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Comment by maltalex | Hacker News Reader

> Korneyev’s sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his life’s work. “Soviet radiation,” he joked, “is the best radiation in the world.”

Wow.

How does one survive multiple visits to "the Elephant's Foot" long enough to tell these jokes?

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How? The answer is "Nohavica's theory of alcoholic mountain". As you drink, you are climbing your alcoholic mountain. While you're climbing, everything is fine. You can even turn around and go back. But when you reach the summit and step over it, you are done. Nobody will help you. No doctors, no therapy, friends or medicine. Nobody. Then you die. Now you say "but my uncle was drinking whole life and he was fine". Sure, because his mountain was very tall. Nobody knows how tall is his mountain.

This Russian scientist had very tall radiation mountain. You try doing the same and you will die.

Do you have any source for that? I have some friends suffering from alcoholism that could probably use hearing something like that, but google isn’t turning up anything.

It's a joke from a movie. No science here.

what movie

Probably this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_of_the_Devil

Yup, Year of the Devil.

Friends mom was a ICU nurse. She said the effects of drinking and smoking begin to kill people in their mid to late forties. The most susceptible develop liver failure or COPD[1] in their forties and start checking out soon after. Not that many people at that age but grows substantially each decade after.

[1] She said about liver disease and COPD, you think cancer is bad. Cancer isn't a death sentence.

She said in your 20's you don't know which group you're in.

Humans (and other organisms in general) have a rather wide range of tolerance to such things, and it's the reason why an "LD50" exists. Not everyone who received the same dose will react with the same severity. Hence you will hear about people who have smoked a pack a day yet lived into their 90s without cancer, asbestos workers without lung problems, etc. What is responsible for this "robustness" is an interesting question to research itself.

That said, this guy happened to be particularly well-suited to his job.

>Hence you will hear about people who have smoked a pack a day yet lived into their 90s without cancer

At least for this, it's thought to be specifically linked to cyp p450 polymorphism. As the enzyme breaks down the carbon molecules from smoking, it creates free radicals which can cause cancer. People who express less of the enzyme experience a lower frequency of cancer from smoking, hypothetically.

Super interesting! Are there downsides to having less of it?

Drug metabolism is slowed, sometimes dangerously.

He is like the true Stalker.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)

here's more details about him

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chern...

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