The only regret that we have is you are not able to be with us here in person to enjoy the beauty. My name is doctor travis morris. I have the privilege and honor to be the executive director and also the director for the war center and for everyone, this initiative is part of a program with the University Global resilience and security. Global resilience and security. Part of a larger Strategic Initiative the Environmental Security initiative for the university. We are thrilled all of you are joining us today for the very special presentation and this event to a war adam the 2020 military writer award. I would like to mention a couple administrative details before i introduced him and we present the award. For those of you that are not familiar with the award or those of you that are, we have created a special video that provides some context and background of the award, some previous recipients and we just ask you go to our website, the link has been pushed out via chat and just take a couple minutes after the presentation to watch the video. It situates the prominence. Just take a few minutes to watch that. We would like to ask if you go to the schedule page on the website, you will see the president is giving an introduction to the military writers symposium. It introduces you and where we have been and why we are doing some of the things we are doing right now. As you can imagine, this is our inaugural event virtually. We have been bringing guests and authors to our campus. This is the first time we have partnered with them. If you go to the symposium website you will see that there is an and icon you can select beard it is free this year. If you are interested in gauging the topic even further, sign up and you can interact with worldclass scholars and other peers that are interested in this particular subject. If you have not heard of this, i would like to suggest that you join. Other than just an expectation. Helping us grow and taking it to higher horizons. It is also on our webpage. Take some time to take a look at our other features. What has been brought to you through video and web design. We are here to present a very special award. Adam, it is such a pleasure to have you here. We are thrilled you are this years 2020 award winner recipient. Your book has weighed reviews. I just want to provide a little context and background that will not be familiar with your book. Adam has a background. There is nonfiction in the future writer and appears in magazines which include and these are not all of them, but the new yorker, sicilian and New York Times magazine. Many of the stories have been developed for film and for television. I would also probably like to suggest that it is a candidate for that as well in the future. The first book, the untold story of the worlds greatest disaster was in as a international bestseller. Translated into 21 different languages. Named one of New York Times 10 best books of the year and named as a medal for excellence in nonfiction. Another quote from the New York Times, suburb, and throwing and clarifying. The accent with a horrible inevitability amid rich recording and scrupulous analysis when major things emerge. Currently working on a new book about the disaster of the space shuttle, look forward to that being released but its my pleasure honor to award and we will be in front of a large audience and dinner and we will bring you to the stage and administrators to be here but we would like to award you the 2020 award for this excellent publication. A difficult story to tell and also as it relates to Environmental Security so it is our pleasure to congratulate you and thank you again for this excellent work and eliminating such an important topic. We are thrilled to know its been translated to so many different languages and thats what this symposium is about. International and global importance and we are thrilled that you are this years award recipient. Thank you so much. Im very grateful to you and the judges. Ive long admired his work. The first book recognition of this award, professionally. Id like to talk about the book. Five years working exclusively on this project. This undertook in 1986. It was much further back than the. I first traveled 14 years ago russia and ukraine. The confusion and propaganda throughout that began. It goes back, i wanted to find what really happened for the witnesses to tell the story. Can we construct the offense, i was inspired by reading a night to remember. The sinking of the titanic. The official inquiry, interviewing survivals. The second half of the 20th century. A gripping narrative and enable us to be the experience. Its important to tell the full story and explore not just what happened the night of the accident what it was like before the explosion. I began to realize, own conceptions interfered. The individuals whose hopes and aspirations were much like mine. Today, the technological part, chernobyls have the jewels in the crown thats associated with that. This is how it is presented in 1978. Many were specialists in the field. They had technicians and their families. Spacious Apartment Buildings and surrounded by open countryside and had banks of rivers. They make sure the supply, furniture and even big cities like here and even the rare delicacy. Scuba divin club, a beauty parlor and cultu where there was the mesic. Public spaces were filled with culture and celebrating science and technology. This designed with a true worker. I. 1986, the 45000 citizensere overwhelmingly young andhey were filled with optimism. The population average age was 26. This was a change of, they were at work. There were schoolchildren. This picture, six months bore the accident. This was 1986 this from the far end. In the middle, studying engineering. Your on duty in the control room on the night of the accident. The more i learned, is only through the distorting lens of the cold war. The more i was fascinated by the contradictions of the soviet experience. The i was freezing this, we began to recreate, this really was, it is a strange world of 289 people in this system. They have the same desires and they had the responsibilities of career and families and rivals i work, cheating on the spouses, or getting in trouble with the police. This story was populated by