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stands at fewer than a hundred. Such estimates drive organizations like Greenpeace crazy,
and they have produced their own numbers—of nearly a hundred thousand projected can-
cer fatalities, and sixty thousand already dead. Who knows, maybe the UN is the nuclear
power industry's stooge.
More fundamentally, it's just hard to accept how little is known with any confidence
about the disaster's effects, whether on people or animals. And it's hard to accept that the
Chernobyl children may be the children of regular misfortune, not of nuclear fallout. That
the accident's most traumatic effects may have been social and psychiatric, rather than ra-
diological. That Chernobyl—and humankind's wretchedness—may not quite have lived up
to our expectations.
Early the next morning, in the zone's only hotel, I awoke to the symptoms of acute radiation
poisoning.
Inflammation and tenderness of exposed skin. Nausea and dehydration. Exhaustion and
disorientation. Headache. Did I mention the nausea? I was still in my clothes, sprawled on
top of a ruffled pink bedspread. The ceiling listed sideways in a sickening spiral.
I lay motionless, hoping for death, and stared upside down through the window above
my head. Beyond the gauzy curtains, a massive Ukrainian dawn burst downward into the
sky. It made me want to burst, too.
It wasn't radiation sickness. What I had was a bad hangover and a bit of sunburn. But I
didn't see much difference.
I had found the nightlife in Chernobyl. Coming back from the war memorial, we had
visited the outdoor “vehicle museum,” a tidy grass parking lot with a fleet of military
trucks and personnel carriers left over from the cleanup. Already slightly tipsy, we amused
ourselves for a moment by dipping our radiation meters into the wheel well of an armored
personnel carrier and listening to them scream, and then headed back to find the party.
The party was across the road from headquarters, in front of the hotel, and consisted of
Dennis, Nikolai, and me, sitting on a bench in the parking lot. The hotel—it was more like
a nice dormitory, really—was otherwise deserted. I'm sure you can still get good rates. I
went up to my room and brought down some gifts: a Mets cap for Dennis, a pair of New
York shot glasses for Nikolai, and a bottle of vodka for everybody.
We followed the strict custom that a bottle opened is a bottle that must be emp-
tied—even though Nikolai wasn't drinking tonight and Dennis was too polite to outpace
me. Toast upon toast seemed to improve my Ukrainian, and Nikolai's English, and the
