On the night of December 2nd to 3rd 1984 years the city of Bhopal slept. Slept after a hard day at work. Bhopal, city of a million people, capital of the Indian state of Mahdya Pradesh, a city with an ancient history located in the heart of India.
80-The 1950s were boom years for India. Large companies from Europe and the United States were provided with significant tax incentives by the Indian government., which, combined with very cheap labor, promised huge profits for companies. Wherein, working conditions at the opened enterprises were not at all the same, as in the same enterprises in developed countries, there was no need to think about any labor protection and more or less serious safety precautions, companies saved literally on everything, to get as much profit as possible. Often used outdated, cheap equipment, alarm systems were not equipped, happened, that dangerous industries were located right in the cities. For example, the plant of the American company Union Carbide (Union Carbide) in the same city of Bhopal. The plant produced the insecticide Sevin, which was produced from a very toxic substance methyl isocyanate - it was stored on the territory of the plant in three huge containers, half buried in the ground. This substance was stored at the plant 42 tons while, that according to international standards, one enterprise was supposed to store no more than one ton, i.e, exactly at 42 times more than normal. Wherein, many security systems did not work, and the containers themselves, in which the substance was stored, were in a pretty run down condition..
On the night of December 3, water got into one of the containers with methyl isocyanate for an unknown reason.. Methyl isocyanate reacts very violently in contact with water.. The temperature rises sharply, and as a result of the reaction, the substance decomposes, decomposition products are in particular hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide. Sensors showed a malfunction in the tank, and plant operators heard a rumble and rattle, which issued a foundation collapsing under the tank. An attempt to turn on the security systems did not lead to anything., since many of them were simply absent, and a, that were, were out of service. At half past midnight, the emergency valve failed, and there was an explosion. About thirty tons of deadly poisonous gas were in the air. This cloud covered the sleeping city.
People woke up with a terrible cough, their eyes and throat burned, it was impossible to breathe. Hell lasted for several hours, people died by the thousands. Nobody could help. The doctors tried, but the composition of the gas was a trade secret, and what antidotes to use to help people was unknown. Only in the first hours of the disaster, about four thousand people died., later, within two weeks people continued to die and the number of victims approached eight thousand. But the tragedy didn't end there.. People have been dying for years, many have developed various chronic diseases, many children were born with various abnormalities. The total recognized number of victims was 18 thousands of people. The disaster also had quite serious environmental consequences.. clear, that the catastrophe itself also killed many domestic animals and livestock, leaves fell from the trees, territory, covered by a deadly cloud, turned out to be poisoned for many years.
Us, probably, it's impossible to even imagine. The scale of the tragedy is enormous, and they just don't fit in my head.. But the plant was not closed after the disaster and continued to work. It closed only 1986 year, but was not eliminated, its territory was turned into a chemical waste dump. Union Carbide pays out to accident victims 470 million dollars in exchange for, that they refused further prosecution.
And in 1986 year, in the same year, when the ill-fated factory in the city of Bhopal closed, tragedy struck in our country. An accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian USSR. Nuclear accidents of this level have never happened in the history of mankind.. Compare Chernobyl with Bhopal in terms of the number of victims, probably, must not, in Bhopal there were many times more victims, but there are no analogues on the planet in terms of the environmental consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. Huge territory has become a zone of exclusion, beautiful modern city has become a ghost town. The consequences of the disaster are felt outside the exclusion zone: in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have territories, where the radiation background significantly exceeds the natural.
The whole world remembers and will remember the Chernobyl disaster. So, remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Especially, what happened at the end of the existence of the Soviet Union, and it is certainly associated with the supposedly rotten Soviet system at that time. The accident itself is quite mythologized, the truth about it has been known for a long time, but who cares now? Recently, the series "Chernobyl" was filmed in the United States about those events.. TV series, well made, cost a lot of money and seems to be based on real events. Only truth, which is a lot in this series, skillfully enough mixed with the subtlest lies, many of the main characters of those events are shown completely incorrectly and unfairly, and the life of the people of that time, despite good detail, quite strongly distorted in the negative direction. Basically, it's understandable.. The USSR of those years for the United States will always remain a "gloomy empire of evil". But what is remarkable is that there are no such series about the Bhopal disaster.. There were films of Indian production, it is understandable - for India it is a national tragedy, filmed documentaries in the USA. But in general, the world remembers that catastrophe rather badly., especially in comparison with Chernobyl. Probably, because it is not very pleasant to remember those events, which were arranged in a "third world country" by a large company from the "empire of good", how the United States has positioned itself and is positioning itself. But that doesn't change the fact, what is on the conscience of this country 18 thousands of innocent Indian lives.
voice of Mordor
