Original subtitles

Prypyat. A city founded 2 km away from a nuclear power plant.

Every apartment house here has a great view of the Chernobyl NPP.

On the night of April 26, 1986, one could watch the fire through one's window.

Those who had been watching for too long had eventually gone blind.

Next day, Prypyat became the world's biggest agglomerate of nuclear waste.

It was still inhabited by people, though, who had no idea their city was dead.

It was heaven on earth, a Communist heaven.

At that time Communism and heavens were virtually the same thing.

This womans story is horrible beyond belief. It brings our understanding

of what happened back in 1986 to a new level.

Her reminiscences make one's skin crawl.

What are they supposed to do with it? Dissect it, cut into pieces?

There were hundreds of them. But only a handful was able to fight it.

I wasn't crying. I was frantically trying to figure out what to do.

30 years ago a reactor explosion released into the air

a bucketful of radioactive fuel. Just a bucketful.

Plutonium, Uranium, Strontium. But mostly Cesium,

whose Latin name means azure.

The amount of the azure dust scattered by the wind over the exclusion zone

was even smaller: a quarter of a bucket. That was enough to ruin or take

dozens of thousands lives, contaminated by the azure dust.

IVORY FILMS production

Ordered by UKRAYINA Channel

Author Illlarion Pavliuk

Director Volodymyr Rybas

AP Operator Oleh Yerofeyev Camera Mykhailo Titov

Music by Serhiy Mohylevsky

Producers Oleh Rohozha, Volodymyr Rybas, Illarion Pavliuk

Narrated by Andriy Mostrenko

AZURE DUST

This is the Prypyat Checkpoint. And this is my home.

This is Oleksandr, our stalker. Stalker is an unofficial name for those

who escorts visitors to the exclusion zone. However, the name stuck,

and nobody calls them anything else nowadays.

Our todays destination the city of Prypyat.

The entrance to the so-called 10 km zone.

This is the territory around the former Chornobyl NPP

which requires a special authorization. The most contaminated sector.

Our copter, hovering at 200 m over the plant, gives a good view of it.

The city limits begin almost immediately behind it.

It was built in the close proximity of the NPP,

which was supposed to demonstrate how safe nuclear power was.

We're already in Prypyat.

Today the city is surrounded with barb-wired fence

and has a small checkpoint of its own at the entrance.

This isn't our first time here.

After each visit to the dead city we would spend evenings in silence.

It's hard to explain why seeing Prypyat is such a big shock.

Maybe it's because it's sort of frozen in time.

You feel like you're back in your own childhood. Except that it's dead.

Prypyat still looks like a city that is supposed to be busy and noisy,

and subconsciously that's what you expect. Instead, you see this.

In summer Prypyat looks probably the most eerie,

because it reminds one of a forest

interspersed by mysterious apartment buildings

which you can't even spot at once.

This is what happened to us. We didn't realize at first

that we were already in the city. Through the windshield

it looks like you are driving along a forest road.

This is the main street, Lenin Avenue. This is the oncoming lane.

The lane we're supposed to take is already

Well, where is the avenue?

This is a part of it. We're going the wrong way.

To the right is a pedestrian area.

Our stalker Oleksandr was born and raised here until he turned 10.

Until the disaster struck.

Now he's a professional exclusion zone tour guide.

A man who lives in the past almost literally. However,

he does everything he can to prevent the past from repeating itself.

This is Lenin Avenue where we're driving right now.

That's how it looked before the disaster.

Prypyat is no exception in this sense. Virtually all modern cities

are built near big construction sites. They are all different.

Some are destined to be abandoned by the people of the next century.

Others will become home for many people for many years to come.

We believe that the latter

are those lucky enough with their first residents. Prypyat is lucky.

Those who built it gave a part of their hearts

to the creation of their hands and minds

We are in the Exclusion Zone's tourist center, so to say.

Prypyat's central square.

The one-time heart of a perfect city by Soviet standards.

Today it's quiet and filled with a forest scent.

Because that's what it is - a forest.

50,000 people used to live in Prypyat.

The square, as well as the rest of the city, is covered

with dense dog rose thickets. Which is weird, because dog rose

isn't the most common plant in a city's vicinit.

Turns out that this isn't dog rose but garden varieties that went wild.

30,000 of rose bushes that used to cover the whole city.

It was planned to plant more, bringing the number up to 50,000.

One for each inhabitant.

During the good times it was a fairytale city. A city of roses, children,

and young people. Average age of the population was 28.

No private houses. Beautiful modern apartment buildings,

wide streets, roses, the river, the forest, mushrooms and berries,

fish in the river, it was like a dream.

