Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future

by Kate Brown

Overview

Winner of the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History
Winner of the Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Nonfiction
Finalist for the Ryszard Kapuscinski Award for Literary Reportage

"A magisterial blend of historical research, investigative journalism, and poetic reportage…[A]n awe-inspiring journey." —Economist

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, international aid organizations sought to help the victims but were stymied by post-Soviet political roadblocks. Efforts to gain access to the site of catastrophic radiation damage were denied, and the residents of Chernobyl were given no answers as their lives hung in the balance. Drawing on a decade of archival research and on-the-ground interviews in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, Kate Brown unveils the full breadth of the devastation and the whitewash that followed. Her findings make clear the irreversible impact of man-made radioactivity on every living thing; and hauntingly, they force us to confront the untold legacy of decades of weapons-testing and other catastrophic nuclear incidents.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393652529
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/12/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Kate Brown is an award-winning historian of environmental and nuclear history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her previous book, Plutopia, won seven academic prizes. She splits her time between Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/01/2019

Award-winning author Brown (history, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore Cty.; A Biography of No Place) writes a new history of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster that begins with text from the first survival manual ever issued to a population after a nuclear incident. The author's research then uncovers terrible truths that the official account of the disaster chose to ignore. Using archival records and interviews with those living in Ukraine and Belarus, Brown explores the environmental devastation that resulted from the incident. International scientists who wanted to promote the safety of nuclear energy deliberately downplayed the danger to the people still living in the Chernobyl area and to the flora and fauna in that region. For example, the official record states that only 44 people died as a result of the tragedy. Brown's research shows the actual death toll from radioactive isotopes to be in the hundreds of thousands, and engaging and accessible writing makes for a page-turning read. VERDICT This important work should be read by those concerned about the environmental impacts of nuclear energy and climate change. [See Prepub Alert, 10/1/18.]—Jason L. Steagall, formerly with Gateway Technical Coll. Lib., Elkhorn, WI

Library Journal

★ 12/24/2018

In a gripping book part scientific exploration, part Cold War thriller, Brown (Dispatches from Dystopia), a University of Maryland historian of environmental and nuclear history, investigates the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and reveals why ferreting out the truth about it is so difficult. The Soviet government assured the world that the meltdown’s repercussions weren’t severe, with only 54 plant staff and firefighters dead from acute radiation sickness, and minimal exposure of families, who’d been swiftly evacuated to safety. But behind that optimistic lie, there were secrets on all sides. The Soviet government didn’t want to reveal how much it actually knew about radiation effects, or how it had learned that information. The American government, meanwhile, refused to share information from its own medical study of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims with the Soviets. As the crumbling Soviet Union fought to avoid blame, historians and scientists struggled to document data before it disappeared, and Chernobyl victims found their lives dropped into the hands of bureaucrats more interested in covering up the truth than in helping them. Brown’s in-depth research and clean, concise writing illuminate the reality behind decades of “half-truths and bald-faced lies.” Readers will be fascinated by this provocative history of a deadly accident and its consequences. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"With bountiful, devastating detail, Brown describes how doctors, scientists, and journalists—mainly in Ukraine and Belarus—went to great lengths and took substantial risks to collect information…. One of the most alarming—though also eerily beautiful—aspects of Brown’s book is her description of the way radioactive material moves through organisms, ecosystems, and human society…. Manual for Survival asks a larger question about how humans will coexist with the ever-increasing quantities of toxins and pollutants that we introduce into our air, water, and soil. Brown’s careful mapping of the path isotopes take is highly relevant."

New York Review of Books - Sophie Pinkham

"A magisterial blend of historical research, investigative journalism and poetic reportage…. an awe-inspiring journey."

Economist

"[A] humane and strange book about the irreversible things a technological disaster does to people and landscapes."

New Statesman - Owen Hatherley

"Kate Brown presents a convincing challenge to the official narrative of the Chernobyl disaster. Deeply reported and elegantly written, Manual for Survival is chilling."

Elizabeth Kolbert

"Kate Brown introduces new archival material to document the public-health crisis — creating a handbook for a 'postnuclear reality'…. Brown’s page-turner skillfully weaves an original narrative on the long-term medical effects of the Chernobyl disaster."

Nature

"This engagingly written book reads like a cold war thriller and uncovers the devastating effects of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters."

Alison MacFarlane

"A remarkable book, distinguished by formidable archival history, investigative research, and vivid storytelling. Parts of it grip with the force of a thriller—but again and again, the plot is proved true. A decade’s work has gone into uncovering the real human cost of Chernobyl. Yet this is a book about even bigger subjects than the disaster at its core: about how politics processes disaster, about the unseen legacies of the ‘friendly atom,’ and about the Anthropocene futures faced by the human species, surviving in an epoch of ruin."

Robert Macfarlane

"Combining the skills of a historian, investigative reporter, and detective, Kate Brown has blown the lid off the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster and decades of official efforts to suppress its grim truths. Disturbing in its conclusions, destined to incite controversy, Manual for Survival is first-rate historical sleuthing."

J. R. McNeill

"Gripping…Kate Brown’s relentless, tenacious reporting shows that Chernobyl isn’t the past at all. Nothing, she makes clear, can stop its radiation from seeping through all attempts to bury the truth for a long time to come. This deftly written, impassioned, courageous book should make the world think twice about what’s at stake when we unleash nuclear reactions."

Alan Weisman

"Kate Brown introduces new archival material to document the public-health crisis — creating a handbook for a 'postnuclear reality'…. Brown’s page-turner skillfully weaves an original narrative on the long-term medical effects of the Chernobyl disaster."

Nature Lib

"A magisterial blend of historical research, investigative journalism and poetic reportage…. an awe-inspiring journey."

Economist

★ 2018-12-30

An award-winning historian challenges the notion that the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident had few consequences, arguing that the "public health disaster" killed at least 35,000 to 150,000 people and left most adults and children in affected areas sick with cancer, anemia, and other illnesses.

In this explosive, exquisitely researched account, Brown (Environmental and Nuclear History/Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County; Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, 2013, etc.) draws on four years of fieldwork in Soviet and other archives—27 total, some previously unvisited—and in towns and farms in contaminated territories to provide a powerful story of the devastating health and environmental effects of radioactive fallout in areas outside the 30-kilometer Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. "The accounts of unspecific, widespread, and chronic illness, reproductive problems, and acute increases in cancer resound like a lament across the area of Chernobyl fallout," she writes. The official death toll from the exploding nuclear power plant was 54, but there was never any long-term study of health consequences, including the effects of exposure to radiation over time. After interviewing workers, evacuees, and scientists; visiting affected factories, swamp ecosystems, and abandoned towns; and examining transcripts of secret Politburo meetings and other documents, the author concludes that Soviet officials hid the radiation's impact through "secrecy, censorship, counterespionage, and fabricated news." In the face of Soviet "half-truths and bald-faced lies," international scientists nodded agreeably. Like the Soviets, Western officials blamed stress—not radiation—for health issues, out of fear of Chernobyl's implications for other radiation exposures and possible lawsuits. Brown's prose is sometimes technical but largely accessible and even turns poetic when she describes changed lives. She offers horrifying descriptions of the processing of radioactive meat and other foods for shipment to large cities and towns and of the continuing sale abroad of contaminated berries.

This sobering book should be read—and studied—by policymakers and citizens; pair with Adam Higginbotham's Midnight in Chernobyl to spark a renewed debate over nuclear power.

Kirkus Reviews