Valerio Zeno turned pale when a website showed him what an atomic bomb would do to Amsterdam

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Valerio Zeno in conversation with Tom Sauer, professor of international politics at the University of Antwerp. Image PowNed

The viewer got to know Valerio Zeno at TMF and BNN as a ray of sunshine with his highest ambition being a show staircase to descend from. He wanted to become a quiz master, following Ron Brandsteder and Rolf Wouters. That carefree young man is now back on TV as a gloomy man. For the Powned program We’re all going to die, he wonders how humanity will meet its end.

Episode two dealt with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust and in no time he found himself on the website Nukemap where you can simulate the impact of a nuclear bomb detonated sometime in the last century over a city of your choice. And guess what? When the heaviest Soviet bomb of the Cold War is released over Amsterdam, 800,000 people die.

Zeno: “No waffle shop is left standing.” But seriously: the fallout of radioactive ash and soot particles extends to Groningen. And what about the nuclear winter that follows when a soot cloud lingers for years after a series of these types of bombs?

After the invasion of Ukraine, the threat from Russia’s nuclear power has returned and, unlike in the Cold War, the nuclear danger has been spread over more hot-tempered heads of state. The Doomsday Clock, with which atomic scientists symbolically keep track of how far we are from the end of the world, comes closer than ever at one and a half minutes to twelve.

Zeno turned a bit pale around that point. As an adolescent in the nineties he saw no problem and now this! His conclusion: the nuclear threat is greater than when Doe Maar sang about the bomb. Traditionally, the nuclear powers have had hotlines with each other to clear up misunderstandings, but China often does not answer, unfortunately. To illustrate, the tone of a telephone going off the air sounded.

It was all told to him by serious experts, which resulted in an informative yet easily digestible NPO 3 program. The temptation must be great to seek sensation only from preachers of doom in such a playful format.

Interesting follow-up episodes can be made about threats such as climate change and robotization or AI. Still a bit curious about the episode that Zeno promised about the question of whether we will meet our end because we are eaten by aliens. And which experts will contribute.

More TV reviews? Read all episodes of Han Lips in our archive. Also read the weekly Sterrenstof section, in which we discuss the media week. Comment? [email protected].

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Het Parool will from now on sign the TV reviews in the Han Lips watches TV section with the author’s name. The section will of course continue to exist, but the fictional character Han Lips has retired.

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