• tibi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    1 month ago

    “The injured were sprawled out over the railroad tracks, scorched and black. When I walked by, they moaned in agony. ‘Water… water…’

    I heard a man in passing announce that giving water to the burn victims would kill them. I was torn. I knew that these people had hours, if not minutes, to live. These burn victims – they were no longer of this world.

    ‘Water… water…’

    I decided to look for a water source. Luckily, I found a futon nearby engulfed in flames. I tore a piece of it off, dipped it in the rice paddy nearby, and wrang it over the burn victims’ mouths. There were about 40 of them. I went back and forth, from the rice paddy to the railroad tracks. They drank the muddy water eagerly. Among them was my dear friend Yamada. ‘Yama- da! Yamada!’ I exclaimed, giddy to see a familiar face. I placed my hand on his chest. His skin slid right off, exposing his flesh. I was mortified. ‘Water…’ he murmured. I wrang the water over his mouth. Five minutes later, he was dead.

    Everywhere, as far as my eyes could reach, all the houses had collapsed, all the trees and electric poles had been broken down. About two kilometres away, around the spot which later proved to be the explosion centre, thick dark smoke whirled up from a sea of yellowish dust.

    I remained stunned, completely stunned. The next moment I heard a faint groan, then disconnected words that seemed to come up from the bottom of the earth: “Yuko . . . dead . . . I’m dying . . . don’t stay …” It was my wife, but it was not anything like a voice uttered by a human being: it was a voice squeezed out from the last bit of life in death’s grip. “What? Be strong now! . . . Where are you? Where are you?” As if in reply, a pile of tangled timbers moved with a creaking noise. Bleeding all over, my wife stood upright, with our two-month-old baby tightly in her arms.

    All around us we heard shouting, groaning, cursing, voices calling father, voices calling mother, voices in search of brothers and sisters. All over the central part of town flames were shooting out as if the earth’s crust had been ripped open. And these sorely burnt men and women all in stark nakedness! It was as if our corrupt world had come to an end, giving way to hell. My wife was most painfully wounded. On her whole body were stuck countless fragments of glass, large and small, that reflected pallid lights like a glittering spearhead of a demon. She could see nothing.

    I took my wife on my back, and held the baby on my left arm. We walked three hundred metres, stepping barefooted on the debris and broken sheets of glass that went to pieces under our weight, and took refuge on a sand bank in a river where the tide had ebbed. Here we joined hundreds of suffering people, and the sound of the frantic search of parents for their children was heartrending enough to make one giddy.

    But it wasn’t that bad, right?

    • chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 month ago

      Everyone got showers, I don’t know what the big deal is. I’ve seen pictures, have you seen the pictures? All of those people were in great shape. My doctor says I’m as healthy as someone half my age, but I’d kill to be in as good a shape as some of the people in those pictures.

  • omarfw@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    22 days ago

    Sociopaths view other people as replaceable interchangeable meat puppets. They don’t value human life. Our society will not improve until we remove sociopaths from power and make it impossible for them to pursue it.

  • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    I didn’t want to take this at face value without context so I found when they discussed this. Check around 1:17:00 in this video.

    https://youtu.be/lfBQoWxQaEM?si=6Ev6rx62KESH-HgR

    And yeah, he did say exactly what the OP states. So… yeah.

    To give the absolute benefit of the doubt, I could say they were referring specifically to nuclear fallout rather than the initial explosion, as a full on explosion is less likely in a nuclear plant emergency. But even assuming it was just an incredibly distasteful way to reference that, there are still thousands of deaths and even more injuries/illnesses associated principally with radiation poisoning.

    This is not to say I’m against nuclear energy, but by god we’ve got to have more careful consideration than this.

    Edit: As a bonus, Musk talks about his views on global warming around the 1:10 mark. The issue with greenhouse gasses is, uh… making it hard to breathe?

    • TheSlad@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 month ago

      For more context: hes comparing nuclear energy disasters like chernobyl to the bombings of japan, saying that because those cities recovered therefore people are wrong about chernobyl still being uninhabitable and that people shouldn’t be so scared of nuclear energy. Hes not saying bombing cities isnt so bad in general, just that its not as bad as how “(((they)))” say it is at chernobyl. Nevemind the fact that even if chernobyl was able to rebound it still would’ve been a major and tragic disaster!

      This actually perfectly demonstrates his lack of knowledge and ability to perceive himself unduly as an intelligent person because of his financial success. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were able to rebuild and the nuclear fallout was short-lived because the bombs were detonated miles above the ground to maximize their immediate devastation, while the chernobyl reactor exploded on/in the ground and there is still uncontained radioactive material within the compound because it is basically impossible to clean up.

      Also, the comments on that video are depressing.

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    “I shot a guy in the head, but then a different guy moved into the house where he lived, so it wasn’t that bad?”