of it, has there ever been a time that, uh, you've seen a cover-up that just continues to get worse and worse, and worse.

Ron: 2:12

I'm sorry to disappoint you both, but I have been involved with the cover-up. I have initiated a cover-up, a conspiracy to withhold information. Uh, I think this is. I think this is my first cover-up. Um, my first cover-up was I was a young child, a toddler, I don't know, maybe four or five unbelievable something around there already started. Yeah, advanced placement and uh, I think we had this like metal, like die cast, uh replica of the uss enterprise from the popular american science fiction program aircraft carrier.

Don: 2:54

I think we're talking star star this is the star trek one.

Ron: 2:58

Yeah, I did not yet uh like engage with war machines at that time, um, but this is like a. It was the enterprise from next generation and the like saucer part of the ship would come off and it was like all just solid metal so you can kind of stick them together. And I was playing with it and my brother zach wanted it, who was younger than me, I'm pretty sure I don't remember all the details because you know I was the one that got away with it, but anyways, somehow this metal saucer fell from our hands and landed on his toe, like instantly breaking his toe, and it was like the toenail fell off.

Don: 3:35

That's why he doesn't have six toes anymore.

Ron: 3:37

Yeah exactly this is why I say always take another toe, you never know what could happen.

Doug: 3:42

Do you mean to rhyme?

Ron: 3:43

that that was nice. Some things just work, um. So, anyways, he, he had a broken toe and he was super sore and I think I like threatened him to like do not tell mom about what happened here.

Ron: 3:56

So he walks with a limp to this day yeah yeah, so like she saw his toe and she's like what happened? And I think he covered for me and I think I lied. I was like zach clumsy zach, you know, he's so stupid. He dropped the toy on his foot and you insulted him. Yeah, and I think zach was like that's right, I dropped the toy on my foot and I think it was.

Ron: 4:16

I don't I don't know how long that lasted, because I think everyone in my family knows this story and it's like the. It's, like you know, my original mark of duplicity that has lived with me ever since and uh, so I don't think I don't know how long it lasted. I don't think it lasted super long.

Doug: 4:31

I think my mom was like zach's, not that dumb wow, yeah, shout out to zach for not being a snitch even on himself zach has always been there for me.

Ron: 4:39

Honestly, he should have snitched many a time yeah but he's uh, and in that way the sin is his too, because he is complicit in these crimes.

Doug: 4:49

Yeah.

Ron: 4:50

That's rough.

Doug: 4:52

Agree, yeah, I mean, I feel bad for the guy, but I'll be looking after his feet from here on out.

Ron: 5:00

Someone needs to. He only wears steel-toed boots. Now, absolutely From three to now.

Doug: 5:07

I accidentally step on his foot. I'm so sorry, zach. I know what this is like for you. Yeah, that's it. Don you got anything?

Don: 5:15

I've lived a spotless life, so I really am having trouble, it's good. But I can think of one time when someone else was duplicitous on my behalf. Oh, and I think it's safe now. I mean, so this happened in the seventh grade. Um, I hope it is my English teacher, uh, mrs Collier. So if you're, if you're, an uncannibal, mrs Collier, I'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but I suspect that you're not. We had notebook checks, oh, and one of the notebook check pages it was dittoed, so like that purple you know, smelly stuff.

Don: 5:58

We were supposed to get our parents to sign Once a week. I think that they had checked our homework and seen that we were up to date, et cetera. And Mrs Collier made one mistake. And what she did was she said sometimes kids try to fool me with this and they have their parents sign it and it's all the same pen. And I can tell the parents signed it all at the same time.

Don: 6:25

Well, I hadn't had my mom signed my signature page, so I asked her sign it all at once right before it was due, and I had six different pens and I just rotated them in and out and she used a different pen every time and and I got away with it. So true conspiracy, and you guys have never met my mom, of course, but she is a saint, so I'm actually a little bit prouder of the fact that I got away with it. True conspiracy, and you guys have never met my mom, of course, but she is a saint, so I'm actually a little bit prouder of the fact that I got her to go along with it than the fact that I did it.

Ron: 6:51

She wasn't like Donnie. Why all the pens?

Don: 6:54

No, I told her why. Oh, this one's being strong. Let me give this one a shake.

Doug: 6:58

Try this one Don's criminal enterprise started that day.

Don: 7:03

Dawn's criminal enterprise started that day, so it was perfect. Like there was no way you could tell. It was as if every week she had a different pen in her hand.

Doug: 7:09

Really solid record considering that that only started in junior high. We've got Ron, who's a true criminal at four years old.

Ron: 7:16

Yeah, come back when you lived a little.

Doug: 7:18

That's true, or go back, I don't know. It's hard to say. Next time around, okay, start over there. Mine was being tremendously hungry as a young three-year-old I believe. Running around in my kitchen, my mom is making scrambled eggs, leaves them on the side of the plate. I sneak one. She says please stop taking the eggs. We're going to all eat together.

Doug: 7:46

And what she had done is she was putting pads of butter on the side of the plate and, uh, it looked like scrambled eggs, and so I ran for a second one when she wasn't looking, and then just put a gigantic pad of butter in my mouth instead of scrambled eggs. And then, um, before I even had like, recognized that I was eating butter instead of eggs. I'm running to my room and I'm hearing her call after me Did you grab another one? Did you grab another one? And I hid behind this very miniature basketball hoop that was there and in my room. It was like a Fisher-Price basketball hoop, and as I bit into the pad of butter, I actually was so disgusted the fact that I was just eating this like mesh of yeah, I guess like gelatinous yeah fat and salt.

Doug: 8:38

I almost vomited and I learned my lesson by accident. I don't think my mom was quite laughing, but I remember that there wasn't a punishment immediately afterwards, because she ran into my room, saw my face as I was eating butter and she's like that's right, that's butter, not eggs. You should have listened. And yeah, I guess I tried to cover it up by just sneaking in like a little solid snake that I was, and take the uh, uh, take the butter off of the plate.

Ron: 9:07

I love that. I got mine. You were the child who had to be told to stop taking eggs.

Doug: 9:11

Yeah, that's good, yeah I still am, I still am. Don't catch me on easter I'll tell you that it's bad news. You don't like butter. I love it things. And I think my palate is advanced enough now I could just go directly after the stick.

Ron: 9:28

No, I can't. You guys would go straight to the stick.

Doug: 9:33

I'm always. Every time that I go to the fair and see that they have fried butter as an option, I get really grossed out.

