Huh? spoiler
What was the point of the authorities covering up the disaster and paying off the survivors? Why couldn't they just fess up, fine the chicken factory for over polluting the waters, learn from the mistake and move on?
sharePossibly to conceal corruption and malfeasance by government officials that had allowed the pollution to happen. Or to prevent the entire region's seafood industry from collapsing. But the idea that, in the age of social media, a disaster of that magnitude with that many deaths could be covered up through payoffs is beyond absurd.
shareBut the idea that, in the age of social media, a disaster of that magnitude with that many deaths could be covered up through payoffs is beyond absurd.
Also, what's with the "they settled with the town as a whole for an undisclosed amount" part?
Did the town distribute the amount to the surviving townspeople? If they didn't, what's to stop people from telling anyone? If they did, wouldn't Donna have been included in that settlement, and would therefore at least know how much she was paid for her silence?
Clearly she's not abiding by that settlement since she's telling the story of what happened, so why not say "I know I got $5 million, so I'd think they probably paid billions to the town" or "I only got $5,000 I don't know why anyone would keep quiet about this disaster for a few thousand dollars." share
But the idea that, in the age of social media, a disaster of that magnitude with that many deaths could be covered up through payoffs is beyond absurd.
I liked the movie, but they went too far with the cover-up. It would have been better to present the as a straightforward documentary rather than a Wikileaks-type thing. It's particularly absurd that this enormous disaster was covered up even though it happened on the Chesapeake Bay, an hour or so from Washington, DC. An event like this, affecting a town a couple of hours from DC, one of the most media-saturated places in the world, could not be made to disappear. share
Yeah, if the idea had been to set this in the early or mid 80's it would have been one thing, but the sheer omniscience of social media and the like today makes a complete coverup like this something that simply couldn't happen, information just ends up far, far too quickly spread, within seconds of the first case you'd have news agencies reporting on it, posts from residents on facebook or youtube, and so on. That's not to say they couldn't use the conceit that there was a coverup, but what they'd need is to find an incident somewhere in which something actually happened and then play on that suggesting that the government just lied about the SEVERITY or cause of the problem people know actually occurred.
Look at it this way though, a highly totalitarian, insular and closed regime like the USSR was completely incapable of hiding Chernobyl for even one single day back before the internet or cell phones or any such things were commonplace. If a near totalitarian dictatorship with completely controlled media and no internet or wifi was unable to keep that out of the international spotlight for even a few hours, what hope would the US have of doing it today? Their only hope would be in getting on top of it before anyone knew what was happening and completely go in full biohazard style, shut down all cell or internet connections and cut all the LAN lines then claim it was something other than what it actually was..."oh, turns out it was a small group of extremists that released a toxin, nothing to worry about in the towns food industry", paint anyone claiming otherwise as a conspiracy nut and then spend billions compensating and hushing people up. Even then, they'd have to be right on top of that within an hour or so or the cat would be out of the bag already.
In a society where I can get information in less than a couple seconds to the other side of the world and almost everyone has video recorders on their person 24 hours a day it would be a bloody miracle. Hell, people were letting slip info about Osama Bin Laden's killing while the SEAL team was still in his house doing the job let alone a whole town being ravaged by a plague that killed hundreds.
--
*+_Charos_+*
"I have often laughed at weaklings
who thought themselves good because
they had no claws."