Chernobyl & USSR

Chernobyl explosion was “perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” According to Mikhail Gorbachev who was the last leader of the Soviet Union and was in power during the meltdown. But perhaps the more important lesson from the Chernobyl catastrophe is that disinformation can kill you. It is important to remember that the largest and most deadly nuclear accident in the world was not even reported initially by the secretive and corrupt Soviet Union. It was not until 2 days after the meltdown that the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden detected the radiation and forced the Soviets to admit there had been an accident. Forsmark is 1100 km from Chernobyl. Disinformation about Chernobyl is not confined to the Soviet Union, western nations and especially the UN played a critical role in down playing and distorting information about the effects of the disaster. This is most obvious in the fatality estimates associated with the catastrophe.