The Place Where Time Stands Still

The Chernobyl nuclear plant accident which took a place in 1986, involved the lives about 600 000 people. Scientists, firefighters, miners, “liquidators”. All these people risked their lives to prevent the catastrophe from spreading. Despite their efforts, the disaster has left a huge mark not only on Ukraine, but also on the whole world.

On 26 April, 1986, an unanticipated increase of power was detected on reactor four, causing it to explode and scatter radioactive core materials. This led to an ignition of graphite moderator. The situation was out of control. The amount of radiation leaked that day from the explosion, was 100 times more devastating than two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The precautions weren't put in effect immediately. The broadcast of news including instructions to stay indoors with windows and doors closed, began after 36 hours. The residents were being evacuated unbeknownst to them that it was the radiation they were escaping from. The ban on consumption of locally produced food was done after 7 days.

The accident is considered as one of the most classified events, getting level 7 which involves the maximum classification. Mikhail Gorbachev, who was the general secretary of the soviet party, masked the situation as an ordinary fire. For 2 days world never knew what had happened in Chernobyl until the power plant in Sweden detected the high levels of radiation. While Swedish were still wondering where the radiation had come from, massive evacuations were took place in 200 towns in a radius of 20 km around Chernobyl. It was then when Kremlin was made to admit that a terrible accident had occurred. Even then it wasn't mentioned as a critical event until Gorbachev himself gave a speech after 18 days rating the situation as abnormal. Many critics argue over the subject of what could've been done within 2 days to minimize the outcome of the disaster. One theory of why Soviet Union didn't want the information to leak was a budget. They had to spend 18 billion rubles to contain the situation with help of liquidators which equals about 1.2 billion Euros calculated by soviet newspaper.

Given the loss of the coolant system which occurred instantly after the reactor explosion, fuel rods started to melt rapidly. Without the coolant, the event of destruction of reaction in the core, released a huge amount of energy towards the graphite moderator causing It to overheat, even though its made to withstand even the highest temperatures. After the graphite came into the contact with oxygen, it got caught on fire.

Shortly a after the accident, firefighters arrived to extinguish the fire, never knowing what they were dealing with. An immediate provision of protective clothing and respirators to the fireman, operating personnel and recovery workers was unavailable. The commander of the first brigade, who arrived first at the scene, lived for merely 2 weeks after the accident and died of radiation. Same happened to most of his group members. “ We didn’t know that it was the reactor, no one told us.” “ Vashchik, Kolya and others, and Volodya Pravik, .. they went up the ladder,.. and I never saw them again”. Those were the later-on comments of fire brigade survivors. One of them even gave a description of feeling the radiation: ”tasting like metal and similar sensation to that of pins and needles all over my face” Anatoly zakharov, firefighter from station N2 offers us a different image saying that they were aware of the radiation, but it was a moral obligation to put out the fire. We still don’t know if he says the truth, or he just happened to be lucky survivor who was forced to mask the truth by telling a lie.

After the leak of radiation, Soviet Union issued an order (after 7 days) to ban local food. After 5 years, Alla Yaroshinksaya who became a deputy of Soviet congress found few classified files concerning the explosion of Chernobyl. Here’s what one of those files included:” Distribute meat contaminated by radiation widely as possible throughout the country and use it in a ration of 1:10 with normal meat to make sausage, canned and processed meat”. This emergency plan was approved by the minister of health of the USSR. Want to know what else was approved by Health minister? The plan for radio-protection in case of a nuclear accident which was laid out in 1964. It clearly stated to shut down and forbid food production. However, during the catastrophe, the plan was rejected. The reason given was that an accident of such a nature, as to require these measures was “impossible in the USSR”.

Alla Yaroshinskaya, the deputy I mentioned above, seemed to show an interest in disaster and addressed former Deputy Prosecutor V.I.Andreyev who answered to her inquiries. He told that for more than 10 years, local areas produced 47 tons of meat and 2 million tons of milk with higher than acceptable levels of contamination. It seems that Soviet Union not only didn't care for their population, but rather helped to increase the chances of death. The most appropriate reason for this is that Chernobyl disaster wasn't an accident. This has it’s reasons.

Astrology has been around for quite a long time now. its roots goes back to 17th century BCE. It’s been used by many political leaders to determine It’s validity and effectiveness. One of them was Adolf Hitler. Although we know that theories differ here. Some said that Hitler considered astrology as a complete nonsense, but others claim that fuhrer planned his military campaigns according to astrology. For instance the book Wilhwelm T. Wulff's 'Zodiac & Swastika; How Astrology Guided Hitler's Germany. The day before the explosion, a total lunar eclipse conjunct Pluto took a place. It is largely believed that Pluto represents an explosive planet(Pluto-nium). This means that Kremlin leaders, may have ordered Chernobyl disaster to occur at an astrologically appropriate time. This strongly indicates that Chernobyl resulted from an intentional plan rather than an unforeseen accident. This begs a reasonable question, what was the intention behind it?

Well unless we get our hands on the most classified documents, we won’t really know the actual answer and that probably won’t happen, ever. Despite the fact that we won’t be getting the secrets of the explosion, we do know that Chernobyl won’t represent a populated area for a long time .While some claim that it will be habitable in 3,000 years, others deny it and increase the number up to 21 000. Both are big numbers both us and for the whole world. It doesn't matter which one is the correct number. What matters is that we saw severe consequences of the explosion that affected not only the country itself, but the whole planet. As long as the leaders are there to maintain peace, they really should really look into getting rid of nuclear weapons and not have a race for it, because it doesn't take a scientist’s mind to know that if world war 3 happens, it won’t come with tanks or soldiers. Someone somewhere will push the Big Red Button and that will probably put an end to everything.