The people of Pripyat and all the surrounding villages had to be evacuated.  On the morning of the evacuation, they were told to be ready to leave by noon.  Not too much panic, because they knew they would be home soon.  They couldnât bring pets, and only minimal possessions.  Buses arrived and bussed them out to be dispersed all over Ukraine.

 

Our bodies concentrate iodine in the thyroid gland, to make thyroxine.  So if the iodine we are getting is radioactive, we get a huge dose of radiation to the thyroid gland, causing thyroid cancer, especially in children, whose bodies are still growing.  The way to avoid this is to administer stable iodine in the first hours of exposure but this was not done until much later, so the damage was done.

 

Nobody has gone back to Pripyat, and 25 years later it is a ghost town.

 

 

At reactor 4, the first men to go in were fire fighters, deep inside the reactor, using water.  They quickly became ill with vomiting and diarrhoea and were taken to hospital, and their efforts were futile. The next wave was by helicopters carrying soldiers with sandbags, who flew over the breached roof and chucked tons of sand onto the magma.  These efforts also failed because the magma was so hot that it melted the sand.  The temperature and radiation levels over the plant were massive and these men, too, quickly got ill.  The third effort was to throw tons on lead down into the reactor from helicopters, and this did begin to stabilise the situation.

 

Because of the heroic efforts of all these men, a second, massive explosion now looked less likely, and a more âpermanentâ solution could be begun.  But all of these workers suffered massive doses of radiation.  Acute radiation sickness causes rapid diarrhoea and vomiting.  Then there is a latent period, and many of them arrived at hospitals in this latent period, âall wearing the same pyjamasâ, laughing and joking.  Soon, the radiation damage becomes apparent with failing vital organs and massive skin burns.  Some died very quickly.  Those who are still alive now continue to suffer with radiation-related diseases, known as âChornobyl syndromeâ.

 

Gonna send this now.