Book: Chernobyl. Scary stories and mystical stories Stories about Chernobyl for children to read

The stumbling block for the Soviet court would be a lawsuit for the death of television viewers. After all, even if you wanted to, you can’t blame TV viewers for sitting in front of the TV without helmets or bulletproof vests. Blame the company? State? Does this mean the state is to blame? Soviet? The court will not tolerate such a perversion of principles. A person is guilty before the state - yes. And if not, then no one. For seven decades, our courts have only turned the screw in one direction. Over the last few years there has been talk about independence, the independence of the courts, serving the law and only the law.

Women and children were the first to be evacuated. There was a shortage of buses in this corner of the former Soviet Union. To take 50 thousand people out of the city, buses from other regions of the country came here. The length of the bus column was 20 kilometers, which meant that when the first bus left Pripyat, the last one could no longer see the pipes of the power plant. In less than three hours, the city was completely empty. He will remain this way forever. At the beginning of May, the evacuation of people living in the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl was organized. Disinfection work was carried out in 1,840 settlements. However, the Chernobyl exclusion zone was not developed until 1994, when the last residents of the villages in its western part were moved to new apartments in the Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.

Today Pripyat is a city of ghosts. Despite the fact that no one lives there, the city has its own grace and atmosphere. It did not cease to exist, unlike neighboring villages, which were buried in the ground by excavators. They are only indicated on road signs and village maps. Pripyat, as well as the entire 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, is guarded by police and patrol services. Despite their constant vigil, the city was repeatedly subjected to robbery and looting. The entire city was plundered. There is not a single apartment left where the thieves have not visited and taken all the jewelry. In 1987, residents had the opportunity to return to collect a small portion of their belongings. The Jupiter military plant operated until 1997; The famous Lazurny swimming pool operated until 1998. At the moment, they have been looted and destroyed even more than apartments and schools in the city combined. There are three other parts of the city that are still in use: a laundry (for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant), garages for trucks, and a deep well with a pumping station that supplies water to the power plant.

The city is full of 1980s graffiti, signs, books and images, mostly related to Lenin. His slogans and portraits are everywhere - in the palace of culture, hotel, hospital, police station, as well as in schools and kindergartens. Walking around the city is like going back in time, the only difference is that there is no one here, not even birds in the sky. You can only imagine the picture of the era when the city flourished; during the tour we will show you historical photos. To give you a vivid impression of the times of the Soviet Union, we offer a Soviet uniform, retro walk in our RETRO TOUR. Everything was built from concrete. All buildings are of the same type, as in other cities built under the Soviet Union. Some houses were overgrown with trees, so that they were barely visible from the road, and some buildings were so worn out that they collapsed from the large amount of snow that had fallen. Chernobyl is a living example of how Mother Nature takes its toll on the efforts of many people. In a few decades, only ruins will remain of the city. There is no corner like this in the world.

I have been to the Chernobyl exclusion zone many times and brought back impressions and photographs. I can say that from the inside everything looks completely different from how it appears after reading articles or watching videos. Chernobyl is completely different. And every time it’s different.

On the thirtieth anniversary of the worst man-made accident in the history of the Earth, I am publishing a selection of my best photographs about Chernobyl. After this series of materials you will look at Chernobyl with different eyes.

Posts are available by clicking on the title or photo.

A post-retrospective look at the life of a young nuclear power plant worker in 1985. In spring Pripyat, even now, the same atmosphere of the city of youth, spring and hope that was there in the early eighties has been preserved.

Try to see Pripyat exactly like this.

In Pripyat it is now forbidden to enter buildings, but I managed to walk through one abandoned city house. From the material you can find out what typical apartments of Pripyat residents looked like, what was left in them after the work of disinfectors and looters, as well as what the entrance looks like after almost thirty years of the power of nature.

Pripyat has become a symbol of the Chernobyl tragedy; the whole world knows about this city. But at the site of the passage of the nuclear wind there were dozens more small towns and villages, which no one remembers now. The village of Kopachi found itself at the epicenter of a nuclear tragedy and was so contaminated that it was completely destroyed - houses were destroyed by bulldozers and military IMRs and covered with earth.

On the periphery of the village, only the building of a kindergarten remains, where you can still see traces of pre-accident life and childhood in the mid-eighties.

Pripyat sixteen-story buildings are perhaps the most famous residential buildings in the city. There were exactly five such houses in Pripyat. It is now not very safe to enter the sixteen-story buildings with coats of arms that are located on the main square of the city, but it is quite possible to visit the buildings on the Street of Heroes of Stalingrad - I just visited one of them.

