- Joined
- Jan 19, 2020
Oh man.
Oh man oh man oh man.
Nuclear irradiation? THAT IS MY JAM.
And Lily, honey, darling. That's not how nuclear radiation works.
The Elephants Foot, for those unaware, is the slag mass that is left of Chernobyl's core, a great heap of melted metal that resembles -- ash the name implies -- an elephant's foot. The Elephant's Foot is so dangerously radioactive that the pictures we have of it had to be taken from the end of the hallway by very, very old men taking blind photographs around the corner because standing at the open end of the hallway will cause fatal radiation poisoning. And they were explicitly old men because they didn't figure they had much time left anyway so if they died by stepping out into the hall then nobody else would suffer for it.
I think what Lily is proposing is that Niva would use earth, water, and metal to cool down, bury, and then enclose the overheating core, which is fair. In current day we actually entomb radioactive waste in a cylinder of sand and concrete and then enclose that in metal. These can be buried for extra assurance, although I think most waste is kept out in the desert, under monitored facilities; either way the capsules themselves are so dense as to be impenetrable and there's zero chance of leaks.
However, the idea that she is simultaneously so irradiated she herself becomes radioactive is... well, ridiculous. I think it actually IS possible for this to occur, but anybody who is so irradiated that this happens has hours or days to live at best. Three years of suffering in isolation, writing books on philosophy? That ain't happening. Especially because
radiation poisoning causes chromosomal damage.
Radiation poisoning is absolutely fascinating. While there's the obvious effect of being so close to the core explosion that she would probably be incinerated or melt, it's also possible that she had enough distance or protection to survive the initial wave and appear 'okay' in the immediate aftermath. The problem will come in a few days, when that chromosomal damage means that her body can no longer produce... anything, because the biological blueprint is fucking gone.
Red blood cells. White blood cells. Platelets. Skin cells. Her hair will start coming out in clumps and never growing back because her body forgot how. Her epidermis will still sloughing off and there will be no new skin underneath. She will have no immune system so the faintest hint of an infection from any source will likely prove fatal. She won't be able to digest food. She will undergo systemic organ failure while her body rots from the inside out. She will die in agony a couple of weeks after the accident, at most, although if she's so close to the core explosion she will probably only live for a few hours before collapsing in a puddle of blood.
'Three years' might work if she wasn't so close and wound up developing some fun forms of cancer instead, but that would eliminate her big savior moment and certainly wouldn't be enough to turn her radioactive.
As somebody who has used nuclear irradiation as a blueprint for some existential body horror myself, the idea strikes me as super fun, but Lily obviously can't pull it off, and even worse she's basically throwing it in both as a coda to the Avatar (when this sort of horrific death deserves more than a footnote), and also seems to just be another point in her anti=capitalist/free market screed, since it's the fault of 'cost cutting measures' and evil corporate executives. See what free market trade has wrought?!
(Ignore that Chernobyl occurred under the communist USSR and that it was a result of intentionally shutting down safety protocols while conducting a test and carrying on with that test despite system errors. Chernobyl as a facility was safe. It was raw human hubris that caused the accident.)
The Avatar State is already fucked up because of Korra severing the link to her past lives. I was also under the impression that Aang becoming as he did in the Avatar State (before he had control of it) was because those past lives were being channeled through and controlling him, and we see later on that the Avatars in general had a much more pragmatic approach to their problems once they reached their fully realized state. In this case, 'eliminate the threat to save the most people' seemed to be their general default. Even the Airbender that he talks to on the Lion Turtle is like 'stop being a bitch, Aang, sometimes you gotta murder people'.
I also just love her 'Lavi and Niva are reunited in the Spirit World' bullshit. Um, no, they aren't. Even if Lavi winds up there (for whatever reason) then Niva is going to be reincarnated into the next Avatar. Her spirit deosn't get to move on to the other plane. She is permanently tethered and beholden to the physical world.
Oh man oh man oh man.
Nuclear irradiation? THAT IS MY JAM.
And Lily, honey, darling. That's not how nuclear radiation works.
The Elephants Foot, for those unaware, is the slag mass that is left of Chernobyl's core, a great heap of melted metal that resembles -- ash the name implies -- an elephant's foot. The Elephant's Foot is so dangerously radioactive that the pictures we have of it had to be taken from the end of the hallway by very, very old men taking blind photographs around the corner because standing at the open end of the hallway will cause fatal radiation poisoning. And they were explicitly old men because they didn't figure they had much time left anyway so if they died by stepping out into the hall then nobody else would suffer for it.
I think what Lily is proposing is that Niva would use earth, water, and metal to cool down, bury, and then enclose the overheating core, which is fair. In current day we actually entomb radioactive waste in a cylinder of sand and concrete and then enclose that in metal. These can be buried for extra assurance, although I think most waste is kept out in the desert, under monitored facilities; either way the capsules themselves are so dense as to be impenetrable and there's zero chance of leaks.
However, the idea that she is simultaneously so irradiated she herself becomes radioactive is... well, ridiculous. I think it actually IS possible for this to occur, but anybody who is so irradiated that this happens has hours or days to live at best. Three years of suffering in isolation, writing books on philosophy? That ain't happening. Especially because
radiation poisoning causes chromosomal damage.
Radiation poisoning is absolutely fascinating. While there's the obvious effect of being so close to the core explosion that she would probably be incinerated or melt, it's also possible that she had enough distance or protection to survive the initial wave and appear 'okay' in the immediate aftermath. The problem will come in a few days, when that chromosomal damage means that her body can no longer produce... anything, because the biological blueprint is fucking gone.
Red blood cells. White blood cells. Platelets. Skin cells. Her hair will start coming out in clumps and never growing back because her body forgot how. Her epidermis will still sloughing off and there will be no new skin underneath. She will have no immune system so the faintest hint of an infection from any source will likely prove fatal. She won't be able to digest food. She will undergo systemic organ failure while her body rots from the inside out. She will die in agony a couple of weeks after the accident, at most, although if she's so close to the core explosion she will probably only live for a few hours before collapsing in a puddle of blood.
'Three years' might work if she wasn't so close and wound up developing some fun forms of cancer instead, but that would eliminate her big savior moment and certainly wouldn't be enough to turn her radioactive.
As somebody who has used nuclear irradiation as a blueprint for some existential body horror myself, the idea strikes me as super fun, but Lily obviously can't pull it off, and even worse she's basically throwing it in both as a coda to the Avatar (when this sort of horrific death deserves more than a footnote), and also seems to just be another point in her anti=capitalist/free market screed, since it's the fault of 'cost cutting measures' and evil corporate executives. See what free market trade has wrought?!
(Ignore that Chernobyl occurred under the communist USSR and that it was a result of intentionally shutting down safety protocols while conducting a test and carrying on with that test despite system errors. Chernobyl as a facility was safe. It was raw human hubris that caused the accident.)
The Avatar State is already fucked up because of Korra severing the link to her past lives. I was also under the impression that Aang becoming as he did in the Avatar State (before he had control of it) was because those past lives were being channeled through and controlling him, and we see later on that the Avatars in general had a much more pragmatic approach to their problems once they reached their fully realized state. In this case, 'eliminate the threat to save the most people' seemed to be their general default. Even the Airbender that he talks to on the Lion Turtle is like 'stop being a bitch, Aang, sometimes you gotta murder people'.
I also just love her 'Lavi and Niva are reunited in the Spirit World' bullshit. Um, no, they aren't. Even if Lavi winds up there (for whatever reason) then Niva is going to be reincarnated into the next Avatar. Her spirit deosn't get to move on to the other plane. She is permanently tethered and beholden to the physical world.
