But at the plant, the nuclear engineers on the morning shift recognized all too clearly the danger the city was facing and tried to warn their families. Some managed to reach them by telephone and told them to stay indoors. Knowing that the KGB was monitoring the calls, one tried to use coded language to prepare his wife to escape the city. Another persuaded Director Brukhanov to let him go home for lunch and then packed his family into the car to take them to safety, only to be turned back at the end of Lenina Prospekt by an armed militsia officer manning a roadblock. The city had been sealed
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