Ron: 9:40

Have you tried it? No, I can't.

Doug: 9:42

I just can't imagine, and probably because of my childhood experience, I can't imagine it arctic explorers do it.

Don: 9:48

It's a. It's high density calories, so it's you chew.

Ron: 9:51

That's great for them, yeah high fat diet I don't blame them. Um, so why are you making us like uncover our past?

Doug: 10:02

uh well, sins, because sometimes a whole country needs to unveil their past um and actually going there. This country needed to reveal their present. That was really. That was really the issue. Uh, today we're talking about the chernobyl disaster, um of 1986. Um, how familiar are we with the topic?

Don: 10:26

um, I'd say, relatively familiar of the three of us, I was the only one here, right yeah it was 86, most familiar.

Doug: 10:36

Yeah, all right, you win, don's gonna be taking over at this point, but thank you folks um.

Ron: 10:43

You can tell us what it was like what was it? Like to get the transatlantic emissions landing on your doorstep like we didn't know it was new.

Don: 10:52

It was actually a little bit scary because like, uh, yeah, it was one of the things that the 1980s were a scary time to be a kid and and with the cold war kind, you know, having existed for so long. But then you've got like the Day After Tomorrow movie came out right and like high stress. Like I think I've told you guys before, I have memories of waking up in the middle of the night and having to go downstairs to talk to my parents about the fact that the Russians are going to kill us all Right, and like as a seven or eight year old, yeah.

Don: 11:26

So yeah, the fact that there was actually a nuclear disaster and yeah there was, maybe there's going to be nuclear winter and the particles are going to come across the ocean and like what's going to happen and everyone's going to mutate, and yeah, there was like real fear about how it was going to actually play out.

Don: 11:43

So, different, I think, than the fukushima yes, uh disaster, because it is like it was not the first one, right. So like, yes, that was bad and terrible, but nobody was afraid that we were going to have mutant wolves eating us or whatever right.

Doug: 11:59

So, and that is the direction that we're going, because these mutant wolves have made it to the united states and I want us to be,

Ron: 12:07

safe, and so I saw this insane tiktok about chernobyl that's exactly right.

Don: 12:15

Counterintelligence just coming right at you, but in case someone doesn't know what the chernobyl disaster is, we probably should go back to to what Chernobyl like. What is Chernobyl? Where is?

Doug: 12:25

Chernobyl. Yeah, so we are looking um at a town, um that is uh, currently located Ukraine, um, and on April 26th 1986, at one 23 at the morning, um, there was a nuclear power plant that was running a test that had a tremendous failure which led to the destruction and release of one of the cores of this power plant, which released the most nuclear energy into the atmosphere of the world in the history of man, the atmosphere of the world in the history of man. My fascination on this started because I was watching the Last of Us. I learned about Craig Mazin, who created that show, and I looked up that he is lauded for his production of the show Chernobyl, which is a five-episode miniseries about the disaster and the consequences of what had happened.

Doug: 13:30

I'm not really going to be touching on the show as much, although I highly recommend it because it's a masterpiece, I think, in its direction. But the thing that I find most fascinating is this event. It's interesting. Gorbachev at the time said that he looks at the end of the Soviet Union as this event. He very much signals that this was the event that kind of ended the Soviet Union, and so that's a potential way that we can take this topic today, but it is known as the worst nuclear disaster in history, not just in terms of costs and casualties, but also, um it's far reaching effects on science, the environment and, uh, the way that we do life and global consciousness. Um, good summary anything I'm leaving out before we dig in. It was reactor number four. It was reactor number four four um, and we almost blew all of them too.

Don: 14:28

That's a little spoiler there, but we didn't, so credit where it's due and the other ones continued to run yes, today I think till like the early 2000s yeah I believe so.

Doug: 14:40

It's currently in the sarcophagus, which we'll get to in a moment, where there is a giant structure that has been built over it since then. That actually is breaking down to the point that they've built another one over it because there's been so much damage. And that keeps the ghosts in right, yes, yeah, ghosts are there at all times. Green ghosts yeah, ghosts are there at all times.

Ron: 15:04

Green ghosts? Yeah, absolutely.

Doug: 15:05

And you know there have been many a video game that has been made about this area and, yes, the potential for ghosts and mutants and all of these things. But today I'm going to try to base it as much as we can in reality. Oh, sorry about that.

Ron: 15:23

Yeah, it's uncanny enough. I was gonna say that like the sort of like video game and science fiction media that has spun off from uh yeah, the chernobyl disaster is sort of like where I'm probably actually like most familiar with it, like I feel like it definitely uh, like, uh, like sort of post-nuclear fiction is like a part of like almost all modern, you know, 20th century societies, but I feel like it colors russian and soviet union media in a very different way than like americans do, and I feel like that somehow it links back to the.

Don: 15:56

You have to have the image, you have to have the empty ferris wheel that that's what signals to you that there's been a radiation problem, exactly like it's.

Ron: 16:03

It's part of that, the zeitgeist and it's more like real in in their sci-fi right like uh, you know we're talking about video games like uh, what's the? I can't even think of their names stalker, yeah, stalker series right, which is uh, also based on the short story right roadside picnic and that kind of stuff.

Don: 16:21

Um, it's more like horror based than like american post-nuclear fiction, which is more like fun based or something I think some americans are like it would be, it would be sick if the world ended, whereas I can think other nations that have like more actual local disasters, like no, it would not, it would be the worst thing ever yeah.

Doug: 16:43

Yeah, there's um, quite the cast of characters, um, and people that we have to mention um going into this, and so I definitely would appreciate any clarifying questions If, if we start to lose track of who's Victor who was Anatoly like as we go through, please let me know if I begin to spin that the wrong direction. But I do need to introduce a few people, because this event, the thing that is interesting to, at least to me, to think about, is where some of the fault lies, Because there's kind of a chain of events that lead to Reactor 4 going down, that kind of take different directions and people have very strong opinions about. I don't plan to make any gigantic ones today, but there are some facts that we can kind of bring forward and then start to talk about it from there. So Viktor Brukhanov was the plant manager who oversaw the construction of the plant and um, as early as 1979, when these were being put together, um, uh, and they were testing these reactors, which we'll get to in a minute. There's actually KGB documents that show that there were instability issues within the reactors and the way that they work is you're essentially putting uranium deposits inside of them that have neutrons that are bouncing off of the outside. These neutrons collide with the other neutrons that are next to it in the uranium chemicals and there is a combination of safety rods that are inserted into the core, that are tipped in boron that slow down this reaction, which interacts with water. The steam creates the power, the heat from the steam creates the power, and this is how you power a city in this case.

