November 19, 2025 • 45 mins
When Russia invaded Ukraine, hundreds of starving dogs were trapped inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. For years, Oregon-based veterinarian Dr. Jenn Betz had been their lifeline. Now, with Putin’s troops occupying the site, she had only one thought: How do I get back there?
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If you would like to help the dogs of Chernobyl, visit CleanFutures.org.
Today's episode is a production of iHeartPodcasts and School of Humans.
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Lucas Reilly
Senior Producer is Josh Fisher
Story Editor is Virginia Prescott
Editing and Sound Design by Jesse Nighswonger
Mixing and Mastering by Jesse Nighswonger
From School of Humans, producers are Emilia Brock, Edeliz Perez and Gabbie Watts
Research and Fact-Checking by Lucas Reilly and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's five am in Portland, Oregon, when doctor Jen Betts's
phone starts buzzing. At first, it's just a couple of notifications,
then more a cascade of alerts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I woke up at five o'clock or so in the
morning with my phone just going off crazy boom boom boom.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Half asleep, she reaches for her phone and scrolls through
the flood of texts. It's February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Everybody was texting and saying, you know, Russia had just
invaded Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
For Jen, this isn't just breaking news. Ukraine is like
her second home.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So it was a very scary moment.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Jen starts texting her friends there, checking in anxious for replies,
but her message just hang unread.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was very difficult trying to get information a long
moment until we were able to find out what's going on.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Later, she would watch CCTV footage that explained.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Why everything was cut off. The first thing they did
was cut off all communication.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
The camera catches tanks barreling down a road outside Chernobyl.
Plumes of diesel smoke curl into the air. One after another,
Armored vehicles rolled through a Russian convoy stretching for miles,
armored trucks, fuel tankers, missile launchers, and then a dog
(01:40):
pokes its nose out from the barren woods peers across
the road, ghostly white, small tail wagging nervously as it
weaves between tanks. Jen leans closer into her screen, her
eyes flicker with recognition. She knows this dog.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Her name is Snow, and so this one particular dog
we see her running across the street, obviously very confused
as to what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Snow is one of hundreds of strays living in the
shadow of history's worst nuclear disaster, and Jen, a retired veterinarian,
is their lifeline.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'm the veterinarian medical director for the Dogs of Chernobyl program.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You know that Chernobyl, the radioactive, post apocalyptic wasteland abandoned
by humans after history's worst nuclear disaster some thirty nine
years ago. Since twenty seventeen, Jen has volunteered with the
Clean Futures Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities affected
(02:57):
by the Chernobyl disaster. Of the mission is to vaccinate, sterilize,
and administer medicine to Chernobyls stray dogs, the descendants of
pets abandoned decades ago.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
This is an industrial area, this is a nuclear power plant.
This is not a place where dogs should be roaming
around freely. And so right now we have this situation
where they are just here and they are multiplying. But
that's the hand they were dealt, and that's where they live,
and we try to provide them the best comfortable place
(03:34):
that they can have considering where they are.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Dogs like snow, suffer harsh winters, are preyed on by wolves,
and yes must deal with radioactive fallout from one of
the world's worst man made disasters. Now, with Russian troops
occupying the site, Jen had only one thought, how do
(03:59):
I get back there? Welcome to very special episodes and
I heart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz and
this is the Dogs of Chernobyl.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Welcome back to very special episodes. She's Danish Schwartz. Hey,
he's Aaron Burnett.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
What up?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I'm Jason English Now and Lucas Riley first pitched this story.
I think I still believed some of the viral headlines
that the Dogs of Chernobyl have superpowers and the laws
of biology don't apply to them, But as we'll come
to learn, some of that was a little overblown.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
I just want to go on record.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Before we begin. These are still very good dogs and
they should be celebrated.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Yes, they would be rated highly.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
They're good dogs. All dogs are good dogs, but these
are especially good dogs.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Completely.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Also, that's the phrase, the world's most radioactive dogs. That's
like a line of poetry, or maybe like an MF.
Doom lyric. I don't know, but I love that phrase.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
The obvious media recommendation here is the HBO classic show Chernobyl,
which I've managed to not watch yet, and I will
rectify that. Have either of you read the book The
World Without Us by Alan Wiseman?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
No, No, but that sounds intriguing, a very cool book.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It imagines what would happen if humans just disappeared from
the world, but all our stuff was left here, and
what would happen and how nature and water would reclaim things.
This story reminds me a little bit of that in
some regard, I could totally see.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That life finds a way to understand why all this matters.
I want to take you back to nineteen eighty six.
