• The explosion delivered emissions equal to 500 nuclear bombs used in Hiroshima
• The release of radioactive nucleotides contaminated an estimated 17 million people to some degree
• Over 500,000 workers were involved in the clean-up after the explosion
• The most heavily affected areas were in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine
• Thirty one people died as a direct result of the explosion
• 115,000 people were evacuated from a 30 km radius about reactor four

On April 26th 1986 at 1:23 am a failed experiment within reactor four at Chernobyl nuclear power plant resulted in the world's worst nuclear disaster, releasing more than 100 times more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.  And even though over 500,000 workers acted selflessly in the clean-up effort and diverted an amplification of the catastrophe, the environmental, social and health effects are still active concerns today. 

The Chernobyl exclusion zone opened to the public in 2011, and many trigger-happy tourists flock to take photos of the "abandoned city".  But just as the photogenic qualities of the zone cannot be denied, the disaster's ramifications cannot be forgotten.  Many people lost their lives in and many people continue to be affected by this disaster.  This blog is my attempt to grant some dignity to a lesser-known sector of Chernobyl: the voices of its former inhabitants and survivors.  

All photos are my own, and all  captions are first-hand interviews with people involved in Chernobyl, directly or indirectly.  I have altered sentence structures in places for ease of reading, but the content is original and unchanged. The quotes are taken from the following four sources:

• Voices From Chernobyl
• Chernobyl: A Documentary
• Chernobyl: The Real Story
•  The Legacy of Chernobyl

Lessons from the Sarcophagus

• If a man acts according to his convictions and views, if he avoids responsibility, then that man will live in a sarcophagus.
• If people-both individuals and society as a whole-do not draw conclusions from the tragedy, then they end up in the sarcophagus.
• If humanity does not ponder on the lessons of the tragedy, it will be in the sarcophagus.

Last Love
  
One night I heard a noise.  I looked out the window.  He saw me.  "Close the window and go back to sleep.  There's a fire at the reactor.  I'll be back soon." I would say to him, "I love you." But I didn't know then how much.  

Evacuation

Over the radio they tell us they might evacuate the city for three to five days.  "Take your warm clothes with you.  You'll be living in the forest in tents."  People were even glad-"a camping trip! We'll celebrate May Day like that, a break from routine."  People got barbecues ready.  They took their guitars and their radios with them.  Only the women whose husbands had been at the reactor were crying. 

Courage

At first, we didn’t feel any fear…when the dosimeters started giving readings, then fear appeared. But none of the soldiers at the station showed weakness. They all carried out their tasks courageously with high professional competence.  There were no cowards among us.

Mum's the Word

They showed her to me: a girl.  "Natashenka," I called out.  "Your father named you Natashenka."  She looked healthy: arms and legs.  But she had cirrhosis of the liver.  Her liver had twenty eight roentgen. Congenital heart disease. Four hours later, they told me she was dead.  And again, "we won’t give her to you."  "What do you mean you won’t give her to me? It’s me who won’t give her to you!  You want to take her for science.  I hate your science.  I hate it!"

[she is silent]

Why are these things together-love and death?  Together.  Who's going to explain this one to me?  I crawl around the grave on my knees.  No one's asked what we've been through.  What we saw.  No one wants to hear about death.  About what scares them.  But I was telling you about love.  About my love...

Living Dead  

It happened ten years ago, and it happens to me again every day. You’re a normal person! And then one day you’re suddenly turned into a Chernobyl person. Into an animal, something that everyone’s interested in, and that no one knows anything about.  You want to be like everyone else, and now you can’t.  People look at you differently.  The very word Chernobyl is like a signal.  Everyone turns their head to look at you.  "He’s from there!"

Playing "Radiation"

And, as it always happens, the children began to copy the incomprehensible life of the adults.  On Rusanivka I had already seen children running through the bushes with a stick as if they were measuring background radiation with a dosimeter.  They were playing “radiation”. 

Analogy

Imagine personnel of a plane which is flying very high.  Whilst flying, they begin testing the plane, opening the doors of the plane, shutting off various systems...the facts show that even such a situation should have been foreseen by the designers.

Future

I wanted to forget.  Forget everything.  And I did forget. I thought the most horrible things had already happened.  The war.  And that I was protected now, that I was protected.  But then I traveled to the Chernobyl Zone.  I’ve been there many times now and understood how powerless I am.  I’m falling apart. My past no longer protects me. There aren’t answers there. They were there before, but now they’re not. The future is destroying me, not the past.

 Pull out All the Stops

Who took it off?  It was the system that switched off the emergency cooling.  A system of irresponsibility.  

Vulnerable

Chernobyl is like the war of all wars.  There’s nowhere to hide.  Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.

