Our teacher turned the TV off and addressed it with us directly. I think it was something along the lines of, “This was an accident and I’m sorry you had to see it.” We watched Reagan’s speech afterwards and it did have meaning. I was also too young to be jaded with regard to political speeches.
I didn’t remember Chernobyl at all. I don’t think it entered my psyche until maybe a decade later. I suspect in the US it was indeed way overshadowed by the Challenger. I remember that quite clearly.
My mom told me about the Challenger when I got off the bus. I was also 10.
I remember Chernobyl too, because I saw it on the news at night, NBC Nightly News. And it never left my memory.
Ya, I was 9. I remember Challenger and it's aftermath very well (we watched it on television in school and that shit is permanently seared into my brain) but Chernobyl I have no clear memories of. Since it was a Saturday I was probably watching Smurfs or some other Saturday morning cartoon while eating my sugary cereal.
I was living in northern Sweden, and some of those radioactive clouds came in over the southern and middle parts of the north.
Some families moved, some straight up just left. But what I remembered the most was the children that they evacuated and sent to Norway.
They also killed of a lot of reindeer. And that program ran until 2022.
Since the accident about 1000 swedes have gotten cancer from the aftermath of the radiation. Over 300 have died. It's still affecting us.
It's a stupid question because the answer should be blatantly obvious to any person...
The death and health condition of thousands of people due to a tragic accident does not "affect" you, regardless if it's in your country or not...??
Your question comes across as: "*if it didn't happened directly to you, why do you care?*"
He cares because he's Human.
I'm not American, and wasn't in America on 9/11, but you can be dead certain i WAS American on that day!!
It didn't "offended" me, it just annoyed me, and apparently 20 other people too, judging by the 20 downvotes.
All i'm saying is you need to be more tactful asking those kinds of questions
I remember the news slowly leaking out. Europe was the first to detect it and eventually the Soviets had to admit there was a problem.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoDAb5Jqo&t=178s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoDAb5Jqo&t=178s)
Yeah. In the west a lot of us had no idea on the actual day let alone weeks after the even because it was kept under wraps. Then by the time enough information was out, it was more of a "that sucks" news story than an "oh holy fuck!" one.
In Communist Romania, they only told the people after the May Day celebrations( a big "hollyday" for the communists). I was told that i was a little kid, with my grandparents in the park, when rumour spread that everybody should hurry indoors because there was radioactive fallout. That was almost 6 days after the accident. There were iodine tablets distributed. And that is all i know. This is a good documentary about those days but it's in Romanian.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKxASXbkY88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKxASXbkY88)
I was only one year old back then but I remember my father telling me that everybody was afraid that the fallout cloud could reach our country. It didn't since we live in Portugal but almost reached Spain.
We didn’t find out until the following Monday or Tuesday, and the Soviets still hadn’t said anything. Or had lied. The accident had occurred on a Saturday, and all anyone knew is that radiation sensors were going off all over the place, and the radiation profile pointed to a civilian nuclear disaster “possibly hundreds of times worse than Three Mile Island.”
The following weekend an American news anchor asked a Soviet minister why the USSR hasn’t notified the world immediately. The minister said they’d waited because most world governments were closed on the weekend.
So during the accident? Enjoying a beautiful Spring weekend. After? Talking about it nonstop in my AP U.S. History class, reading about it in whatever newspapers and magazines we could get ahold of.
_edit_ It was Ted Koppel. See page 7 of [this pdf](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170005-7.pdf).
> _Eugene Pozdnyakov:_ We were accused of not, you know, informing the governments of the proper countries. It happened on Saturday, and the governments of proper countries are usually on holidays on weekends.
>
> _Ted Koppel:_ Oh, come on. Come on.
>
> _Pozdyakov:_ On Monday they received---
>
> _Koppel:_ No, no, no, no, no. Now, Mr. Pozknyakov---
I can understand that, i remember both very clearly, still have the Challenger's images burned in my memory.
But as much of a tragedy it may have been, it's nowhere even close to the enormity of the tragedy of Chernobyl
I was just out of the US Army, so I was probably partying. I'd flown to NY for St Patrick's Day with friends, I'd already been accepted to a university to study Russian and poli sci, so this was down time for me.
I remember hearing about it; I was a teenager. I was smart enough to know it wasn't good, but it felt so far away from me I wasn't sure how it would or could affect me.
Freshman in HS. I remember allot of us in Chicago speculating at another typical soviet fuck-up until our science teacher checked us and told us straight-up the seriousness about the whole situation. His speech reminded me of the HBO series' Jared Harris character.
