Chernobyl in the popular consciousness

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The Chernobyl disaster has received worldwide media attention. The secrecy inherent in Soviet management was blamed for both the accident and the subsequent poor response; the accident, it is argued, hastened the demise of the Soviet Union. Public awareness of the risks of nuclear power increased significantly. Organizations, both pro- and anti-nuclear, have made great efforts to sway public opinion. Casualty figures, reactor safety estimates, and estimates of the risks associated to other reactors differ greatly depending on which position is favoured by the author of any given document. For example, the UN scientific committee on the effects of radiation has publicly criticised the UN office on humanitarian affairs with respect to some of its publications. The true facts of the affair are therefore rather difficult to uncover. It is, however, fair to say that the accident sparked interest in alternative forms of energy production and nuclear phase-out.

[edit] Chernobyl and the Bible

Because of a controversial translation of "chernobyl" as wormwood, some people believe that the Chernobyl accident was foretold in the Bible:

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. — Book of Revelation 8:10-11

The story appears to have spread to the West with a New York Times article by Serge Schmemann (Chernobyl Fallout: Apocalyptic Tale, July 25, 1986) in which an unnamed "prominent Russian writer" was quoted as claiming the Ukrainian word for wormwood was chernobyl.

The name of the city comes from the Ukrainian word for mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), which is chornobyl. As a result, chornobyl has been translated by some to simply mean wormwood. This translation is a matter of extreme controversy.

[edit] Computer virus

The CIH computer virus was popularly named "the Chernobyl virus" by many in the media, after the fact that the v1.2 variant activated on April 26 of each year: the anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. However, this is simply because of a coincidence with the virus author's birthday.

[edit] Impact on popular culture

The story of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is closely tied to the Chernobyl accident and ultimate peace between the U.S. and Russia. This was played in the Star Trek universe by having the Klingon Empire experience a similar cataclysmic accident, and having to seek refuge with former enemies, the United Federation of Planets (humans, Vulcans and a variety of other species). This led to doubts about peace on both sides, and how those doubters attempted to destroy the developing peace.

In the 1988 film Scrooged, when the Marley-esque character visits Bill Murray's Scrooge-like character, Murray says the ghostly visitor is just "a hallucination brought on by alcohol, Russian vodka, poisoned by Chernobyl."

In the 1990 film Quick Change, one character's claim that a major foul-up was an "accident" prompts another to reply "You know, so was Chernobyl."

Shortly after the accident, the nickname "Mobile Chernobyl" was applied to the American aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered capital ship. She had already possessed the nickname "Three-Quarter Mile Island," a reference to the Three Mile Island near-disaster; both nicknames indicate the sense of gallows humor possessed by sailors.

In a second season episode of FOX's hit show The X-Files called "The Host," Mulder and Scully encounter the famous Flukeman, a mutated flukeworm/humanoid hybrid. The creature is later found out to have been created as a result of the Chernobyl accident.

In the Millennium episode, "Maranatha", a Russian agent calling himself Yaponchik is shown sabotaging the experiment and causing the meltdown.

In the 1998 film Godzilla, the Matthew Broderick character is taking a worm sample from the Chernobyl area to test for mutations.

The upcoming video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is another example of the Chernobyl accident impacting upon popular culture with the game being set inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone with people called "stalkers" (in homage to the Russian movie Stalker, and the books Roadside Picnic and Stalker by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky) go inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone to search for valuable items.

The fact-based (but nevertheless controversial) US film, K-19: The Widowmaker portrays the handling of a nuclear reactor incident (on the K-19 nuclear submarine) within the Soviet political climate.

The Smiths's song Panic was reported to be based on Morrissey's annoyance that Radio 1 DJ Steve Wright played Wham's I'm Your Man straight after the news broke.

In the mystery novel Wolves Eat Dogs by Martin Cruz Smith, investigator Arkady Renko is sent to Chernobyl to solve the murder of a Russian billionaire, and he spends several weeks with the inhabitants (legal and illegal, human and animal) of the Zone.

In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Global Grilling", Master Shake buys a grill called "Char-Nobyl 6000", which is powered by radioactive vials from Chernobyl combined with pieces of the sun.