Tag: Zaporozhye

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

While all wealthy Blue Check liberals this summer were banging anonymous people on Ibiza and Mikonos while high on shrooms, we poor people have noticed that there is a low-grade crisis afoot at the Ukrainian Zaporozhye Nuclear plant. It is, as I understand it, the third largest such plant in the world and the biggest in Europe.

There is a greater-than-zero sum chance that some sort of nuclear catastrophe, on a par with Chernobyl could happen there, pretty much at any moment. There has been some shelling there and the Russians, as I understand it, have been holding the planet’s staff hostage and generally terrorizing them.

But what would be the significance of there actually being another major nuclear tragedy in Ukraine? Let me be clear — I’m not an expert, but this is just off the top of my head speculation.

Let’s say whatever it is that might happen at Zaporozhye is Big. Big enough that it’s one of the — if not the biggest –news events of the year, maybe even the decade. And, let’s say whatever it is that happens, happens before the American 2022 midterms.

Probably what would happen is the entire world would, for a few days at least, come to a grinding halt as we all struggled to process what was going on. All the people in the affected areas would have to be evacuated and, that, unto itself, would be a huge news event because it would make concrete the abstract nature of what was going on.

I suspect the unintended consequence of such a tragedy happening is both the Ukrainians and the Russians would grow more radical. Ukrainians would have yet another grievance to rile them up, while the domestic Russian population might grow even more restless. All of this is very speculative. I have no idea what might happen.

But a nuclear disaster at Zaporozhye would for sure make an already unstable world even more so. The post-WW2 global liberal order is barely hanging on and a few million people being displaced in Ukraine would not exactly help the situation.