Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl

by Mary Mycio

When a titanic explosion ripped through the Number Four reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986, spewing flames and chunks of burning, radioactive material into the atmosphere, one of our worst nightmares came true. As the news gradually seeped out of the USSR and the extent of the disaster was realized, it became clear how horribly wrong things had gone. Dozens died - two from the explosion and many more from radiation illness during the following months - while scores of additional victims came down with acute radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated from the most contaminated areas. The prognosis for Chernobyl and its environs - succinctly dubbed the Zone of Alienation - was grim. Today, 20 years after the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, intrepid journalist Mary Mycio dons dosimeter and camouflage protective gear to explore the world's most infamous radioactive wilderness. As she tours the Zone to report on the disaster's long-term effects on its human, faunal, and floral inhabitants, she meets pockets of defiant local residents who have remained behind to survive and make a life in the Zone. And she is shocked to discover that the area surrounding Chernobyl has become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing - at times unearthly - wilderness teeming with large animals and a variety of birds, many of them members of rare and endangered species. Like the forests, fields, and swamps of their unexpectedly inviting habitat, both the people and the animals are all radioactive. Cesium-137 is packed in their muscles and strontium-90 in their bones. But quite astonishingly, they are also thriving. If fears of the Apocalypse and a lifeless, barren radioactive future have been constant companions of the nuclear age, Chernobyl now shows us a different view of the future. A vivid blend of reportage, popular science, and illuminating encounters that explode the myths of Chernobyl with facts that are at once beautiful and horrible, Wormwood Forest brings a remarkable land - and its people and animals - to life to tell a unique story of science, surprise and suspense.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Science, Nature, Environment, Natural History, Ukraine

276 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2005

About the author

Mary Mycio was born to Ukrainian parents who immigrated to the United States when she was one year old. She reported from Kiev for the Los Angeles Times between 1991 and 2003 while also directing a legal aid program for journalists. Since then, she has been splitting her time between international development consulting and writing.

She has been fascinated and frightened by atomic power since her fifth grade teacher told her misbehaving class that they would all die in a nuclear war because they didn't follow instructions. Her first book, "Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl", was published in 2005. Her debut thriller "Doing Бizness" is a darkly comic and suspenseful romp based on the secret history of nuclear disarmament and smuggling after the Soviet Union's collapse.

Her current project "The Forest Song" is a historical fantasy about the intersection between magic and science. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, three cats and a horse.

Reviews

[Nataliya · Rating 4 out of 5]

How do you picture the area around the scariest human-made natural disaster zone a few decades later?

Perhaps, like a postapocalyptic dark world filled, possibly, with mutated cockroaches that, as the popular wisdom states, would surely be the ones to survive a nuclear disaster?

That surely seems fitting, and so once thought Mary Mycio, a journalist and a writer, many years ago, when she first heard of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the wee hours of the morning on April 26, 1986.

"Surely, whenever I thought about the irradiated lands 50 miles north of Kiev, it was like contemplating a black hole. All I could picture was a dead zone, like a giant parking lot paved with asphalt or a barren desert of dust and ash where nothing could grow and nothing living could survive without protective gear. Only gloomy shades of black and gray colored my mental images.

But when I first visited the Chernobyl region, 10 years after the disaster, I was surprised to find that the dominant color was green."

This is what the Alienation Zone around Chernobyl nuclear power plant (now decommissioned, with the infamous reactor sheltered by the heroically built Sarcophagus) now looks like:


(Images by Sergey Gaschak from the article in Slate magazine here)
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This slightly dry and undoubtedly scientific book (even if that's presented as popular science) manages to address the specifics of complicated radiation monitoring, radioactive waste storage, the history of the explosion, in addition to the meat of its contents - the focus on the ecological impact of Chernobyl disaster, the invisible radiation that lives in plants, animals, ground and waters.

And it does so in a very accessible way, slowly introducing and explaining difficult concepts (but not in the too-simplified way that would insult the intelligence of her readers, no ma'am) interspersing them with Mycio's travelogue-like experiences over her numerous visits into the 30-km Exclusion Zone (also known as Alienation Zone) mostly in Ukraine where she now lives, as well as a semi-legal forage into the Belarus territory where a third of the zone is located.
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"Contrary to the myths and imagery, Chernobyl's land had become a unique, new ecosystem. Defying the gloomiest predictions, it had come back to life as Europe's largest nature sanctuary, teeming with wildlife."

Through the eyes of Mycio, Chernobyl Alienation Zone is seen as an unintentional unnatural natural preserve, the territory abandoned by humans after a deadly disaster - which, without the urban landscapes, without human interference, without farming and hunting has started to be reclaimed by wild nature, with fields giving way to meadows and bogs and forests where the previously endangered or rare species - wolves, boars, black storks, eagles, deer, and even experimentally human-introduced Przevalski's horses - appear to roam free and thrive.