Doug: 18:50

And nuclear power was a pride of the Soviet Union because they yeah, they'd claimed that they had the greatest power sources.

Doug: 18:59

They're showing an advance in technology and we're also dealing with the Cold War, of course, and so anything that's technology, the idea of it being supreme in some way, is a very big part of the identity of a country and also part of the competition and war that, like resources and technology, became just as important as the potential for bodies on a field.

Doug: 19:21

So the plant manager did not initially test the safety of these cores, they just started operating immediately, and he was recorded saying that in the USSR you were often rewarded for finishing your work early. Saying that in the USSR you were often rewarded for finishing your work early, like, literally, the government would give you bonuses if you were able to, because, again, speed is of the essence, making sure that you get to things first, and he said that this is fairly standard practice. He was recorded saying this is fairly standard practice within the USSR, that the things that you're building and the projects that you're finishing, you would try to finish as quickly as possible for the financial benefit and it being good for the state. He speaks really good English.

Doug: 20:01

He he speaks some great translated Russian.

Don: 20:05

That's.

Doug: 20:06

I'm hoping is is is as close as we can get um from what I was able to get from subtitles of watching the trial that he was in, from subtitles of watching the trial that he was in Um, so hopefully I'm not doing him um to poor of justice here, but um, he um ultimately, uh, bears some of the responsibility for this accent or this accident. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, um, which is crazy considering what we're going to um unveil about him. But Victor actually was released for good behavior and continued to live in the Soviet Union. Following there's another character, nikolai Formin, who was the chief engineer for this facility and others. He was also held accountable for postponing this test, so there was a very critical moment in which they haven't tested it.

Doug: 21:00

And then 86 rolls around. They're going to test this reactor during the day, but you notice, it just said that the accident happens at one 23 in the morning. Well, nikolai felt that, um, there were officials that were in Kiev that day and he felt that it would not be good if they ran the test, something were to go wrong or not go well, because they have to power down the reactor. They're basically trying to see if the reactor is powered down, can they use an alternative source of power? He felt that it would not be a good idea to run it during the day because they didn't want any of the power to go down during the cities or in the city when officials were going to be in the surrounding area.

Doug: 21:41

The problem with this is the people who were briefed on the safety of doing this reactor power down were the day shift. The day shift were the only ones who got the briefing. So when the night crew came in, they literally were looking at an annotated document that was hundreds of pages long, that kind of like. From what I was able to gather, they were looking at it as notes that people were making during the day presentation, saying so do this actually, this page like, move this over? Don't do this actually move this this way? Um, so you can imagine that a crew who's going in with um less experience because the night crew was the one who was basically just running maintenance Um, they were not really ready to run this test.

Don: 22:29

Um so the, uh, the, the. The plan for the, the nuclear reactor, was to make sure that we only had disasters during the daytime. That's smart.

Ron: 22:40

Smart. A lot more people are there to fix it.

Don: 22:43

That's true.

Ron: 22:44

What's going on in?

Don: 22:44

there, you want that scheduled, absolutely. Was it not an operating power plant before.

Doug: 22:50

Yes, it was operating. It had been operating for years, but they had never given it a stress test if the cores went down in power, if the alternative sources would go in. And so we'll get into that. So Nikolai Formin was the one who made the decision. So obviously Victor owns the plant. He was aware of the fact that the core should have been tested earlier, never tested. That's why he got in trouble. Nikolai gets in trouble because he basically threw this on the night shift and said I'm sure it'll be fine, just on the pride of the fact that this is Soviet technology, so it will withstand. There's no way that it's going to go. This is the most advanced technology in the history of man when it comes to power.

Don: 23:29

Everybody's saying so. People say that all the time.

Ron: 23:31

It's the greatest technology it's only the greatest there was a big boat once.

Don: 23:37

It was supposed to be real good. Exactly, look at Jurassic.

Ron: 23:41

Park, that's right.

Doug: 23:45

He also received a sentence for 10 years and also attempted to take his own life several times before the trial went on. Due to the shame of the experience Following his sentence, he was actually placed in a psychiatric hospital before the trial went on. Due to the shame of the experience Following his sentence, he was actually placed in a psychiatric hospital. He was released early and, shockingly, went to work at another power plant up until the early 2000s. So he ended up kind of continuing his work.

Don: 24:10

You've got to stick with your expertise Absolutely. I'm good at one thing even if that one thing went bad once. Well, yeah, now he knows what not to do. Yeah, you got to learn from your mistakes. We don't want to ruin his future.

Doug: 24:23

everybody has to have the chance to revise. Yes, yes, um, our last character to introduce right now is anatoly diatlov. Um, he also gets a 10-year sentence for this and he's he's one that I think takes a lot of the blame for the disaster, because he was the person in charge of the night shift when they were testing the course, and the thing that's tough is going back to the show for just a second. He's very much painted as this villainous, prideful character who, um, just kept pushing no matter what. And um, where a lot of historians would disagree is he. Probably he was really the only person who knew, point to point, what you did to actually power down the reactors and bring um things back into the fold, to where the night staff was looking to him, saying and then do we do this, and then do we do this, and he was kind of guiding the entire thing. So he was relied on for his expertise at the time where everybody was kind of asking him we can't really read the documents that we were given from the day shift, so what should we be doing? And so he was sentenced to 10 years in prison as well for this.

Doug: 25:37

So, to outline what happened, give me a moment here as I assemble. What happened that? I guess, early morning the issue came from the lower power and safety rods which dip into this core, which slow down the neutron reactions between the uranium, which almost completely stopped the core. So they were trying to power this thing down to where it was at levels of about 700 um. Unfortunately I'm lapsing on the the 700. What exactly?

Don: 26:10

I would I don't want to say megatons- maybe don can sub it.

Doug: 26:14

I don't want to say megatons, if that's like not anywhere near you know cause, I think that's an explosion directly. Um, but they had to be powered down to about 700. Um, and they noticed that the core was actually going to be approaching zero and they were fearing that it was never going to power back up again. So the at law of um instructed them to bring up, take out the safety rods, like he just said. Okay, the cores are about to go down, take out the safety rods. The minimum amount of rods and I think that there was close to a hundred that were in the um core. He said um, take out as many of the rods as we can. Let's go to about six minimum for safety standards. These cores needed to be at 12, like 12 was the absolute bare minimum and even that was pushing all safety regulations. And again, because he didn't want to be the person responsible for the core going down, he said go ahead and put that down to six.

