R_Spc

The story of the Chernobyl divers has been one of the biggest revelations of my research. Literally every single piece of English language media you can find says that those 3 guys dove into the basement, opened the valves, then died within 2 weeks.

The event did happen, but not in the way it's portrayed. They were 3 employees of the plant, only one of them was what I'd consider old (he was in his 40s). They didn't dive, the basement was drained of most of its water before they went in - the highest it got was up to their knees. They each had two dosimeters (one strapped to their legs), and most importantly, none of them died and they continued to work at the plant afterwards. The first guy to die died of heart problems in 2005. One of them was at least alive until last year, but that's as much as I can find. The last guy is still alive, and I've spoken with him briefly.

I don't know, probably because they just assumed (like I did, before I started reading into it), that the entire power station would be shut down after what happened. Ukraine needed power, so it wasn't.

Both. Some of the official documents from the time are unreliable, depending on their subject. Since you don't know for certain what's true and what isn't, you have to be careful about which parts you believe. For example, the Soviet Union tried to cover up the true cause of the accident for 5 years after it happened. They held a big conference in Vienna and presented an epic, incredibly detailed report about what happened. While most of it was true, parts weren't, but it was believed because the lies were mixed in with a lot of truth.

It's remarkable how much misinformation there is, that was one of the reasons it took me so long to make my book. I had to read a ridiculous amount to get an accurate picture of what happened.

I recently picked up a book I have about it and read the first few pages again. Literally every paragraph contained an error.

Nope! You don't need to look hard, there's treasure everywhere. I'd rather leave it where it is. There's nothing worse than people looting stuff.