[ WP ] The Chernobyl disaster was all a conspiracy and there was actually no radioactive meltdown . Something much worse happened there , and you 're the conspiracy theorist who just figured it out..


 The video starts with a low-res webcam showing a dim, cluttered apartment and a disheveled man in his 50's who looks like he has n't had a good night's sleep in half that time. It wobbles slightly as the man adjusts the view. 
 
 `` Hello. My name is Charlie McDowell, and I'm a theoretical mathematician.'' his voice sounds as gravelly as his unkempt appearance would suggest; nothing like the composed academic his job title would suggest. `` Unfortunately I think history will remember me instead for my cross-disciplinary work, which now includes solving two of the longest-standing philosophical debates as well as dooming the human species.'' 
 
 The man, Charlie, leans into the camera's field of view, attempting to strike a grave pose - but the eyes are too wide; too wild. `` Before I tell my story, I need to say this first: Delete any math files, programs, or ebooks you may have. Burn your math textbook. Do not open any email attachments. This is n't a joke or a prank. Your life, and the lives of your friends and neighbors, are at stake. If that sounds melodramatic or crazy to you, well, you probably wo n't last the week. This world is already not the world you knew.'' Charlie holds the pose for a moment longer, then slumps back, looking defeated. He rubs his grimy brow with one hand and continues. 
 
 `` I guess, if history is going to be looking at me - if there is a history after this - I ought to get the whole story out there. Although that sort of open thinking may be exactly what got us into this. Regardless, it started over thirty years ago. Actually it started with Dmitrii - though I knew him as Dvolve, and he was the first person I'd ever found to share my passion for math. We met on a math-themed BBS I was running, and despite spending hours a day talking with him about math with him, I knew very little about him. About all I really knew is that he had adopted ( what I thought at the time anyway ) a Russian affectation.'' 
 
 `` Well one day Dvolve stopped logging on, and within the week men in suits stopped by to confiscate my BBS with a warrant so secret I was n't even allowed to see it. They also hauled me off for a week's stay in a dark room for questioning. I thought at the time it was because of the encryption Dvolve and I were developing, but they hardly asked about that. In fact, I could hardly make heads or tails out of their questions, and eventually they released me.'' At this point, Charlie stops his narrative to take a drink from a glass of clear liquid. He sets it down, half empty, at the edge of the field of view. 
 
 `` That was about the time I became what you might call a `` conspiracy theorist.'' These days, that term has a lot of baggage associated with it - tinfoil hats and blurry photos of men in rubber suits. But that's only because so many people forget how many conspiracies were true: MKULTRA. Bay of pigs. Gulf of Tonkin. Operation Northwoods. And now their conspiracy against me - intimidating my would-be employers for 30 years. Falsifying my background checks. My ex wife...'' Charlie drifts off for a moment, them shakes his head and appears to regain his conviction. 
 
 `` Ten years ago, after four lawsuits, they finally returned my old BBS to me. By then of course it was hopelessly outdated; but in the box with it was an innocent-seeming packing slip, with the computer identified as'Chernobyl Ev. 15443-A.' It's the kind of thing you might only take seriously if you've been followed around by black sedans for a few decades. So I started poking the internet to see what would fall out.'' He made a jabbing motion with his finger to emphasize this point. 
 
 `` What I found out was this: Dvolve - Dmitrii, actually, had n't had a Russian affectation. He'd been a genuine Russian researcher at Chernobyl. A researcher into applied mathematics. And he was n't working on nuclear research. In fact, Chernobyl had n't been a nuclear power plant at all. Well, I mean it had - but that was a cover - a cover for what they were *really* building!'' He leaned closer to the camera as he continued: `` After finding out who Dvolve was I remembered that BBS that had been sitting in the corner. I decided to go through it's logs, looking for any other clues Dmitrii might have left. And I found more than I had bargained for.'' He slapped his hand on the table in agitated emphasis, causing the camera to wobble. The glass remained still however. 
 
 `` The feds had crawled over every byte, but they could only reach the hard drive, not what was in my head.'' He tapped the side of his head knowingly. `` So they missed it. That encryption Dmitrii and I had worked on? The algorithm was still there... but it was altered. And it was n't all that was altered - I found several other things Dmitrii and I had written or exchanged with subtle flaws. We'd spend hours, sometimes days on these things, and I knew every detail - and things had been changed. I'm sure the feds thought to check those errors, but without the original information, they found nothing. But I had it; I remembered just enough to piece together the differences. So I took all of those changes, and I ran them through the original version of our encryption engine. And it spit out... well, it spit out a truth the world should have kept hidden. Tried to keep hidden, really, but I'd thwarted it.'' Charlie was leaned back now, shaking his head in self-recrimination. The glass of clear liquid slid about two pixels towards the center of the screen, but the liquid inside did n't so much as ripple. 
 
 `` The unecrypted docs were a log, Dmitrii's log, hidden on my BBS for safe keeping in case of disaster - like the one that happened in 1986. Dmitrii had always had this theory - more an idea really - that math was n't *just* a model for the universe; it was the underlying mechanism of the universe. Philosophers have names for this in varying degrees, but Dmitrii was n't interested in philosophy. He wanted empirical proof - and in his genius he found a way to get it.'' Charlie had been leaning closer to the camera, eyes widening as he spoke. Now they looked so big that his face hardly seemed to consist of anything but scruffy beard and wide yellowed eyes. 
 
 `` Godel's incompleteness theorem. It states that no system can be both consistent and complete. Well, Dmitrii managed to create a model for the universe that was broad enough to encompass all our physical theories - and he found it's incompleteness. It's flaw. More than that, he'd designed a machine to *test* that flaw - a Godel *device*. It would take half the power of a city to run, but if it did... well, Dmitrii did n't know. It would break reality and destroy the universe? Or maybe it would crack through into the underlying Ultraverse. And those mad Russians, desperate to get ahead in the Cold War, decided to find out.'' The glass, though it had n't seemed to move during this time, was now about half it's diameter closer to the center of the screen. A damp ring of condensation marked its previous location. 
 
 [ part 2 to follow ]