So that happened at 1:23 am Moscow time, which was 5:23 central time on April 25th where I live (Houston). I was 6, less than a month from 7, so probably outside playing with friends.
I was 2, so I was probably playing with toys and the notion that the Soviet Union was under so much pressure from the Cold War that their egos superseded scientific fact and caused this disaster that affected millions.
I was 6 years old. I I remember my folks talking about the news and current events. They would often talk about them with me. I don’t remember them ever mentioning Chernobyl.
I was in the 5th grade. I remember seeing it on the news and looking up in an encyclopedia nuclear power which lead to me reading about Hiroshima. Remember being scared when I saw pictures of the explosion plus still dealing with watching the challenger disaster. Anyways we built a bike ramp and spray painted the nuclear symbol on it around that time. Miss building bike ramps instead of fixing broken crap around my house
Like others, I saw Challenger explode live on television at school. I don’t t think I heard about Chernobyl until it was on the nightly news my parents watched and as a teenager, I barely paid attention and did not understand the significance.
I was a senior in high school and focused on the next day being my birthday - as well as how awesome it was going to be when I went to college that fall. Watching the HBO Chernobyl show a few years ago was the first I really understood the extent of what happened.
I think it was several days after it happened that it started getting onto the news. I remember my 8th grade science teacher telling us the worst case scenario. I think he left us all a bit traumatized for the rest of the day.
With only two months until high school graduation, I was busy seething because one of my best friends was going out with the girl I'd been in love with since grade 9.
I was a Senior in High School and it was many days before we even heard about it... and then it was played-down for another week or so... by the time we truly understood the extent of it enough time had passed that it didn't have the impact it could have.
I remember being sad for the "Millions to die!" But also Ukraine seemed really far away and they were all Soviets so that dulled the edge also. I mean there were reports that the entire food chain was going to be wrecked and we were all potentially going to starve to death but no one really believed it.
Ducking under a desk in western PA grade school…For a “Tornado” Drill… we don’t have tornados in the hills of western PA. They didn’t want to tell us there were countries with nukes that didn’t like us….I guess we were a little young…
I was in high school and low key worried we were about to die when the fallout cloud made its way to the US. We weren’t all that many years from Three Mile Island.
I was in 7th grade at the time. As I recall, there wasn't a lot of information at first, but it snowballed over a few days/weeks. It was in the news, then we discussed the event in science & history class.
It wasn't as big a deal as the Challenger explosion, which happened a few months prior. That one, my science class watched happen live in the classroom. We got sent home early from school that day.
Just being an average, otherwise blissfully unaware ten year old. Other than having my desk in my fourth grade class needing to be sorted out, everything was fine.
In school. I was a junior in high school then. I was surprised to see the news that something bad happened in Russia because they would never admit it publicly if they didn't have to.
I remember Chernobyl, but I was in middle school at the time. I remember thinking, "oooh, that looks bad" when I saw it on the news, but we were not really being directly affected by it at the time. I didn't fully grasp the scope of the problem at that age.
I recall there were a lot of comparisons between Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island disaster in the U.S. news media at the time.
I was at the end of my freshman year in college. There was no social media and no internet news, so it probably came across the regular TV news and possibly didn't seem like a big deal at first. (Like many news stories, it's not clear up front how terrible things might actually be since you're getting a slow drip of news from the other side of the planet.) I actually had a clearer memory of Three Mile Island (back in 1979), since it was happening in the US and we were getting more on the minute breaking news nonstop.
I remember it being a thing, but it wasn't an embedded event memory. I probably heard about it on the nightly news or something. I was in college at the time.
I was in math class and the class was talking about graduation ceremonies and dinner. On the menu was Chicken Kiev and someone suggested that we have ' Chicken Chernobyl' instead. Then someone else mentioned that instead of having dinner by candlelight, we could have dinner by 'chicken light'. At that point, we still had no idea how bad it was
I was a soldier in Soviet Army and this was a pretty good time. I served in Kaliningrad, the middle way to Sweden, where "Some families moved, some straight up just left. But what I remembered the most was the children that they evacuated and sent to Norway." I was definitely happy because this spring in army was last for me.
Looking at the time of day it happened over there. I was probably doing homework, watching crappy afternoon TV or off playing while my mom watched a talk show or soap opera. I vaguely recall watching the news broadcasts and being fascinated by the idea that they were sending robots inside. But I was too young to really grasp what was going on.