"The prevailing scientific view of the exclusion zone has become that it is an unintentional wildlife sanctuary. This conclusion rests on the premise that radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than we are."

From a Slate Magazine article by Mary Mycio, Do Animals in Chernobyl Fallout Zone Glow?

No wonder that Mycio early in the book quotes the 1920 poem by Sara Teasdale, ' There Will Come Soft Rains ' also immortalized in Ray Bradbury's eponymous 'There Will Be Soft Rains' (1950), included in 'The Martian Chronicles' (and, if you are the Martian Chronicles fan, you can see it immortalized in 1984 short animated film by 'Uzbekfilm' studio, with English subtitles).

"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."

----Sara Teasdale (1920)

Mary Mycio in Chernobyl 30-km Alienation (Exclusion) zone.
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And yet in this seeming unexpected wildlife paradise, teeming with life that seems to be a testament to the sheer ferocity of Nature that survives even the most imaginable disaster there is always the invisible presence of radiation that remains a threat even after all these years. The dosimeter that Mycio takes with her on all these trips, to the forests and rivers and the homes of squatters serves as a beeping intrusive reminder of reality - in addition to the Sarcophagus looming on the horizon.

The most well-known testament to the deathly effects of radiation exposure (yes, acute and huge-dose, but still...) is the Red Forest, also known as Wormwood Forest (named so after wormwood, a common weed in the Chernobyl region, which also apparently is connected to the biblical apocalypse, as I learned). This is a pine forest that was one of the areas that took the heaviest fallout immediately after the explosion - and as the result the pines lost their chlorophyll, turned red and died. It was subsequently leveled, buried underground and covered with sand, and new trees were planted - and now they grow deformed, still feeling the effects of radiation both in the ground and the higher than in other places levels in the air.



And it's not just Red Forest. The area of the Exclusion Zone has patchy areas of heavy contamination, and some are more dangerous than the others. The danger comes from the ground where radioactive isotopes are freed from the dead vegetation and are taken up by the new plants, from the animals that eat those plants and are in turns eaten by predators, from the danger of fires that can release dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere, from the waters that can take up contaminated materials and spread radioactivity downstream, from the material on the bottom of water reservoirs (such as Chernobyl nuclear station cooling pond) that, if dried up, can release many curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere.

"It seems odd, but it is impossible to smell fresher air in an inhabited urban setting than in Chornobyl, where the number of cars can usually be counted on one hand and songbirds frequently provide the only sound. It is one of the disaster's paradoxes, but the zone's evacuation put an end to industrialization, deforestation, cultivation, and other human intrusions, making it one of Ukraine's environmentally cleanest regions—except for the radioactivity."

In many ways, the stunning unexpected and unplanned nature preserve that sprouted on the ruins of the human-made disaster is also like a ticking bomb potentially threatening the humans living in the areas around it. And the threat that is for now contained in the decrepit but much-needed Sarcophagus - over 90% of nuclear fuel still there - is likely to be a danger for at least 300 years, and possibly much longer.

This unnatural nature park is full of life and full of danger. Both at the same time. The two sides of the aftermath of Chernobyl disaster, now 27 years ago - but with effects that will likely be around for many many more decades.

"The tomb over the ruined fourth reactor was like a monumental Rorschach test, perhaps more revealing about the person looking for meaning in it than about the thing itself. Was Chernobyl's message one of hazard, about the dangers of technology and the fact that all of us, 5 billion strong, live downwind from 300 nuclear reactors that are operated by mere people and have a statistical probability of one meltdown every 30 years?

Or was its message one of hope, that no matter how humanity messes up, nature will persevere—even if it is forever changed and unnaturally natural, like the radioactive landscapes of Chernobyl? Perhaps the arch would one day become a kind of environmental shrine, eerily sanctifying the radioactive wilderness around it. Or would it desecrate that wilderness? I imagined future philosophers making pilgrimages to contemplate the shelter shrine and come up with answers.

I didn't have any."

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By the way, my review of another Chernobyl book, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich - a truly heartbreaking compilation of accounts of the disaster by the ordinary people who have been caught in the middle of it, is here.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written, interesting and informative book from 2005 about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe and the effects of the radiation the explosion poured onto the people, plants and wildlife of the surrounding area - a contaminated area that extends across parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.

The author, a Ukrainian-American, became obsessed with the catastrophe the moment she heard about it and spent years researching aspects of the accident, and even lived in Kiev for a number of years. The book explains the way different isotopes can harm people, plants and animals; some of those effects lessen with time as particles decay, sink into soil or silt.

