Three days into her latest stay on Earth, Twilight Sparkle is enjoying learning about Europe in the company of her mentor while staying in the nation of Equios, a European microstate bordering Switzerland that functions as Equestria's outpost on Earth.
But when a solemn Celestia wakes her early one morning and asks Twilight to accompany her to a new place a thousand miles away, she will learn that not all is Friendship and Harmony when it comes to humans. That there are some very dark and dangerous events in humanity's past whose nature may rock her to her core. Can Twilight solve the mystery her mentor presents of what happened decades earlier near a town named Pripyat? And can anything be the same afterwards if she does...?
Inspired by the HBO series Chernobyl.
Thanks to user Eezee, there is now full text to speech version of the story available with pictures up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__0FF-VeXKg
Set during FiM season 2, the story takes place in the Phoenixverse of Turnabout Storm and The Lawyer and The Unicorn, but familiarity with those two stories is not required to read this one.
Author: Firesight
Prereaders: AJ_Aficionado, James CyberLink, Silentwoodfire, Denim_Blue
Picture Credit: James CyberLink
The saddest truth of the Soviet Union was that she wasn't worthy of her people. Respect from the United States to the citizens both great and small of the late and unlamented USSR.
Not holding everything back and releasing bit by bit? More words for me I guess.
Edit: You fiend! Linking To TV Tropes without warning! You time killing monster!
Celestia in Full Mentor mode! Most benevolent showing of Trolestia I've seen recently.
Haha lol scardy Twi
Good instructor!
MOAR of this pls and thx
By Murphy's law, this will definitely come back to bite them.
Correction for Twilight not Firesight.
I watched Chernobyl recently, so this resonated with me. Well done.
I think this might be one of the best pieces of literature I've ever read about Chernobyl. A sad chapter in human history, but at the same time a valuable lesson for us and future generations. And Celestia in full nurturing mentor mode is such a delight to witness.
9761947
Doesn't seem to, surprisingly.
9763701
Good work on the cover art!
9765144
Nope. This is the present day.
9761830
Not even remotely. Unfortunately, the lessons it taught go unheeded by some.
9761895
Actually, I'm now thinking that was a mistake and I'd've garnered more heat and likes if I'd reserved half the chapters for dailiy releases after publication. Ah well.
That's how incredibly evil I am!
Though actually, I didn't find that page. James CyberLink did so I linked it here.
9761927
Not sure I'd call this Trollestia as she's not trying to be cute here... for the most part. There was one genuine moment of mischief towards the end of the story that Twilight didn't catch. As in, something she implied but didn't state.
But yes, this was showcasing Celly in mentor mode--which was when she was at her strongest during the show. I don't actually like what they did with her in the final two seasons, so this is at least in part an effort to correct that a bit by using Celly as I envision her--powerful and wise.
9761935
Considering how unnerving everything she's seeing and sensing is, wouldn't you be?
9761940
You're welcome! And moar is definitely coming!
9761947
If it does, it will be in a future Phoenixverse story.
9761965
Correction accepted!
9762772
Good quotes, and ones that definitely apply here. Thanks for sharing!
9762946
Why thank you!
I do think mentor Celestia is my favorite Celestia, and that's a version of her we stopped seeing in later seasons.
9762466
As did I.
That's where the idea for this story came from. It's one of those deals where the idea wouldn't leave me alone until I put it on paper, and once I started, I just couldn't stop. That's the best kind of writing, right there, when you indulge a muse and for it, things come easily.
Missing a space between those two words.
Please pardon the pedantics, especially since it's clear what is meant, but "aural" means "auditory". Perhaps a word like "thaumic" or "essential" may fit better?
This. This is what I want to see from you. Interesting commentary on humanity, with an outside species' perspective, with none of that "Humans are bastards and should be exterminated" bull.
9768775
Thanks. There's been a weird issue with imports where spaces between words sometimes disappear where italics and boldface tags are involved. Oddly, when I checked the fimfiction editor, there was an invisible boldface tag where the space was supposed to be for some reason.
9768823
Went ahead and changed it to 'magical awareness'. I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
9771251
I'd never do that. Not my style.
I much prefer the worlds—and even within Equestria, various races and nations—to be in balance in terms of abilities. One of the things I hate about the show is that it's given all the non-pony races some kind of ridiculous and systemic character flaw.
This story was something different for me. I regret I don't currently have anything else along these exact lines, but I invite you again to read the Firefly stories if you'd like me to see go real in depth into worldbuilding and character development with plenty of (combat) action.
