REMEMBRANCE: An Anniversary to Forget

Today is exactly 25 years since the nuclear disaster occurred at Chernobyl in what was then the Soviet Union. Today the surrounding town of Pripyat is a ghost town, as is a 15km (or thereabouts) 'exclusion zone' around the town, so toxic is the environment.

It was late April in 1986 and I remember so well hearing about it on the radio and all over the news. Everyone was talking about it. I remember how we were all glad, downright relieved, in fact, to be living on the southern tip of Africa, far from those clouds bearing toxic elements too awful to contemplate.

'Exclusion zone' - don't you just love the coy language of the psychotic nihilism that is nuclear speak?

'Exclusion' from what? Oh, yes, that's right - life itself.

Chernobyl is a vault of hellish memories, a scar on our collective conscience, a veritable Pandora's box of humanity's depths of possible hell on Earth. It is not the best of who we were, or who we should be.

It's all been said - all the stats, all the stories, all the endless what-ifs. Pity that we STILL haven't reached the never-agains.

After all, the next time some mindless (or bought out) prat tries to convince you of the 'positives' of nuclear power, do be sure to show them the following:










Do you get my point?