How The Citizens of Pripyat Were Forever Affected by The Radioactive Chernobyl Disaster
The Chernobyl Disaster occurred on April 26th, 1986 in Pripyat, Ukraine. That night, a nuclear reactor inside the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant failed and exploded causing large amounts of harmful radioactive fission products to be distributed into the environment and atmosphere. This is considered the worst radioactive disaster to ever happen as hundreds of people were contaminated and the environment will not be safe for humans for more than 20,000 years.
The citizens who lived in Pripyat before the disaster were normal everyday people like you and me. One day they were informed to immediately drop everything they were doing and evacuate their homes and the city. Many left behind personal belongings, family heirlooms, memories, and even pets. Unfortunately, the disaster left the survivors to be seen as animals waiting to be poked questioned by other people who want to know what happened after they were evacuated from the city. Every time someone finds out that a survivor used to live in Pripyat they are stared at and people exclaim, “Look he’s from there”. In “Voices of Chernobyl” by Svetlana Alexievich, she details the interviews of the survivors and what they have to go through in the aftermath of the disaster.
One of the survivors explains to Alexievich that they lost their human lives even though they survived the radioactive disaster. “And then one day you’re turned into a Chernobyl person, an animal that everyone’s interested in, and that no one knows anything about. You want to be like everyone else, and now you can’t. People look at you differently. They ask you: Was it scary? How did the station burn? What did you see? And, you know, can you have children? Did your wife leave you?” This is fairly similar to the book Animal’s People by Indra Sinha where a teenager named Animal details his suffering after the Bhopal gas tragedy that left him deformed and his town forever affected. Animal thinks his deformity is a metaphor for his lost of humanity. The journalists who probe him to tell his story constantly throughout his life is tiring as it seems like his humanity has been taken away and people only care for the shocking and eye-catching stories. Animal explains, “ I said, many books have been written about this place, not one has changed anything for the better, how will yours be different? You will bleat like all the rest. You’ll talk of rights, law, justice. Those words sound the same in my mouth as in yours but they don’t mean the same, Zafar says such words are like shadows the moon makes in the Kampani’s factory, always changing shape. On that night it was poison, now it’s words that are choking us ” .
Animal and the people of his town of Khaufpur have been suffering for 20 years after the disaster. Many are disabled, blind, and on the verge of a slow death due to the long term affects of the chemicals in the air. The affects of the disaster was immediate for some as people died in their sleep unaware of the horrors taking place. Animal’s parents were victims as he was left an orphan with a twisted spine and forever on all fours. This long term affect from a disaster also happened in Pripyat as Alexievich explains a survivor’s life in the aftermath. A man and his wife had to take their daughter to the hospital as multiple black spots began to appear all over the young girl’s body. Tests were done on everyone but the hospital would not release the results to anyone. The young girl begged to her parents that she wanted to live. She later died due to the radioactive affects of the disaster.
The Soviet government did nothing to properly inform people of the disaster which led to many problems to local citizens. Doctors working near Chernobyl were merely told to examine victims from an “explosion” and to remove any patients already in the hospital. The victims were entirely contaminated and the hospital staff were not prepared to come in contact with radioactive elements. A nurse who unknowingly carried liquidators in her arms only to find out they were heavily radioactive. She later developed cancer in her upper body and breast cancer ended up killing her. The Swiss Medical Weekly also found that children who lived in areas close to the disaster site were consuming food products contaminated with the harmful materials and later developed cardiovascular problems.
The long lasting affects of both the Bhopal gas leak and the Chernobyl radioactive disaster have left detrimental impacts on the lives of many. Both the gas leak and Chernobyl survivors ended up developing life threatening disabilities and deformities which have led them to be probed and questioned by many for their stories. These people feel inhuman, or like an animal after surviving a widely known disaster.