The post contains a story about the house, its apartments and views of Pripyat and the Sarcophagus from above.

How and with what did they fight the consequences of a nuclear disaster? What equipment helped people in the fight against radiation pollution, how did they clean the areas adjacent to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant? Most of the “dirty” special equipment of the liquidators has long been buried in special burial grounds, but some can still be seen in a small museum near the city of Chernobyl. This is the story in the post.

Many people do not know this, but the city of Chernobyl now continues to live its very peculiar life - from an ordinary regional town it has turned into a closed city for the life of modern Chernobyl workers. Residential buildings have been turned into dormitories for workers who live there on a rotational basis for several months, from time to time traveling to the mainland. The city has a curfew, almost like in wartime.

I managed to get into one of the dormitories of modern disaster liquidators and see how they live. There is a story about all this in the article about Chernobyl apartments.

What does the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant look like now? Is it true that mutant catfish live in the cooling pond?

Is it true. Read about this in the post about a walk around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant :)

The Thirty Kilometer Exclusion Zone around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is known not only for cities and villages. There are also amazing military facilities there - for example, the famous ZGRLS "Duga", also known as "Chernobyl-2" - a once top-secret antenna complex designed for long-range monitoring of nuclear missile launches by a "potential enemy".

Usually at the Chernobyl-2 facility only the antennas themselves are shown, since many of the interior spaces of the complex are even now considered secret. I managed to get into several military barracks and also
premises where top-secret equipment was previously located.

This post contains a story about the interior of the military complex - something that will never be shown to you on any excursion.

A question that worries many people is what is the current level of radiation in Chernobyl? On one of my trips to the ChEZ, I took a customized dosimeter with me and took detailed measurements of radiation in different parts of the Zone, including Chernobyl, Pripyat and the Chernobyl nuclear power plant itself. There is a detailed photo story about this in the post.

The city of Slavutich became the second life of the city of Pripyat. There will never be life in Pripyat itself, but its former residents had the strength to start all over again. The post is about how spring always defeats winter, and life defeats death.

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On April 26, 1986, I turned seven years old. It was Saturday. Friends came to visit us and they gave me a yellow umbrella with a letter pattern. I’ve never had anything like this before, so I was happy and really looking forward to the rain.
The rain happened the next day, April 27. But my mother did not allow me to go under it. And she generally looked scared. That was the first time I heard the heavy word “Chernobyl”.

In those years we lived in a military town in the small village of Sarata, Odessa region. It's a long way from Chernobyl. But still scary. Then cars with liquidators pulled out from our unit in that direction. Another difficult word, the meaning of which I learned much later.

Of our neighbors, who shielded the world from the deadly atom with their bare hands, only a few remain alive today.

There were more of these people in 2006. A week before my birthday, I received an assignment - to talk with the remaining liquidators and collect the most interesting episodes. By that time, I was already working as a journalist and living in Rostov-on-Don.

And so I found my heroes - the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus Civil Defense Regiment Oleg Popov, Hero of Russia Captain II Rank Anatoly Bessonov and sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov. These were completely different people, united by only one thing - Chernobyl.

I'm not sure if they are all alive today. After all, eleven years have passed. But I still have recordings of our conversations. And, from which the blood still runs cold.

Story one. Abnormal summer.

On May 13, 1986, Oleg Viktorovich Popov, head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus Civil Defense Regiment, had a birthday. Relatives congratulated us, friends called, even a messenger came. True, instead of a gift he brought a summons - tomorrow morning he had to come to the military registration and enlistment office.

We celebrated quietly, and the next day I went according to the agenda. I didn’t even know where I was being called, so I put on a light shirt and took money to buy milk home. But my milk never arrived. “I returned only at the end of summer,” Oleg Popov told me.

He remembered Chernobyl for its abnormal temperature. During the day, already in May, it was below forty, at night it was so cold that it was impossible to touch a tooth. The liquidators were given canvas suits as protection. Heavy and not breathable. Many could not stand it and fell from heatstroke. But it was necessary to “remove the radiation,” so the suits were removed and disposed of as best they could - with their bare hands.

People started getting sick. The main diagnosis is pneumonia.

Then I had another shock. We were delivered boxes with red crosses - medicines. We opened them, and there, beyond words, was something that had been lying in warehouses for decades. Over time, the bandages disintegrated into threads, the tablets were yellow, and the expiration date on the packaging was barely visible. The same boxes contained gynecological instruments and instruments for measuring growth. And this is all for the liquidators. What to do? How to treat people? The only salvation is the hospital,” recalled Oleg Viktorovich.