Intriguing. I recognize what disaster they are experiencing. And is still unfolding.
Loved it.
Chapter 1:
So Celestia just decided to visit Chernobyl just like that. Also did she really had to force Twilight go there as well?
I can't help but to think Celestia in her infinite wisdom going Wouldn't it be cool if we just got right next to the sarcophagus,I am sure my student would like to study it.
9778636
No, she planned this, waiting for a good weather weekday there that coincided with when they were in Equios. As for why Celly’s doing this—I wouldn’t say she forced Twilight to go—you’ll find out at the end.
9778665
Stay tuned.
9774520
This was great, the show got a bit difficult to follow in the last episode and you wrapped it up nicely.
9778865
Thanks!
I tried doing my own research here and not relying on the HBO series, which I knew was taking liberties with the truth at times (such as claiming the use of graphite was unnecessary when it in fact had a perfectly valid use as a neutron moderator). The problem was, the true sequence of events isn’t fully known and you get contradictory information from different sites and sources. I basically settled on what seemed to be the facts not in dispute.
Thanks for reading!
Tsunami, tidal waves are different things with different causes, tend to be less destructive then a tsunami.
9779276
Corrected, thanks.
Wait...Pripyat...isn't that close to Chernobyl? Huh; hopefully these princesses have a 'hazmat suit' spell, since they failed to bring any actual suits.
Also, isn't there a 30km-radius 'exclusion zone' around the power plant? A zone that's illegal to cross, or something?
Ponies haven't discovered the incredibly destructive and damn-near eternal force of nuclear energy, have they?
Lucky them; they haven't accidentally rendered part of their planet almost-permanently scarred, hostile to life.
Sure, nuclear can be harnessed and used well - but only if all the safety measures are used and kept. These idiotic Russians failed to do that, resulting in a meltdown - really, what did they think would happen if they turned off the safety measures?
I love this story; well-written, well-researched and everything just fits.
Fantastic job.
9780320
Bingo. Well, given Celly’s been here before and she wouldn’t take Twilight into a place she couldn’t protect her, so you can be sure she’s got something handy.
There are guided tours you can take there now. Few people live there, but the radiation levels aren’t generally bad enough anymore to poison you except over a longer period. A few hours or even a night there isn’t going to hurt you, as long as you avoid certain areas.
Read on. You’ll get the answer later.
Unless the Zebras use Megaspell missiles, of course...
They believed their own propaganda. The reactors were said to be disaster-proof. And in fairness, they had to really try to make it happen. Do everything just wrong. Western reactors, by contrasts, have extra layers of safety features on them, not the least of which is a containment tower designed to contain explosions and core breaches to a certain point. That’s partly why, say, the accident at Three Mile Island wasn’t much worse.
9780388
Thank you very much!
That's because stars like the sun are basically large fusion reactors* while nuclear power plants in use right now use nuclear fission, also you can be in a uranium mine and have no ill effects* , also the radiation talked about is ionizing radiation* from the electromagnetic spectrum*, which the human body can handle up to a certain amount of certain types of ionizing radiation without long term effects*.
*we're looking into using it as an alternative to what's in use now.
* so long as you don't breathe in the dust or get any in your blood stream via open cuts.
* compared to non-ionizing radiation which is relatively harmless.
* which is a form of radiation with the others being acoustic, gravitational and particle.
* you even take it in daily from food, water and the air we breathe and we have inside our bodies.
9788957
It's true that just being in the presence of mined uranium is probably not going to hurt you without ingesting it or breathing in dust for an extended period. The alpha and beta particle radiation of Uranium can be stopped by skin and clothes, respectively. However, you omitted the most dangerous radiation of all: Neutron.
That's emitted by both fission and fusion reactions. Once a sustained fission reaction is initiated by neutron bombardment on enriched Uranium (or Plutonium), they become far more radioactive and dangerous because they're continuously releasing more neutrons through ongoing fission reactions, which are hard to stop. Neutron radiation also has the ugly effect of contaminating what it touches by turning stable atoms into unstable isotopes through neutron activation (basically, adding additional neutrons to an atomic nucleus), meaning it can turn other substances radioactive--even your own body tissues.
I tried to keep this story simple and not get too caught up into the explanations of what radiation was or how reactors worked, or else I was going to get bogged down in describing the difference between the various types of radiation or U-238/235. So suffice it to say, the ponies are aware of what Uranium is and what it can do on an alchemic level, and Twilight's explanation implies that attempts to use it in alchemy have met with disastrous results before.
9790081
Neutron radiation is a form of ionizing radiation, good thing you did too.