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Comment by AlphaGeekZulu | Hacker News Reader

Oh, come on. And the correct term for Great Britain would still be UK. And for Germany it would still be BRD, and for America would be USA...

Note to my private journal about the hilarious history of the destruction of our planet: "In June 2019, an article about "Nuclear Power possibly not being the answer to solve climate change", lead to a public discussion, whether the author got a geographic term historically right or not (with the suspicion, that if he didn't, probably everything else in the article was wrong as well).

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> Great Britain would still be UK

No, it wouldn't. The term "UK" includes Northern Ireland while "GB" doesn't.

> Germany it would still be BRD

Before 1990 that would've been the common usage, simply because there were two "Germanies" at the time. Today, while technically still the correct denomination, "BRD" / "FRG" is equivalent to "Germany", which is why these terms can be used interchangeably (with the non-technical country name being much more common these days).

> America would be USA

Using "America" instead of "USA" is highly inaccurate, perhaps even offensive to people from other countries on that continent.

These distinctions are relevant. This is not some casual pub conversation but rather it's supposed to be a serious article on scientific and political issues. Therefore, diligence, getting the facts straight and using accurate terminology is important.

No, seriously. Russia did not exist back in 1986. It has nothing to do with the correctness of the opinions expressed in the article. If we were to talk about Germany in 1987, I think, it would be very important to distinguish between east and west, no? Also, hilarious or not, if you make a slip on correct historical terms (as a nuclear catastrophe happening in a country that did not even exist at the time, and even managing to get current geographical term wrong), it does reflect poorly on the quality and/or perceived quality of the whole piece. Come on!

I'm pretty sure Russia existed in 1986. You must be talking about the Russian Federation?

no, I am talking about either

USSR (if we're talking about country)

Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), if we're talking about countries' administrative unit.

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