Any More Stalinists Out There Who Think Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine Should Be Part of Russia? Maybe You Want to Re-Partition Poland Again?

@HootyTheNightOwl What exactly are they doing to these people aside from making sure they have supplies and access to a doctor? You really expect them to run utilities into the zone, even as they're still trying to pressure those people to leave? Samosely are insular (and at times even dangerous), they will never listen to reason.

What they should have done was lock the area down in '86, and make sure these kooks stayed where they were resettled - at gunpoint if needed.

@QuixoticSoul If they haven't left in over 30 years, it's pretty safe to say that they aren't going to wake up one morning and say "Gee, you're right, maybe we should leave after all". Try to see things from their angle, they've seen family and friends who were evacuated die anyway, to them evacuation is as much the enemy as radiation is to the rest of the world.

If you've tried beating them with a stick and it hasn't worked... at least offer them some crumbs of comfort to make life more bearable.

No, they won't get utilities and that's not what i was suggesting. Take a look around you for a moment. Technology has come a long way since the 1980's and we have basic survival items that are of use to us after a tornado, hurricane or earthquake. Why not make these available to them at low cost - a hand cranked lantern isn't that expensive to produce or supply to someone who lives off grid, doesn't involve disturbing any irradiated soil in the gardens that they eat out of and doesn't come with any increased fire risk, so give them that and a radio for entertainment.

Sure, forcing them to stay was certainly the answer, right??? Maybe we should have saved the money on the new safe confinement, too - because we certainly need the radiation belching out into the world and polluting us again, don't we??? You Americans came out of the situation much better than those who live closer to the former USSR, who bore a greater impact from it in our own lives. Why didn't you go to Fukushima and point a gun at those reactors as you yell "If you explode, I'm going to fill you full of lead" - who knows, maybe you could have been the hero in that situation, too.

@HootyTheNightOwl They do get help - the government is giving them basic supplies and sends out a doctor for regular checkups. Among those supplies is kerosene, which they use in the same lamps they've been lighting their entire lives. Come on, you really expect a crazy old lady to wind up a lantern by hand?

And yes, they should have been forced to remain at their resettlement area and assimilate. They went back to the exclusion zone before getting to see anyone die of long-term complications, it was pure culture shock and a spazout. Samosely is a manifestation of mental illness, pure and simple.

And it has nothing to do with money, letting them do what they're doing now is certainly cheaper than making sure they have modern housing with utilities, and access to mental health resources.

I am from the former USSR. Even vaguely remember everyone freaking the fuck out in '86.

@Harriet03

I just hope Lavia is still free when she's a grandmother.

@beckyromero Lasma

@QuixoticSoul

Not really.

"Disaster" and "catastrophe" are synonyms.

@beckyromero It's the "greatest" vs "major" and the missing "geopolitical" that's the problem in the translation - not the catastrophe/disaster conflation.

And no, he's not talking about the Baltics - but everything else that happened - and most importantly, how.

@QuixoticSoul
Well, it's not like we're talking natural disasters.

@DeWayfarer dominated and controlled by the Soviet Union? Yes. But still they were separate countries, just pointing out the facts.

@Discotheque The semantics only mattered to Soviet Union not the people!

@DeWayfarer ok fair enough.

@beckyromero but they didn't finally come for you, because you were them

@SW-User

Want to be clear.

Are you directing your comment at me or at Martin Niemöller?

@beckyromero I was making a joke. Not accusing anybody of being a Nazi.

@pikminboy
Militarily? No doubt.

@AngelofFail

[media=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DasYZgS3ceI]

if you havent seen this movie... go watch it, its hillarious.

[media=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukJ5dMYx2no]

@AngelofFail

Thank you. I will try to check it out.