I was eleven when the Chernobyl disaster happened. At the time, I remember hearing a lot about it, but it wasn’t something that frightened me. I was halfway around the world, and despite a nuclear power plant being situated fairly close to where I lived, I didn’t give it much thought (as seemed to be the case with a lot of things that happened to me around that age).

Over time, I read more about what had happened, and over the course of the past couple months I’ve especially taken in a lot of essays and photos about it all. Despite the waste that it creates, nuclear power is still one of the best solutions for creating the large amounts of power that the human race needs, but human errors at Chernobyl caused something so catastrophic that it’s almost hard to look past.

Of all the things I’ve read in the past couple weeks (and years even), this map, narrated photo essay, and timeline is one of the better pieces I’ve seen. It broke my heart.