Was full of life

One of the best places

to live in the USSR

the amusment park

set to be dedicated on May Day

it would never open.

A night like any other

Until awoken

their lives flashing before their eyes

Literally

when buses finally came

They left for 'three days'

Never to return

Lives upended

by faulty reactor design

the lack of a containment building

slowly fading to obscurity

memories brought up

when radiation dose

causes reaction to the dye

used in TB testing

A government based

on lies and secrecy

blaming operators

Who were the best in the country

Set to get awards

and promotions

Attempting a test

No one else would do

They were set up for failure

Dyatlov cites the rulebook

They did nothing wrong

but this is distorted by Soviet lies

The remnants of the Soviet secret city,

Pripyat?

Reclaimed by nature

The bus rumbled down the deserted highway, the only sound the hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of the radio. I gazed out the window, watching as the landscape shifted from lush green forests to a barren wasteland. The sign on the side of the road read "Pripyat" in faded letters, and I felt a chill run down my spine. This was it, the infamous city that had been abandoned in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster.

"Nia!" I called out, as she ran out of the bus.

She's always getting into mischief. I saw her, running off towards the ruins.

"Nia, wait!" I shouted, taking off after her.

Our guide, a gruff but kind-hearted Ukrainian man named Viktor, stepped in front of me. "Be careful," he warned, his eyes serious. "The radiation levels are still high in some areas. We need to stay together."

I nodded, feeling a surge of worry. I caught up to Nia, who was exploring a abandoned playground. I grabbed her hand, holding it tightly.

As we made our way through the city, I couldn't help but feel like I was walking through a ghost town. The buildings stood empty, their windows shattered, their walls cracked. The streets were littered with debris, and the only sounds were the rustling of leaves and the occasional bark of a wild dog.

We stopped in front of a abandoned apartment building. Viktor told us that this was where many of the city's residents had lived. I couldn't help but wonder what their lives had been like, what they had left behind.

As we explored the building, I stumbled upon a room that seemed frozen in time. There was a child's doll on the floor, a book open on a table, a pair of shoes discarded in the corner. It was as if the occupants had just gotten up and left.

But they hadn't just left. They had been forced to flee, to abandon their homes and their lives. The thought left me breathless, my heart heavy with the weight of their loss.

As we continued our tour, I couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness. The city of Pripyat was a testament to the devastating power of human error. But it was also a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit.

We left the city, quite. The sun was setting, casting a golden glow over the desolate landscape. It was a hauntingly beautiful sight, one that I would never forget.

I closed my eyes, letting the silence of the city wash over me. The only sound was the soft beep of the Geiger counter in my hand, a reminder of the secrets that this abandoned city still held. And as I stood there, I knew that I would never forget this place, this haunting reminder of the devastating power of human error.

The chernoyl, Chernobylus ridicularis, is a one-celled parasite that arose from spontaneous creation after the famous nuclear meltdown in Ukraine. It is based on radon, although it spews enantiomeric uranium isotopes. The scatter diameter for each 55-nanometer organism is about twenty feet, or about as far as you can run in a gulag before a bullet catches up with you.

Chernoyls tend to infect your glibula, which means you're fucked. It reverses the polarity of your hydrogen atoms, which is why getting an MRI scan cam make you explode. Because you depend on your glibula for about a dozen physiologic inanities, once you've developed glibulitis, you can kiss your modeling career goodbye.

NOTE: The glibula bank is running disastrously low. Remember, only you can designate yourself glibula donor on your driver's license. Help someone with a faltering modeling career!

Currently, there is no cure for glibulitis or infection with the chernoyls, but you can still protect others by abstaining from pearly ovule insertions, now the most frequent cause of infestation. Pearly ovules have also been implicated in anachronism and falling down.

Pearly ovules have an exquisite sense of humor, so they can die laughing, but it is theorized it would take a stand-up gig of about 100 hours to effect such an eradication, and what's funny after 100 hours?

It is not politically correct to reference the sex organs of people infected by chernoyls. (It's still, as they say, too soon.) How would you like it if your own sex organs were variegated into prismatic shards? You wouldn't, so be sensitive to the problem.

Chernoyls have also been implicated in manifest destiny, e.g., Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal.

Currently, several anti-chernoyl medications are in Phase IV trials—if you can get past the taste. Chernot®, ChernBurn®, and Chernobyl-Never-Happened-Conspiracy® ("CherCon") aren't expected to hit the shelves for another three years, so don't ask your stupid doctor if it's right for you.

And while your shit still stinks, don't be concerned about it glowing in the dark. Only be concerned when it stops stinking.

Being born too late to experience the age of Chernobyl

Being born too early to experience the real change after Chernobyl

Chernobyl was the thrill that I remembered from the TV show

Somehow, I have the opportunity to feel the same in real life

Are we in a parallel universe?

What is the real disaster?

Radioactive materials spread across Europe

The habit of covering up forever remained in other part of the Earth

What is the real disaster?

See it's a Justice League episode-- original run not the sequel-- where Green Lantern, Hawk Girl, and a third hero are transported into what reads as a fifties comic book and it is.

It was Green Lantern's favorite comic series.

An alternate world where the comic had existed, and continued to exist unchanged, even when according to the papers--

'PEACE TALKS DISSOLVE, WAR DECLARED.'

And the superheroes are mourned as tombstones. That too.

A child had been horrifically mutated into a psychic. A too big head, burnt looking skin, and one eye a bulbous mass compared to the other as an unbalanced slit.

He was ugly and repulsive.

He was also so sad.

Chernobyl was the first thought I'd had. To what incident the TV show had been alluding to. A world where Chernobyl or even WW2 had even worse consequences.

'Our world was already destroyed, we did that. But now we have a chance to rebuild.'

Turns out they'd meant to reference the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.