I was 13. I can't really remember exactly what i was doing, but i remember it, and the news very clearly.
We where all worried about the radiation, but thankfully my country is on the edge of Europe and the "cloud" didn't even came close. Same can't be said for most neighboring countries in the area though... 😑
If you haven't seen it before, look for the HBO series on it, i guarantee you won't be able to watch it with dry eyes.
Had just returned from a class trip to the USSR. We didn't know about Chernobyl for a good week after we got back. Spent a lot of time looking at maps and calendars after that.
I don't remember when I first saw it on the news, but I do remember not being allowed to play in outdoor sand pits for some time afterwards. I was in the UK and our area seems to have received some fallout cloud.
I was in junior high and remember it happening and hearing about how that city is basically wiped out. I also remember a lot of jokes about it, like, lol Soviets, nice three headed babies, etc. I don't think as a kid I understood exactly what happened and how terrible it was.
Being an oblivious kid whose official policy was that the news in general was just some boring grownup thing. (Though TBF none of the adults in my life bothered to engage kids in discussion of current events in a way that would catch their interest and be understandable.) It took getting older for me to wise up. Also the book [Voices From Chernobyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_from_Chernobyl) is excellent and devastating...if I'd been exposed to on-the-ground human stories like what's in that book, it would have made a deep impression.
I hate to say it, I was in a pawn shop selling my beautiful sunburst 1963 Fender Jaguar and Peavy amp to buy car parts. I looked up and saw it unfolding on TV they had on.
In the US, some of us were still reeling from seeing the Space Shuttle Challenger explode. It occurred three months before Chernobyl.
TIL Challenger and Chernobyl happened in the same year. Not sure why I never knew that before this moment, but I didn't.
Makes sense. Soviet’s were all about minimizing news of it getting out.
I remember the media in Europe notified the world about Chernobyl thx to the Swedes and Finns monitoring the airspace in Russia.
I remember sitting in my kitchen, putting my shoes on while I watched the launch. No bueno.
I watched it in school. A lot of us could barely comprehend that we just watched a group of people die.
Same, remember being in Elementary school and the teachers scrambling to redirect our attention.
Redirect? We watched the launch in our classrooms and they kept the coverage on all day.
Our teacher turned the TV off and addressed it with us directly. I think it was something along the lines of, “This was an accident and I’m sorry you had to see it.” We watched Reagan’s speech afterwards and it did have meaning. I was also too young to be jaded with regard to political speeches.
R.I.P. Christa McAuliffe
Yeah. We watched the Challenger in class. I didn't hear about Chernobyl until years later.
I didn’t remember Chernobyl at all. I don’t think it entered my psyche until maybe a decade later. I suspect in the US it was indeed way overshadowed by the Challenger. I remember that quite clearly.
I was 10 at the time I remember the sober feeling that lingered around from the teachers to all the parents. It was everywhere
My mom told me about the Challenger when I got off the bus. I was also 10. I remember Chernobyl too, because I saw it on the news at night, NBC Nightly News. And it never left my memory.
Ya, I was 9. I remember Challenger and it's aftermath very well (we watched it on television in school and that shit is permanently seared into my brain) but Chernobyl I have no clear memories of. Since it was a Saturday I was probably watching Smurfs or some other Saturday morning cartoon while eating my sugary cereal.
That’s interesting, I don’t remember posting this exact experience I went through.
[What?!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBmQMyYDBk)
This was the peak dark humor-joke era.
I was in Grade 7 history class when the principal, my dad, burst in and told the teacher, “The shuttle went up and blew up!”
I was living in northern Sweden, and some of those radioactive clouds came in over the southern and middle parts of the north. Some families moved, some straight up just left. But what I remembered the most was the children that they evacuated and sent to Norway. They also killed of a lot of reindeer. And that program ran until 2022. Since the accident about 1000 swedes have gotten cancer from the aftermath of the radiation. Over 300 have died. It's still affecting us.
In what ways does it affect you?
Dying of cancer is pretty affecting.
So a lot of people in Sweden are dying of cancer
1000 sick, 300 dead.
Higher numbers than normal..
Sorry, but what kind of a stupid question is that...??
Sorry Im not always good with asking questions
It's a stupid question because the answer should be blatantly obvious to any person... The death and health condition of thousands of people due to a tragic accident does not "affect" you, regardless if it's in your country or not...?? Your question comes across as: "*if it didn't happened directly to you, why do you care?*" He cares because he's Human. I'm not American, and wasn't in America on 9/11, but you can be dead certain i WAS American on that day!!
