Manual for survival - Kate Brown

'Remarkable . . . grips with the force of a thriller' Robert MacFarlane

An astonishing expos of the aftermath of Chernobyl - and the plot to cover up the truth

The official death toll of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 'the worst
nuclear disaster in history', is only 54, and stories today commonly
suggest that nature is thriving there. Yet award-winning historian Kate
Brown uncovers a much more disturbing story, one in which radioactive
isotopes caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the magnitude
of this human and ecological catastrophe has been actively suppressed.

Based on a decade of archival and on-the-ground research, Manual for Survival
is a gripping account of the consequences of nuclear radiation in the
wake of Chernobyl - and the plot to cover it up. As Brown
discovers, Soviet scientists, bureaucrats, and civilians documented
staggering increases in cases of birth defects, child mortality, cancers
and a multitude of life-altering diseases years after the disaster.
Worried that this evidence would blow the lid on the effects of massive
radiation release from weapons-testing during the Cold War, scientists
and diplomats from international organizations, including the UN, tried
to bury or discredit it. Yet Brown also encounters many everyday heroes,
often women, who fought to bring attention to the ballooning health
catastrophe, and adapt to life in a post-nuclear landscape, where
dangerously radioactive radioactive berries, distorted trees and birth
defects still persist today.

An astonishing historical detective story, Manual for Survival
makes clear the irreversible impact of nuclear energy on every living
thing, not just from Chernobyl, but from eight decades of radiaoactive
fallout from weapons development.