"Yes, Uncle Screwtape."
Posted on 01/28/2015 8:03:06 AM PST by BenLurkin
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the 14,000-ton military radar installation in northern Ukraine, near the border with Belorussia, has remained a mystery to outside observers, largely because it sits right next to the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station, where a reactor meltdown in the spring of 1986 rendered the surrounding area uninhabitable for the next, oh, several thousand years. Then again, a nuclear wasteland is just the sort of thing to attract a jaded 21st century tourist who doesn’t want to hear about your wild week on Phuket, and the Exclusion Zone has recently seen a drastic increase in visitors, even if it remains a potential radioactive tinderbox. The site deemed Chernobyl 2—a tiny military outpost that housed the operation of The Russian Woodpecker, known formally as Duga-3—is also opening up to tourists, albeit more slowly.
...
And yet the Russian Woodpecker ... even made it (metaphorically, alas) to the Sundance Film Festival in the form of The Russian Woodpecker, a documentary by the American filmmaker Chad Garcia.
...
Still, it’s hard to call Alexandrovich’s version of events anything other than a conspiracy theory; if he were not such a magnetic subject, or if Chernobyl weren’t so eerily telegenic, I doubt there would have been a sleek American documentary for me to write about. The film records Alexandrovich’s increasingly strong conviction that the Russian Woodpecker was the pet project of a high-ranking Communist Party bureaucrat named Vasily A. Shamshin. Alexandrovich—who does not have a background in the sciences, though he assiduously interviews many people who do—argues that the radar was never going to be any good at intercepting American missiles, that it was like so much of the Soviet Union, superficially impressive but fundamentally pointless.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Given the way the Soviets operate, that would not surprise m in the least.
"Yes, Uncle Screwtape."
Interesting!
I walk away from the article completely dumbfounded as to the author's intended thesis.
But, it's Newsweek, so that is to be expected.
Near as I can tell, the author wanted everyone to know that he had been to the hippest vacation post on the planet —Chernobyl.
I don't know about Scully, but from glancing at Mulder's post-X Files artistic career, I'd say it's Mulder or nothing.
That’s the Home, Pa episode. Supposedly Mathis didn’t allow his song to be used because of the content and they had to clone a version. I actually knew someone who had a job delivering phone books to the residents of Home. Pretty funny.
FReegards
Walking Dead??
There’s a lot of recordings of that, and a few numbers stations as well.
That is NOT tinfoil! It’s that less effective aluminum stuff!
There is one portion of the Roswell legend that is true. I can verify there were original drawings from the 40’s for a cryogenic lab in the building 18 complex at Wright Patterson. I saw them with my own eyes. I worked on a project that I needed architectural details for a flare stack installation and pulled the blueprints, cryogenic was in the drawing title.
Seems like a round-a-bout way to make a point about Russian-Ukrainian ‘relations’. About a relevant as describing the Russian radar by its weight. A waste of magazine space & the reader’s time.
Back before 9-11 air force bases had many open sources of information. There have been several articles written on the historical building 18 complex, no new information here. Several of these buildings were built in 1928. Back before 9-11 we thought nothing of parking a hydrogen trailer pretty much where ever we pleased, within reason. Imagine the uproar if someone tried that now.
I think you are correct. Honestly, I tried but couldn’t get through it.
It was unreadable mush.
Ok, in the interests of discovery, and some curiousity as well, I read this over and over again until I finally got it.
In paragraph 8, the author supposes a scenario whereinwhich Vasily A. Shamshin, who built DUGA-8 Radar Station, also ordered a power-shutdown test of Chernobyl and hoped for a meltdown. The reason he supposedly would want that is that he allegedly scammed millions off DUGA-8 and that the radar station would never work.
There, I did in one paragraph what it took the author to do in about 20.... and *I* didn’t HIDE the thesis as best as I could. LOL
Still unreadable mush.
The author’s main point seems to be that he is a very hip hipster.
Still, I had never heard of the Dugan before. Found that info moderately interesting.
O! Without question! 10 paragraphs are dedicated to how effing COOL he is, then 2 to the alleged-subject-at-hand.
This is an example of EXACTLY HOW NOT to write an article. I have been given guidance by a writing titan, to refer to yourself as little as possible, and that's even in an editorial. For example, it is bad form to say "I have long observed that... " bla bla bla.
This guy, on the other hand, dedicates long strings of sentences to his OMGIncredibleVastCoolWhoa-ness.... which is a beautiful demonstration of why Newsweek has dwindled to nearly nothing in readership, and why -- the last time it was sold -- it was sold for one dollar.
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