[allard]

But others remained unaware of the invisible dangers around them: soldiers lounged in the sun close to the reactor, smoking cigarettes and stripped to the waist in the summer heat; a group of KGB officers arrived in the zone incognito, clad in tank crew overalls and carrying expensive Japanese-made dosimeters—but approached the ruins of Unit Four without knowing enough to turn the devices on. Only the fate of the crows that had come to scavenge from the debris but stayed too long—and whose irradiated carcasses now littered the area around the plant—provided any visible warning of the costs of ignorance. (Higginbotham)