Her name is Maryna.

Not many people have heard the stories of people like her.

And those who have don't always believe in them,

so horrible and inhuman they sound.

But her story is as true as it is scary. Actually, today we came to Prypyat

to find Maryna's house and tell her story from the beginning

and eventually to the end.

Neighborhood festivals were great. I never saw anything like it.

The Lenin Street festival: all its residents show their talents.

Some sew, others knit, cook, paint, etc.

Was it a kind of fair?

Yes. Long tables in the street, music playing, House number so and so,

this is Anna, and these are her handicrafted items. This is Petro,

and these are his paintings. Everybody was celebrating their talents.

The festivities would go on all day.

Is this the entrance?

Yes, main entrance to the community center.

What's so special about it for you?

It's not just for me. This really was our cultural center.

All city events were held here. Pop concerts, circus performances.

Careful, there's a hatch. City discos were held here.

I performed a New Year impersonation for 3 years in a row.

I've got a picture. We found it inside, near a mount.

The mount, unfortunately, decayed. But we managed to make a copy.

These are extras from a New Year's show.

This is me wearing a 1984 New Year's costume.

This picture was taken right here.

A poster for a show based on Marina Tsvetayeva.

Winter of 1986, just before the disaster.

My mom was the director. Life Is My Profession.

It was about Tsvetayeva's life and creative work.

I was washing the windows in my apartment, preparing for winter.

In Prypyat? Yes. Suddenly I felt dizzy. I wondered why,

because the windowsills weren't that high to make me dizzy.

A friend dropped by, and I told her about it.

She laughed and told me to go to the doctor.

So I did, and the doctor confirmed it.

It was a welcome baby? Very much so.

Was it called a medical unit? Yes, that's how it was called in Prypyat.

The medical unit. Today it's the most dangerous place in Prypyat.

It's the most contaminated spot in the Zone, with the obvious exception

of the remains of the Reactor 4 buried under the sarcophagus.

The fact that it's called medical unit instead of hospital or clinics

is a reminder of Prypyat's special status. Most of the city institutions

were called the way they are called in the army.

Coming inside, we take a radiation monitor with us.

It's meant to gauge beta-activity, i.e.,

looking for radioactive waste underfoot.

Today it's not the whole hospital that's dangerous but a certain spot.

However, careless visitors sometimes spread radioactive mud

through the whole building.

This is where a happy Marina was going through her medical examination,

hardly believing her own luck.

I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe it. 3 months before my husband and I

were at a doctor's office consulting about our fertility problem.

They told us that it was improbable that we would conceive a baby,

with our health problems and all. I was already considering adoption.

And suddenly there it was.

Coincidently, today this building contains something crucial

for understanding Marina's situation.

This something has been sitting in this cellar for 30 years.

This is how it's supposed to look when put on correctly.

Like this? Yes.

Why did we go there? Probably to try to understand as much as we can

the diabolic force that was unleashed from the reactor 30 years ago.

These are high-density anti-exposure suits designed to protect

from radioactive dust.

It doesn't always work the way it's supposed to.

Double filter masks, thick rubber gloves:

all these preparations are depressive enough.

But what's really scary is the thought of what's down there.

What had contaminated the whole cellar which is as dangerous today

as it was back in 1986? Moreover, it will stay that way

for the next 1000 years.

A few dozens of yards left to go.

The stalker draws our attention to the dust in the air.

Under the radioactivity levels as high as it is here, this isn*t just dust.

Some of these particles are tiny fragments of radioactive fuel

or reactor graphite.

Breathing this air is like playing a lottery or Russian roulette.

Radioactive dust can't ever be removed from your lungs.

It stays there forever, exposing you to radiation from the inside.

If it gets into your eye, it might mean a radiation cataract.

So, why the radiation is so high here?

What happened in the cellar 30 years ago?

It's going up. 500! 2,500! 2,900! 4,000!

I don't see any uniforms here, though. Let's go further.

Look!

The device registers a radioactive spot on the floor.

20 000! Wow!

The safe level is 20 units.

Are these clothes?

Yes. This is probably part of a fireman's uniform. 2,700. Ready?

Misha, are you ready? Yes.

Stop.

Change of register. 10,000. 12,000.

This sound means that separate blips have merged together.

The computer fails to process data.

Try not to step into it.

Oh God. What's this? 26,000! 250,000! Wow.

Don't step on this spot.

Here, 54,000.

A few more steps along the corridor. This is the room.

44 uSv in gamma radiation.

