

Manual for Survival
A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
Author: Kate Brown
Narrator: Christina Delaine
Unabridged: 12 hr 53 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Published: 06/11/2019
Categories: Nonfiction, History, Technology & Engineering, Science, Physics, Nuclear
Synopsis
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.