Nuclear Catastrophes “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” ― Albert Einstein Nuclear Catastrophe. A point of time when people lived through, and become stronger. The human race has lived through many hard times. We survived from wars of spear and arrow to nuclear bombs and nuclear accidents. But what keeps us from giving up? Why after wars or hard times people get even more energy and start rebuilding their lives? Such examples are the Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union, the Fukushima accident in Japan, and bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And these are just the nuclear catastrophes from which Humanity survived. We have seen devastating earthquakes, deadly viruses, and bloody wars. But steel we live and create on Earth. But one of the worst disasters that still remains is the nuclear accidents. But what caused this to happen? As we know the nuclear bomb was invented first before nuclear power and happened in 1945. At that time World War II was happening. At that time both sides, Atlant and Central powers, were trying to win and one of the successful ways was nuclear fusion. The main powers were investing a lot of money in making a nuclear bomb. But the history of the nuclear bomb goes a little bit further in the past. The history of nuclear science and technology began in Germany in 1895 when Roentgen discovered a new type of ray, the X-ray. A year later Becquerel discovered radioactive and the Curies isolated two elements exhibiting spontaneous energy production, Polonium, and Radium. Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus, alpha and beta radiation, and gamma radiation. In 1932 Chadwick discovered the neutron. In the 1940s Szilard, Fermi, and others conducted research that led to the first man-made nuclear chain or reaction in 1942 and the development of the first atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After the war, nuclear technology expanded and the first nuclear-generated electricity was produced in 1951. Admiral Rickover pioneered the use of nuclear reactors in submarines and the first nuclear-powered submarine was launched in 1954. The first commercial nuclear reactor was opened in the USA in 1957. The nuclear reactor used for electricity generation worked well and produced cheap emission-free electricity. In 1974 France pushed for nuclear energy and ended up with 75% of its electricity coming from nuclear reactors. The US built 104 reactors and got about 20% of its electricity from them. However, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and the Chornobyl accident in 1986 slowed the development of nuclear reactors. Labor shortages and construction deal delays brought the cost of nuclear reactors slowing their growth. Today nuclear energy continues to be a topic of debate with some countries promoting it as a clean source of energy and others rejecting it due to safety concerns.1 The safety of nuclear fusion was one of the big concerns and it was understood by all scientists during World War II. German scientists understood that very well if Hitler got the nuclear bomb then he was going to blow up the world. So it is possible that German scientists knew the formula but didn't publish it. Eventually in the United States, Albert Einstein found the formula, and after knowing that the atomic bomb was made. As I mentioned above one of the major nuclear accidents was the Chornobyl accident. The Chornobyl nuclear power plant accident was not an accident, it was a disaster. The disaster resulted in the destruction of the 4th power unit which caused the radioactive substance to spread within a radius of at least 30 km from the accident site, polluting about 140,000 square 1 Nick Touran, “General History of Nuclear Energy,” Whatisnuclear.com Editors, Accessed March 14, 2023, https://whatisnuclear.com/history.html kilometers of the USSR. Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus were the most affected but the radioactive cloud also affected many other European countries. The composition of already active emissions included isotopes of uranium plutonium and many other particles. The disaster affected many people including the elderly and those who chose to remain in the nearby Villages after the evacuation. The Chornobyl nuclear power plant was considered the cleanest, safest and most innovative in the country but the explosion of the fourth block destroyed those beliefs. According to the official figures 31 people died from radiation in the first week after the accident and about 600 station employees and firefighters were exposed to radiation over the next 12 years people who received a strong dose of radiation in the radioactive zone died from serious diseases such as malignant tumors. The disaster occurred during an experiment with the turbogenerator returning down more to improve the safety system; the power unit nearest to the station was put into operation in 1983. The emergency cooling system of the reactor was turned off which was prescribed by the instruction and power grew rapidly resulting in the strongest explosion in the fire that destroyed the core and the upper part of the reactor the disaster resulted in significant material damage moral cause moral loss inflicted on more than thousand people and was classified as the catastrophe, not an accident. In addition, there are people living in Chornobyl until now.2 In my opinion, the reason why the human race survived such a situation is that they had hope. They believed that if they handled that difficulty they will have better times in the future. This was understood from old times. For example from Old Chinese literature from 500 BCE. In the Analects of Confucius where is talked about the importance of hope. It was understood from 2 Olia Sckibinia, “ЗАГАДКА ЧЕРНОБЫЛЬСКОЙ АЭС. ЧТО СЛУЧИЛОСЬ 26 АПРЕЛЯ 1986 Г.,” Научная Россия, Accessed March 14, https://scientificrussia.ru/articles/zagadka-cernobylskoj-aes-cto-slucilos-26-aprela-1986-g early age that without hope people are nothing. This passed through generations and was mentioned in many places. One of the places is in my books where authors give the worst scenario and show us how we can survive. Both books, Barefoot Gen and Voices from Chernobyl, describe human survival during the nuclear holocaust. Both books agree that no matter how bad your situation is you can rely on hope and build your life again from the beginning and how this can be a good lesson for their audience. The books are written on a real