Bio-robots

So they brought us in, and they took us right to the power station.  They gave us white robes and white caps. And gauze surgical masks.  We cleaned the territory. We spent a day cleaning down below, and then a day above on the roof of the reactor.  Everywhere we used shovels. They guys who went up, we called them storks. The robots couldn’t do it, their systems got all crazy.  But we worked. And we were proud of it.

We had good jokes, too.  Here’s one: An American robot is on the roof for five minutes, and then it breaks down. A Japanese robot is on the roof for five minutes and then-breaks down. The Russian robot is up there two hours! Then a command comes in over the loudspeaker: “Private Ivanov! In two hours you’re welcome to come down and have a cigarette break.”
 

Call of Duty 

I didn’t tell my parents I’d been to Chernobyl.  My brother happened to be reading Izvestia one day and saw my picture.  He brought it to our mom.  "Look, it says he’s a hero!"  My mother started crying.

Chain reaction

They’d take our readings there, write something down on our cards, but the number of roentgens we got, that was a military secret. Now they’re fighting for power. For cabinet portfolios.  They have elections.  You want another joke?  After Chernobyl you can eat anything you want, but you have to bury your own shit in lead.

Irony
  

When I made it back from Afghanistan, I knew that I’d live.  Here it was the opposite: it’d kill you only after you got home.

Nature knows best
 
Then we discovered a sign, which all of us followed: as long as there are sparrows and pigeons in town, humans could live there, too. I was in a taxi one time, the driver couldn’t understand why the birds were all crashing into his window, like they were blind.  They’d gone crazy, or like they were committing suicide.

A Glowing Report

I remembered some lines from the papers: our nuclear stations are absolutely safe, we could build one on the Red Square, they’re safer than samovars.  They’re like stars and we’ll “light” the whole Earth with them.

 

Cover your Tracks

So many people suffered, and no one ever answered for it. They put away the directors of the station, but then let them out again.  In that system, it was hard to say who was guilty. They were trying something out there.  

Christian Duty

But all I can hear is, "for some people it's a sin to give birth.  It's a sin to love." Do you know it can be sin to give birth? I'd never heard those words before. 

Blame Game

In order to answer the question of how to live, we need to know who’s to blame.  Well, who?  The scientists or the personnel at the station? The director? The operators on duty? Tell me…

 

Antidote

The famous Russian firewater is vodka, and reports were given in the press of it being a potent anti-radiation folk medicine if taken with strong wine.

Blind Faith

But we kept quiet and carried out orders without a murmur because of Party discipline.  I was a Communist. I don’t remember that any of our colleagues refused to go work in the Zone.  Not because they were afraid of losing their Party membership, but because they had faith.  They had faith that we lived well and fairly, that for us man was the highest thing, the measure of all things.

Epitome of Selflessness

They are people who came from a certain culture, the culture of the great achievement.  They were a sacrifice. There was a moment when there existed the danger of a nuclear explosion, and they had to get the water out from under the reactor, so that the mixture of uranium and graphite wouldn’t get into it-with the water they would have formed a critical mass. This would have meant that not only Kiev and Minsk, but a large part of Europe would have been uninhabitable.  Can you imagine it?

Insight

We didn’t even need to know the truth at that point. But when they put labels on the milk that said, “For children” and “For adults”-that was a different story. That was a bit closer to home.

Seeing a New Light

That day a neighbour was sitting on the balcony, watching the fire through binoculars.  Whereas we-the girls and boys- raced to the station on our bikes, and those who didn’t have bikes were jealous.

Rocket Science

Everyone forgets that before Chernobyl everyone called the atom "the peaceful worker." Everyone was proud to live in the atomic age.  I don’t remember any fear of the atom.

Accidentally on Purpose

This kind of practice is not unusual in Soviet industrial construction.  Many industrial objects are accepted by the relevant government commission with a long list of incomplete elements and operations which the construction team promises to complete after the object has been officially licensed. 

Legasov maintained that no single person was responsible for the accident.  The operators made mistakes, but the whole programme of the experiment was poorly prepared. It had not been approved or corrected by the proper experts…in part, the tragedy was the product of administrative anarchy of the attempt to keep everything secret.

Mind over Matter  

It’s possible he didn’t realise what danger hung over him; It’s possible he understood, but perhaps did everything particularly so as not to pay attention to the threat of his life. His behaviour was very moving; during the rounds he would always ask, "How are things, doctor, how do you feel?”

Time to Face the Music

It wasn’t just the reactor that exploded but an entire system of values.

Personification

 

There’s a note on the door: "Dear kind person, Please don’t look for valuables here.  We never had any.  Use whatever you want but don’t trash the place. We’ll be back."  I saw signs on other houses in different colours: "Dear house, forgive us!" People said goodbye to their homes like they were people.