Science
Related: About this forumFood for thought from Chernobyl
Socioeconomic collapse in an affected society can be more damaging to human health in the aggregate than a large nuclear accident such as Chernobyl, taking into account the then Soviet society's quite well-organised reaction to the latter catastrophe (immediate evacuations, medical treatment, social support, containment...). It is predictable that varying degrees of socioeconomic collapse in various societies worldwide will be caused by forthcoming now unavoidable anthropogenic rapid climate change and accompanying natural systems instability (shifting ecosystems homeostasis), and could also be caused by large-scale warfare using modern weapons as well as natural causes such as earthquakes, volcanoes and asteroid strikes. Rapid socioeconomic collapse can also be more directly caused by financial meltdown and consequent economic paralysis as almost occured in 2008.
It would interesting, I'd like to suggest, to examine and theorise about what can render a society less vulnerable to socioeconomic collapse, whatever the cause, with a view to setting up experiments...
... Many suspect that the radiation has or will cause other cancers, but the evidence is patchy at best. Prof Richard Wakeford, from the University of Manchester's Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, points out that health studies look for a "signal" of a specific health effect linked to Chernobyl. They aim to pick out that signal above the "background noise" from other causes. That has been incredibly difficult, primarily because of the huge background noise that was the almost simultaneous upheaval of the Soviet Union's collapse.
"It's assumed that there will be some cancers linked to the accident in addition to the thyroid cancers, but detecting them amid that socioeconomic chaos - that had its own impacts on people's health - has proven almost impossible," says Prof Wakeford. Cancer also affects between a third and a half of people in Europe, so any Chernobyl signal is likely to be imperceptibly small.
Amid reports of other health problems - including birth defects - it still is not clear if any can be attributed to radiation...
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767