Bad Day In April

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Ukraine, USSR.  01: 23:00. Saturday. April 26th 1986

‘Glasnost’ was lifting the curtain of secrecy around the Kremlin. The curtain came crashing down when President Gorbechev was woken with news from Chernobyl. He went pale as he was told. A super-heated-steam explosion had opened-up a nuclear reactor. Still in his pyjamas he ordered a News Black-Out. Eight hours later, nuclear scientists told an emergency meeting of the Politburo. Everybody living within 70 miles of the accident must be evacuated. The Politburo decided an Exodus on that scale, involving over three million, would cause chaos. Riots & looting would surely follow such an announcement. Gorbechev ordered the unannounced evacuation of every dwelling within 19 miles of the reactor.
The nearest town, Pripyat, was emptied in the remarkable time of four hours. At 2 pm, 27th April, the Red Army arrived in town, 45,000 people were loaded into commandeered buses and army transporter trucks. At gunpoint they were told. 'Don’t bring any luggage. You'll only be gone for a day or two. Until the radiation levels have died down.'

At 6 pm the last bus, of the twelve-mile-long-convoy, left Pripyat. Not one of those 45,000 people had any idea they were leaving their homes forever.
The army built a ten-foot-high, concrete-posted, razor-wire-fence around the 19-mile-round-nuclear-desert. But. As the Kremlin scientists predicted, the poison blighted a much wider area. Those who could afford to wasted no time leaving the area. The break-up of the old Soviet Union disguises the true cost of Chernobyl. The last reliable figures came in June 1994, a Kremlin 'Statement on Chernobyl' reads. ‘Relocation and medical treatment., Containment., Loss of land and lost food production has cost the equivalent of eight-hundred-billion Sterling.’(£800 BILLION)

Feb. 1st 1995. Sizewell B Project Manager Brian George told BBC 2 Newsnight. ‘Nuclear Electric (now British Energy) has less than half-a-billion insurance to cover nuclear accidents in Britain.’ Divide less than half-a-billion between the ten million living in Sizewell’s Fall-out-zone, (which includes Greater London) and you should see why Sizewell B should not have been built.

Hundreds of firemen who raced to attend Chernobyl died within months. Planeloads of firemen were rushed to radiation specialists in Moscow, Kiev and Minsk - to no avail. (Unlike the Emergency Services who rushed to the Twin Towers anyone rushing to a Nuclear 9/11 would be knowingly committing suicide. )
You will never learn the true extent of the misery caused by the Chernobyl accident from the British media. It is considered too frightening for the Queen's simple subjects. Operating nuclear stations after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl is a fair measure of the utter contempt the Head of State has for the people who pay all her bills. In the event of a nuclear attack. The royals will be soaking-up the sunshine on one of their private islands - ten thousand miles away - before the BBC are allowed to announce Britain is unfit for human habitation.

BLACKOUT

As thousands of brave men were giving their lives fighting the Chernobyl fire, the Kremlin began the usual cover-up that accompanies all things nuclear. An All Soviet Directive (U2617) was issued forbidding details of radiation victims being released. For two days the Politburo enforced a complete News Blackout. Only when Chernobyl’s fall-out triggered nuclear alarms in Norway, Finland and Sweden did the Kremlin admit they had a problem.
The orderly evacuation of every person, and every farm-animal, living within nineteen miles of the reactor was going smoothly to plan when Moscow Television reported. "There has been an accident at Chernobyl. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences." The newsreader had no idea the Kremlin had ordered everything, within nineteen miles of the nuclear fire that could be buried, was to be buried. Including the forests.
From every direction the Red Army were heading for Chernobyl. Bringing their fleets of highly efficient earth-moving-machines.
In the next two months over six-hundred-thousand civilians, from all parts of Mother Russia, found themselves conscripted and transported to the Ukraine.
Villages in the woodlands were bulldozed into the same shallow grave-pits as the forests. Most villages and the towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat, were too radioactive to demolish. Hastily formed Battalions of civilian ‘Liquidators’ were ordered to empty fatally contaminated buildings. Earth-movers dug eight hundred emergency nuclear waste dumps, of all shapes and sizes, to take the contents of factories, food storage depots, builders-compounds, office-blocks, schools, libraries, garages, hospitals and clinics.
Even the telephone exchanges were stripped out. Nothing that would attract looters was left above ground.
Everything from contaminated combine-harvesters and crop-sprayers. Everything, from milking parlours to grain-hoppers. Everything, from flour-sacks to millstones. Everything, from tractors & trailers to blacksmith’s anvils. Everything from school-desks to school buses. Everything, from typewriters to butchers-benches. Everything, from teddy bears to dentists’ chairs was tipped and crushed into makeshift nuclear dumps.
After three months of ‘Burial Duties’ dozens of super-fit soldiers died of what the Kremlin called ‘heart-attacks.’ Soldiers were threatening to go on strike. Tours of Duty were scaled down from three months to three weeks. Army Chiefs began to question the wisdom of sending anyone to fight nuclear waste... Over 200,000 convicts arrived in the First Exclusion Zone. In return for forgotten sentences they did most of the work building a 450,000-ton concrete tomb over the wrecked, red hot, reactor. Thousands of Battalions of civilian Liquidators were returned to their respective corners of Russia - after falling sick (Most of the Liquidators have since died of ‘ionising cancers.’ ( i.e. both; skin peeling-off and internal organ failures )).

NUCLEAR GHOST TOWNS 2009

Below. Pripyat. One of 2,000 Ghost Towns in the nuclear desert around Chernobyl. Pripyat, the same size as Dover in Kent, is still too radioactive to demolish. The dust would kill the demolition crews. Chernobyl was a steam explosion. Had the reactor gone nuclear. This town and it’s 45,000 inhabitants would have disappeared in a mushroom cloud. The fall-out from a nuclear explosion at Chernobyl would have sent most of Russia back to the Stone Age.

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