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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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Just for your information: That "Chernobyl killed less than 100 people" is wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster
It is also totally unhonestly framed in order to trick you. "less than 100 people died in 1986", but it ignores that most deaths will be due to cancer a few years later. So fuck this guy spreading propaganda bullshit.
It is not wrong. As I have already posted, although the 2005 report of the Chernobyl Forum concluded with expected 4000 excess deaths after the event itself, the used model (LNT) is highly contested and with the dosages most people were exposed to not useful.
It is expected that all in all fewer than 100 people will die because of chernobyl (including the ~50 people killed by the explosion and the ASR right after it).
The Rational View podcast with Dr. Al Scott: Gerry Thomas and the UNSCEAR reports
Link to episode: https://therationalview.podbean.com/e/gerry-thomas-and-the-unscear-reports/
Link to media: https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/r8t8zh/TRV-GerryThomas.mp3
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The other one I like to compare is: in the decades that the Berlin Wall - the ultimate symbol of eeeevil gommunist authoritian totalitarianism - existed, fewer people were killed attempting to cross the wall than were murdered by a single US bomb that landed on a girls’ school in Iran in a single day.
I do not know the number of Palestinians that have been murdered by the IOF just for approaching the intentionally vague “yellow line” since the “ceasefire” months ago, but I’m certain it’s higher than the Berlin Wall fatalities.
Children are currently 50 percent of the population in the Gaza strip if I'm correct. That should tell you more than enough how bad things are.
Israel is testament to how the West fooled everyone.
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I feel like this is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. You should compare Chernobyl to Fukushima and 3 mile island. All of these accidents involved gross incompetence, but the incompetence at Chernobyl was the grossest for any large nuclear disaster in history.
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
Critically, the working classes were in charge of Chernobyl. Their mistakes were mistakes made by workers. The worker is not infallible.
The chernobyl disaster also had the chance to be much, much worse than it was. The only reason it wasn't worse was the sacrifices of the people.
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Bhopal was in the news for a while. It was the lead story on the nightly news for at least a week. I think nuclear accidents have more staying power due to fear of the unknown. The movie The China Syndrome came out a few years before and many thought they were witnessing the end of the world.
in the end estimated 50-60.000 people died from cancer related to Chernobyl.
Again, because my other comment is not visible to many of you:
The estimate of 50,000–60,000 Chernobyl cancer deaths is a widely cited, worst-case projection, but it is crucial to understand that this figure is not a factual count. It is a theoretical calculation derived from the linear no-threshold (LNT) model, a framework that is fundamentally flawed and inappropriate for assessing the health impact of low-dose radiation exposure.
- 29 relief workers died from Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS) shortly after the accident.
- As of 2005, only fewer than 50 deaths were directly linked to the radiation exposure from the accident itself. This is the most solid figure based on actual evidence.
A total of up to four thousand people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.
As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster, almost all being highly exposed rescue workers, many who died within months of the accident but others who died as late as 2004.
The new numbers are presented in a landmark digest report, "Chernobyl’s Legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts," just released by the Chernobyl Forum. The digest, based on a three-volume, 600-page report and incorporating the work of hundreds of scientists, economists and health experts, assesses the 20-year impact of the largest nuclear accident in history. The Forum is made up of 8 UN specialized agencies, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), and the World Bank, as well as the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/chernobyl-true-scale-accident
The estimate of 50,000–60,000 Chernobyl cancer deaths is a widely cited, worst-case projection, but it is crucial to understand that this figure is not a factual count. It is a theoretical calculation derived from the linear no-threshold (LNT) model, a framework that is fundamentally flawed and inappropriate for assessing the health impact of low-dose radiation exposure.
- 29 relief workers died from Acute Radiation Sickness (ARS) shortly after the accident.
- As of 2005, only fewer than 50 deaths were directly linked to the radiation exposure from the accident itself. This is the most solid figure based on actual evidence.
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When people think of a stereotypical ghoulish corporation that would melt their workers into glue after they collapsed from working 50 years in a mine for scrip they are thinking about Union Carbide.
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.
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I'm one of today's lucky 10,000 for Bhopal. Horrific.
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