jesus christ no. save yourself

[The world] must learn its lessons from what happened in and around Chernobyl on April 26, 1986.

Rambling review warning so strap in⚠️

When I was writing my dissertation in University I chose to write about the concept of ‘American Exceptionalism in relation to the atomic bomb’. I read articles about the medical effects of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, read declassified KGB documents about nuclear bomb tests and looked into the cultural impact of atomic bombs on the American public.

I remember vividly talking about the ‘peaceful atom’, the idea of harnissing this destructive power and putting it to work to benefit society. But one thing I didn’t touch on was the impact of the nuclear energy industry - it was outside of my topic scope so I never thought to learn more. I feel disappointed that I never did.

I have only ever lived in a post-Chernobyl world and, ironically, never even thought about its effects on my day to day life. I watched the Fukushima Daiichi meltdown on the news in 2011 and never once thought to look further than a news report about an event half the world away.

But this book has given me so much to think about - both in a nuclear power way and also in a social history way. Plokhy takes pains to talk about the ‘little men’ of history: the liquidators, the civilians and the medical personnel - a side of history we barely see acknowledged. The impact of Chernobyl continues today, effecting the ‘little men’ of tomorrow’s history and we owe it to them to learn what was sacrificed to allow us to live through it and past it.

((I don’t like leaving a star rating on non-fiction as by default it has biases or potential biases - don’t let the no star review put you off this book, I thoroughly enjoyed every page))