About

The story of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is legendary. At precisely 01:23:40 on the morning of April 26th 1986, a control room operator named Alexander Akimov pressed the Emergency Shutdown button at Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor - an action which would ultimately kill thousands of people, bring about the fall of the Soviet Union and change the face of the nuclear industry forever. Many people have heard of it, but few know what actually happened, much less know it in any great detail. It's the story of a safety test gone awry, the total destruction of one of the biggest reactors ever built, the desperate struggle by hundreds of thousands of men and women to contain the lethal radiation it expelled, and the massive cover-up by the Soviet government as to the true nature of what happened. I've created a large Imgur photo gallery summarising the entire story, which you can find here.

I've been fascinated by the disaster for a long time. After reading many books on the subject, and finding that the sort of comprehensive, mid-length book I wanted to read didn't exist, I decided to write one myself. It had to be an accurate, accessible, detailed and thorough, yet focused and relatively brief account of what happened on that warm spring morning in April 1986, and the months that followed.

In addition to an account of the events of 1986, I thought it would be interesting for readers to hear about my own experience visiting the Chernobyl zone in 2011, as it had a more profound impact upon me than I ever expected. It has become something of a tourist attraction, but I know there are many people who are curious yet will never have the opportunity to go themselves, so those chapters are for them. The split is around 60/40, with the description of the accident taking up the majority of the book.

When I started this project I had never really written or properly researched anything in my life, so this has been a huge and challenging learning experience for me, and has taken a great deal of time and effort to get this far. What started out as a small personal interest project has, over time, evolved into something far more personally significant to me. As such, it's now very important to me that people hear about what happened, and the courage shown by the hundreds of thousands of liquidators in their fight to contain the accident. This, combined with the sheer number of individuals who have encouraged me to pursue publishing it, has convinced me that it should be made more widely available.

There are books about the run-up to the accident and little else. There are books about the effects of the radiation on the local and global population. There are books that are too short or too long, books that exaggerate, books that are biased, and books that are far too technical for your average reader. I've kept it as neutral and accessible as possible, without becoming overlong and convoluted, while providing as much information as much information as possible in a relatively short (55,000 words) book.

There are a couple books that touch upon what the area is like now, but none that go into detail about visiting the area like this one does. Just recently, the National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig did a Kickstarter for his own photographic book about Chernobyl, but it, too, contains essentially no information about the accident itself.

There's a surprising amount of inaccurate and conflicting information about the accident. This can be attributed in many ways to the lies told by the Soviet government during the five years after the accident, but even in published books released since then, I haven’t encountered a single title that doesn't contain at least one verifiable error. My goal, therefore, was to present as definitive a truth as I possibly could, using many different sources and accounts from people who were there, whilst resisting the temptation to use suspect information I couldn't verify. Most important of all, I did not want to sensationalise the accident. What happened is sensational in many ways, but the story is frequently exaggerated for the sake of adding drama. It is dishonest and unnecessary; the true events were dramatic enough.

It's taken me about 2 years, but I have finished writing what I want to write. Next, I need to pay for the services of a professional non-fiction editor if this project is to be taken at all seriously. I have spoken to several editors from across the pricing spectrum, even some who openly state that they don’t accept new clients because they're in such high demand, and all have been surprisingly keen to work with me on this project. This has reassured me that it's a worthwhile endeavour.

I have a full-time-student partner with one child and another on the way, and definitely won't be able to spare the money necessary to fund this myself, so I'm turning to Kickstarter for help with the editing. I'm hoping to get all editing work done and the rewards shipped within 6 months at the latest. Most of that time will be waiting for me to fit into a given editor's schedule - the actual editing process should only take a few weeks.

I'm trying to be as transparent as I can. The goal value is set to reflect the fact that the rewards are costly to produce, and Kickstarter and the UK government will take 30% of the money straight away. Of the remaining 70%, a little over half will go towards the cost of printing the reward books. The margins are different for different rewards, so I've had to set the goal price high enough to reflect a worst-case scenario of everyone pledging money for the lowest margin book. This ensures that I'll definitely have enough money to get everyone their rewards, no matter what.

Editors' prices vary - I've seen as low as £500 for a bare-bones rush-job, and as high as around £20,000 for very highly regarded and in-demand editors. I'm aiming for about £3000, which will allow me to hire an experienced but reasonably priced editor, who can provide me with a thorough structural and content edit.

Most people know about this project through Reddit, from when I posted three extensive galleries of historic photographs of Chernobyl and Pripyat before and after the accident. If I get more money than the target goal, I'll put that towards gaining copyright permission to include some of those historic photographs in the colour editions of the book that will be shipped to backers. Generally speaking, the more money this gets, the better the editor and the better the end result will be.

In the long run, I ideally intend to have the edited text published with photographs (my own and historical) as a proper book in time for the accident's 30th anniversary in 2016 at the latest, however, to avoid confusion, THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS KICKSTARTER IS FUNDING. This is purely to help me pay for an editor. Some reward tiers do contain physical copies of the text printed as Kickstarter-only edition books, but they will be paid for, designed and distributed by you/me and not a publishing company. Realistically, the chances of this ever getting properly published are quite low, so these might be the only copies ever made.

Because this Kickstarter is purely to fund an editor and isn't being put towards creating a physical end product, I've been forced to make the goal very high and some of the rewards a little pricey in order for me to be able to afford to get them made. It isn't ideal, but I have no choice.

The e-book will be available in more or less any file format you want. I'll probably email out 4 or 5 different formats to each backer of the e-book tier, and if anyone has a specific file format in mind I'll do my best to make one for them.

I'll be offering 5 different physical versions of the book as rewards, to try and cover the typical price spectrum. Confusing? Very, but there's little else I can offer, so I'll do my best to explain. First, the paperback:

And hardback:

Both of these 6" x 9" books will contain the complete text, with no photographs. I'm not exactly sure how long these will be, and won't know until the book has been edited. The final version will probably be in the region of around 160 pages, assuming nothing significant is added to it. I'm hoping to reproduce certain diagrams, maps and technical drawings within each book to explain how the reactor works etc. The paperback version has a regular paperback style cover, while the hardback has a slipcover.

Next, the 8" x 10" and 10" x 8" books. These pictures are of the cheaper version.

Both versions will be about the same length as the paperback, but will also include a few of pages of photographs taken by me during my own trip to Chernobyl between each chapter. These photographs are intended as an accompaniment to the chapters about my own journey through the Zone.

The paper on the cheaper 8" x 10" version isn't photo-paper, but it's still a nice package overall, while the more expensive 10" x 8" book is printed on proper photographic paper and will be of higher overall quality. Each will have the same content, the only difference is the paper and aspect ratio.

The hardback 13" x 11" version is the ideal edition of the book. I would love to be able to show you a copy, but it's so expensive to produce that I can't afford to make one. This book will be printed on beautiful, 190gsm ProLine Pearl Photo paper for the best possible finish, and will contain the most photographs of the three colour books.

To be clear, every version of the book will contain the exact same text.

I'm not doing this to make money. The entire book, as it is now, is available to read for free with photographs at https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl if you would like to take a look for yourself. I hope that you'll be interested in it enough to consider backing this project.