There were, unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of people harmed by the accident - both residents of the affected areas and the hundreds of of thousands of workers sent in to do the clean-up. Surprisingly, the restricted surrounding area - which is now a nature reserve off-limits to most people except to permitted visitors and some former residents who insist on returning to their properties, is mostly green and teeming with wildlife, not a nuclear wasteland, although living things in the area do contain elevated levels of radionuclides. Aside from some distorted pine trees in the Red Forest near the decommissioned power plant itself which bore the brunt of the explosion, which grow from the contaminated soil in a shrub-like manner rather than as trees with branches perpendicular to their trunk, and some striped mussels, which develop in a disoriented manner with respect to the direction in which they grow in streams (not an effect readily visible to a casual observer), there are no "mutants" or "monsters" as a result of the radioactivity, despite the years of radioactive harm. Although this is of course good news in that it attests to the regenerative power of nature, it leads to some disquiet, at least it did for me. A huge mitigation project was undertaken after the accident - and although imperfect - the area did not turn into a permanent nuclear wasteland, as people have usually imagined the after effects of nuclear war with only roaches and rats remaining. Earth's seemingly invincible regenerative or adaptive power unfortunately might give military planners fewer qualms about using tactical nuclear weapons in a limited conflict. The fact is, wars and all nuclear weapons are catastrophically bad; some of the isotopes at Chernobyl have a half-life of thousands of years. Nuclear fallout is never acceptable. Despite the hope one can derive from the book, it is in the end nonetheless a profoundly disquieting book. Still, I would recommend it to anyone interested in finding out about the Chernobyl catastrophe especially its effects on the ecology of the surrounding contaminated area.

Here are a few quotes:

"...an accident on April 26, [1986] ... destroyed part of what was, until then, the obscure Chernobyl atomic energy plant in the Soviet Ukrainian republic."

"My Ukrainian-American upbringing had instilled a visceral distrust of the Soviet Union in me."

"...to harness the energy of Ukraine's Dnieper River, Europe's third largest, over the years the Soviets transformed it into a series of shallow, eutrophic reservoirs where fish perish by the thousands during hot summers."

"It is one of the disaster's paradoxes, but the zone's evacuation put an end to industrialization, deforestation, cultivation, and other human intrusions, making it one of Ukraine's environmentally cleanest regions--except for the radioactivity."

"...the feral fields surrounding the largely empty town [of Chornobyl] are now rich with the hares, rabbits, and rodents that are the golden eagle's favorite diet. The multitude of small creatures has attracted many raptors..."

"With biologically active radionuclides such as strontium and cesium constantly decaying, the window for studying high levels of contamination in the environment will eventually close. At the same time, Chernobyl's long-lived radionuclides such as plutonium and americium will continue to affect living things for a very, very long time to come."

"[Petr Palytayev, director of the Belarusian reserve:] 'And then, in one moment, it all ended.'"

"Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling coined the term "involuntary parks" to describe places that have been reclaimed by nature and reverted to savagery because of war, pollution, or other disasters. Involuntary parks do not, as Sterling puts it, represent untouched nature, but "vengeful nature"--natural processes reasserting themselves in areas of political and technological collapse."

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my absolute favourite books on Chernobyl so far. Loved the stories of nature around the disaster area a few years after the disaster, animals and plants. Well written, interesting for biologists and people interested in radiobiology. I always knew I wanted to take a tour there one day, but now I'm definitely sure!

[International Cat Lady · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, well researched, and well written look into the impact of the Chernobyl explosion on all aspects of life in the Zone (plants, animals, water resources, humans, the sarcophagus and other reactors) - and it even had several chapters on the Przewalski's Horses that have been relocated to the zone. Mycio really understands the science behind all of it, although some of the chapters (particularly those on the effects of radionuclides on plants) got a little too in-depth for me. Still, it's an excellent book. (One sad thing to note: the book was published in 2005, and the author was hopeful that the new containment for the decaying sarcophagus would be finished by 2008... sadly, as of August 2011 when I was there, construction of the new containment had yet to even begin.)

[Gilda Felt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well researched and deeply detailed book, it delves beneath the facade of life to the facts of that life in a radioactive wilderness. Though much does support life, the 10 kilometer radius is sheathed in plutonium-239. With a half-life of over 24,000 years, the area will be uninhabitable for at least 723, 300. In other words, for all imaginable time.

Still, there is a beauty to the place, even as Mycio inundates the reader with facts and figures, especially those regarding radioactivity. Animals live there; there is even a breed of horses that were relocated there, but none can be eaten. Same for the plant life. And most of the human inhabitants are slowly dying out, as children are not allowed to live in the zone.

