Smells Like Green Spirit

A few years ago, a chilling documentary called “Chernobyl Heart” aired on HBO about a children’s mental asylum in Vesnova located near the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. A reported 40% upsurge in birth defects linked with the nuclear catastrophe coupled with the area’s poverty filled the children’s home with twisted creatures rarely seen in more well-off western countries. The girl whose brain grew entirely separately from her head, the girl with “water on the brain” that made her head swell to the size of a huge upside down pear, the young one whose body was twisted painfully into a backwards horseshoe shape by a bent spine…these were just some of the tear jerking images of what 100-200 years ago would likely have been marketed in circuses and sideshows as circus freaks.

And yet, another strange thing emerged from the nuclear disaster. As the area with an 18 mile radius has been completely abandoned by people, the incredible biodiversity that has erupted has stunned scientists. Free from the interferences of people terrified of the nuclear core that will be burning for thousands years from now, the flora and fauna of Pripyat is flourishing at a startling rate.

Over 100 animals listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List of threatened species have been found in the area. While genetic mutations and deformities abound in young creatures, they are rarer in adults, implying that the mutations are weeded out as the fittest survive and the deformed die young. Trees have been found to grow twisted and confused, almost as if they “don’t know which end is up,” says Discover Magazine.

Will nuclear fall out in the future lead to less people and more animals on earth? Time will only tell. Surely for the answers, let us ask the cockroaches and the beetles who have been laughing at our foolish ways since the beginning.

For more information:

Chernobyl Children’s Project International
They have a wealth of links on the left hand of their home page with Chernobyl information.

Note: This article has previously appeared in Atlanta’s Heroine Magazine, with copyrights retained by the author Laura Callier.

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