Doug: 27:08

The core instantly starts reacting, it starts to heat back up, but what they notice is it's not heating back up at an additional rate, it's at an exponential rate to where they're seeing it jump from 700. Now we're in the five thousands. Almost instantly it's heating up and now we're past 15,000. It just continues to go. Um, the core is heating at such a rapid rate, um, that people start freaking out, obviously in the terminal, saying like, okay, this is accelerating at a rate that we don't know exactly what we're supposed to do. Okay, this is accelerating at a rate that we don't know exactly what we're supposed to do.

Doug: 27:38

So, because this happens, um, and they know that meltdown is imminent, there is a famous button. Never thought I would talk about a famous button, but the AZ five core shutdown button, um, which is like the only one that's like it's indicated. There's this red button that's in the corner, is pressed by one of the officials that is on site at the time, designed to shut down this reactor. It causes a surge instead of a, um, a core slowdown. I'd like the numbers jump again, leading to a gigantic steam explosion in the core, which leads to a full blown meltdown. It took exactly 18 seconds for the core to explode. The reactor design is called an RBMK, which is Reactor Bolshoi, moshonshi, kanali or Kananli you did great.

Doug: 28:28

Thank you, definitely good, just as good as my subtitle translation, which had very serious flaw.

Doug: 28:35

Designs which this is something called a positive void coefficient, meaning it could become more reactive as it lost coolant.

Doug: 28:42

And the thing that they hadn't accounted for is the fact that, even though these rods were tipped in, uh, or are boron in their construction, the tips of them have graphite in them and that, apparently, is where the reaction happened is because of the graphite hit Like once those went back in at such an impact at the levels that it was at, it heated up the graphite which caused, um, the explosion. The top of the core is a 1000 ton, which is insane to think about, but as an a thousand ton um core top that was there, that shattered into hundreds of thousands of pieces instantly, just destroying everything that was in the side. Now, this is just one of the reactors. So as this explodes and goes up, the people that are in the control maintenance room feel the shake of the building instantly that you know there's a reaction of like. Okay, clearly this thing has exploded, but right away, the mood that was in the room, um, from what the accounts seem, um, from people that had worked with him, had set your laughing.

Don: 29:50

The mood that was in the room. Oh, we work at a nuclear reactor. That just melted down. What's the? How are you feeling, sergey?

Ron: 29:59

I can't wait to be written about it. They're like boys we made it, we're the most famous technicians in the world.

Doug: 30:07

Or infamous, that's right.

Doug: 30:11

So once this happens, the accounts waver from different people that were written about in this book called shadows of chernobyl. But it seems that immediately what people started to do and this is why we talk about the cover-ups is immediately the concern was there had to have been an accident where something has fallen or something has moved in such a way that, like something's broken in the building, but there's no way that this core is broken down Like the. The overall conversation that had happened is surely there's some other accident that had happened, and instantly the conversation becomes so go check it out. So who is going to be the person that goes in and takes the brunt of a potential open core nuclear reactor? That's like exploded in this building. And the thing that I find the most interesting is, if you don't go, you are saying that the Soviet Union has created technology that's failed. If you do go, you face the potential of taking on what ends up being 15,000,.

Doug: 31:15

uh, reikens, I think I have the pronunciation on that one correct you do Good Ritgens of nuclear radiation that takes it on. So the group that goes in and decides to brave this goes in with measuring devices that only measure 3.6 rate guns. So when they go in they take the temperature of the room essentially as they're approaching it hits 3.6 and breaks immediately and the reports that follow in this basically say it's measuring at 3.6. In this basically say it's measuring at 3.6. To give you an idea, 400 ray guns is a lethal dose of radiation. That like, if you're exposed to that, you're looking at a lethal dose and the building is, yeah, like measuring at the core at 15,000 at this time, so immediately upon the reactor exploding.

Doug: 32:16

The issue is not safety. The issue is not we need to do everything that we can stop this meltdown. There's a duplicity in we not only need to figure out if this thing has melted down, but also who's going to be the first person that even suggests this. And this is where I start to, you know, kind of spin the wheels on. Like what universe are we living in, that the worst disaster in history has ever happened and people are frozen in their fear of saying anything against the Soviet Union.

Ron: 32:43

I feel like that's a fairly common reaction, like, have you ever like fear of the Soviet Union? Yeah Well, yeah, you're still unpacking it Don to this day. But I mean like, have you ever made an accident? An accident right? Or like it could be a small thing, maybe it could be a larger thing. But I feel like for a moment there's a, there's a. You give yourself a grace period where you pretend the world is such that that accident didn't happen or it's somehow not your fault right like I'm thinking.

Ron: 33:13

The first one, because of my mind, is like I accidentally broke the stained glass windows set into my buddy's front door to a house he was renting in college. I just like slammed the door shut and they like all shattered and I was like well clearly that wasn't me, because I didn't close the door any harder than I usually do. Clearly there was a fracture in the glass and it was right. Like for a moment. I understand the impulse to like no wait, you know, like to to fantasize that somehow that's not actually what's happened.

Don: 33:47

And or I'm thinking of like when, when someone is not used to doing an activity like cooking, right.

Doug: 33:54

Right, yes.

Don: 33:58

And the pan catches on fire or you cut your finger, whatever. Like there's a moment where a new cook would freeze and like not be sure what you're like. They probably intellectually like you quiz them beforehand know how to put out a fire, but like when it happens, there's that moment of like, like how did this happen? Is this happening?

Don: 34:13

like yeah where know the experienced cook that can see that, and like it's just part of the motion to to put it out and to know what to do, which is, I guess, the point of having drills and stuff. Right, so that way, when the emergencies actually happen, like you know, we file the kids out aside in the school, right? So that way, if a fire ever actually happened, they know where to go and how to do it. So it's not something that they're trying to figure out. Sounds like in this case, though, we were trying to figure it out all at the same time.

Doug: 34:41

Absolutely, and something that I should very much give the grace to is these aren't people that are going into their jobs on a day-to-day basis and thinking I'm an emergency responder, like their job is to run a power plant.

Ron: 34:56

And run it.

Doug: 34:59

If this had been some superheroes, this would have been different, but at least we got nuclear wolves out of it.

Ron: 35:05

That's right, and also a still nascent technology.

Don: 35:09

Correct.

