Today is the 21
st anniversary of reactor number four melting-down in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
When it happened I was just a kid living in Munich Germany. I remember going out for recess and the teachers running out and telling us all to go back inside. We asked "Why?" and they responded "because of the fallout". We were children of the Cold War with parents in the military. Needless to say we all thought
Stanley Kubrick was a prophet and we were going to have to go all Road Warrior by the end of the week. "Wolverines!!"
It was difficult to get news of what was going on from the Soviet Union so we were in the dark for a while. When I finally did see a map of radioactive caesium-137 fallout from the Chernobyl catastrophe I got a little concerned.
Southern Germany seemed to get a good amount of fallout after all. We had been drinking the milk from the cows who ate the grass that had the cesium on it with little thought thanks to the news blackout.
My self-centered concern was understandable for a kid and my family seems to be fine so far. (My sister has had three kids with the proper number of fingers and toes.) So I haven't thought much about it in years.
When I heard about a Ukrainian video game called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. it peaked my interest again. First in the Exclusion Zone itself and then in the ongoing containment battle.
I don't know why I am typing this. It is just that I have been learning a lot more about the people who lived in Prypyt and the surrounding areas and the mass number of people who suffered horrible deaths to help contain the reactor. It is not just history. There are those who still fight for their lives and those of their children even today. Mutation is not just in the movies.
Just take some time today to consider those people, what can be done for them and how to make sure this does not happen again.
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Slavestate
By Godflesh
Release date: 07 March, 1995 |
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