The last thing we see on the monitor is beta-activity level of 440,000.

Our stalker calls this place a common grave.

And at once it's 30,000. 62! 108!

The level of penetrating radiation here is 28 mR.

It's almost 2,000 times higher than the safe level.

Soon the readings cease to make any sense.

It's off the charts.

The source of this radiation is this pile of dirty clothes on the floor.

That's it, we're leaving.

These are the firemen's stuff!

These uniforms belong to the firemen

who worked at extinguishing the fire

in the first days after the explosion.

They were admitted to this hospital with radiation disease.

The staff didn't know what to do with their clothes,

so they simply left them in the cellar. They hadn't yet realized

that these were not just clothes but radioactive waste.

Those who used to wear these uniforms had only several days left.

And the clothes themselves make monitors go crazy even 30 years later.

This is just a small detail

helping to understand the scale of the 1986 tragedy.

These are simply clothes belonging to firemen

who had been working mere 2 km from the city.

The city that was being accumulating radioactive dust by the minute.

They used to tell us that Soviet nuclear plants were the safest.

No more dangerous than a teapot. That's what they said.

They took us kids on tours to the plant.

They showed as the administrative block. We sang songs for them

at the assembly hall. We were under their electrical shop's patronage.

They gave us presents, some notepads Showed us around the plant,

telling us how safe it all was, how we'd produce heaps of energy,

how the peaceful atom had a bright future and all.

So, even experts in nuclear science were unable to imagine the scale.

So there were no drills based on an explosion

Are you kidding? Speaking about an explosion at the plant

would have probably landed you in Siberia.

What explosion? It's impossible. Impossible?

Sure. How can a teapot explode?

Now you know enough to hear the story of a girl from Prypyat,

who was 5 months pregnant in April 1986.

I woke up because of a loud blast. I thought it was a plane

going through the - Sound barrier.

Yes. I sat up in bed. It was so hot and stuffy in the room.

So I came up to the window and opened it,

ripping apart the winter insulation. I needed fresh air.

The plant was this way, and my windows looked that way,

so I didn't see anything. I went back to sleep,

leaving the window opened.

At 5 AM the woman who was on duty that day was knocking at my door,

yelling, Maryna, wake up! There was an explosion at the plant.

The exact data for radiation levels are still classified

and still kept in Russia's archives.

The research conducted after the collapse of the USSR states

that radiation levels in the two most contaminated districts

were 5 R per hour.

How high is this?

The effects of radiation are individual and depend on many factors.

However, as for 5 R per hour it is quite unambiguous.

It'll kill you in a week's time.

Just 7 days, and lethal outcome is almost certain,

even if you stay in a gas mask and take only clean food and water.

Inside the buildings the level was to be lower.

If you would lock yourself in your apartment

and didn't approach the windows, you'd have lasted longer.

Maybe a couple weeks or so.

Seven days before death. That's what the dream city became

on the morning of April 26, 1986.

None of its residents had any idea about it.

It was a regular Sunday.

They told us to close the windows to prevent dust from getting inside,

wash the floors to lay the dust, drink lots of juice,

and don't come outside unless you have to. But it was in the second half of tha day

of April 26. In the morning everybody was on the streets,

strolling and all, even though we knew something had happened.

We are here to find Maryna's residence hall.

Maybe we'll be able to imagine how she felt that morning.

Now, when we already know what had happened,

it's hard to wrap one's head around it. How could this happen?

Here, in these streets, people are living their everyday lives,

while radiation levels are many times higher than those

currently registered in the hospital basement. No protection suits,

no double-filter masks, no radiation monitors.

Each of these houses is brimming with life.

Each apartment contains a whole world with someone's dreams,

wishes, problems, and plans for the future.

Today, all apartments in Prypyat are alike. They are empty.

Everything that had been inside was disposed of as radioactive waste.

On the morning after the disaster there are no military or liquidators

on Prypyat's streets. Instead, a fair has opened there.

Street vendors, who had never been there before.

Were you surprised? Yes. It was May 1st's eve.

We thought, How nice! Let's buy some cucumbers and sausage

for the holiday dinner. We could buy it at the supermarket, though.

They never used to sell it in the streets before.

Where there any scarce goods? Yes. Odesa sausage.

The fair Maryna is talking about was a shameless attempt to

get rid of the goods the stores would have to dispose of anyway.

Food products would be banned from going out of the quarantine zone.

They'd have to bury it as radioactive waste.

The person who gave the order to put highly sought - for goods on sale,

even before the evacuation was announced, had to realize

that the city of Prypyat didn't exist anymore.