Ron: 35:11

Sure, it's been around for a couple decades now. But I mean in this capacity, to this extent, right, I guess Three Mile Island was a little bit around for a couple decades now. But I mean in this capacity to this extent, right, um, um, I guess, like three mile island was a little bit before this, right, that was like what in the 70s.

Don: 35:22

Yeah, yeah, um, but but it's a mystery, a mysterious killer though, too, right so right um, the explosion happens and your job is to go in the basement and see what what it looks like like. It's not going to look like anything, it's just going to look like anything. It's just going to be death Correct, but you're not going to see it. You're not going to Right.

Doug: 35:42

So yeah, and I think that that's where you know, because, of course, cold war is going to touch this a little bit. Living in Soviet Russia is going to touch this a little bit, because there's so many layers of continue on and the state moves on. Um, that probably is there as well.

Doug: 35:58

That's also affecting this, um, because your job and your labor is everything you know, Um, and so I would imagine too there's a certain amount of like, and I think that's why you would walk in, whereas, like, somebody is not going to catch a very morbid comparison but you're not going to catch a bullet for, like a register at a target, probably, it's like a minimum wage worker absolutely terrible comparison, forgive me. But, um, yeah, these people, I mean, their identity is like what they do for the state in a sense, and so I think that that leads to a lot of this. Um, shall I elaborate on how this gets worse?

Ron: 36:33

oh, yeah, sure, yeah, I can't, I can't turn my eyes away um, the.

Don: 36:39

The word you're looking for before is a megawatt thermal.

Doug: 36:41

700 megawatt thermal is what it was supposed to come down to it actually times dipped to 30 yes, at a certain point right, and then zero's core is like completely right. So when it?

Don: 36:51

got down to 30, they panic and they're like, oh, throw gas on it, and that's why it went out it, it was, uh, the operation um. It was designed to operate at 3200 megawatt thermal. So when you're talking about it getting up to 5 000 and then 15 000 like that's, those are the pressures that caused the, the actual accident yes, so naturally, um, the evening looks fairly insane.

Doug: 37:16

We have a gigantic response of firefighters who are going to. They see the flames. Firefighters are called to take care of the explosion. I don't know if this is your immediate thought, but one of the things that I considered immediately is like okay, well, what suits are you wearing if you're living in a town like this and you need to go take care of Armani? Yep, absolutely. So they rolled up in their Armani suits to put this out, and luckily they're really great at protecting radiation, at least from the poor who can't afford it.

Ron: 37:53

Lead-lined Armani. That's right. Poor who can't afford it? Lead-lined Armani.

Don: 37:55

That's right.

Doug: 37:55

But no, they're in the standard civilian affair of, you know, cotton rubber and thermal-based clothing that's used to protect from fire, but nuclear radiation is a completely different beast, to say the least. So as water is being applied to the flames, like I said earlier, steam is inherent in this reaction and so, even though some of the auxiliary flames that are on the outsides of the core are going out, any of the water that is hitting the core directly from the flame it's probably is exacerbating the effects of what is happening at the time, and immediately phone calls start going out to Soviet officials of like we need to figure out what we're going to do about this. Unfortunately, soviet authorities delayed their response of talking about this, and one of the things that was postulated is we should evacuate the city of Pripyat, which had 49,000 civilians that were living and mostly were associated with the power plant and its workers that were the area, but it was not evacuated until 36 hours later. What caused the USSR to respond to the information being leaked was Sweden was actually getting levels of radiation in the following days that were appearing in their atmosphere, and they had released the information that that was happening, had heard through the grapevine that things had gone south with one of the reactors in Russia, which forced the USSR to make a statement. Boris Shcherbina, who was one of the officials that was on this, was asked to consider this evacuation and before it happened he was quoted as saying why are you being so alarmist? And again, there's a person who knows about the flames and knew what was going on and when told that the court exploded, he was quoted as saying how will we recover from the embarrassment of this situation when thinking of people being evacuated, potential news footage of that being leaked and him going through? And this is one official, of course, but you imagine if this is the overall conversation that's in the room there is a delay in the response to what is known as the greatest disaster of all time because of a certain amount of pride and state that is involved in this. And so, yes, two days later, essentially when morning news comes out with that, the USSR releases a statement and evacuations begin.

Doug: 40:29

And unfortunately, there's not quite a way to document the deaths and cancer that followed this, other than the fact that there's an estimate that a very large portion of the individuals it's like close to half dealt with some kind of cancerous consequence that was there and a lot of that could have been avoided had they acted immediately on this. That could have been avoided had they acted immediately on this. So, to go back to the you know new chef, I suppose, um, if you're thinking about people that are dealing with a cold war and the fact that you know the, uh, the um, the phone, I think immediately of the phone in um, strange love, yes, strange love, right, like the fact that, like this is probably something that you're dealing with at all hours of the night, at all times in having these conversations. It seems like there's a direct correlation to a.

Don: 41:22

Pride was more important in this case which is not at all surprising, yeah, to somebody who lived through the 1980s and like, yeah, it was, it was a common reaction from the soviet union. Like they, there's the I can't remember the name. There's a submarine that sank off the.

Doug: 41:39

Red October, not that one. Thanks for bringing Clancy in.

Don: 41:43

And they just kept denying that it had happened, even though all these other countries were offering to help rescue the men and they just they refused to admit that it happened and just let the men die.

Ron: 41:54

I can't remember the name it's, I don't know. I'm always interested in like to what extent that's it's the case today. I mean, like I know the soviet union was sort of notoriously like secretive, um, and it sort of felt like it was alone on the world stage right, like everyone was its enemy, more or less um, and I'm sure that like fueled a lot of that. But I I do feel like international relations are frequently more like like kids on a schoolyard than we give it credit you know like like the nations do have personalities.

Ron: 42:25

You know they are personified in many ways by their heads of state or their diplomatic.

Ron: 42:29

You know, teams and embassies and things like that, and I think sometimes we're like, oh well, clearly, like those are all level-headed and logical people who are the best appointed to their job at any given time, but like that's not always true. Like there, there is a lot of reputation at stake and how a country is perceived is important, right, and because those things factor into how people, you know uh, carry themselves and negotiations and deals, and you know like it can give leverage right, well, your countries that are the idiots who can't even keep their submarines afloat. So, like you know, we will be less afraid of you and your capacity and we feel like we can boss you around. These sorts of these are some of the motivations, I presume, for why they, they act this way, why nations sometimes act this way, right, so the submarine I was thinking that was called k129 and, uh, it sank in 1968 yeah and they just denied it that it had sunk and 98 men were on board, um.

