Audiobook12 hours
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
Written by Kate Brown
Narrated by Christina Delaine
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Dear Comrades! Since the accident at the Chernobyl power plant, there has been a detailed analysis of the radioactivity of the food and territory of your population point. The results show that living and working in your village will cause no harm to adults or children.
So began a pamphlet issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health-which, despite its optimistic beginnings, went on to warn its readers against consuming local milk, berries, or mushrooms, or going into the surrounding forest. This was only one of many misleading bureaucratic manuals that, with apparent good intentions, seriously underestimated the far-reaching consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.
After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between thirty-one and fifty-four people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.
So began a pamphlet issued by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health-which, despite its optimistic beginnings, went on to warn its readers against consuming local milk, berries, or mushrooms, or going into the surrounding forest. This was only one of many misleading bureaucratic manuals that, with apparent good intentions, seriously underestimated the far-reaching consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.
After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between thirty-one and fifty-four people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.
Related to Manual for Survival
Related audiobooks
Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Famine Plot: England's Role in Ireland's Greatest Tragedy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radioactive Boy Scout: The Frightening True Story of a Whiz Kid and His Homemade Nuclear Reactor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Krakatoa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-made Landscape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Republic of Detours: How the New Deal Paid Broke Writers to Rediscover America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trees in Trouble: Wildfires, Infestations, and Climate Change Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rust: The Longest War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The World Without Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underland: A Deep Time Journey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fire in Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My War Gone By, I Miss It So Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Technology & Engineering For You
How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Steve Jobs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Design of Everyday Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tesla: Wizard at War: The Genius, the Particle Beam Weapon, and the Pursuit of Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-made World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space Within Reach Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Manual for Survival
Rating: 3.90625 out of 5 stars
4/5
16 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My thoughts are mixed on this book. I really appreciate much of the book, but I can't quite fully buy into the author's conclusions regarding the wide-scale consequences of Chernobyl. I find the nuclear accident at Chernobyl fascinating and this book is not about what happened at the nuclear power plant, but rather the environment consequences of the accident. It's certainly interesting (although not nearly as good as Higginbottom's Midnight in Chernobyl, in my opinion), and Kate Brown has certainly dug into the archives and studies which surround Chernobyl. Still, after reading her descriptions of the problems surrounding Chernobyl scientific literature (and combined with other information on the health and environmental consequences I've encountered), I have trouble agreeing with the conclusions she draws.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Investigation of the ways in which the longterm health consequences of Chernobyl were hidden—hundreds of thousands of people were affected, and mushrooms and berries being sold all over Europe are still highly contaminated.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is about the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Russia in 1986. More specifically, it discusses the extent of the nuclear fallout from that disaster, how this fallout contamination has affected the local population, how the Russian authorities (mis)handled the problem and how the Western governments and aid agencies wilfully misread the situation and actively covered up the extent of the disaster for their own political ends. Overall, very few come out of this analysis smelling of roses.Even though there had been hundreds of nuclear ‘test’ explosions in the 40 years since Hiroshima there were no detailed studies of the effects of nuclear fallout on human populations, or, at least, none that any government or agency on either side of the Iron Curtain was prepared to share. When the Chernobyl explosion blasted huge quantities of radioactive materials over large swathes of the Ukraine and Belarus there was no coordinated effort to understand the medium and long term impacts of this contamination on the people most affected. The only objective analysis came from the nuclear and medical staff closest to the event who saw the effects of radiation contamination on local populations as the years went by.This book makes some devastating observations. Governments and NGOs in both Russia and the West ignored the scientific evidence, and this included scientists on both sides, preferring instead to stick with their own political and ideological prejudices. Authorities then and now refuse to acknowledge the huge suffering of thousands of people with horrific cancers, diseases and birth defects. Further, no attempt has been made to learn any lessons from this disaster in order to be better prepared for some future incident.Kate Brown has clearly undertaken an enormous amount of research to develop this book. This has included not just archival research (much of this was original) and interviewing the great and the good, but also visiting many of the towns and villages affected and talking to the people who lived or still live there.Brown writes well and drives the story forwards. The only failing, I think, is that the scope and detail is large as to sometimes overwhelm the central point.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book focuses not on the Chernobyl accident, but on the after-effects of radiation on humans and the environment. As with the accident itself, the Soviet government constantly downplayed the health consequences and environmental impact of the radiation releases--frequently increasing the dosages considered "safe" and often ignoring the health complaints of people residing in zones it said were safe. Surprisingly to me, both the US and the UN atomic/radiation experts also played this game, although perhaps I should not have been surprised since both are proponents of "safe" nuclear energy and don't want any inconvenient facts to discourage the continued growth of the nuclear energy industry.One difference between the radiation exposures after Hiroshima as compared with Chernobyl is that Chernobyl victims received a constant barrage of lower level radiation on a daily ongoing basis. In addition, Chernobyl victims were eating contaminated food. I was amazed at the way that the government manipulated the radiation measurements of food so that dangerously radioactive food--meat, milk, berries--was miraculously deemed safe to eat, i.e. mix contaminated berries/milk/meat in with enough uncontaminated product so that the whole measures within safe levels. Then, when people started getting sick, the experts, including US and UN experts claimed that their illnesses were not caused by the radiation itself, but by people's stress resulting from their fear of radiation.There were many interesting factoids in this book. For example, the Soviet government engaged in cloud seeding to ensure that radioactivity would not reach Moscow. Instead, the seeding caused the radioactive rain to fall in Belarus, so that areas of Belarus are much more radioactive than areas around Chernobyl. While 90,000 were relocated from areas of the Ukraine around Chernobyl, only 20,000 were relocated from the much more heavily contaminated southern Belarus.Those involved in the Chernobyl cleanup are known as liquidators, and not surprisingly many of them received heavy doses of radiation. The author found records indicating that certain wool workers were designated as liquidators and wanted to know why. It turns out that after heavily contaminated sheep were slaughtered, the government couldn't bring itself to "waste" the wool, and so had the wool sheared. The workers who sorted the wool became contaminated. (The government also sent the hides to be processed into leather). The author also tells the story of train cars full of radioactive meat that station after station refused to accept, and which floated around for 3 years before ending up in a highly contaminated Ukrainian town. Railroad workers put a fence around the train and warning signs, but the train sat there for months in the middle of a transit hub. The KGB stepped in finally, four years after the meat had been slaughtered (and after the cooling equipment had failed) to bury the meat in a cement-lined trench.There is a huge amount of information in this book that should be concerning to us all. As Dr. Robert Gale states, "A nuclear accident anywhere in the world is everywhere in the world."