Only people were what's left, and nobody knew what to do with them.

I believe by evening of April 26 the plant management

and the government commission had a pretty good understanding

of the situation.

You think they did? Definitely.

So they knew

By 9 PM a convoy of 1,100 buses was already at the city's outskirts.

1,100 of what? Buses.

Buses! Yes.

So, the decision on evacuation had already been made.

They didn't give a signal to start it. They were hesitating.

But there was an understanding that they need to get people out of here.

Over 1,000 buses are waiting outside Prypyat in the evening of April 26.

However, the evacuation will start only at 2 PM next day.

This archive footage is important for understanding the situation.

Note these white flashes. These are signs of gamma radiation exposure,

a rare occasion when you can actually see radiation.

This is possible only under very high radiation levels.

Judging by the respirators the policemen are wearing

and the vehicles in the streets, this is morning of April 27.

Still a few hours before the evacuation begins.

So, empty buses have been standing for 17 hours near the city

where radioactive rays cause flashing exposure of the film.

For 36 hours nobody is being evacuated from a place

where every hour takes away years of people*s lives.

36 hours in the city where 7 days equal to certain death.

Why did they hesitate?

Responsibility. Nobody wanted to take it, I suppose.

They were waiting for an order from above, while those above

didn't want to take responsibility, either.

Could it have happened otherwise?

It could. Suppose that the world hadn't found out about Chernobyl.

Suppose that the monitoring system hadn't worked in.

It was the Netherlands, right?

Anyway, what if they didn't sound the alarm,

and nobody would have found out?

Knowing what we know now about the Soviet Union, I can imagine

that they would be able to sacrifice Prypyat and its residents

for the sake of what they thought necessary.

Nobody would have heard about this city.

What do you mean?

I mean, literally. They could just leave us there. Shut down the city

and wait for a month. Why would they tell everyone

that there were 50,000 people leaving in a city next to the plant?

There's no accident, all is well, and Prypyat had never existed.

But people would get sick, wouldn't they?

They would. At the existing levels of radiation, I believe

this issue would have resolved itself in 4 weeks, maybe 6.

And then they would have leveled the city to the ground.

What are 50,000 people on a scale of the USSR?

Now, recall the food fair where people were sold goods

which they wouldn't have time to consume,

because the next day they would abandon them in their houses

and never come back.

This is the residence building for the nuclear plant staff members.

Maryna has never been here since that day.

When evacuation finally started on April 27, nobody knew it was for good.

Officially, it was supposed to be for just 3 days.

So I packed for a 3-days trip. I put the sausage and cucumbers

in the fridge and left a note for my husband,

telling him we were leaving. I left it on the table. We were so naive

I'm at the elevators. I see male and female figures, a bas-relief.

Maryna doesn't remember her room number,

so she talks us through it by the phone.

Imagine: in her mind she is going down this very hall,

except that it's the hall of her memories, full of people,

filled with the smell of cooking food, sounds of TV at the rec room.

Maryna had left this room without any premonitions,

even though the phones for some reasons didn't work in the city,

and people weren't allowed to leave the city in their own cars.

Maryna was forced to delete phrases 'an accident has happened'

and 'the buses were cancelled' from a telegram she sent her husband.

However, nobody seemed able to put two and two together.

The explosion at the plant.

The street fair that had never happened before. The 3-days evacuation.

They had been taught never to question orders from above.

So they didn't.

I'm so glad you made it there. Thanks a lot. Good luck.

You were already pregnant at that time.

Well, yes. Around 5 months.

Did you show? * Yes.

Did it occur to you that your baby was - Nope.

People were leaving as if for a picnic. They took small bags

packing them with bare essentials, papers, etc.

They left their pets behind. Nowadays people on the internet say,

how could those sadistic Prypyat people do this.

They locked their pets inside to die.

Why would they take to a tent camp

a cat which had never been outside in its whole life?

They left them food and water for 3 days and left the city.

The Golden Corridor. That's how it's called.

A few hundred meters long, it hasn't changed in these 30 years.

The plant workers used to go through it on their way to work,

including those who were heading to their night shift at Reactor 4

on April 26, 1986.

Yes, we are inside of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station.

Individual monitors will alert us if we enter a high radiation zone.

In general, this is a clean place.

However, radiation doesn't spread evenly.

You can walk into a high contamination spot

one step away from a clean one.

This is our special sewer.

This is where radioactive water goes.

This is the decontamination bay a tank for cleaning the equipment.

We get the first idea of the events of the night of the accident

when we see the huge pumps

which were used to pump water into the reactor.