I was surprised to read that about half the area, that part in what is today Belarus, is not that well supervised. Much has to do with the lack of financing, which is also a problem on the Ukrainian side. One rather frightening fact is that the sarcophagus which covers the reactor needs to be replaced as it allows water in and dust out, but, here again, money is lacking.

[Diego Tonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dettagliatissima fonte di informazioni, a volte così tante da non riuscire a seguire completamente il filo logico.
Ben scritto, combina l’accuratezza del reportage con note di vicende umane e di colore.
Purtroppo paga il fatto di avere ormai 15 anni, e quindi di non essere aggiornato.

[ola ✶ cosmicreads · Rating 2 out of 5]

fact-checking leży tu po całości

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nature's Tax: Chernobyl Apples and A Green Field

“A babushka at the market shouts: ‘Chernobyl apples! Get your Chernobyl apples!’ ‘Don't say that they're Chernobyl apples,’ says a passerby. ‘No one will buy them.’ ‘Sure, people buy them,’ says the babushka, ‘for their husband, their wife, their mother-in-law.’”

Pines seemingly live forever. Some live more than a thousand years. I grew up in Georgia, in an area scattered by pines as well as a variety of deciduous trees, so wet leaves and pine cones and needles populate my childhood bike-riding memories. The Great Basin bristlecone pine is called ‘Methuselah’ because it is one of the world's oldest living organisms at around 4,600 years. They can be found in the White Mountains of California. ‘Prometheus’ was one such tree that lived 4,900 years before it was cut down. Pine trees flourish around the world. They predominate in the Ukrainian part of Polissia, but more deciduous trees were planted on the Belarus side of Chernobyl, the subject of this book, because they are less prone to forest fires.

Before 1986, the Polissia region was a farming community with the addition of a booming nuclear energy business. Being a highly cultivated region, many wildlife species had been driven out by the human population, which is the normal chain of events. White storks were one of the exceptions, as they build their nests in towns, among people. The people of Ukraine considered the white stork to be a symbol of hope.

And then, in one moment, it all ended. In 1986 the four and a half square miles of evergreen woodlands stood directly in the path of the deadliest debris from the explosion and then the pines turned red before they died. The city of Chornobyl and the newest town of Pripyat, with the 120,000 humans living there and in the surrounding communities, were completely irradiated. Humans can be evacuated. Plants and animals are destroyed, but return. This book is the story of land given back to nature. The term ‘involuntary parks’ is used to describe places that have been reclaimed by nature and reverted to savagery because of war, pollution, or other disasters.

Wormwood Forest is a well-written, first hand investigation of the area around the Red Forest in the Polissia region, and its systems; natural and manmade. The words are heavy... not a fast read. It is a study of the natural world, and its pages are filled with the beauty of nature. But, it is also a study of radioecology and why different soils and plants are affected differently by various types of radiation. The highlighting system I normally use for my Kindle books was a bit of an enigma in this book. I usually use blue to mark history and people, pink to highlight science and tech, and orange for nature. In this book, science and nature were blurred in a ‘technogenesis.’ The artificial has become an integral part of the natural in the radioactive wormwood forests of Chernobyl.

If ignorance is taxed, and the lottery is a 'stupid tax,' then we must admit it is ignorance to gamble with the environment. Involuntary parks are not untouched nature, but “vengeful nature—natural processes reasserting themselves in areas of political and technological collapse." But, these modern nuclear nature reserves are nature’s tax on mankind. The fact is, wildlife will have its own place, whether we allow it or not. But, in these circumstances, the wildlife; animals and plants, serve no benefit to mankind. These parks cannot be enjoyed by tourists on family picnics, or wild safaris. The animals cannot be cultivated for food. It is a total separation of the human from the natural world. They live in isolation as a buffer between man and his nuclear waste.

Today the Zone of Alienation is considered a…

“…territory that experienced intensive technogenic influences as a result of decontamination works.”

As the British sociologist John Wills writes: “‘Nature' is a difficult term to appreciate fully, its multifarious dimensions giving rise to its status as perhaps the most complex word in the English language. He coined the phrase “unnaturally natural” to describe the paradox of man-made contamination—such as that surrounding some American nuclear weapons facilities—"

"Chernobyl is far from the only place on the planet that human beings have rendered uninhabitable. War can leave formerly civilized lands open for wildlife. Tigers rebounded in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War because combat drove out the farmers that killed them to protect their families and livestock."

"Like the flaming sword that God installed east of Eden to prevent man from reentering after the expulsion of Adam and Eve, land mines and machine guns kept people out of the DMZ, making it welcoming for wildlife."

