Soviet Union

At 1:23 AM on April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded with a force that blew the 1,000-ton reactor lid clean off its housing. It was the worst nuclear accident in human history — and the Soviet government’s first instinct was to lie about it. Not just to the world. To its own people. To the firefighters it sent in without proper equipment. To the children still playing outside in radioactive rain. ...

On the night of February 1, 1959, nine experienced Soviet hikers cut their way out of their tent from the inside and fled into the darkness of a Ural mountain in temperatures approaching minus 30 degrees Celsius. They were found weeks later in states that defied easy explanation — some with catastrophic internal injuries but no external wounds, one missing her tongue, several with traces of radiation on their clothing, and all of them dead. ...