When it boiled instantly, these giants were torn off their bases.

There are 4 pumps on this side and 4 more in a similar room

on the other side.

Do you see these traces?

This is the turbine island.

This is where the gigantic turbines used to be, producing energy.

The turbines were set in motion by steam.

All the immense power of the nuclear reactor was used to boil the water.

This is where the teapot analogy comes from.

The Sarcophagus and the remains of the destroyed Unit 4 are very close:

just outside the rear wall of this hall.

It's a spine-chilling feeling when you realize that this is the site

of the biggest manmade disaster in human history.

There are still people working at the station,

though there's no electric power production going on at Chernobyl NPP.

Shutting down a reactor is a bit trickier than turning off a teapot,

no matter how much the Soviet nuclear industry loved the analogy.

For the last 30 years the plant has been preparing for shutdown.

The process itself will take more than twice as long 70 years.

After that, they'll have to find a way to dispose of the waste.

This is a pot for you, which takes 100 years to be turned off

and which can probably be disposed of only on the Moon.

The elevator is working!

Cool. It probably won*t take us back, though.

Open the door, press the button

Maybe it can't take us all. No, the button is stuck.

The Chernobyl NPP named after Lenin is working for Communism.

This banner was placed over the Chernobyl plant's main entrance.

After the accident it lost the words 'working for Communism,'

and after the collapse of the USSR 'named after Lenin.'

Today the plant is dying a slow death.

Mercury arc lamps take time to warm up. You'll have light in 5 minutes.

I see. Thank you. Great.

The Central Hall! That*s where we are.

The 1986 accident happened in a hall just like this one.

Except that this is Unit 2.

Unit 4 is a mess with hellish radiation levels.

The reactor is over there, under that circle.

This, one may say, is the teapot's lid.

The explosion had turned it over like this, so that the incandescent

uranium bars ended up on the outside.

The scale model shows an absolutely accurate picture.

The 'lid' made of armored concrete weighed 2,000 tons

and was called the Elena biological shield.

When Reactor 4 exploded, it destroyed a hall similar to this one.

"Huge fragments of its walls ended up in neighboring premises;"

the lid flew up, crushing the ceiling,

and only then landed on its side, the way it's shown in the model.

Those unlucky enough to see a turned inside out reactor

through the breaches in the wall died in the next few days.

The humongous yellow pumps were leaping around the hall

like tennis balls. Most of the unit's rooms were choked with debris.

We are trying to imagine it, but imagination fails us.

At some moment we even start to think that the stories are exaggerated.

But they aren't.

What did you know about radiation back in 1986? Living in this city

I knew nothing, except for the civil defense posters.

They used to be in every office, depicting various kinds of US bombs

and people in gas masks and telling where to go in case of a sudden

treacherous attack by the United States.

We used to have civil defense drills every year.

They'd make us put on gas masks and go down to bomb shelters.

We learned the signals and all that. We would even get grades for this.

Not that it was of any help for anyone.

When the accident really happened, nobody was prepared,

including those who were supposed to be prepared.

Nuclear experts were walking on the graphite near the Unit 4 ruin.

They couldn't believe it. They see the graphite, and still

It's like we are sitting here talking, and suddenly a UFO lands here.

We never believed they existed, and here it is right in front of us.

No, it can't be true, is a hologram or something!

What do you mean, they are walking in graphite?

What were they supposed to realize?

They were to realize that the reactor core didn't exist anymore,

that there is this unbelievable level of radiation.

They had to do something with their families and themselves.

Being there is not just dangerous it's a grave danger!

They keep telling themselves and the others that it's just a fire,

that there is some demolishing, but everything will be just fine

when they shut down the reactor. There wasn't any reactor left!

Let me turn the sound off. - What is in this video?

My dad shot it. My parents were divorced. He came to visit

and brought a new 8mm film camera. He was an amateur photographer.

He came to our school, and we all gathered around him.

He says, Guys, this is a movie, not a picture.

You have to do something. So we started doing something.

Where was it shot?

Right here. This is the school stadium, Prypyat School No.1.

We are standing in the exact spot where this was shot.

How many schools were there in Prypyat? 5.

And this one was number - 1.

One school for every district? Yes.

On the night of April 26, 1986, Prypyat was playing a lottery.

Most of the city was in big trouble. The rest in even bigger trouble.

This school was built in the district closest to the station.

This area had the highest level of radiation in the city.

Were you scared? I don*t remember. I was angry. Yes.

We got used to deaths very quick.

We lived in a Chernobyl house in Kyiv's Kharkivsky District.