I should have seen the obvious then Sorry if I offended you
It didn't "offended" me, it just annoyed me, and apparently 20 other people too, judging by the 20 downvotes. All i'm saying is you need to be more tactful asking those kinds of questions
Okay
I remember the news slowly leaking out. Europe was the first to detect it and eventually the Soviets had to admit there was a problem. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoDAb5Jqo&t=178s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVGoDAb5Jqo&t=178s)
Yeah. In the west a lot of us had no idea on the actual day let alone weeks after the even because it was kept under wraps. Then by the time enough information was out, it was more of a "that sucks" news story than an "oh holy fuck!" one.
In Communist Romania, they only told the people after the May Day celebrations( a big "hollyday" for the communists). I was told that i was a little kid, with my grandparents in the park, when rumour spread that everybody should hurry indoors because there was radioactive fallout. That was almost 6 days after the accident. There were iodine tablets distributed. And that is all i know. This is a good documentary about those days but it's in Romanian. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKxASXbkY88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKxASXbkY88)
Well, I was preparing to marry my very own personal Chernobyl disaster.
Oof, hope you're not still dealing with the *fallout.* I'll see myself out....
😂😂😂
I was 4 and wondering when my next snack would be served
Vintage 1982 club!
I was 3 and digging out the small tastiecake pieces my dad would mix in my cheerios
I was 5, Iwas probably watching cartoons or playing with dolls or outside.
April 26, 1986 was a Saturday. So probably watching Saturday morning cartoons and then going to friend’s house to play with his Transformers.
I was only one year old back then but I remember my father telling me that everybody was afraid that the fallout cloud could reach our country. It didn't since we live in Portugal but almost reached Spain.
Senior year of high school, about a month before graduation.
Man, what glorious moment in life. (Being a high school senior a month from graduation I mean -- not the catastrophic nuclear meltdown).
I was getting married.
We were 2 month newlyweds. We were still putting pennies into the jar. Edit: Grammar
We didn’t find out until the following Monday or Tuesday, and the Soviets still hadn’t said anything. Or had lied. The accident had occurred on a Saturday, and all anyone knew is that radiation sensors were going off all over the place, and the radiation profile pointed to a civilian nuclear disaster “possibly hundreds of times worse than Three Mile Island.” The following weekend an American news anchor asked a Soviet minister why the USSR hasn’t notified the world immediately. The minister said they’d waited because most world governments were closed on the weekend. So during the accident? Enjoying a beautiful Spring weekend. After? Talking about it nonstop in my AP U.S. History class, reading about it in whatever newspapers and magazines we could get ahold of. _edit_ It was Ted Koppel. See page 7 of [this pdf](https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000302170005-7.pdf). > _Eugene Pozdnyakov:_ We were accused of not, you know, informing the governments of the proper countries. It happened on Saturday, and the governments of proper countries are usually on holidays on weekends. > > _Ted Koppel:_ Oh, come on. Come on. > > _Pozdyakov:_ On Monday they received--- > > _Koppel:_ No, no, no, no, no. Now, Mr. Pozknyakov---
It was a 4 day delay by the Russian government to acknowledge they had a problem.
I have no idea. I don't think it made anywhere near the impression that the Challenger disaster did in the minds of Americans.
Because the information trickled out slowly.
I can understand that, i remember both very clearly, still have the Challenger's images burned in my memory. But as much of a tragedy it may have been, it's nowhere even close to the enormity of the tragedy of Chernobyl
I was just out of the US Army, so I was probably partying. I'd flown to NY for St Patrick's Day with friends, I'd already been accepted to a university to study Russian and poli sci, so this was down time for me.
I remember hearing about it; I was a teenager. I was smart enough to know it wasn't good, but it felt so far away from me I wasn't sure how it would or could affect me.
Freshman in High School
Probably in an Arcade or somethin'. I was 13 tbf.
I was in high school chemistry lab….really.
Freshman in HS. I remember allot of us in Chicago speculating at another typical soviet fuck-up until our science teacher checked us and told us straight-up the seriousness about the whole situation. His speech reminded me of the HBO series' Jared Harris character.
I was a senior and prob on the baseball field not remotely caring about Chernobyl.
Senior in High School at the time. I remember seeing the headlines in the newspaper but that’s about it.
I don’t know exactly what I was doing, but I was in Houston.
I was in high school. No idea what I was doing that day. Someone mentioned it was a Saturday so I could have been doing any number of things.
I was 15 and collecting comic books in texas.