The positive side of man’s removal from the zone is that nature has returned. In Belarus there were no great white egrets except for the occasional vagrant. But in 1997 the first great white egret egg was found. Since then the zone has become one of the birds' primary nesting sites—especially in the wetlands north of the Pripyat River. Aquatic birds such as cormorants began appearing in 1988. Kestrels nest in the abandoned flower boxes on Pripyat balconies, and young endangered eagle owls can be spotted near the Sarcophagus. From 250 to 280 bird species—40 of them rare or endangered—have been spotted in the zone since the evacuation. Unlike their white cousins, black storks like the wild country of forests and swamps where human intrusions are rare. And, the beautiful Hoopoe birds have arrived, since the zone lies on a major migratory path. Twice a year, about half a million birds pass through. All of the reflooded peat lands have become bird sanctuaries. (They were reflooded to keep the nuclear waste in the soil from eroding into the ‘Kiev Sea.’)

“If it wasn't radioactive, it would be a farm—and there wouldn't be any egrets,”

"In general, amphibians are environmental bellwethers because their unshelled eggs and permeable skin make them hypersensitive to environmental perturbations. But amazingly enough, no deformed frogs have been found in the Red Forest. You are more likely to encounter a deformed toad or frog in the United States, where there has been a shocking increase in frog and toad malformations, especially missing or extra legs. One cause may be a natural parasite whose populations bloom when runoff from fertilizer, cattle manure, and other contaminants gets into ponds where the frogs develop."

The plants and animals are living totally irradiated today. But, when it comes to mammals, even genetic changes, with effects invisible to the naked eye, have been minimal. If any mutants are born in the wild, they die. Also, the animals that received the worst genetic injuries from the disaster died before they could pass damaged genes. Because wild fish eat food that still contains traces of fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing they cannot be eaten. But, they do not really show signs of mutation. The catfishes' large size is, in part, a result of radiation—but not because they are mutants. Since fishing is banned in the zone, the catfish can grow to their maximum length undisturbed.

The zone is one of the few European wild lands large enough to accommodate the lynx's enormous 170-square-mile range. It is also teeming with roe deer, the lynx's favorite food. Hunters, the lynx's worst enemy, are officially banned. The depopulated zone on both sides of the border has become an inviting habitat for wild animals—but not only because the newly feral landscape provides room for ranging and foraging: The rules that prohibit hunting for mushrooms also prohibit hunting for game.

The plant at Chernobyl no longer produces power, but battles to prevent erosion and manage the wildlife, and contain the still heavily contaminated plant. The ‘transuranic soup’ accumulating in the bowels of the reactor poses the risk of starting an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. Although the plant has facilities for processing liquid waste created in the course of normal reactor operations, it is not suited for the dangerous job of removing the transuranic elements in the unit water. And, the Chernobyl station stands at the intersection of several faults.

"...a totem for the artificial and manmade, an energy source that must be “contained” in sterile conditions and kept separate..."

Weather is one of the biggest concerns in the area. That's why differences in radioactivity levels between the dirtiest and cleanest parts of the zone have been gradually growing smaller in the years since the disaster. Clean leaves blow into dirty sections, diluting the contamination, while radioactive leaves fly into clean areas, balancing the natural world. With the birds migrating directly overhead, some of this radiation has been carried around the world.


’Wormwood water’ currents, winds, and waves spread the radioactive surface film on rivers and lakes to the banks, creating so-called riverbank anomalies—highly contaminated strips of soil that were at the level of the radionuclide-coated water at the time of the disaster... along the Dnieper basin, from Belarus to the Black Sea." The Chernobyl polder is, territorially, modest in size, but its creation was the most important measure taken to keep radionuclides out of a major Ukrainian water supply. The Chernobyl cooling pond is also a significant source for contamination of groundwater that then flows into the Pripyat River, but cleaning up the pond is practicably impossible. The costs, in terms of finances and occupational radiation doses, would be too high and there is no place to put the radioactive waste that would be recovered.

And then, there are the humans who inhabit the area today: ‘Samosels’ and vagrants who live ‘no place at all.’ The term samosel refers to the fact that they settled themselves there without anyone’s permission but their own. But, in reality they returned home after the first months of evacuation and refused to leave again. Though the government provided them places to live in other areas, evacuees lived in crowded conditions and were feared by the new neighbors because they were seen as contaminated. Therefore many chose to return and live where they were still at home, like the wildlife of Polissia and the Red Forest. But, the white storks never returned. There are not enough people to keep them company, so today you only see their abandoned nests among the abandoned houses.

Here live the owners And our kind will not be moved —Signs on zone homes

All of the red-letter days had long since faded away in the sun, leaving ghostly nondays—the nondays of Pripyat after its people left. – Author’s comment about calendars hanging in abandoned homes

But, will the Chernobyl facility ever be a ‘green field?’ Volodymyr Kholosha, the head of zone administration at the time of the writing of this book hoped at best that the zone would become a green oasis. But, he admitted that the facility would only ever be cleaned up if future technological breakthrough made it possible. They instead built radioecology sanctuaries near the nuclear containment facilities, like the United States in the nineties built our first long-term radioactive waste storage facility—the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP—in southwest New Mexico, isolated and buffered by nature.

