Midnight in Chernobyl

I picked this up after watching the HBO series Chernobyl and being so fascinated I wanted to know more. This book does an excellent job of giving the details and the real facts, filling in and correcting the condensed and dramatized version from the TV show.

For a fairly long book filled with facts, this does an amazing job of telling a relatable, human story. The context about Soviet nuclear history and ambitions, the political influences, and the historical forces were illuminating. The personal stories underlined the danger and the costs, but also demonstrated the resiliency of so many of those affected. Most compelling was the illustration of the blame/cover-up culture that was the true genesis for every thread of cause, from the design of the reactor, to the actions of the controllers, to the horrifying lag in understanding what had happened.

At times this did devolve a bit into a numbing litany of names and numbers. Sometimes people are introduced who disappear after one paragraph, while others are introduced in similar ways and wind up being key players. The information about the levels of radiation were usually gripping; the catalog of building materials and dimensions as the containment was built were less so.

But that's a small gripe - this is riveting and dramatic. It tells the systemic, scientific, and human stories well. It even acknowledges the threat of radiophobia (the number of people killed and injured by conventional coal plants is far greater than victims of nuclear incidents) and some hope for a future that better balances risk through scientific advances and refocusing away from nuclear weapons.

Holy cow that was fascinating. After watching the HBO show, I've been watching and reading about the Chernobyl incident, and Higginbotham's book is an amazing telling. He goes into the background of nuclear energy in the USSR, what happened at Chernobyl, the aftermath, plus interviews with survivors (including Bryukhanov), etc. Really well done and highly recommended.

“Satan sleeps beside the Pripyat.”

I knew of the Chernobyl disaster, but this book showed I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did. Well researched, well told, it read like a thriller with the play-by-play of a biography or memoir. I really appreciated the history and backstory behind the disaster, because I think a lot of what went on could be blamed on the Soviet-era hubris at the time and the willingness to overlook pesky things like safety measures and proper construction to save perceived face on a global scale.

I also really liked the structure of the book as a whole, where each chapter was dedicated to one part of what ends up being a very complex whole. It does seem to jump around a bit, particularly in the beginning, but with each chapter focused on a particular topic related to the disaster I feel like it was necessary to get the whole story. Chapter highlights for me included the 6 chapters dedicated to the day of and days following the event, discussion on The China Syndrome, Inside Hospital Number Six, and The Elephant's Foot. There's some really great stuff in this book.

Highly recommend to anyone interested in reading about this catastrophic event, or if you're looking for a good, gripping nonfiction book.

This is a harrowing, thorough book. I would have given it 5 stars, except at parts I felt that the HBO series that used this book as inspiration did a better job of getting across just how much of a disaster this was on an emotional level. I can't fault for the book for this, obviously, but since I watched the show first, it impacted my read.

The main take-aways I got from this book is how ineptitude spreads from the top down, and how people scrambling to cover their own asses can result in horrible things for the rest of us. One thing this book did very well was document how the survivors carried on, as well as how impossible the clean-up process was and how all of this effected the psychology of the U.S.S.R. and the citizens themselves.

Man, nuclear power just seems . . . like a bad idea? (I am intrigued by the thorium reactors Higginbotham mentions at the end but I'm not a scientist!!) I admit that I thought I would understand nuclear power more after reading this and I definitely don't. I do know that a “positive void coefficient” is very, very bad. How you get there or what it actually MEANS is still beyond me.

What was super interesting was the Soviet propaganda machine and the way the USSR handled - or mishandled - the disaster. One of the points the author posits is that Chernobyl contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union which I never really thought about.

If you love history then you'll love this. If you're interested in history but wish it was written as a thriller then you will LOVE this book. I literally know the outcome of Chernobyl and I was still getting anxiety about how everything was going to play out. Learned lots of things I didn't know about and it shows just how corrupt Russia is