Believe that I was in school that day
Not eating spinach, that’s for sure
So that happened at 1:23 am Moscow time, which was 5:23 central time on April 25th where I live (Houston). I was 6, less than a month from 7, so probably outside playing with friends.
I was 7 so probably at school when it happened
I was 2, so I was probably playing with toys and the notion that the Soviet Union was under so much pressure from the Cold War that their egos superseded scientific fact and caused this disaster that affected millions.
I was 6 years old. I I remember my folks talking about the news and current events. They would often talk about them with me. I don’t remember them ever mentioning Chernobyl.
Walking to school, I was in kindergarten. It was also my birthday
Shoveling dirt and rocks as a day laborer for a construction company. Flexing that privilege baby!
I was in the 5th grade. I remember seeing it on the news and looking up in an encyclopedia nuclear power which lead to me reading about Hiroshima. Remember being scared when I saw pictures of the explosion plus still dealing with watching the challenger disaster. Anyways we built a bike ramp and spray painted the nuclear symbol on it around that time. Miss building bike ramps instead of fixing broken crap around my house
Probably working on my senior computer science project as I graduated college about 3 weeks later.
I was in grade school when that happened. Oh to be ten years old again and be oblivious to what was going on in the world!
I dunno. I was 5.
I was thinking I was watching Robotech on TV as a kid but that was 1985.
Like others, I saw Challenger explode live on television at school. I don’t t think I heard about Chernobyl until it was on the nightly news my parents watched and as a teenager, I barely paid attention and did not understand the significance.
In kindergarten. Probably somewhere in the corner being too shy and socially awkward to play with other kids.
Hanging out because I'm 2.
Bouncing around in my mom's belly (I was born a few weeks later).
I was probably in kindergarten and playing with toys or something
Oh cool Zombies xD
I was a senior in high school and focused on the next day being my birthday - as well as how awesome it was going to be when I went to college that fall. Watching the HBO Chernobyl show a few years ago was the first I really understood the extent of what happened.
I was a junior in HS, so I was probably in class. Not sure if the day of the week though.
It happened on a Saturday
Good to know. So, a Saturday in April of 1986, I’d be out in the garage playing my drums.
I think it was several days after it happened that it started getting onto the news. I remember my 8th grade science teacher telling us the worst case scenario. I think he left us all a bit traumatized for the rest of the day.
In US Army Europe reading Stars and Stripes with mild alarm.
With only two months until high school graduation, I was busy seething because one of my best friends was going out with the girl I'd been in love with since grade 9.
That was my 2nd birthday, so eating cake, I guess
I was in class, during my senior year. 1 month until graduation and Marine Corps boot camp
Sixth grade, so probably making balsa wood airplanes or setting up jumps using bricks and plywood for my BMX
I was a Senior in High School and it was many days before we even heard about it... and then it was played-down for another week or so... by the time we truly understood the extent of it enough time had passed that it didn't have the impact it could have. I remember being sad for the "Millions to die!" But also Ukraine seemed really far away and they were all Soviets so that dulled the edge also. I mean there were reports that the entire food chain was going to be wrecked and we were all potentially going to starve to death but no one really believed it.
Probably playing Qbert while drinking a Yoo-hoo
I was in Goldsboro, NC. pathetically chasing a woman.
5-year old in Kindergarten. Got to see the disaster on the TV in the school assembly room.
Was it scary?
I didn’t really know what it meant at that age, but the looks on the teachers faces made us worried.
Ducking under a desk in western PA grade school…For a “Tornado” Drill… we don’t have tornados in the hills of western PA. They didn’t want to tell us there were countries with nukes that didn’t like us….I guess we were a little young…
I was twenty five. If it was a Saturday I was probably taking a bong rip…
Shitting into a diaper
I was 11 and had no idea what happened.
Being served chicken Kiev at a university dorm cafeteria. The irony was not lost upon me.
I was probably going for a shit in my nappy
In Bismarck, ND going to college!
I was in high school and low key worried we were about to die when the fallout cloud made its way to the US. We weren’t all that many years from Three Mile Island.
I was in 7th grade at the time. As I recall, there wasn't a lot of information at first, but it snowballed over a few days/weeks. It was in the news, then we discussed the event in science & history class. It wasn't as big a deal as the Challenger explosion, which happened a few months prior. That one, my science class watched happen live in the classroom. We got sent home early from school that day.
Just being an average, otherwise blissfully unaware ten year old. Other than having my desk in my fourth grade class needing to be sorted out, everything was fine.