The evacuees from Prypyat were being accommodated in Kharkivsky

and Troyeshchyna districts. And not a week went by without a funeral.

A kid from my apartment house who was 5 years older than me

I remember he had a dog, a collie. His mom was a nurse at a hospital.

He was in his senior year and had to pass his final exams.

We talked sometimes. We weren't friends, of course, because

of age difference. It matters when you're a kid. 5 years, that's a lot.

But we talked sometimes. And suddenly we find out that he felt sick

during his exam. He went out and died on the stairs. A heart attack.

He was just a boy!

Now we are well aware that radiation affects children more than adults.

Especially in Prypyat, where there was plenty of radioactive iodine

in the air. A child's thyroid gland absorbs it in mere hours.

If radiation was visible, the kids' slender necks would be glowing.

The only ones who were in bigger trouble were babies whose moms

at the time of the accident were still carrying them in their wombs.

Like Marina, who had first felt some vague fear during the evacuation.

Did the word radiation feature in these fears at all?

No, not radiation. Not yet.

You were a member of the civil defense committee, right?

Well, we took the pills, we took a shower. We were supposed to be OK.

They told you it would help? Yes.

Did you know then that the pills were to be taken every 6 hours

before the exposure?

Who would have given them to us before the accident?

Dear comrades, the City Council of People's Deputy informs

that in connection with the accident at the Chernobyl NPP

an unfavorable radiation situation was created in Prypyat.

To provide safety for the people and primarily the children,

a need arose for a temporary evacuation of city residents

There were so many buses. This is the bridge, leading to the city,

and on this side there are buses with people,

and on this side there are empty buses.

When we were leaving the city limits, there were policemen and soldiers

on the left side. That's when I first felt uncomfortable.

Starting at 2 PM today, April 27, buses will be picking up residents

at their apartment houses,

attended by police officers and city council representatives.

While I was at home and at work, or went to the post office

which was a short walk from my house I lived in the downtown then, -

I didn't realize what was happening.

But when we were crossing that bridge, I felt uneasy. Too many buses,

people, the police, the military It had first occurred to me then

that this wasn't a small accident.

In course of the evacuation people were exposed to even higher

level of radiation, since the only road to Kyiv went next to the station.

We still don't know what exactly this level was. Suffice it to say,

that a whole pine forest on both sides of the highway had died.

After the accident it was nicknamed the Red Forest

because of its dead pine trunks that had lost all their needles.

Even now, after the trees had been cut down and buried,

a 1 km-long radioactive spot remains on the otherwise clean road.

The monitor shows here a 20-times rise in radiation levels.

This is the road a pregnant Maryna traveled that day,

having no idea how dangerous her surroundings were.

She would come to a doctor only 3 days later,

April 30, already in Vinnytsia oblast,

where her husband's family lived.

So we went to the radiology department at the Vinnytsia oblast hospital.

You were not going to be admitted there, were you?

Of course I wasn't. Everybody was worried, so I thought I should

check my radiation level. For me it was like

There's open space, and there's Mars, and there are radiation levels.

OK, if I have to, then I have to. Let's do it.

This is the village of Krasne, 7.5 km from the nuclear plant.

We are here because April 28, 1986, when Maryna was already

in Vinnytsia oblast, here people were having a regular day,

moreover, a regular school day.

0.90. Here's the school.

We gauge the radiation level and realize that 30 years ago

the village wasn't a much safer place than Prypyat.

0.92, 0.93.

It's about as high as in Prypyat's First District.

Is it the cleanest one?

No, the one that had suffered most contamination.

The closest one to the station.

In one of the classrooms of the old school building with stove heating

we find a pile of notebooks with exercise dated April 28.

This notebook belonged to a 3-grader named Andriy.

So, when Prypyat residents had already been evacuated,

a 9-year-old boy Andriy was sitting in class.

We don't know the exact date when Krasne was evacuated

or what happened to its residents later.

However, there are some test sheets left in the school building.

Here we can see the date: May 14.

Here, May 15.

And 17.

The latest test sheet we found was a test on the Ukrainian language

written by a 2-grader named Nadya. It reads, May 21.

The Soviet Union is our Motherland.

Our Motherland is great and powerful.

There were only 325 residents in Krasne village, plus the kids.

We came to the hospital. Hi, this is what happened in our city.

You've probably heard of it. Can we check our radiation level?

Oh, you're from there? Please walk out of the hospital. Go, go!

There was an old 1-storey building with a glassed-in veranda.

So they sent us there. There came a doctor with this radiation meter.