Don: 43:26

But here's, here's the fun fact um, the cia, rcia went and got it and recovered some material from it, and this is the first documented use of the phrase. We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of such a project. It's called the Glomar response.

Doug: 43:46

Wow, oh, I didn't know it had an official title. That's fun.

Don: 43:51

Anyway, so yeah, so yeah. So I don't think that's unusual at all that the Soviets deny. Like that was. I remember that being like everyone was saying, no, we know something is happening, let's let us come help. Like that was. I remember that being like everyone was saying, no, we know something is happening, let's let us come help, let us come and it was just a few days of no, there's nothing wrong.

Doug: 44:09

Well, luckily, the USSR does fess up and they do give an incredibly specific statement following Sweden's reveal, by saying, as quoted an accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences. Move to the next news segment. And that was as far as it got immediately two days following that. So, as you can imagine, probably a certain amount of confusion. Fear unlocks.

Doug: 44:41

There are accounts at the hospital. The first people that needed to be responded to were the firefighters that had reacted to the fire that was going on, and something that I found is the firefighters didn't really have knowledge of the radiation because, again, they're just responding to a fire, um, and many of them died within weeks of combating the fire. Their clothes that were taken off by the nurses, speaking of people who react incredibly quickly, the nurses actually immediately took the clothes of the firefighters, knowing that they were, um, radiated, um, and basically started to pile them up in in a basement, um, that is, in on location and on site. Those clothes are still there to this day and the room cannot be open because it is still emitting lethal levels of radiation just off of the clothes that were directly there next to the reactor.

Doug: 45:32

Yeah, that's some scary stuff. There are a few photographs that has been taken that you can look up, but it's yeah, it's absolutely terrifying. So we got to solve this problem right. Graphs that has been taken that you can look up, but it's yeah, it's absolutely terrifying, so we gotta solve this problem right it's part of the horror that it's not like other horror, right like I think so.

Don: 45:51

It's like any horror. It's not a horror of skeletons, it's not a horror of blood.

Ron: 45:56

It's, it's the horror of. Clothes are dangerous, like that's a. That's a really weird thing. Yes, human mind to process, yes, yeah, the unseen not for hercules denaro poisoned him.

Doug: 46:11

That's right, let's get the follow-up of how chernobyl and the tale of hercules are connected. That's right, um, so the two of you are obviously very advanced scientists. How do you take care of this? What do you do?

Ron: 46:25

oh, big time you gotta get an antidote material, douse it in a in a non-fissile club soda be right back yeah, and club soda was the answer.

Doug: 46:38

Club soda was taken directly.

Ron: 46:41

That's why they have Coke there now. That's right.

Doug: 46:47

Well, the solution that was initially offered was taking I don't exaggerate the entire stores of the USSR's sources of sand and boron.

Doug: 47:00

So they are extracting from beaches and then the supplies of boron throughout the entire USSR are being helicoptered in and dropped over the site.

Doug: 47:10

You just got to bury it right Essentially right, and so, because that was what the safety rods were made out of, they just said like we're going to need all the boron that we have as a resource in this country in order to map this. There was a challenge, though. The problem is is this um, you cannot fly directly over the radioactive source, so they basically had to track where wind was blowing and release these giant boxes of the sand and boron as close as they can get, knowing that a majority of it would miss. So this takes days upon days upon days of helicopters going through, including an accident where a helicopter made contact with a crane that was in the area, completely destroyed it. It falls to the ground and destroys itself there. The problem is and this gets to the only pre-talk that I had with Don was he was excited to talk about the elephant's foot, and we'll get into that in just a second the elephant's foot.

Doug: 48:11

Yes, this boron it's the elephant in the room. Yes, it's well, that room for sure, that room for sure. This boron has an interaction with the open core, essentially, and water, and it creates this substance called corium, which is basically like nuclear lava, that's the best way to put it. So it does slow it down, it isn't actively burning, but it turns it into this lava that continues to sink through basically the facility and soon into the earth it burns through the concrete.

Don: 48:47

It's like it was 3000 degrees celsius.

Doug: 48:50

Yes, and so, as this fire keeps burning and this lava is being created, it does end up slowing it down and there's a gigantic deposit of it that looks like the bottom of an elephant's foot. That's in the bottom of one of the reactors that's seeping through the cracks. Um, there's only, I think, two photographs of it, but you can look it up. It is fascinating to look at and it is directly the like, if not the most deadly, one of the most deadly, um, basically, installations of radioactive participation that exists in the world.

Doug: 49:23

There's only two photographs that exist from 1986 it's been photographed since then okay, got it so from the, from the original the uh and uh.

Don: 49:33

They didn't discover it until october, so it took them six months or so to get in there. The uh. If you're looking at the photo run, it looks like the uh, the. We're not sure who the guy is right, but the, the. The urban legend is that he died minutes later because he was standing standing next to it, yeah.

Don: 49:49

Yeah, it would have been um uh, emitting 10,000, uh of radiation, which they say is about is lethal in 30 seconds. So the it's great, the it's. It's a dose of about 10 sieverts, but we think that he had that. They figured out who it is. They think that that's our two Korniav and he actually lived to 2010. That's fantastic, so good on him.

Ron: 50:19

Yeah, good for you us thanks, yeah, um.

Doug: 50:25

Now, one thing we didn't discuss is um, all that water that was inside of the plant and the fact that water is released as a mechanism for um cooling down this reactor.

Doug: 50:39

As scientists continue to weigh in on this issue, there is a problem of there is a giant deposit of water that is underneath reactor four and, as this lava is being made, the corium, essentially, if it makes contact with this water, what was said in the officials meeting is the impact and steam that it would release would blow the other three reactors that are in the building, causing the like, basically creating a hole in the earth to where this is going to be a disaster that can potentially wipe out all of it, like because of the atmosphere.

Doug: 51:16

Wiping out the entire continent is what is what was said. Atmosphere wiping out the entire continent is what was said. This led to three men, olenski and Nalekul, valery Bespelov and Boris Baranov, who volunteered their lives to go down into the radioactive water in what is the equivalent of essentially wetsuits, to empty the water sources from the area and redirect it, so people would not have to endure this explosion. What was promised to them was 400 rubles and the state would take care of their families for the rest of their lives. In order to do this.

Don: 51:54

That's easy because that's only like three weeks, no problem.