”Imagine a child growing up here. He can't go fishing because the fish in ponds and lakes are too radioactive. No matter what direction he walks in, he'll eventually encounter barbed wire. And all this time he'll grow up in the shadow of the Sarcophagus. What will be the psychological impact on this child's life?” –Volodymyr Kholosha, former head of Zone Administration

There Will Come Soft Rain by Sara Teasdale
“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.”

I read Mary Mycio's book for my stop in Ukraine in my Journey Around the World in 80 books. It is highly recommendable but, a heavy subject matter that begs to be pondered, and therefore I spent quite a while with it. My next stop is Moldova.

[Amelia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book. The author did a nice job of explaining how the different parts of the ecosystem interact in this region and how these interactions have changed as a result of the nuclear accident. She also discusses the impact on the people of the region and also touches on how other human interventions (such as water diversions) have changes this ecosystem. It was fairly well written, but the biggest thing that she was missing was a map! She is constantly referencing locations throughout the Polissia region, but without a map (or several) it is difficult to put these in context. Overall it was informative and taught me a lot about the Chernobyl accident and its repercussions (which I have to teach, but did not know much about).

[Denise]

Finally throwing in the towel. Bought this book for Dad for Christmas a year and a half ago, then borrowed it because he was already reading a different book. Then when we left Christmas, I went and got a copy from the library with the intent of finishing it, but then had to return it 7 months later when I graduated and moved. Recently, Dad came to visit, and we both discussed how we found the topic interesting but the writing dry and repetitive. In summary, skip the book and read the Slate article that inspired me to buy Dad a copy in the first place: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_...

[Farfoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book after I read Full Body Burden, but got side tracked and picked it back up and finished it today.

I enjoyed this book and learned a lot. It is the next best thing to being there yourself. Nature, disaster physics, and a travelogue all rolled up into one well written book.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

If, like me, your brain conjures up images of two-headed sheep and desert wastelands when it hears the word "Chernobyl," I highly suggest you read this book. It's attention-grabbing, information-rich and covers a lot of ground in only 250 pages. If your knowledge of Chernobyl is as limited as mine was, you'll learn something new on every page.

In addition to all the science presented, the author also does a great job of interrogating the more abstract problems Chernobyl presents surrounding nature, humankind and what our responsibilities are to the planet. I'll leave you with this quote from Chapter 6:

As we drove past the decommissioned nuclear plant that had caused so much human heartache, I had mixed feelings about thinking something positive could have come of the disaster. But then I wasn't sure if a radioactive nature preserve was a good thing or a bad thing. I wasn't even sure if it could be called "natural" if it was radioactive, not because of the slight radioactivity with which creation endowed our planet and which is a part of us all, but because of the great (and truly deadly) amounts of the stuff produced by human effort and error. I was certain, however, that nature was refusing to abide by the absolute definitions we try to foist on it. Endangered species rebound in war zones, while grizzly bears struggle to maintain their numbers in protected areas such as Yellowstone Park. Chernobyl wildlife was thriving.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Wormwood Forest” by journalist Mary Mycio is one of the only and most detailed account of Chernobyl’s ecological impact and development, that is for people that aren’t professionals in the field of radioecology. Some 240 pages, this book gives a fairly comprehensive overview of the Ukrainian and Belorussian parts of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, analyzing everything from wildlife to water to resettled peoples. As anecdotal as it is informative, Mycio’s book offers a layman’s insight to what’s often considered a specialists’ problem.

If this weren’t the only book of its kind, I’d likely have given it three stars rather than four. But it is, and so it gets that extra star for its uniqueness. While Mycio has much in the way of information and riveting stories of wildlife encounters, her writing itself is very dry, and often swings from the overly-technical to the overtly personal, rather than existing in that happy medium between facts and opinion where most good journalism is. Even worse, the opinions she does express in the book are ones I often find disagreeable, though some readers may find otherwise. Still, the facts of it all make up for this, and the insight this book gives to one of the most unique places on the planet is invaluable.

[Cheryl]

When I realized, p. 60, how old this was, and when I kept skimming through the hard science of the different kinds radiation stuff, I realized that this was not the book I wanted. I suppose, given the location of the event, not much more will ever be known. I did use the index to find a few tidbits, for example what the author was able to tell us about the health of different wild animal populations... but she wasn't able to tell us much.

I did discover that "the American cockroach... is actually a wimp among insects when it comes to radiation resistance."

