Nuclear Disaster

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Atoms and Ashes recounts the dramatic history of nuclear accidents that have dogged the industry in its military and civil incarnations since the 1950s. Through the stories of six terrifying major incidents—Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—Cold War expert Serhii Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power, both for military and peaceful purposes, while offering a vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary circumstances.

And so it begins.... In the United States, the Department of Defense and the NSA computer networks have been hacked. A nuclear-armed CIA drone has lost all flight control. North Korea...Iran...Russia...and soon the gates of Hell will open. Humanity's most terrifying nightmare has become reality. Bombs are detonated, missiles are launched, counterstrikes are ordered, and within minutes, untold thousands of megatons have left countless millions dead or dying. Devastation of biblical proportions has fallen over the land...and the USA has been hit the hardest.

It was a warm night on April 26th, 1986. Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov, the Chernobyl Reactor 4 plant engineer, called for a safety test. The test was to figure out how to keep the reactor cool until the backup electrical generators could be turned on. Three similar tests had been conducted the year before, but they hadn't managed to produce any results. This test was going to be different.

On March 11, 2011, an earthquake large enough to knock the earth from its axis sent a massive tsunami speeding toward the Japanese coast and the aging and vulnerable Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power reactors. Over the following weeks, the world watched in horror as a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe: fail-safes failed, cooling systems shut down, nuclear rods melted.

At 01:23:40 on April 26th 1986, Alexander Akimov pressed the emergency shutdown button at Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor. It was an act that forced the permanent evacuation of a city, killed thousands, and crippled the Soviet Union. The event spawned decades of conflicting, exaggerated, and inaccurate stories.

Almost 24 hours to the minute since the tsunami hit Fukushima Daiichi, Unit 1 exploded. The building wrenched apart, sending shards of irradiated concrete and metal knifing through the air in all directions. The reactor’s massive heavy-duty gantry crane bent like a twig and collapsed onto the refueling floor control room, crushing everything that wasn’t expelled in the blast. Outside, chunks of debris rained down on the fire crew, injuring five and shredding the hoses they had just laid.

Uranium is best known for the destructive power of the atom bombs, which ushered in the nuclear era at the end of World War II, but given the effectiveness of nuclear power, nuclear power plants were constructed around the developed world during the second half of the 20th century. While nuclear power plants were previously not an option and thus opened the door to new, more efficient, and more affordable forms of energy for domestic consumption, the use of nuclear energy understandably unnerved people living during the Cold War and amidst ongoing nuclear detonations.

A harrowing account of Russia’s occupation of the Chernobyl and Zaporizhia nuclear power plants and the dangers of nuclear power colliding with warfare.

A Chernobyl survivor and the New York Times bestselling author of The Gates of Europe "mercilessly chronicles the absurdities of the Soviet system" in this "vividly empathetic" account of the worst nuclear accident in history (Wall Street Journal). On the morning of April 26, 1986, Europe...

Leo Ferrel was the terror of the school system in Kooskia, Idaho. Leo was the product of a single parent who spent more time beating on her son than raising him. When Leo’s mother decides that she has an opportunity for a better life, she abandons her son at age 14. Leo is left with an old pickup truck and just enough money to survive while trying to find a better home than the old rusted trailer that was the only home he had ever known. Leo decides to make one of the caves on his property livable in order to escape the dilapidated trailer and try to build a better life. Along the way, ...

★★★★★ "The most engaging post apocalyptic/dystopian thriller I've ever read!" ★★★★★ "Holy Cow!" No Power. No Telephone. No internet. No T.V. No Transport. Nothing. What will you do when the world as we know it stops? For Kate Wolfe, the answer is simple - whatever it takes to protect her family. For Bob Jackson and his militia, it's the day they've been planning for. The day they take control. When the two collide, as the city of Boise falls to ruin, nobody can predict how things will end. ★★★★★ "I put Murray in the same class as Brad Thor, James Rollins, David...

From the pioneers of Los Alamos who got up close and personal with the cores of atomic bombs, to the hapless engineers in Soviet fuel-processing plants who unwittingly mixed up a disaster in a bucket, and from the terrifying impact of a tsunami at Fukushima to the mystery of the recent Russian incident, Meltdown explores the past and future of this extraordinary and potentially lethal source of infinite power

An investigation into our complicated 8-decade-long relationship with nuclear technology, from the bomb to nuclear accidents to nuclear waste. From Hiroshima to Chernobyl, Fukushima to the growing legacy of lethal radioactive waste, humanity’s struggle to conquer atomic energy is rife with...

A single faulty sensor. A town blissfully unaware of the poison in the air. For Elena Markham, a brilliant and dedicated nuclear engineer, it’s the start of a thirty-hour nightmare. When her instruments detect a critical anomaly at the St. Croix Nuclear Facility, her superiors dismiss it as a minor glitch. With a major safety audit looming, they’re more concerned with appearances than with a potential catastrophe. As management actively works to bury her findings and silence her warnings, Elena finds herself in a desperate race against time. The reactor's core is unstable, and the ...

One pulse… and civilization crumbles. A catastrophic EMP attack plunges the world into darkness, igniting a global nuclear war that wipes out 90% of humanity. With law and order collapsing, survivors must fight not only for food and shelter—but for their lives. Colonel Thomas Bradley, a brilliant electronic warfare expert, leads a desperate group of survivors deep into the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. Inside the massive underground facility, they battle against dwindling resources, radioactive fallout, and relentless attacks from militant factions determined to take what ...

To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias - communities of nuclear families living in highly subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Fully employed and medically monitored, the residents of Richland and Ozersk enjoyed all the pleasures of consumer society while nearby, migrants, prisoners, and soldiers were banned from plutopia - they lived in temporary "staging grounds" and often performed the most dangerous work at the plant.

It was a day like any other. People setting out on the commute to work or taking the kids to school or chatting to their friends in the park. Normal. Routine. Nothing to mark it apart. By lunchtime, everything they had ever known, every aspect of their lives, would be changed forever - marked by the most catastrophic series of global disasters to strike the planet in over 6000 years. MANKIND STANDS AT THE GATES OF EXTINCTION The world is being ripped apart by a great geological cataclysm. Cities crumble and entire continents disappear beneath the sea as earthquakes and mega-tsunamis lay ...

One of AudioFile’s Best Audiobooks of 2019! A New York Times Best Book of the Year A Time Best Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence Winner From journalist Adam Higginbotham, the New York Times bestselling “account that...

How to prepare your home for a life-threatening emergency or catastrophe with this prepper-survivalist guide book filled with proven techniques, strategies, DIY projects and security methods from a prepping expert.. The normal preparations you make for short term disasters will not work when widespread social collapse, pandemic or grid failures strike. Governments won’t be there to help you; they will be pre-occupied with macro-political problems. This book shows you how to prepare and hold out through emergencies for weeks, months or years before local services are restored: This guide ...