September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, appears in the translator’s preface as a point of comparison rather than as a narrated account of the attacks. The emergency response in New York City—triage stations, extra hospital shifts, and public blood donations—became a measure of how radically the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster differed: in one case, rescue preparations exceeded the number of survivors; in the other, a vast population survived exposure to an invisible hazard.

Emergency preparations and their reversal

After the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center, emergency triage stations were established across New York City. Doctors and nurses rushed to hospitals for additional shifts, while members of the public came forward to donate blood. The preface presents these actions as generous and solidaristic. Their purpose, however, was overtaken by the scale of the collapse: few people survived the destruction of the two towers, and the blood and triage stations were not needed.

The passage makes the gap between response and outcome central to its account of the date. The preparations were not treated as foolish; they were moving precisely because they expressed a readiness to help. Their eventual lack of use instead registered the scarcity of survivors who could have needed them.

The contrast with Chernobyl

The preface sets September 11 against the Chernobyl disaster as an almost inverse pattern of loss. The initial blast at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station killed one worker, Valery Khodemchuk; fewer than thirty workers and firefighters died from acute radiation poisoning in the following weeks. Yet tens of thousands received extremely high radiation doses. The disaster thus produced, in the preface’s formulation, more survivors than victims, making those who lived through exposure—not only the immediate dead—the subject of the book.

The contrast is not simply between two casualty totals. In New York, the emergency stations stood ready for survivors who were few. At Chernobyl, survival opened onto a much larger and less visible aftermath: people had to live with radiation exposure and with the uncertainty and social consequences attached to it. One testimony describes how a person could be transformed, in other people’s eyes, into a “Chernobyl person,” marked as someone from a disaster that others both feared and struggled to understand.

Function in the preface

The date gives the translator’s preface a contemporary frame for considering what counts as a disaster’s human toll. It directs attention away from the immediate spectacle of destruction alone and toward the unequal relationship between death and survival. The September 11 comparison makes the book’s emphasis legible: Chernobyl’s defining human story includes the many people who lived on after receiving dangerous doses, even when the full consequences could not be immediately seen or comprehended.

The passage does not develop September 11 into a separate narrative of the attacks. Instead, it uses the day to establish a sharp contrast in aftermath and to introduce the book’s focus on survivors. The date’s significance within the text lies in that framing: a response prepared for many survivors proved unnecessary, while Chernobyl left an immense survivor population whose experiences demanded attention.