https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
Basically, 3 lumberjacks went into the woods, found a strange metallic thing that was warm to the touch, slept next to it. The report has incredibly graphic images of how their skin looked due to radiation exposure, don't scroll down to that section if you cannot look at gore. But essentially - the issue wasn't the initial damage, the issue was that the affected areas just wouldn't heal no matter how many skin transplants were done, literally rotting away while alive.
When I was a kid my dad told me a story about people finding glowing objects and taking them home and giving their whole family radiation poisoning. (In hindsight, I think he was probably describing the Goiânia accident in Brazil in 1987, which would have been recently in the media at the time he warned me). Like most people, I never found any glowing object but if I ever did I would have known to leave it be, get the hell out of there, and then call the authorities.
In true American fashion they paid a bit of money, and said come back in 5 year's everything will be totally normal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikini_Atoll
In the cold war, both sides where just disgusting, in fact the US was most of the time the aggressor and the soviets had to be on the defense side (because near absence of money flow)
The US was no saint during the Cold War but the Soviet Union was so much worse. Trivial Example: Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen are still alive, but the people they betrayed were executed in the basement of the Lubyanka - without trial.
>because near absence of money flow
Communism giveth, communism taketh away.
See that's the problem, extreme capitalism is absolutely the same..talking about supporting the UAE, attacking Irak (because OIL...not Human rights) the US is the example of a absolute extreme money and might centrist Kingdom (with a better marketing than the soviets)
PS: Please ask the Vietnamese people if the US the French or the Soviets are the worst
PPS: And the US eats his children (witch are good ones) alive...what a shitty society you made, russia is just a tick worse nowadays. You as a nation had the chance to make this planet a better place, but no you spit out billionaires like a assembly line.
In true Soviet fashion some libraries had all material on radiation removed after the accident.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident (famous story which has become something of a creepypasta but does contain)
If you drink the FSB tea, I'd suggest finding a tall building.