We found out about it from listening to TV and the radio. People were excited and mildly frightened. The school was cancelled that day, which to us kids was always a welcome development. Everyone was told to stay indoors as much as possible and avoid contact with rain. There was a strong possibility that the produce was contaminated, and almost no one dared to buy any, resulting in massive losses to farmers. The year was 1986 and the event that caused all of this was the nuclear plant disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Today is the 20th anniversary of that incident, an incident that become almost synonymous with the dangers lurking behind nusclear energy.
However, the incident should be a reminder of something much more sinister than the nuclear energy itself. It is a reminder of how totalitarian regimes put ideology ahead of the safety of their own citizens, and care even less about the potential global repercussions. The incident was reported many days after it actually happened, and then only because of the increased levels of radiation that were noticed by some Scandinavian scientists. The ensuing international outcry forced the secretive Soviet regime to finally come clean and admit to the disaster.
Something similar happened with the Asian flue a year or two ago. The Chinese government was silent about the outbreak until citizens of other countries became ill and started putting some pressure to find out more about the origin of that virus. In an increasingly interconnected world, when the truth gets suppressed in one corner of the globe, the consequences are felt thousands of miles away. Potentially everyone suffers because of it. Such secrecy comes at a heavy cost, and we are ever less able to afford it.