story. The first book, Barefoot Gen written by Keiji Nakazawa, represents human survival in Imperial Japan in Hiroshima where the bomb was dropped. The Second book, Voices from Chornobyl (“Чернобыльская молитва” translated “Prayer of Chernobyl”) written by Svetlana Alekseavich is about the Chernobyl disaster. It shows the people's opinions about Chornobyl, the evacuation, the people who stayed there, and the disease people caught because of that. The books are more informative and historically more than fiction. They both have a lot to tell about hope. For example “Manga Study Guide: Barefoot Gen/Analysis (Q&A from study guide)” gives us the meanings of several characters. One of the main parts to get out from the article is that the wheat farm represents hope. This will be talked about later.3 In another article, it says that Gen represents the upcoming generation and the hope that it will be better and can fix every problem.4 The hope for a future that will be better is important and is characterized by Gen. 3 “Manga Study Guide: Barefoot Gen/Analysis (Q& A from study guide),” WikiBooks.org Editors, Accessed March 14, 2023, https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Manga_Study_Guide:_Barefoot_Gen/Analysis_(Q%26_A_from_study_guide) 4 Robyn Chapman, “Barefoot Gen Vol. 1 Study Guide,” Riding With Pictures, Accessed March 14, 2023, https://www.readingwithpictures.org/2008/04/barefoot_gen_vol_1_study_guide-2/ Next, there are several articles about Voices from Chernobyl and one of the articles gives the answer from the title of the book. As I said the title in Russian is prayers of Chernobyl it instantly connects with God. If it is a prayer then there is the importance of God and in the Christian world special in Orthodox people believe that God is the hope so the title shows that it hoped for a better future.5 So as we know and the sources tell us there is some hidden meaning in this book about the importance of hope and its changes through timers. To prove this and provide more information I want to see if things get worse after nuclear catastrophes or if they merely stay the same. This will be an essential point to know if the hope and peoples aim for the future change before and after the disaster. Then I will look at the “smart” decisions of the government and how propaganda interferes with hope and people’s goals for the future. So at first we all probably think that nuclear disasters will make everything worse and people will remember it with greed. But it is not quite this way in the books. Considering the fact they were telling the true story and the actions were seen from the eyes of witnesses then we can conclude that what they are telling is true to reality. But what are they telling? First In Barefoot Gen's book starts by showing the unimaginable situation of the average Japanese family during the war. They are shown in a poor situation where parents can't even feed their kids. All this before the bomb struck. After the nuking of Hiroshima, there is not much written in volume one. But what we know is the only survivors of the family stay Gen and his mother. So this is clear that things get worse. As in the past, the whole family was present and no dead members now we get only two survivors. This situation can be looked at differently and the 5 “«Чернобыльская молитва: хроника будущего» С. Алексиевич. Проблема жанра,” Md-eksperiment.org Editors, April 23, 2019, https://md-eksperiment.org/ru/post/20190423-chernobylskaya-molitva-hronika-budushego-s-aleksievich-problema-z hanra perspective is decided by the authors. If the author concentrated on the fact that two survivors left and at least they are alive and made the ending more or less happy then we would say the change of their state before and after didn’t change. But in the comic the author goes in the direction that the rest of the family members are going to greed for the dead and carry the burden for the rest of their life. To conclude I would say that in Barefoot Gen the situation gets worse after the bomb strike. There is a clear difference between actions going before and after the bomb hit. Next in Voices from Chernobyl before the explosion, we have a short story of the love story of a young girl and man who got married a little while ago. The book shows their happy life and how they didn't have any problems and everything was going smoothly. After the explosion first, we have a drastic decrease in happiness but after a while when her husband dies her happiness increases and becomes close to the past. It says that everything would not be the same again but it is not showing that her life gets worse after the explosion. As in the past, she was living and could have food for herself the same after the explosion. She stays in her village and grows her own food and lives her peaceful life. To sum up in this book we are not having a situation where it is shown that things get worse after the disaster. It is more like that for her nothing changed and she lived through everything. Her neighbors came and the government officials came and went beach but nothing convinced her to move. In the book, she talks about how the neighbors came to visit their hows and how they left it missing their favorite home. If the book contained more information about those side characters probably we could have said that for them things really get worse after the explosion because typically they lost their house and were forced to live in their village. A similar situation happens during the war. In the book, the author mentions a few times that she can handle many things if war won’t happen again. So is an anti-war person. In both books, we have anti-war people so this is one of the things that the authors agree on. In both books, it goes that people can survive everything if war does not happen. As in Barefoot Gen, we get information that in the past the family lived a normal life but after the war, things get worse. In my opinion in the books what makes things worse is the war, not the nuclear disaster. So if we imagine that Hiroshima was bombed without the war it is possible the results wouldn't be as bad and people will continue living. They would know that if they work hard and don't give up they will have the same old and happy times. This is what hope is. Hope is when we have a goal and we live to make it true, we live with and for hope, hope that a happy past would become present. But at this point, we should ask ourselves if we always have hope and if it is what prevents