A Lesson In History - Chernobyl

I like to think that I enjoy the horror genre. My best friend in high school and I would talk about visiting haunted places in the small towns around us and what we would do there. We would watch scary movies and freak ourselves out discussing the possibility of potential hauntings and possessions. Though the movies we watched; Paranormal Activity, Annabelle, etc.; scared us there was always one think that helped me move past my fear. Most of these stories were pure fiction created in the twisted mind of some screenwriter in Hollywood. Even the movies that were "based on a true story" had some fiction to it to heighten the audience's reaction and at least that haunting or possession was only linked to one or two people at most.

Recently I, along with millions of other viewers, discovered a new form of horror. After showing teasers of their new show at the beginning of the last season of Game of Thrones, HBO finally released their new short series Chernobyl and it was an instant success. However, the short five-episode series opened a door to a new fear. How can you and your loved ones survive when your society does all it can to hide the terrifying truth from you? What can you do to survive when everything you touch, see, breath, and eat can instantly sign your death sentence? How does mankind carry on?

Like many historical events I've gotten a taste of, after the credits rolled for the series finale, I realized that I had to know more. How could such a catastrophic event even happen? What happened to the men who volunteered for a suicide mission to save the entire planet from sure destruction? And yes, what does death by acute radiation sickness look like? It was a morbid fascination mixed with my own growing fears of a future where my body would slowly start to disintegrate from the inside.

Though there are a handful of historical fiction novels that put the reader in the shoes of a first responder or even one of the Chernobyl techs themselves, there are a surprisingly few amount of non-fiction works regarding the subject. The two books my library had already had a waiting list, as people like me discovered they wanted to learn more. It took several weeks of waiting, but finally I had Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higgenbotham and Voices from Chernobyl a collection of interviews of actual people affected by the disaster organized by Svetlana Alexievich a decade after the event itself.

The Book: Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higgenbotham

Date Published: February 12, 2019

Dates Read: June 21-26, 2019

Current Goodreads Rating: 4.47/5

I started my research (if you can really call it that) with Higgenbotham's book. Higgenbotham starts from the very beginning: the creation of the RBMK reactor. The first several chapters don't even really address Chernobyl at all. There are several passages regarding the building of the reactor and the nearby town of Pripyat and the man who was in charge of it all, Viktor Bryukhanov. Higgenbotham also attempts to explain how an RBMK reactor works as well as the differences between alpha-, beta-, and gamma-rays. I say "attempts" because this was probably the most difficult section to read in regards to understanding the content. While I'm pretty sure I got the gist of a negative void coefficient and the proper ways to regulate a nuclear reactor it was still pretty obvious that a proper nuclear physicist had a lot they had to learn in order to properly run the facility. Training and knowledge that many of the men on duty that fateful night did not have.

The most shocking aspects of Higgenbotham's book were not the depictions of the firefighters, first responders, and workers' bodies breaking down due to acute radiation sickness (though this was incredibly shocking and heartbreaking). Rather, what I found the most sickening, was the attempts by the government to keep the disaster a secret. Pripyat was eventually evacuated, as well as many small towns surrounding the reactor, but this was days after the explosion; days after a radioactive cloud traveled across the country and rained lethal doses of radiation upon unsuspecting people. In one passage Higgenbotham writes about a town who witnesses a dirty, black rain falling a little ways outside their town limits, but no one had warned them of the disaster. No one was trying to keep them safe.

I found that I had a hard time with some of the information. There was a complete utter disregard for those who volunteered to help and the greater numbers of those who were recruited to help with clean up efforts. There were several accounts of men who were not given the proper equipment to protect themselves and accounts of improper radiation monitoring. Many men were not given dosimeters and then sent into some of the most irradiated parts of the facility to assist with clean up. If I can take a second to turn off the part of my brain that has any sense of morals, I can see why the government decided to do this. This clean up was a necessary evil, if it had not been done millions more would have been exposed to radiation and, perhaps, a large chunk of the world would be lost to us. If you strapped a dosimeter to every man and told him that he would absorb a lethal amount of radiation and would die a slow and agonizing death there's a good chance Chernobyl would still be burning today. But why wouldn't the government do something, anything, to better prepare those men involved?

My Rating: 4/5

The Book: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster collected by Svetlana Alexievich

Date Published: first published 1997

Dates Read: June 26-30, 2019

Current Goodreads Rating: 4.44/5

It seems like I wasn't the only person asking these questions as I found out in my second Chernobyl book Voices from Chernobyl. This book was more haunting than Higgenbotham's as it was a collection of interviews from people who lived through the disaster. Beginning with an interview with Lyudmilla Ignatenko, wife of fireman Vasily Ignatenko, the mood is immediately set as one of sadness and anger. Why were people not told? Why were people not warned? Why was it better to save face than to save lives?

The book itself is short, only about 240 pages, but the content is so heavy it's nearly impossible to read in one sitting. Alexievich interviews a wide variety of people. She interviews those who lived in small towns nearby who were evacuated, but not told why. They share their stories of sneaking back to their houses through the woods. They lament not being able to drink their cow's milk or eat the vegetables they had planted in their yards. They discuss the loneliness of an empty town and the comfort their animals brought them. Alexievich also interviews countless liquidators and their wives. One particularly haunting interview is with a liquidator who was part of the team eliminating the household pets that had been left behind. Believed to be covered in irradiated dust, the animals had to be put down and buried. The liquidator recalls a small, black poodle that had not died and was attempting to climb out of the truck bed. Out of bullets, the liquidators could only push the dog back in and watch it get buried with the other animals.

I think it was probably at that point, at the end of that interview, where I realized that this was no longer about me addressing a fear I had. Though radiation and dying of radiation poisoning was still terrifying to me, I was more heartbroken at the broken lives these people were forced to lead because of the lack of communication. I was angry that the wives of the firefighters and liquidators had to watch as their husbands almost literally deteriorated in front of their eyes. I mourned with the families of the men who had done everything they could to stop the explosion to no success. They were treated as the villains of this story when, in reality, they had no clue of the risks they were being forced to take. I was horrified of the stories the women would tell about how they had been told that having babies was a sin since that child could potentially be affected by the radiation their mother and father had absorbed.

As of today thousands of men, women, and children have been and are being affected by the radiation that was spewed across the sky from Chernobyl. Over 30 years later, I hope that we can look back at the disaster and remember the fallen. Remember those who gave their lives to ensure the lives of others, not only in Russia and the Ukraine, but all over the world.

My Rating: 4/5