Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster

by Adam Higginbotham

The head of the USSR’s civil defense—the branch of the Soviet armed forces responsible for protecting civilians in the event of natural disaster, nuclear war, or chemical attack—was away at a conference in Lvov, in western Ukraine. The marshal found him by telephone and gave instructions to deploy immediately the mobile radiation reconnaissance unit of civil defense stationed in Kiev. He also alerted the special Soviet army brigade dedicated to dealing with radioactive contamination, based east of the Volga River, and arranged for men and equipment to be airlifted to Chernobyl. By the time he left Moscow to lead the operation, Colonel General Boris Ivanov, deputy commander of all civil defense forces in the USSR, understood that he was dealing with an explosion in the Chernobyl plant’s gas storage system and a fire in Unit Four. He planned to deploy his troops in accordance with existing plans to protect the workers and nearby population in the event of power station accidents: this was a scenario for which his staff had been specifically trained.