Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

Or more simply, Vladimir Gubaryev, the first journalist to reach the Chernobyl accident site, reflects:

This tragedy should be a lesson for all of us and a reproach to those for whom a quiet life with materialistic benefits matters above all else. [25] “Testament,” Pravda , May 20, 1988.

It is only a few decades since the tobacco industry was publishing medical papers proclaiming the health benefits of cigarettes. So there’s perhaps something apt in the reports that Lord Walter Marshall won a round of applause at a meeting of the British Nuclear Forum in 1986 for stating that the effects of radiation exposure within the Chernobyl exclusion zone would be “no worse than smoking a couple of extra cigarettes a year.” [26] “The Chernobyl Syndrome: The Day the Impossible Happened,” The Observer , May 4, 1986.

These attitudes continue unabated. International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War have predicted that the suffering brought about by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima is, and will continue to be, of a similar magnitude to Chernobyl. [27] Pflugbeil, Paulitz, Claussen, and SchmitzFeuerhake, Chernobyl , 8.

Radiation is the ultimate assassin. Silent, invisible, tasteless, formless, odourless. It eviscerates the human body, devising sadistically imaginative forms of suffering. And it will keep on doing so for as long as we inhabit the earth. And we create it to boil water.

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Cover design by Jarrod Taylor

Cover photograph © Anna Voitenko/Haytham Pictures/Alamy

Originally published as All That is Solid Melts into Air in Great Britain in 2014 by the Penguin Group, Penguin Books Ltd.

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ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO AIR. Copyright © 2014 by Darragh McKeon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST U.S. EDITION

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R. F. Mould, Chernobyl Record (London: Taylor & Francis, 2000), 299.

Boris Pasternak, “Träumerei,” Second Nature , trans. Andrei Navrozov (London: Peter Owen, 1990), 5.

Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl , trans. Keith Gessen (New York: Picador, 2006), 151–152.

Ibid., 153.

H. G. Wells, The World Set Free (London: Collins, 1921), 3.

Ian Fairlie and David Sumner, The Other Report on Chernobyl (Berlin: Altner Combecher Foundation, 2006), 48; M. Goldman, “Chernobyl: A Radiological Perspective,” Science no. 238 (1987): 622–623.

Alexey V. Nesterenko, Vassily B. Nesterenko, and Alexey V. Yablokov, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 2009), 26.

Nesterenko, Nesterenko, and Yablokov, Chernobyl , 1.

Alla Yaroshinskaya, Chernobyl (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 4.

Marilynne Robinson, Mother Country (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1989), 8.

Sebastian Pflugbeil, Henrik Paulitz, Angelika Claussen, and Inge Schmitz-Feuerhake, Health Effects of Chernobyl (Berlin: IPPNW, GFS Report, 2011), 6.

John Berger, Hold Everything Dear (New York: Pantheon, 2007), 95.

B. K. Voronetsky, N. E. Porada, N. E. Gutkovsky, and T. V. Blet’ko, “Morbidity of Children Inhabiting Territories with Radionuclide Contamination,” Materials, Gomel Medical Institute (November 1995): 9–10.

Nesterenko, Nesterenko, and Yablokov, Chernobyl , 38.

Nesterenko, Nesterenko, and Yablokov, Chernobyl , 320–322.

Helen Caldicott, Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer (New York: The New Press, 2006), 54–55.

Leslie Freeman, Nuclear Witness (London: W. H. Norton and Co., 1982).

John Vidal, “UN Accused of Ignoring 500,000 Chernobyl Deaths,” The Guardian , March 24, 2006.

E. Stepanova, V. Kondrashova, T. Galitchanskaya, and V. Vdovenko, “Immune Deficiency Status in Prenatally Irradiated Children,” Haemat 10 (1998): 25.

Nesterenko, Nesterenko, and Yablokov, Chernobyl , 38.

Dr. Evgenia Stepanova, interview in Chernobyl Forever , directed by Alain de Halleux (Paris, France: Crescendo Films, 2011), DVD.

Nesterenko, Nesterenko, and Yablokov, Chernobyl , 38.

A. I. Il’enko and T. P. Krapivko, “Impact of Ionizing Radiation on Rodent Metabolism,” USSR Academy of Sciences, Biology 1 (1998): 98–106.

H. G. Wells, The World Set Free , preface.

“Testament,” Pravda , May 20, 1988.

“The Chernobyl Syndrome: The Day the Impossible Happened,” The Observer , May 4, 1986.

Pflugbeil, Paulitz, Claussen, and SchmitzFeuerhake, Chernobyl , 8.