Recent headlines:
World: PM to challenge Trump’s approach on climate (Oh good, we’re saved)
Gaming: Microsoft is bring more games to Steam (Crackdown plsssss)
I’ve been playing: World of Warcraft (PvP time), Super Mario Bros (yes, that one.)
I love history. I love history because it challenges our notions of what normality is. Normality for me was the starting template of school, making friends, growing within the educational system, leaving, attending university, getting a job… and much more to come. Normality for me is the domesticated life which leaves room for hobbies and encourages creativity. If my life was a story, the main antagonists would be poor mental health and ignorance from people in power. Omitting quite a few larger details, that basic picture is what normality is for me, what life is. But a few thousand years ago, normality for someone else included the expectation that you’d join the army, don heavy armour and cut down foes with a sword. Normality was defending your home against barbaric invaders with spear and shield. A completely different world.
History is fascinating to me because a lot of the events which shaped our world now sound like fantastical stories. I see humans walking down the street, caught up in their normal lives with their phones and their cars and their jobs, who in a different time would be warriors, smiths, map-makers. Most of us aren’t giving a second thought to how much the world around us defines who we are. In a thousand years, if we still exist, who will these people who walk the streets be then? What will be important to them? What will they think of the humans of 2019? I can’t imagine history is going to look back on us fondly, or as much more than a society which was obsessed with burying their heads in the sand.
I’m rambling about history because a new HBO miniseries has been exploring the events of the catastrophe of the nuclear power plant of Chernobyl in 1986. This isn’t ancient history, but it’s fascinating in an altogether different way in that this was the world nine years before I was born; a world before smartphones and widespread adoption of the internet, and thus, a world before easily accessible and fast-travelling information. This is also set in Soviet Ukraine, so a cultural divide is more prominent than a historical one, for sure. Information is clearly shown to be weaponized here, with paranoia and ignorance fuelling mismanagement and misunderstanding on a colossally deadly scale.
Chernobyl is fascinating, yes, but more-so terrifying. I don’t personally recall being taught anything about the events of the Chernobyl disaster in school – whether due to a gap in education or my own wandering mind, I don’t know – and while I’ve obviously heard about the broad strokes of what happened, I’ve been watching most of this series in fresh horror. Now this is a drama, so everything has to be taken with a pinch of salt, and I’ll certainly look up the historical accuracy of these plot points when I’ve seen the final episode. But wow. I had no idea how close we came to a much larger scale tragedy occurring in 1986. Several times! In multiple scenarios, if certain people hadn’t made certain actions and decisions at certain times, Chernobyl could have lead to a mostly irradiated Europe or a mostly radioactive European water supply. At least, that’s what I took away from the show. As I said, I’ll be checking up on this later.
My father was 21 when this happened. Now obviously, information on the details of this catastrophe was kept secret for a long time by Soviet Ukraine, but it did eventually come out. I’m trying to imagine what my reaction would be to the news that a nuclear catastrophe has occurred on the other side of the continent, and I think it’d mostly be one of intense fear. I mean, I’m already appalled at the stalwart apathy world leaders are showing to the climate crisis regarding our impending doom, but something like Chernobyl sounds so much more immediate. My father has told me before about how growing up during the Cold War he pretty much expected the world to end in his lifetime, but this is the first time I think I’ve really stopped to imagine what that must have been like.
I fear that in this blog post I come across as privileged and naive. And I’d just like to say that while my life certainly has its fair share of difficulty, that’s probably fair to say. I’ve grown up in a Western world, never directly affected by war, or famine, or widespread civilian death seen so often throughout history, up to and surpassing Chernobyl. People who want nothing more than to live out their lives, but die due to war driven by some powerful man’s hatred, or due to some disaster mishandled by an apathetic government. I am, relatively speaking, extremely lucky. And one of the reasons why history seems to fantastic to me is because I’ve never had to live through its hardships. Hardships which are still occurring in many places across the globe today. I just felt that I should acknowledge that I know this. But perhaps we all need to be reminded of that sometimes.
Oh bother, I was going to write about how I turn 24 in a few days and how my attitude to aging has changed over recent years. Feels a bit shallow to do that now, here. Maybe next week!
Further reading:
The Weekly Deathmatch #58 – Splitgate: Arena Warfare – Now You’re Killing With Portals
Perpetually Perturbed 