Oh, Those Russians! by Ruby Barnes #ASMSG
The Chernobyl disaster of 26 April 1986 is imprinted on the memory of everyone who lived through that time and continues to be known as one of the World's worst nuclear accidents. The Cold War had long threatened the planet with a nuclear cataclysm but Chernobyl surprised and appalled the population of Earth. An author with a knack for prophesy had written a novel based around a nuclear power accident in Russia several months before the Chernobyl disaster occurred. Farewell to Russia by Richard Hugo (a.k.a. Jim Williams) described a technically very different scenario to Chernobyl, with an even more disastrous potential outcome. But the point Williams made was poignant: "...there remains a fundamental similarity in that both disasters have their origins in the way that the communist system operated. The Soviet Union was a rickety slovenly place behind its sinister façade and the circumstances of the imaginary disaster at Sokolskoye and the real disaster at Chernobyl s...