Effects of the Chernobyl disaster children of liquidators conceived after the accident, when compared to their siblings that were conceived before. However, this effect has diminished sharply over time. Soviet authorities started evacuating people from the area around Chernobyl only on the second day after the disaster (after about 36 hours). By May 1986, about a month later, all those living within a radius of the plant (about 116,000 people) had been relocated. This area is often referred to as the zone of alienation. However, significant radiation affected the environment over a much wider scale than this 30 km radius encloses. According to reports from
The Truth About Chernobyl describing minute by minute precisely what was and was not done both before and after the explosion. It has been described as a tragic tale of pervasive, institutionalized, bureaucratic incompetence leading up to the accident; and heroic, heartbreaking sacrifice among those who had to deal with the emergency afterwards. The book is the single prime source for much of the actions of the operators, managers, firemen and others who are the actors in the Chernobyl disaster. It is, for example, the prime source for the article Individual involvement in the Chernobyl disaster. The book is written not in a documentary