Manual for survival : a Chernobyl guide to the future / Kate Brown.

[London, UK] : Allen Lane, 2019.©2019

Brown, Kate (Kathryn L.) author.

01-01-2019

420 pages ; 24 cm.

text

volume

363.1799 BRO (Copy 1) MAIN-MONO 317529 INLIBRARY

Nuclear weapons tests

Chernobyl nuclear accident 1986

Radioactive fallout

Health

Overseas item

History

Includes bibliographical references and index.

9780241352069

Governments and journalists tell us that though Chernobyl was "the worst nuclear disaster in history," a reassuringly small number of people died (44), and nature recovered. Yet, drawing on a decade of fine-grained archival research and interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Kate Brown uncovers a much more disturbing story, one in which radioactive isotypes caused hundreds of thousands of casualties. Scores of Soviet scientists, bureaucrats, and civilians documented stunning increases in cases of birth defects, child mortality, cancers, and a multitude of prosaic diseases, which they linked to Chernobyl. Worried that this evidence would blow the lid on the effects of massive radiation release from weapons testing during the Cold War, international scientists and diplomats tried to bury or discredit it. A haunting revelation of how political exigencies shape responses to disaster, Manual for Survival makes clear the irreversible impact on every living thing not just from Chernobyl, but from eight decades of radiation from nuclear energy and weaponry.

1242986

317529

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