The level was off the charts everywhere, from head to toe.

Take off your clothes.

Where? Right here.

I say, "There are people around, I can't do it right here!"

"Of course you have to do it here. Where else?"

All your clothes? "Yes, they made me take off everything.

OK, my clothes and shoes are off. My hair is still radioactive,

and so is my belly. "We need to clean her, clean her hair."

So my husband would wash me at that decontamination station,

they'd take the readings, and they were still high,

and there we'd go again. He washes me, they take the readings,

readings are high. We repeated the process 5 or 6 times.

He washed me with lye soap. That was all they gave us.

We washed my hair, too. Finally, after 5 or 6 times,

my hair and body were clean. But when it came to my belly,

the device showed high levels again.

I was scared. I started thinking, "Why? Why is everything clean,

but my belly is still radioactive?"

"Well, you breathed that air, you ate something there.

It's all in your stomach." Nobody mentioned my baby

at that decontamination station.

The authorities might merely forget to evacuate the Krasne residents.

It took them 36 hours to deal with Prypyat, so what can be said

about a tiny remote village?

But what happened to Maryna wasn't a mistake or negligence.

It was a secret order regarding all Prypyat-based pregnant women,

no matter where they fled after the accident.

The doctor came, and they brought an IV drip for me.

A big bottle with a yellow-colored solution in it. I thought,

they talked about my stomach and food in it. They probably want

to cleanse it. Then all the readings will go down to normal,

and they'll let me go home.

I was calm, and I let them put in that IV. But in the middle of it

my baby started acting out. I was 5 months pregnant,

and it wasn't kicking a lot. Sometimes it moved its arm or leg,

and that was it. But at that moment my belly bulged like this.

It was like my baby was standing upright in there.

It seemed to be very upset with this drip. So I thought,

what kind of IV is this?

The baby was kicking? Yes, it was wiggling around.

It was as if it stood up on its feet, because my stomach looked

like it was distended at an angle, like its head was over here.

I felt like the baby was indignant with what was going on.

So I thought, what kind of medicine is this?

Today we know that on the day of the accident the wind carried

the radioactive dust to the north and west of the plant.

Prypyat was right between the two offshoots,

which gave its residents a fighting chance.

500 meters from their houses, even the trees were dying of radiation.

The house where 10-year-old Oleksandr lived with his mother in 1986

is just inside the city line.

Let's go inside.

The notorious Prypyat First District,

which has now become the most contaminated of all inhabited areas.

Careful.

The buildings in Prypyat are in poor condition. Very sad.

This is our room.

It's so small. Did you live here?

At that time it seemed to much bigger me.

When the disaster struck, he and his mom were here.

For the next 10 years they would spend one third of their lives

in hospitals around 4 months every year.

As far as I understand,

the accident had changed your mother's life completely.

Yes, absolutely. The only thing she was still able to do

was write. She used to be a poet before the accident.

She used to write a lot.

The Chernobyl disaster divided her life in two parts.

Before, she was a healthy 30-year-old woman.

After a disabled person.

Did it happen at once? Virtually, yes.

In a year*s time? Yes, it was very quick.

What is a radiation cataract?

It was one of Mom's diagnoses.

It's how the exposure affects the crystalline lens in the eye.

She almost lost her sight. There was that ace surgeon

who operated on her eye and saved it.

She spent a whole night sitting there, watching the fire.

Well, this is another story.

We believed that Oleksandr himself was incredibly lucky,

having preserved his health in spite of living in Prypyat's

most contaminated district. That's what we thought

until we saw how he had looked just a few years ago.

Wait, this is 6 years ago? Something like that.

What's the reason of this change?

That's what I'm talking about. I can't explain it.

I haven't turned to a doctor with my Chernobyl-related symptoms

for a while. When I was a boy and used to spend several months a year

at hospitals, an endocrinologist warned Mom and me

that sooner or later there will be some endocrine problems,

which can lead to changes, in particular, in my appearance.

I used to be very skinny and was unable to gain weight.

My weight at 35 was 70 kilos. And then suddenly it changed,

and now I have the opposite problem. I was shocked.

It was hard to believe. People who knew me before

also say that I've, like, become another person.

There is a place in the Exclusion Zone which has no direct connection

with the accident. But only after visiting it

we were able to fully understand what had happened in April 1986.

The Arc. The Chornobyl 2 facility.

It's an antenna. A huge top-secret antenna which was designed

to register missile launches throughout the world.

But it never started operating.

Today its believed that the Arc had cost twice as much

as the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Its height is 150 meters.

