The Most Radioactive Places on Earth

Veritasium · 24.9M views · 2014 · 11:17

Open on YouTube

Nuclear power & fusionFundamental physicsexplainer

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters use it to put radiation exposure and risk into perspective, including everyday sources like flights and smoking.

What it is

Veritasium visits Chernobyl, Fukushima and other places to find who on Earth is exposed to the most ionizing radiation. The answer turns out to be surprising and puts radiation risk in context.

Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2015 to 2021.

What Hacker News said

Recommends junto · 2015-06 · on “A Walk Around Chernobyl [video]”

One of his other videos describes the people who are most exposed to radiation. The answer shocked me: [this video]

Recommends erentz · 2019-05 · on “They Fictionalize Nuclear Disasters Like Chernobyl Because They Kill So Few”

Radiation is definitely creepy and poorly understood. There was a great video by the Veritasium guy on it: [this video] Punch line, you definitely wanna stay away from ciggarettes if you don't like radiation. There's also this crazy woman (I think she's German?) who likes to go play with radiation sources. She has the most dead pan voice that barely changes except to possibly register some excitement when she finds a particularly hot source of radiation. She has a bunch of videos exploring Chernobyl. It's quite interesting for example to watch her pick apart dirt to find the single hot particle: [LINK]

Cites dharmab · 2021-06 · on “United Airlines will buy 15 planes from Boom Supersonic”

The amount of radiation you receive during a regular flight is quite small, and more than you would receive on a supersonic flight: [this video]