10 Innocent Photos with Creepy Backstories – Part 2

This picture looks like a typical photo from an abandoned building, but it’s not. The person is photographing the Chernobyl monster. A monster was born during the Chernobyl disaster. Lurking in the depths of the reactor ruins, this monster was one of the most dangerous things in the world. In the immediate aftermath of the meltdown, spending 300 seconds in its presence would bring certain death. Even today, it radiates heat and death, though its power has weakened.

After the nuclear fires were finally controlled that day, workers scrambled to contain the invisible dangers of the failed Chernobyl core. The concrete beneath the reactor was steaming hot, and was breached by solidified lava and spectacular unknown crystalline forms termed “chernobylites”.  With the help of a remote camera, an intensely radioactive mass was found in the basement of Unit 4, more than two meters wide and weighing hundreds of tons, which they called “the Elephant’s Foot” for its wrinkled appearance.

It was a solid mass made of melted nuclear fuel mixed with lots and lots of concrete, sand, and core sealing material that the fuel had melted through. In 1986 the radiation level on the ”Elephant’s Foot” was measured at 10,000 roentgens per hour, and anyone who approached would have received a fatal dose in under a minute. After just 30 seconds of exposure, dizziness and fatigue will find you a week later. Two minutes of exposure and the body cells will soon begin to hemorrhage; four minutes: vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. At 300 seconds you would have two days to live.