technicians, soldiers and apparatus. Bus drivers, teachers, construction workers and newspaper reporters. They listened to rock music. They drink pepsi. They have genes that were available on the black market. The city was part of an empire encompassing more than 100 nationalities and languages in western ukraine. One of the most fascinang parts was this woman i the center, maria was born in china but after her fathers cocaine addiction, she came on the ussr with her mother. She graduated from Technical School and eventually was appointed chief architect. For the time of the accident, accommodating a population of 200,000 people in the larst Energy Complex in the world. They were gathering in 1980. Thirtyfour and the chernobyl station, nothing more than a snowcovered fie in western ukraine before the accident, celebrated 50t birthday and fo his entire professional life in the industry. In the city, it was less than 3 kilometers away. This picture taken from rooftop in the 80s you can see the most affected. During this time, it was a state within a state, secrecy that dominated by this one. He headed the weapons and the most important of the civilian industry. The head of the industry took credit for this. Before the accident,lexander, they knew that it was dangerous. But they covered it up and was directed by them and the scale and significance of the problem in this, finally came online at the end of 1983. Plans were already underway to build another station. A giant chain reactor. In my scale, they become part of the network does spread across the ussr by the end of the century. The grant control room, they already discovered that it is not technology and told everyo everyone. In the nuclear weapons, they were unstable and attempt to build that. The design was long and torturous by the gigantic size, chilling them all, emergency control room design and it would increase instead of fall as it was intended. Taken individuay, the many false the accident in the likely event with decisions required, every single o of em in the disaster and tn take a final initiating step but attempting to shut the reactor down using the emergency contro. This is exactly what happened control noble Early Morning in april 26, 1986. During the long delay, the Chain Reaction beg to run out of control and the emergency shutdown, resulting in an explosion, totally destroying the reactor. In the control room, the erators initially have no idea what happened and there is a disaster unfolng around them even as the colleagues we engulfed. Id like to read a passage from the book describinghat that was like. Inde the engineer room on level 12. 5, is engulfed in dust and darkness. There is a terrible hissing sound. Someone from the control rm, they said bring it immediately. They ran downstairs before reaching the control room, is stopped and his face was bloodied a unrecognizable. He said he had come from the station and others were sti there and needed help was a second operator on the other side of the wreckage. Still unable to stand, gross test we schooled. He was grieving withhock. Im all right, he said. Hes being sent from control room number four. Knowing this was at least two months, where they were going to get help. They ran through two flights of stairs and there was water. The door was jammed st but through a narrow gap, they were able to get through. Everything was in ru. Above the wreckage, he was staring into space. There was mooight. In the quarter a into the night, 15 feet from the reactor, he tried to figure out what haened. It was a terrifying apocalyptic site. The righthand wall w completely demolished by the foe of the explosion. After it disappeared, the water tanks and work the circulation pumps dangled in mid air. In that momen, they were certai he was dead. In theile of rubble, latin caes, swaying, showering the eckage. Somewhere in the path of the tangled mess, rebar and shattered concrete, where the reactor was supposed to be, the shimmering glitter of the blue white light reaching straight up to the night sky, dispearing into the night. Encircled by colors, hundreds of flames in the burning building metal and machinery, this was few seconds. Th there was immediate danger. Radioactiv ionization of air and unshlded reactor in the atmosphere. They describe this in the first, there were still alive to talk about it. By then, longer want to report what would happen. Immediate neighbors in his Apartment Building knew nothing of this and he remained anxious to make sure they didnt find out about it which is why is taken in his living room. Over the years, it functions ses to exist. The adjustedhe terms of the conversations and finally agreed to talk about many in the offices, they were happy to discuss it. Maria remained silent for years. They arrived, free photographs, doctors, notebooks. Is is a first image after the explosion, helicopter hovering over the scene in the afternoon april 27, 1986 the explosion was high in the atmosphere and remai a riata radioactive, a fire that no one in the world could put out. They were getting it under control and have High Altitude two years later, they began to realize they were determined to get this secret from the outside world control of this, refused to sanction an evaluation. Revealing what happened and then there is no official information about it. Instead, the roadblock it meanwhile, they were desperate to put up graphite power fire. The pilots would set up in syria or in afghanistan. Thirty years after the accident in the ukrainian city, is reading his poetry. By then, induced by radiation exposure he wrote his memoir, the age of 79. The citys local radio network, 1 10 p. M. , almost 36 hours since the explosion in 1200 buses in the region. The reason this was coordinated with the arctic to help oversee its, it is at times like this one instructed the drivers on where to make their pickups. This just three hours to move 27500 people. Also bringing home Important Documents and were led to believe they were gone for three days and then will return. The morning of monday, april 20, it was already clear the commission, they were facing a catastrophe on a global scale. In moscow, general secretary held an emergency meeting. The 27th congress and was nothing more than an explosion. In this position, a second