Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

by Andrew Leatherbarrow

The unsuspecting artisans would lick their brushes - ingesting radium particles each time - to keep the tips pointed during the precision work, but years later their teeth and skulls began to disintegrate.

radium sand for children’s sandpits, advertised by its creator as, “most hygienic and... more beneficial than the mud of world-renowned curative baths.

An unstoppable deluge of water then prompted a chain reaction that overwhelmed 61 other dams and reservoirs. The resulting 11 kilometer-wide, 50 km/h wave ultimately killed a staggering 171,000 people, destroyed the homes of 11 million more,