us from suicide, are we aiming for the same thing the rest of our lives, or at different periods we hope for different things? As we understood from the past argument, the nuclear disaster is not the reason that things get worse, the main reason is the war. But does the aim for hope change after the nuclear disaster or does it stays the same? This is essential to understanding the importance of hope. And if we know hope changes then it means that for people hope is an integral part of people's lives and to live and make their lives easier they change their aim for hope. So now let's look at what people hope in both books. In Barefoot Gen, before the atomic bomb hit the main characters, Gen and his family longed for the end of the war with Japan’s victory or defeat. They didn't care. At that time they were thinking not only for themselves but also for their neighbors, and their country in their own unique way. This is shown in all parts of the book. Starting from the point when a father without a scare announces that war is bad so he was taken prisoner and beaten up. Or one example is when Gen during a school assignment wrote a letter to the soldiers that their lives are more important than victory. But this changed after the bomb strike at that time I think two survivors, Gen, and his mother, hoping for their well-being. They started hoping to get out of that situation safely. Also one of the signs that their hope is coming true is the birth of the baby. Birth represents continuing life and it shows that there is hope left. In the comic we understand that people at all points have hope for some people it is the end of the war and for others, it is the victory of Japan. In the comic, we have a situation where people lose hope. This is shown in the part where it talks about what happened to people in the cities which was occupied by Americans. The comic shows that the remaining people just kill themselves because Japan lost the war in that cities. So as the Japaen lost then the hope died so they did suicide. This is a chain that is natural. A similar thing could have happened to Gen’s mother if the goal of her hope didn't change by her dying husband. She wanted to stay with the rest of the family and die with them. But her husband made her believe that now she should live for her unborn child and Gen and that should be her hope. So we understand that if she lost her hope then she would die. To sum up we understand that in Barefoot Gen people change their goals, and hope to continue living. In Voices from Chernobyl girl hops for a long, good, and happy life. She lives for her husband and the goal that they were planning to achieve. This we know from the start of the book when the author tells how the girl met his husband and what they planned. But after the explosion and her husband's death she steys alone and at that time she starts thinking more about herself than others. But while his husband was alive she cared more about him than her. So sometimes she even risked her own life hoping it would help his husband. In the book, we know that for her well-being she eventually marys again and births a boy whom she names with her husband's name. So in this book, we understand that before the nuclear disaster, she is thinking about her and her husband as a couple but after the idea of a couple divides before the death of her husband she hopes that her husband will get well after his death she starts to think about her. Even she cared less about her second husband. We know about all this when she lies to doctors and tells them that she is not pregnant and enters his sick husband's room. And we know that she starts to care more about herself and not otters or the country from the part when she determines to stay in the village and continue her life. In the book, we have many cases where she says why are everyone forcing her to move from the village. She says that the government was always scaring people with radiation as a disease that is impossible to see. In contrast, she gives the example of Hiroshima where the radiation is not that bad and there are still people living in Hiroshima. To conclude in both books we get a situation where people change their goals and aims of hopes to continue living. This means that it is possible to change the aim of hope. This is the secret to why things do not get worse after the nuclear disaster. Hope is not something that we generate one time and stay for the rest of our lives. We upgrade it or sometimes change it. And finally, as we understand that hope is important it means that this can be used as a weapon. Through the last two arguments, we understand that people will do everything to make their hopes a reality. In addition, we have seen that when it is not possible to make their hoped-for future a reality they change the ideology about which they are hoping. The governments understand this very well and can make their ideas by just changing or forcing people to keep their hope. Such things happened both in my books. In Barefoot Gen, the first that happened was the government made a situation that war is good and Japan should win. From the book, we do not have any reference to how they did this. But from history, we can tell that probably propaganda started by promising people that if they win the war they will be richer. This made citizens believe and they started hoping that they would get rich if Japan won. Eventually, this was transformed into that they should not skimp anything for Japan, even their loved ones' lives. And we see that the government forced this idea to stay and get stronger by artificially making others who had different ideas traitors or nation betrayers. In Voices from Chernobyl, we have an opposite example where the government used that weapon to make people's lives better. They gave homes and help to those people who lost everything. As if they lost everything they were losing their hope as well so to keep hope the government did good things to change people's hope and make them continue living. These propagandas are proof that hope is important. If hope wasn't important then governments would not put that much energy to change the hope. To conclude In my all arguments I talked about hope. All the arguments are that hope is important. Nuclear disasters played an important role in people's lives. They had a very damaging effect which made people change their hope. They made governments understand how to use hope as a weapon. Hope is important and without it we are nothing.
