Interesting back and forth here, hope things don't slip into name-calling. Ya know, I think OP has some good points, and what's more, we'll be finding out pretty soon about today's markets.

I would say, however, that regardless of what happened in the aftermath of Chernobyl, it's the market's PERCEPTION of what might happen in the present situation that will prove decisive, not how many kids are scheduled for leukemia. Also, Chernobyl was a bolt out of the blue, and the Soviet's bungled response, largely due to their paranoid need for secrecy and their cumbersome command and decision-making structure, made things a lot worse. They didn't even admit there was a meltdown for the first few days, as I remember.