Doug: 51:57

Exactly, yeah, we're done. And also good news following that. Um, the elephant's foot photograph, gentlemen um, the only one who has recorded to have died was in 2005. Boris passed away of a heart attack. The two others, if medical records keep up and what we can take, are probably still alive to this day.

Doug: 52:19

Um, so yeah, those guys have made it out okay, but there was 600,000 people between tunneling sources of water away, making sure that water supplies weren't contaminated from this, that were assigned to the job and were involved in these containment efforts.

Doug: 52:38

And, of course, the question on everybody's mind is how much radiation am I going to be exposed to? The workers who were clearing the graphite from the top of the building from the exploded core basically took 90 second shifts in which they were released from a helicopter, pushed the material back into the core, into the lava, and then would be escorted off. But there are records of several of these people saying I want to go back again, and so the recorded. There was somebody who went back at least 30 times because of the amount of pride that he had, knowing that it would still be lethal for him to take it, because he wanted to do this for his country, and I guess I think about it in terms of service and the way like a soldier would give his life for war. It seems like the amount of pride that people would take in doing this is is like insurmountable, for this being an accident instead of this being necessarily a cause, but I guess it is a cause in some respects it's so slow.

Don: 53:33

It's like the um which you'll know. Which star trek movie is it where Spock has to go into the right that con. I don't know, but like. But. You see him melting right and and like the effects of radiation happening immediately in real life, it doesn't happen like that. Yeah, like the, your lethal death of radiation is like it's. It's not going to explode you instantly. It's going to be something. So, especially for you know, someone who maybe is a Soviet soldier in the 1980s may not have like the most academic instruction about the dangers of radiation, Like what's there to be afraid of?

Don: 54:08

Why are we only here for 90 seconds, Like it's fine, I'm not that right. So I don't know if that could play into it too. Like not to downplay the pride that I'm sure they had in sacrificing themselves. That I'm sure they had in sacrificing themselves, Cause there were definitely scientists who knew, like Karnia, for example, knew that he was standing next to his death when he was going down to look at the elements. Foot, yes, Um, but uh. But so he was going in eyes open. I don't know that everybody involved in the cleanup was going in eyes open, yeah, and how they were coerced into working on it.

Doug: 54:36

I mean, yeah, there's so many different ways of kind of taking it, um, and even the outlaw, who was again our person, who was orchestrating the um, the test that was being done, he did die of cancer, but he died of cancer at 70.

Doug: 54:51

Um, so he still had many years of his life that he lived out following that um, as it happened.

Doug: 54:58

So to this day, what we're looking at is I've mentioned it earlier but essentially what is called the sarcophagus is they built this gigantic structure that was around the plant to contain the radiation which they've just had to replace because so many of the radioactive elements have actually destroyed it that it just kind of keeps having to be replaced.

Doug: 55:19

Elements have actually destroyed it that it just kind of keeps having to be replaced. But there's so many facets of this that, like I find fascinating that I haven't even begun to kind of dip into, like the fact that now there is the possibility that you can tour some of the areas near Chernobyl where the disaster happened, the fact that we now are looking again, if Gorbachev is saying this is the end of the soviet union, um, because this is such a you know kind of egg on the face in this moment of we didn't take care of what we needed to, but also an unprecedented disaster that mirrors nothing. I mean, there's just never been, there had never been, a disaster of that size and still hasn't to this day, even with other nuclear uh power plants uh malfunctioning um't to this day, even with other nuclear power plants malfunctioning up to this point.

Don: 56:03

But the you keep calling it a big disaster. How many people died?

Doug: 56:09

Do I have that on here? Wow, let me see I should. I certainly hope I do. Immediate death toll. The immediate death toll was only 31 people see, yeah it's fine.

Don: 56:23

31 it's not that big a disaster. I've seen bigger disasters than that.

Ron: 56:28

I'd love access to don's internal arithmetic for calculating the disaster although I also have 1500 people on the satanic.

Don: 56:40

That's pretty great disaster, yeah yep, good point.

Doug: 56:42

Then what have we learned today? The titanic leo really had it right it's all the hubris of man.

Ron: 56:49

Yeah, all of these linked.

Doug: 56:51

The who does estimate that somewhere between 4 000 and 93 000 people, though to have their lives cut early because of this disaster. Belarus, ukraine and Russia saw spike in thyroid cancer, especially among children exposed to uh radioactive iodine and if not for the lives. Can we also say that over 50 150 000 square kilometers were contaminated because of this?

Ron: 57:16

it's a massive ecological disaster too right yes, yes. Like you know, like all that water runs into the ground, presumably right, Like that's what groundwater tables that are poisoned for generations. Yes, Potentially right, Right.

Doug: 57:30

Although interestingly I saw that apparently only 1% of the livestock in the area actually have mutations Like they generally have adapted to the area, actually have mutations Like they generally have adapted to the area. There's really terrible accounts of soldiers going through and basically having to kill um animals that were in the area because they didn't want them to continue to like either be sources of milk production or to contaminate population. There's an absolutely horrific scene on the show of going through homes and having to find pets and basically take care of them, which I don't know and can't speak to the accuracy of other than it's a great dramatic effect of how painful that must have been as a part of your job. But yeah, that was one interesting fact at least.

Don: 58:11

And it's kind of become like a little nature preserve. Now, though, right?

Ron: 58:13

Yes, it has.

Don: 58:14

So there's a type of horse the Loshi Brezvalskova horse that was extinct in the 1960s and, uh, they released them into the exclusion zone and they have thrived wait what until until now. They're being poached, but for like the last 30 years, they've been thriving in this area, and so have have wolves and wildlife, and it's been a it's been a.

Ron: 58:41

Nature is healing I hope there was like an endangered horse they're like.

Doug: 58:46

I'll throw them in the irradiated place yeah, it kind of doesn't make sense to me as well, yeah because they were looking for a refuge and so it was free land.

Ron: 58:55

So yeah you tell me there's not more free land in Russia. I'm guessing real estate prices are pretty low.

Don: 59:02

It's a very tiny country, that's right, but yeah.

Doug: 59:08

I mean disaster, a reaction to disaster. Obviously, we're talking at the beginning of this about our childhood cover-ups of different colored pens, butter and breaking somebody's toe. You had the worst one, ron, sorry tell you to say this. You committed violence, but yeah, it's. It's immeasurable the amount of damage that can be done for not taking responsibility for actions. It seems, I think, that that's the thing that I find the most horrific. But I was curious, your takes on it as well.