The fight went on day and night. And not only with the reactor, but also with the system, and with ourselves.

On the website “Chernobylets of the Don” there is the following information about Popov:

“In a 30-kilometer zone I worked in my specialty, I had to treat and put back on their feet mostly soldiers and officers of my regiment. There was a lot of work, and Oleg Viktorovich was actually the main person responsible for the health of the regiment’s personnel. After all, soldiers and officers were called up in a hurry, often without medical examination. Popov O.V. recalls that there were cases of being called up for training camps with peptic ulcers and other diseases. Some even had to be sent to a hospital or hospital. And, of course, it was possible to provide psychological assistance to soldiers and officers, because it is clear that there was no full-time psychologist in the unit. His work in the regiment was appreciated, and from then on he retained the warmest memories of his comrades, of the regiment commander N.I. Kleimenov. and unit officers.
After completing the special training and returning home, Oleg Viktorovich, by profession and work, treated the liquidators of the Chernobyl accident and was always ready to help them in word and deed.
He has government awards: the Order of the Badge of Honor and the Order of Courage.”

Only in May 1986, and only from the Rostov region, about thirty thousand liquidators came to Chernobyl. Many returned with a load of 200. Many carried a poisonous charge in their blood.

Oleg Popov brought leukemia to the Don. He arrived with tests that would not have accepted him even at the oncology center - 2,800 antibodies in his blood.

But I didn't plan to give up. I decided to live. And he lived - he studied chess, English, I became interested in photography, began to travel, wrote poetry, designed websites. And, of course, he helped his own guys, guys like me, who were sent into this hell,” he said.

I typed the name of Oleg Viktorovich Popov on the Internet. And I was happy to discover that he also lives in Rostov, runs his own website, his photography is recognized with high awards, and his literary work has many admirers. This year, according to the regional government website, the liquidator was given another award. And in 2006, the head of the anti-shock department of the North Caucasus Civil Defense Regiment, Oleg Popov, was awarded the Order of Courage.
Then he told me that he didn’t think he was worth this high award.

The real heroes are those guys who were at the reactor, erected the sarcophagus with their bare hands, and did the decontamination, so to speak. It was a criminal stupidity that claimed thousands of lives. But who thought about it then? Who knew that it was impossible to bury, neutralize, bury radioactive substances by digging up stadiums, washing the roofs and windows of houses?! At that moment there was nothing else...

The second story. Sweet roads of death.

Memories sanitary doctor Viktor Zubov a little different. When they first announced the gathering to eliminate the accident, he joked that they would go to war against tanks with sabers. It turned out that I was not mistaken. That's essentially what happened.
On the morning of June 21, sanitary doctors from the Rostov region left for Pripyat.

At first, to be honest, we did not understand the full scale of the tragedy. We drove up to Pripyat, and there was beauty! Greenery, birds singing, mushrooms in the forests, apparently - not visible. The huts are so neat and clean! And if you didn’t think about the fact that every plant is imbued with death, then – heaven! – Viktor Zubov recalled. “But in the camp where we arrived, I felt fear for the first time - I was told that the doctor, in whose place I was sent, had committed suicide. My nerves went away. Couldn't stand the tension.

Zubov's most vivid memories include sweet roads. Ordinary roads, which were watered with sugar syrup in order to bind the deadly dust under the sweet crust. But it was all in vain. After the first car, the sugar ice burst and poison flew into the faces of the liquidators who were driving behind.

We still didn’t fully understand what we were going to do. And on the spot it turned out that we had few patients. And all seventy doctors came for decontamination,” he explained. – The protective equipment included an apron and a respirator. They worked with shovels. In the evening there is a bathhouse. What they were doing? We washed house windows and helped at nuclear power plants. We slept in rubber tents and ate local food. By that time we already understood everything. But there was no choice, we hoped for the best.

Viktor Zubov stayed in Chernobyl for six months. At home, the doctor realized that now he, a young man, had become a regular client of the clinic and the owner of a bunch of diseases. You’ll get tired of listing the diagnoses.

At the time of our interview (let me remind you, this was 11 years ago) Victor was living on medication. But he carried on well - he played the Beatles on the button accordion, walked with his grandchildren, and made something around the house. I tried to live in such a way that it would not be excruciatingly painful.

To be continued