Month: April 2026

A spiritual Positive Void Coefficient – lessons from Chernobyl after 40 years

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At 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, agitated Soviet engineers at Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant anxiously hit the AZ-5 emergency shutdown button—the “scram” function meant to stop a deadly runaway chain reaction in its tracks.

What they triggered instead was the beginning of the worst civilian nuclear accident in human history.

In seconds, the unstable RBMK-1000 reactor—mortally wounded by a disastrous circus of operator violations and a fatally clever design—roared past one hundred times its rated thermal output. Roughly 2,000 tons of radioactive steam, vaporized fuel, and red-hot graphite blasted skyward. As journalist Adam Higginbotham put it in his award-winning  Midnight in Chernobyl, by the moment the test commenced the technicians had effectively created a pistol with a cocked hammer. All that remained was for someone to pull the trigger.

Sunday, April 26, 2026, marked the 40th anniversary of what happened when that nuclear trigger was pulled.

For me this is not an academic exercise. My long-time friend Victor Kubik, founder of LifeNets, traveled to Pripyat (the then-all-new privileged city built from scratch to support the construction and operation of the Chernobyl power plant) and the first Chernobyl sarcophagus with an Indianapolis delegation in 2003. As a former technology columnist I have long been interested in matters of nuclear development. Victor recently invited me on his Kubik Report podcast to talk about what really destroyed Reactor No. 4.

The technical answers to the disaster are sobering. But as we jointly explored, the spiritual answers are more sobering still.

Following is a summary of our 40-minute discussion.

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The Thērion and You – Days of Unleavened War

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As biblical Holy Days go, the 2026 Days of Unleavened Bread—a season of self-examination, spiritual change, and reconciliation—stood in stark contrast to a week defined by geopolitical upheaval, military brinkmanship, and collective heart-pounding anxiety. This week of April 1-7 became, in a most sobering sense, the days of unleavened war.

An historic week of firsts

The first Day of Unleavened Bread opened with a striking juxtaposition. At 6:24 p.m. EDT on April 1, four astronauts aboard the Artemis II spacecraft thundered skyward on 400,000 pounds of thrust, accelerating past 500 MPH in under two seconds toward a rendezvous with the Moon. It was a breathtaking moment of human achievement.

At the same hour, 6,500 miles away, Iran and Hezbollah rained more than 140 missiles on innocent Israeli citizens celebrating their Passover Seder. Hezbollah then fired dozens more rockets through the night on both civilians and military. On the day after the first Holy Day, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned that Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem would pay “a very heavy price” for the “intensified fire toward Israel civilians” as they celebrated Passover.

Back in the United States, as Artemis entered pre-lunar earth orbit, President Donald Trump delivered his first formal address to the American people on the Iranian War — one month into the conflict. The speech said little new but featured contrasting claims that the President never sought regime change, although his initial social media video announcing the war encouraged Iranian citizens to seek same.

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