Chornobyl. The danger for the global civilization

I was born in Kiev in 1934 and devoted myself to literature. Also I worked as a correspondent for a newspaper. April 26, 1986, my friend doctor had a call and said, 'Something had happened at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.' The Minister of Health of Ukraine ordered to create a special medical group. Our destination was Polisky and Invankivsky districts, which neighbored the place of the catastrophe and to which tens of thousands of evacuees from the 10 km zone were taken. Subsequently the area of alienation was enlarged to 30 km. We met our colleagues-doctors and saw first victims of the accident at the plant. I started to collect testimonies from academician to a student, from a nuclear power plant (NPP) operator to a doctor, and from a farmer to a military helicopter pilot. These records became a basis of the documentary story Chornobyl published in 1987. I learned the details of deaths of firemen who rushed to extinguish fire in the reactor compartment of the exploded 4th block, ignoring radiation hazard (and not knowing seriously about it). In 1986 and 1987, I regularly visited Chornobyl, Prypyat, the NPP and its surroundings to collect materials for the story. My first publications in Moscow and Kiev periodicals about the situation in the zone of the accident generated great interest. The work on the book Chornobyl took four years of my life-four years of intensive search for the truth, meetings, trips and study of documentary evidence of what had happened. Chornobyl is a lesson for humankind for all times which should never be forgotten. (S.S.)