Fear (metaphor)
“So, are you shitting your pants?” Scherbina asked. “Not yet,” Sklyarov said. “But I think things are going that way.”
Fear is a strong human feeling, and when a life and future is at stake, people tend to be sincere and tell the truth. This is revealed in one of the short conversations between Scherbina and Sklyarov, in which Sklyarov responded to her ironic remark with evident truth, no matter how stark it may be.
Like air (simile)
Radiation is like air, which means that it is everywhere, and we cannot see it or feel it with any typical human sense. “Radiation is all around us. It emanates from the sun and cosmic rays, bathing cities at high altitude in greater levels of background radiation than those at sea level … All living tissue is radioactive to some degree: human beings, like bananas, emit radiation because both contain small amounts of the radioisotope potassium 40; muscle contains more potassium 40 than other tissue, so men are generally more radioactive than women. Brazil nuts, with a thousand times the average concentration of radium of any organic product, are the world’s most radioactive food.” But radiation is fatal when accumulated and revealed in great amounts – and this is what happened at Chernobyl.
“Scram” button (metaphor)
In the reactor operation office, a button was designed which should have been pressed if “the operators faced a situation calling for an emergency shutdown”. It was called AZ-5, and its purpose was to activate “the ultimate stage of the unit’s five-level rapid power reduction system”, though “the AZ-5 mechanism was not designed to bring about an abrupt emergency stop”. Nevertheless, this button was metaphorically called among the operators “the “scram” button”, as a signal to take to one's heels.
Broken illusion (metaphor)
The Chernobyl disaster, for the leaders of the USSR, was a challenge because they had to face the truth that their nuclear industry is not the safest. The breakdown of this truth was more tragic for them; in part, that’s why the truth was hidden. “For almost thirty years, both the Soviet public and the world at large were encouraged to believe that the USSR operated the safest nuclear industry in the world. The cost of maintaining this illusion had been high.” It cost so many lives, and still the illusion was broken.
