In a few instances, the military was used to prevent people from accessing (or leaving) the exclusion zone.

Workers were supposed to wear their full protective gear – and facemask – but many didn’t.

Some were given 3 sets of clothing, but were then required to wear the same 3 sets for 6 months. Others exhibited a rather care-free attitude towards their own future health. “Our protective gear consisted of respirators and gas masks, but no one used them because it was 30°C outside”, says Ivan Zhykhov. “If you put those on it would kill you. We signed for them, as you would for supplementary ammunition, and then forgot all about it.”

The swimming pool was deliberately kept open to provide some stress-relief and relaxation for the workers.

This is a famous shot taken by Igor Kostin, of a Liquidator who has discovered a baby abandoned in a country home.

Everything had to be cleaned.

The work took months. To make matters worse, each time it rained within 100km of the plant new spots of heavy contamination appeared, brought down from the still highly radioactive clouds above.

By the end of 1986 more than 600 villages and towns in the region had been decontaminated.

Those that couldn’t be properly decontaminated were simply buried.

By this time, the construction of the Sarcophagus was completed.

In all, more than 400,000m³ of concrete and 7,300 tons of steel were used in its construction, which lasted 206 days, concluding in late November 1986.

A big test came that winter. If the snow on top of the reactor building melted, they had a big problem. It didn’t.