Just the maintenance of the cables attached to it

required constructing a separate 500-meter long building.

There's nothing to be said about this place

in connection with the accident, but a lot to be understood.

This facility is an epitome of the USSR in its whole,

of its true priorities and goals, The state that had built a city

2 km from a nuclear power plant, lying to its residents

about the safe atomic energy industry.

It was an outright lie. Take a look at this footage.

We had to shoot it from a moving car, because it's prohibited

to stop here and film the plant.

See the white chimneys over Units 1 and 2? They are made

for an accidental release of radioactive steam to the environment.

In other words, the probability of such a release was part of the design.

Still, the city of Prypyat was built in this place.

There even was a precedent. A small accident with radioactive release

happened at this same station in 1982.

Before that, we had concrete roads. They covered them with tarmac

to reduce the contamination. Nobody knew about it at that time.

Now this information is available. That accident was rather small-scale,

but it led to a certain level of contamination.

Here, at the antenna site, it's easier to believe Maryna's story.

Yes, it's a story of a forced abortion. Hundreds of forced abortions

were performed on the pregnant women of Prypyat,

regardless of their gestation terms. The thing is, if they gave birth

to numerous children with birth defects, it would be impossible

to keep in secret the aftereffects of the accident.

Anyway, the USSR didn't need more disabled children.

The mothers weren't given any choice.

Nobody wasted time on persuading them.

There were only a handful of those who dared to act like Maryna.

The doctor came and said, "Get ready. The OR is being prepared."

I say, "Ready for what?" "You can*t keep the baby.

"You saw your readings. They were off charts. You can*t do it."

"Why? Why can*t I keep my baby?"

Were you crying?

I wasn't crying. I was frantically trying to figure out what to do.

I was scared of that radiation levels the monitor showed.

But the fear to kill the baby was bigger.

I couldn't let them kill my baby. It wasn't just a piece of meat.

I already talked to him, and I knew his name was Artem.

I pictured him in my head. I couldn't kill him. I didn't understand"

I said, "What do you mean? What are you going to do with the baby

when you take it out?" He said, "No, you can*t keep it."

And then he left.

They gave my clothes to my husband and told him to bury it.

They said there wasn't any sense in washing it or burning it.

He was to bury it as far away and as deep as he could.

So he was walking up and down the lane under my window

with this bag of radioactive clothes. I opened the window and said,

"Give me my clothes. We*re leaving."

He gave it to me. I quickly put it on and said, "Help me out."

I was afraid that they would come back for me while I was dressing

and then climbing on a stool and then on the windowsill.

All I could think about was, God, don't let them come in.

So I quickly put on that dress and said, "Help me climb out."

He did, and we ran away from that hospital as fast as we could.

We escaped.

Next day, May 1, the police started looking for me.

She haven't been to her home since she left it 30 years ago,

thinking it would only be for 3 days.

The accident has changed for her much more than place of residence.

Maryna didn't give up her son. He was a nice, funny, chubby baby.

But the way he perceived the world was obviously different

from other kids.

We went to gather some mushrooms, and I got lost.

Having met Artem, we kept observing him, trying to see

any aftereffects of radiation exposure. But we couldn't see anything.

Except maybe for the fact that his eyes were glued to his mom's face,

which seems rather unusual for a grownup son.

It's like she is his whole world, and no matter what she's saying,

there is nothing else worth his attention at that moment.

On the other hand, maybe this is how things are for him.

This is where we were driving out of the city.

We were going this way, and a bunch of buses that way.

Is this a fallen tree? Over there, across the road.

They've killed this beautiful city.

What?

Here!

Second floor. The office.

This was our reception desk.

This was the study hall. Photo lab.

This is our room.

Oh God.

This is where you were supposed to be born.

Nothing's left here.

Well, I would be born in the hospital. But I'd live here.

This tree wasn't here before. No, it was small, down there.

After Maryna's escape from the hospital the police was looking for her.

She and her husband had to go into hiding.

Artem was born almost a healthy child.

And when the almost part had became obvious, his father left them,

blaming his wife for this.

Only in the 90s, after the fall of the Soviet empire,

the doctors showed them MRI images of his brain areas

probably damaged with gamma rays or the mysterious IV drip.

These areas had been affecting his behavior for all his life.

At the Soviet school Artem was considered ill-mannered,

incontrollable, slow;

his mother a neglecting and irresponsible parent.

The URSR was ashamed of children with special needs,

especially if they became special due to the system's fault.

However, Artem has outgrown it, as they say, and grew up

to be a regular man. As for her She has won.

Or we should rather say, they both have won.