Don: 59:39

Well, the same amount of damage would have happened if they had right, like because the reactor exploded as much as it exploded right and and and you're, I think, um, criticizing the soviets for not reacting quickly enough and and spending time denying it instead of cleaning it up. And, and you're right, i'm'm not denying that at all, but that's just a matter of a few hours after a disaster had already happened. So would it have if they had admitted it the instant that it happened and began cleaning it up? Would it have been better? Or it just would have been because, I don't know in the 1980s?

Don: 1:00:17

It's the thing about nuclear. It's why we've shut down so many nuclear plants now is because it's a lot dirtier and we don't know what to do with it. Right, like when it runs away, like there's literally nothing you can do but just to watch, yep, because you can't throw water on it, you can't cool it down, you literally just have to watch until it runs itself out. You can't cool it down, you can't. You literally just have to watch until it runs itself out. And, and it's the work of the humans to have concentrated it so much into one tiny little, you know spot that it, uh, it becomes so powerful.

Ron: 1:00:51

Oh, yeah, it is like. Uh, I don't know, it's a, it's one of those weird things. I guess you were talking earlier about how the, you know, soviet Union went through like this process of trying to assign blame right, like who's responsible for this?

Ron: 1:01:17

like it's a bad mistake. It's a big mistake, uh, but like it is just so. Not like the same with, like you know, going back to titan, do we? Is there someone we can actually blame? Like sure, someone made a call and the call went bad, but, um, I'm also interested in this idea that, like, well, who do we blame for this thing? Right, and the idea that we need to blame, that we need to take corrective action for something that just got away from people. It is just probably beyond the scope of people to handle fully.

Ron: 1:01:47

It was always going to happen. There was always going to be a nuclear power plant accident somewhere. There has continued to be right, this was we did not learn all the lessons from chernobyl, and there will not ever be another accident like this. Right, as fugishima proved right. And when was that? 2011, yes, something like that. So, I don't know, it's just sort of like, it's just a tragedy to me. There's no like, uh, sort of corrective way to to think about it. Um, I guess, like surely there are lessons. I don't super know what they are, though. You're talking about the government cover-up part, and I feel like also, there's an element of the Soviet Union didn't release a lot of this information. We know a lot more about it now than we did immediately afterwards.

Don: 1:02:36

Right.

Ron: 1:02:37

Yeah, I don't know to what extent. Maybe like that would have been more beneficial for everyone to have access to, to fully study the, the magnitude of the of the situation and how that could have improved.

Ron: 1:02:52

Uh, you know nuclear safety regulations in other countries, or or even if, uh, russia learned from this or, you know, soviet Union learned from this and started implementing new protocols in their other plants. Do we, do we know much about that, like, is there a silver lining somewhere, is there a silver sarcophagus that we can place on this Silver lining being put into silver sarcophagus, really takes it even darker.

Don: 1:03:22

I don't know what they are cause. I didn't uh, I have not done um research on it, but I'm I am positive that there were changes made in power plants around the world based on what happened here, yeah, and the fact that Fukushima was like it it blew, but it was a much smaller event than than Chernobyl was. But there was a couple of days we weren't sure that it was a much smaller event than than Chernobyl was, but there was a couple of days we weren't sure that it was going to be so yeah, yep.

Don: 1:03:45

But, um, but I think the lesson is make sure you pay attention to the omens, A hundred percent the omens. Oh yeah, Well did you did? You did you read about the blackbird of Chernobyl?

Doug: 1:03:59

No, I just decided to be really confident, absolutely. That's what I would have done.

Ron: 1:04:05

So now I'm the idiot. I don't know about the omens.

Don: 1:04:09

No, tell me about that. So just prior to the disaster, three days prior, and for the three days prior, just before, people saw this giant six to seven foot blackbird with glowing eyes, and they only saw it before the disaster. People saw this giant six to seven foot black bird with glowing eyes, um, and they only saw it before the disaster. And then, once it happened, no one has ever seen that sense.

Doug: 1:04:28

It is the disaster now.

Ron: 1:04:30

Damn, that's a, that's a whole. Nother aspect of this is like uh, how people pathologize like uh, like disasters, right, and how, how, if like uh, maybe the thing I'm struggling for, which is like, what is the nice little bow tie lesson we can learn from a tragedy like this? People will insert that themselves, right like oh well, there was a. There was a bird you should have known about, the bird six foot bird.

Don: 1:04:53

Yeah, that's a big bird I know it's a big bird. It's a huge bird.

Ron: 1:04:56

I'm not.

Don: 1:04:56

I'm not saying it's not a huge bird it's not the only time that bird's ever appeared.

Ron: 1:05:00

Oh, let me guess Shackleton's race to the South Pole.

Don: 1:05:08

West Virginia Silver Bridge disaster in 1686.

Ron: 1:05:14

Oh, that's the Mothman. You're talking about Mothman now. Mothman was at Chernobyl he was at Chernobyl. Oh, you should have started with that. Doug, can you go back and re-examine this, but make sure Mothman is the protagonist.

Doug: 1:05:29

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and start over.

Don: 1:05:32

How are?

Doug: 1:05:33

you guys doing today.

Ron: 1:05:36

Do the thing about the toes and then talk about West Virginia.

Doug: 1:05:42

Country roads take me home Absolutely. Um, yeah, I don't. I don't necessarily have something there. I think I get hung up, obviously on the evacuation, like we need to get people out of their way faster. Some of the recorded facts about um. It would be way too embarrassing to do this. Of the recorded facts about um it would be way too embarrassing to do this. Maybe, um, I, maybe I do.

Ron: 1:06:05

Yeah, maybe I do mythologize a bit because my sense of justice is like we need to help people immediately no, no, you're, I think you're 100, I think that impulse is 100, right, like, obviously, reaction times are important, these things, and it would have been nice if they had kind of acknowledged I mean, it would have been good to better to acknowledge what's happening and and get things moving a little bit faster, right, yeah, um but there's your answer.

Doug: 1:06:27

I like it well, I'd like to tell you both that, if my yes, please, please first move faster. But uh, if my chernobyl ever burns down, I hope that the two of you are with me to keep me cool headed through it.

Don: 1:06:44

Why would you want me with you at a burning chernobyl? You're in a.

Doug: 1:06:47

That's terrible thing to wish you're in an armani suit though so you'll be fine, I'll be safe I'm with you.

Ron: 1:06:54

Put me in the. Put me in the culvert. I'll look at the foot for you Doug. Thank you, guys so much for chatting with me today, dostoevsky, thank you.