And earlier I did get a bit more background to explain some of the current war between Russia and the Ukraine. Remember that Chernobyl is actually in the Ukraine, and is still hot and dangerous.

But anyway I dnf'd. August 2022

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I could have done without so much granular detail on the ins and outs of driving around the Zone of Alienation, this book contained many fascinating (and weirdly hopeful) facts about how the ecosystem around the Chernobyl disaster adapted to massive amounts of radiation. It also went into some depth on how radiation is carried via wind, water, soil, and animals, all of which was fascinating and surprising.

[Brenda Manthe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, is this book great! If you're at all interested how the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has affected the surrounding area, this book is for you. The writing style is clear an understandable, and goes into depth without being overwhelmingly technical. There's discussion about how the food web has been affected, and a lot about the wild horses that live in the area. I knew that I'd enjoy this book, but it exceeded my expectations.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried to get in to it several times over the last few days but the approach wasn't cohesive and the storytelling wasn't interesting. I didn't know where Mycio was going or what her purpose was- though I know that the subtitle is a natural history. However it seemed to bounce around without a clear path forward and I was actually expecting some amazing photography to be included, not necessarily a photo essay but at least something.

It didn't work for me.

[Marinela Ortiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very educational. I love learning about Chernobyl and how it came to be. I was glad to learn about the environment and how it was affected over time. I felt like I was traveling through the area with the author with every page and with every person she has met.

[Abigail Alpert · Rating 4 out of 5]

amazing imagery!

[Wendy Bousfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wormwood Forest describes Mary Mycio’s visit to the Chernobyl “Zone of Alienation” ten years after the disastrous reactor meltdown (4/26/86). The Zone of Exclusion, or Alienation, initially a 30 km zone around the nuclear disaster, was subsequently expanded to 1,000 square miles in Ukraine, plus a separately administered zone in Belarus. Presently, the Zone is officially closed to any human enterprise. Though isolated settlers have risked radiation poisoning to return to their farms, an extraordinarily large area is presently without industry, agribusiness, or any of the infrastructures that support human communities.

Expecting the Zone to be a wasteland, Mycio was startled to find “Europe’s largest nature sanctuary, teeming with wildlife” (2). Though plants, animals, soil, and water are still dangerously radioactive, the Zone’s ecosystem is recovering from the damage inevitably caused by human enterprise. Mycio does not ignore the damage radiation poses to the creatures: she describes, for example, the deadly effect on bird embryos of radioactive strontium concentrated in eggshells. Chernobyl, however, is a much more balanced ecosystem than it was before the nuclear disaster. The zone abounds in wolves, golden eagles, and other top-of-the food-chain predators, absent when the Zone was devoted to farming.

To me, the most interesting aspect of Wormwood Forest was the concept of an “involuntary park,” a term coined by science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling. Chernobyl is one of many involuntary parks: “places that have been reclaimed by nature and reverted to savagery because of war, pollution, or other disasters.” Natural processes reassert themselves, Mycio states, “in areas of political and technological collapse.” Mycio describes the successful introduction of Przewalski’s horses into the Zone. Threatened with extinction by loss of habitat, they are one of several Chernobyl “species that were brought to the brink of extinction and are now thriving in the wild” (128). Mycio lyrically describes a wonderful animal that has existed since the Ice Age but which, prior to their introduction in the Zone, were found only in zoos. Chernobyl was the only place that provided a range large enough for Przewalski’s to exist in the wild.

Though radiation in the soil and water or the Zone causes the same damage to the cells and organs of animals that it does to those of human beings, Mycio, paradoxically, describes a Garden of Eden. Radiation causes a high rate of mutation in living creatures, but most mutants die out of sight of human observers. The implied—and exceedingly troubling--conclusion of WORMWOOD FOREST is that, as destructive as is radiation to all life forms, any human enterprise is far more destructive of the natural world.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Approaching the Chernobyl nuclear incident from a naturalist's perspective, Mary Mycio details the effects that the massive amounts of nuclear radiation and fallout have had on the environment of the area, from the villages surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plant to Ukraine, Belarus and Russia overall. She details some of the early efforts by the Soviet government to contain the radiation and how the breakup of the Soviet Union has affected clean-up, monitoring and research activities of the three post-Soviet nations. The story is a combination of horrifying details of the effects the disaster had on first-responders' health, as well as the surprisingly positive effect on local flora and fauna of the zone's inhabitants being evacuated indefinitely. Mycio interviews local residents who have sneaked back into the zone, scientists researching the effects of the lingering radiation, and botanists, zoologists and environmentalists observing the recovery efforts of the local plant and animal life. My only complaint is that, while the majority of the book is written on a level understandable by laymen, the author at times goes into excessively detailed descriptions of chemical processes and radiation levels. There is also, apparently, some confusion in scientific circles as to how radiation levels should be reported: some countries report in roentgens, some in becquerels, some in curies, etc. Mycio is forced to spend almost a complete chapter explaining why radiation is reported differently, and how to relate the different radiation units.
My favorite parts of the book, though, are when she describes the amazing ability of nature to recover from such a devastating event. With the exception of government workers and researchers,and a number of illegal squatters, the zones of exclusion are almost completely deserted. In the absence of human population, other species have bounced back, in some cases from near-extinction. In this regard, the book provides a good argument for protecting the earth from overpopulation by humans.