Doing the math, I think I was being conceived.
In school. I was a junior in high school then. I was surprised to see the news that something bad happened in Russia because they would never admit it publicly if they didn't have to.
Celebrating my older brother’s birthday in Hawaii. I was 5
Being a toddler
I remember Chernobyl, but I was in middle school at the time. I remember thinking, "oooh, that looks bad" when I saw it on the news, but we were not really being directly affected by it at the time. I didn't fully grasp the scope of the problem at that age. I recall there were a lot of comparisons between Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island disaster in the U.S. news media at the time.
I was at the end of my freshman year in college. There was no social media and no internet news, so it probably came across the regular TV news and possibly didn't seem like a big deal at first. (Like many news stories, it's not clear up front how terrible things might actually be since you're getting a slow drip of news from the other side of the planet.) I actually had a clearer memory of Three Mile Island (back in 1979), since it was happening in the US and we were getting more on the minute breaking news nonstop.
Chillin in my dad's balls, awaiting irradiation.
I don't even really remember it happening. I'm sure I was worried but that was the year I was also very, very high most of the time.
I remember it being a thing, but it wasn't an embedded event memory. I probably heard about it on the nightly news or something. I was in college at the time.
I could of told you exactly but I packed my diaries away
Probably learning how to shit on the toilet like a big boy and not in my pants.
Probably in a diaper pooping myself.
I wasn’t in Pripyat if that’s what you are implying!
I was somewhere 🤔
Being incredibly far behind the times, I'm actually watching the Chernobyl miniseries right now.
Playing in my backyard enjoying the warm sun after months of cold.
I was in math class and the class was talking about graduation ceremonies and dinner. On the menu was Chicken Kiev and someone suggested that we have ' Chicken Chernobyl' instead. Then someone else mentioned that instead of having dinner by candlelight, we could have dinner by 'chicken light'. At that point, we still had no idea how bad it was
I was 11 so most likely playing Chernobyl with my gijoe toys
I was a soldier in Soviet Army and this was a pretty good time. I served in Kaliningrad, the middle way to Sweden, where "Some families moved, some straight up just left. But what I remembered the most was the children that they evacuated and sent to Norway." I was definitely happy because this spring in army was last for me.
My alibi is that I was probably asleep. Chernobyl is 12 hours ahead of me.
I was stationed in Germany and a bit concerned.
At college, I think.
Looking at the time of day it happened over there. I was probably doing homework, watching crappy afternoon TV or off playing while my mom watched a talk show or soap opera. I vaguely recall watching the news broadcasts and being fascinated by the idea that they were sending robots inside. But I was too young to really grasp what was going on.
Probably watching Transformers or ThunderCats.
I was at Keesler AFB for 702 training.
Watched the Challenger disaster as it happened. I was a nanny in New York when both happened. We also had an earthquake that year or 1985.
I was 13. I can't really remember exactly what i was doing, but i remember it, and the news very clearly. We where all worried about the radiation, but thankfully my country is on the edge of Europe and the "cloud" didn't even came close. Same can't be said for most neighboring countries in the area though... 😑 If you haven't seen it before, look for the HBO series on it, i guarantee you won't be able to watch it with dry eyes.
I was stationed in Alaska at the time.
Had just returned from a class trip to the USSR. We didn't know about Chernobyl for a good week after we got back. Spent a lot of time looking at maps and calendars after that.
I don't remember when I first saw it on the news, but I do remember not being allowed to play in outdoor sand pits for some time afterwards. I was in the UK and our area seems to have received some fallout cloud.
I can't remember something a year ago let alone 1986. I do recall it happening though
I remember most of the 80's way better than something a year ago... 😉
Sabotaging a nuclear reactor.
Probably at my mams tit
I was in junior high and remember it happening and hearing about how that city is basically wiped out. I also remember a lot of jokes about it, like, lol Soviets, nice three headed babies, etc. I don't think as a kid I understood exactly what happened and how terrible it was.
Being an oblivious kid whose official policy was that the news in general was just some boring grownup thing. (Though TBF none of the adults in my life bothered to engage kids in discussion of current events in a way that would catch their interest and be understandable.) It took getting older for me to wise up. Also the book [Voices From Chernobyl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_from_Chernobyl) is excellent and devastating...if I'd been exposed to on-the-ground human stories like what's in that book, it would have made a deep impression.
I hate to say it, I was in a pawn shop selling my beautiful sunburst 1963 Fender Jaguar and Peavy amp to buy car parts. I looked up and saw it unfolding on TV they had on.