power was vulnerable to be unseated in the overwhelming conservative apparatus if they thought it was too much. To this day, insisted on that information released to the public. Is it true, the decisions did not reflect what happened. The authorities continued to deny it until that night. They would do nothing to stop the spread of radiation and by then, they already kne something terrible had happened. An invisible plumeising from the ruins early sunday morning, it was acrosshe but it arrived in denma where there was a monitoring session. The readings went unnoticed that afternoon, radiation was reported and no further action was taken. They began to scavenge for it. Theres only almost 800 miles. Monday morning, a 29yearold technician the chemistry lab, is a copy station, hed only just got to work, he couldnt possib be contaminated. But soon, one after anotherhey arrived to the morning shift, ey would both set up at the far side. But there was leak in the reactor. Through doing tests and is on shoes. His only hours later, the authorities realized the contamination originated where it was exposed in the air, reactor that was diffent, the wind was blowing. Roughly two months after the explosion, inside reactor number four was extinguished but they continued. Thousands of square miles, an area related by lively people. Microscopic use of fuel and graphite. Once it fell, changing the col color, it became known as the red forest. He became a ghost town. It resembled compact. Tens of thousands of troops. It remained open there and there was wreckage. Hundreds from the initial explosion had to be cleared from the surrounding groups of the giant complex some of which like this one, devoped the work on the surface. Evenally they were in a position to send in all of it to do this job. They were too radioactive, relied on the aerial photograph and pipeline over, was attached at the end. From the west and shift ten of thousands of men 24 hours a day was eventually november 1986, attempts to compare and they were abandoned by the end of that year. It was surrounded by a fence sealed off from the outside world. It was t badly contaminated again and had to be abandoned like this one along with radioactive furniture. By 1997, ukraine alone are estimated 128 billion,fter the explosion, the city lies in the exclusion zone and reactor no mans land. The checkpoints on the interior industry but the Ukrainian Government recently opene and became a destination. 100,000 peopleade the journey last year alone. Ukrainian media reported the cleanup is necessary to remove the trash. Once a year on the anniversary ofhe disaster, they return to visit their old house. Thisf you were there once lived. The 30th anniversary, the same rooftop encrypted from this panoramic view. This is what the city of the future looks like. This disaster the lives of many people change the lives of tens of thousands of more. I hope you will read this book and the lives of the men and women attached and they are still struggling to understand what it met even for them. Thanks. Thankou for a very engaging and riveting presentation and the images you included along with your narration for supb. Thank you for the period the first question has to do with leaderip. When you think back to the decisions made immediately after the explosion, can y unpack, when their perspective, some of the large leadership failures that could have either changed or altered or shod have been done . There onhe ground, there was genuine confusion about what happened and the trueature of the accident. I spent a long time in stem everything was pretty okay. He did not expect the reactor to be destroyed. He supposed ts was because of all officials but i think the opposite work, people were in on like this on, they were unable torocess what is going on around them and they dont even believe the evidence they have. So im not sure what they were trying to consciouslyover what happened. Complicated handling after this happened, in the soviet state. Managers at the by this time, they became accustomed to the lies in concealing problems with these gos. Lying washe trade of the soet union and i think thats the major underwriting leadership that obligated this. Thank y very much the next question has to do with journalism and the writing process gaining access to very diicult information. In t presentation, youd had to divide peopleou interviewed interviewed. For those interested in the process of writing the craft of writing a story, could you plain or highlight how you gained access, the complity and challenges assiated how you weave together materials and primary sources . That is very good question. The short answer is irst of all, years after the soviet ion, there is talking to all of these people, what exted initially. Second, i had a l of. Ive worked with a fixer who now ive worked with for g knows how long. Since 2006, my friend who does work on researching this before we eve met in 2006 he and i worked very closely together i nted to try and track him down and a lot of persuading on his part, and he wouldnt shu up. I wouldometimes he said these are the people want to speak to agree had to fure out who is alive and who is original and who was. He did try to chomp these peop people. Trump them into the work for the oject and that was no more than any case in the from mosc moscow. There was this fast archive of original documents and handwritten memoirs and contact the people already involved in the accident. Shes beenorking on this for years and years and over the course of several months in the beginning of the book project, theyept meeting with her and persuaded her sincerity, she listened to what we hado say and say it was impossie to produce it objective. The idea that its idiotic it was what we would keep on with in those corporations. In terms of answering the question how i woke together the materials, what i saw, i was compelled to write the story, but then obviously youre dealing witheoples numbers and things that happene 20 years ago and some things, more than 30 years ago. I would use original documents and memoirs and letters and video and audio recordings to crosreference peoples testimonies. I think it was the best available version of the truth so i hope thatnswers that question. Exactly. That is a comp