[K LF · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended by Flemming teacher

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of this was quite a good read, but overall there was less of the information I was looking for and more a sense of how little is known and understood about the radioactive areas around the Chernobyl explosion. I especially longed for more information about the effects on waterways, but the author seemed to do a rapid about-face and flee the subject almost as soon as she started it. She repeatedly lost me by leaping from talk of curies, rems and rads to bequerels, milliroentgens and all these other units of measure without once telling us how many milliroentgens equal a rad. (One reliable indicator, though, is that the reading is exceptionally high if she ends the sentence with an exclamation point.) One take-home message is that you should never wade in bare feet in the Zone, and don't even think about picking the local mushrooms. One great virtue of this book is the author's constant reframing of the reader's expectations about what the Alienation Zone should look like based on a lifetime of watching nuclear-holocaust movies. A lot of the news in this book is remarkably positive, and for that reason alone it is worth a look.

[Pedro Plassen Lopes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thorough account on the effects of the Chernobyl disaster on the surrounding environment: plants, animals and people.
One of the curious (and if you think about it, rational) conclusions comes with the fact that no mutant three-eyed beasts abound after all these years simple due to selection process. "Ugly" (deformed) creatures are less likely to mate and thus pass defect genes.
Another interesting fact is, if it wasn't for the disaster there wouldn't have been an opportunity of having a large area preserved without human interference were some endangered species such as bears, wolves, birds or even european bysons would have the chance of growing up their numbers.
As one scientist proposed, a radical approach to preserve some endangered ecosystems (ie rainforests) from human interference would be through creation of nuclear disposal sites too radioactive for humankind but liveable enough for the local fauna, as Chernobyl has proven to be.
Certainly an extreme last resort.

[Jack Scholl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is part history, part sociology, part ecology, and a very perceptive account of what happens after a nuclear meltdown. I was impressed by the author's level of knowledge regarding properties and distribution of the isotopes that dispersed. The differing approaches taken by the Ukrainian and Belarusian governments regarding risks and (limited) funding also is intriguing. Chernobyl's resulting wilderness is a situation similar to the Korean demilitarized zone (which now shows signs of dissolution?), but with a sinister unseen dimension. I certainly hope a similar event never occurs again, but the pressure to minimize CO2 emissions and build more fission reactors makes me wonder if another such event is avoidable.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat dry treatment of a really cool topic--the regeneration of the biodiversity in the evacuated Chernobyl area. After everyone was forced to leave, the wildlife came back in; despite some lingering hotspots of radiation, and scattered squatters who refused to leave their villages, the area is now a wild, uninhabited nature preserve of rather good quality. The author explores the region with local guides and tells a lot of the history of the explosion that was kept hush-hush by the Soviet government at the time.

[Art King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Mycio keeps returning to this great irony: Out of the worst man-caused disaster of the 20th century springs a stunning natural ecosystem. Mary knows Chernobyl like few others. She has spent a significant portion of her life studying the accident and its aftermath. She has spent many days tromping through the woods in the Exclusion Zone. Her writing is fluid and never bombastic. A readable, interesting book hands you the chance to understand Chernobyl, and catch a glimpse of the awesome recuperative powers of nature.

[Annette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it's been twenty years, I clearly remember the Chernobyl disaster and have often wondered what happened to the area. From easy-to-understand explanations of the scientific issues surrounding the disaster and aftermath to fascinating descriptions of the site, this book answered my many questions. The author's conversational approach made me feel like I was walking with her through the "Zone".

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good portion of this book was over my head and beyond my interest, but what I was able to comprehend was quite astounding. What it all boils down to is that we know less about the harm radiation does to plants and animals (including us) than we thought. Most of the damage scientists predicted around Chernobyl did not occur in the way they thought it would and many animal communities are thriving, despite continually being exposed to excessive radiation levels. Fascinating stuff.

[Zoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

The subject matter was very interesting and it did offer a much more in depth treatment of the subject matter than World Without Us. The author's writing style put me off somewhat and it felt like the information could have been better presented. With that said, I definitely enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in nature writing.