Chernobyl divers

The heroes who saved the most human lives in the history of mankind.

Remember these three names well - 3 volunteers, known by the nickname "Chernobyl divers", engineers Oleksii Ananenko, Valery Bezpalov and soldier Borys Baranov.

"No one will ever know how much we sacrificed, there will be no monuments in our honor, no parades, and we can only pray that it was not all in vain."

According to some reports, the Chernobyl disaster took between 4,000 and 93,000 lives directly, and many claim that the figure is as much as half a million when various radiation illnesses are included. However, the outcome could have been much more catastrophic had it not been for the three brave guys.

In order to prevent another explosion, someone had to prevent the mixing of water and metal, in other words, someone had to turn off the valves and drain the water that was under the reactor. The damaged reactor sank and there was a danger that it would collapse all the way to the flooded premises, which would lead to another devastating explosion that would destroy everything within a radius of 200 km, destroy Kiev, and pollute the water for 30 million people. In short, life would be impossible in Ukraine and beyond for the next few centuries.

Oleksii Ananenko and Valery Bezpalov are still alive, Borys Baranov passed away 20 years after the catastrophe from the consequences of a heart attack (In that order, the three of them in the picture above)

The volunteers were told they could refuse, but Ananenko later said in an interview that perhaps best described their courage.

"How could I refuse, when only I knew where the valves were."

They have already lived long enough for the whole world to hear about them (and they received medals for their bravery), which was certainly contributed by the popularity of the mini-series "Chernobyl", which has a fantastic 9.4 rating on IMDB in the opinion of almost half a million people.