"Background radiation in the accident zone is still well above normal," says CNN, about the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which is going to be opened to tourists! Awesome. I would love to go see this, actually. But also, says CNN, "visitors receive a dose comparable to the exposure they would receive on a trans-Atlantic flight." Got that? High radiation; just like flying to London.

"In 1961, as John Kennedy was poised to resume atmospheric testing after a two-year moratorium, he met with White House science adviser Jerome Wiesner in the Oval Office one rainy day. The president wondered how fallout reached the earth. Wiesner explained that it was washed out of the clouds by rain. 'You mean,' Kennedy asked, 'it's in the rain out there?' As Wiesner tells it, the president then 'looked out the window, looked very sad and didn't say a word for several minutes." Nonetheless JFK, fearful that the Soviet Union might score a nuclear breakthrough, authorized a new round of above-ground testing before negotiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963." READ MORE