It's late to April in the Soviet Union. The city
of Ukrainian Creepyet is blooming roses dot the streets. People
(06:03):
are bustling about. A new amusement park with a ferris
wheel and bumper cars is almost ready to open for
May Day. Two decades earlier, creep Yet didn't even exist,
but now it's home to almost fifty thousand people. Scientists, engineers,
their families, with hotels, schools, and good jobs, lots of
(06:27):
them at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant just two miles away.
But on Saturday, April twenty sixth at one twenty three
a m a safety test in the plant's reactor four
goes horribly wrong. The core overheats. Engineers scrambled to shut
(06:49):
it down, but the rods to cool the system fail.
Steam builds to catastrophic levels. The reactor got hotter and hotter,
and then two explosions tear through the reactor. Steel and
(07:10):
concrete fly like shrapnel. Two workers are killed immediately. Radioactive
particles caesium, iodine, strontium rise into the night sky over
Ukraine and Belarus. But in prip Yet, no one is
told what's happening. Citizens woke up that weekend like any other.
(07:32):
Children played outside adults walked to the market, babushkas hung
laundry to dry, unaware that invisible radioactive dust was settling
on their clothes, hair, and skin, until eleven a m
On Sunday, when the city loudspeakers crackled to.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Life venuemania, mneumania, mneumonia, mneumonia, A.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Little faint and eerie at first attention, attention, there's an emergency,
But by then it was already too late. Shut up.
Just a few miles away, the smoldering reactor had released
fifty to one hundred and eighty five million curies of
(08:22):
radio nucleotides, the same amount of radioactive material as four
hundred Hiroshima bones.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Who knew at.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Buses pour into the city, women, men and children pile inside.
In roughly three hours, almost the entire town empties. Families
are told pack light and leave your pets at home.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
They were told they were going to be gone for
three days. To not take anything. You weren't allowed to
take your dogs. Just pack stuff for three.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Days, believing they'd soon return. Many left behind bowls of
food and water out for their animals.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
But they were never allowed back.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Crepiet became a ghost town. Overnight, but in homes and apartments,
countless pets weight, dogs, wine and closed doors, cats pace
along windowsills. Some animals wander onto the empty streets confused. Meanwhile,
(09:28):
the Soviet government tries to stop the disaster from snowballing.
Helicopters pour sand to stop the fire. They build a
concrete sarcophagus around the reactor to contain the fallout, and
Soviet troops arrive with a grim task.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
The government went in and tried to kill all of
the animals to prevent spread of the radiation.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Soldiers armed with rifles sweep through Prepiet. They shoot dogs
and cats on site. It's a brutal, haunting scene. But
the plan to cull all the pets doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
A lot of them ran off into the woods and
weren't able to be killed. And since then they have
been living in this area and breeding, dying and reproducing.
And so that's where these dogs came from.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
These are the ancestors of today's stray dogs of Chernobyl
generations have come and gone in this radioactive wasteland. They
endure brutal winters and disease. They fend off wolves and
bears lurking in the forest they scavenge for food, relying
(10:45):
mostly on the humans still working at the power plant.
By the time gen Bets first came to Chernobyl in
twenty seventeen, there was an estimated one thousand strays living
in the exclusion zone that's the almost twenty mile radius
surrounding the power plant. The dogs split into two packs
(11:08):
within the zone. One lives near the power plant, another
in the town of Chernobyl City, just a few miles away.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So it's Ukrainian law that nothing can be removed from
the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and that includes dogs.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And for good reason. It's one of the most radioactively
contaminated places on the planet.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
These dogs, they roam around, they roll around in the dirt,
they have it in their fur, they are ingesting it.
There's particles of graphite around on the ground and down
in the dirt, and so these animals are ingesting this
and once ingested, it does get absorbed into the bones.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And like everything else around Chernobyl, the dogs can be
radioactive too.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I have puppies where the radiation isotopes were embedded in
their skull, so no matter how much I tried to
wash them, we couldn't we could not get it out.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
For years, Jen made routine trips into this restricted area
as a volunteer veterinarian. Each visit requires careful planning and
safety protocols.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
When we're in the zone, we wear a docimitter where
we are tracked the entire time we are there, and
they take our measurements before we go into the area.
When we come back out of the area, we take
those measurements and those measurements are kept in a database
where molt radiation is cumulative.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Surprisingly, the air in Chernobyl is not actually that bad. Today.
Background radiation is similar to, if not less than, what
you'd be exposed to during a commercial flight. The problem
is what's on the ground. Radioactive particles cling to soil,
(12:50):
some off the charts hotspots more than one thousand times
normal levels are scattered about.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You don't want to sit on the ground. You don't
want to put your hands in your mouth. If there's
a huge dusty area, you want to wear protection for
your eyes in your mouth. I'll put something over your faith.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Even with those dangers, Gen's work has kept the dogs
healthier and living longer than anyone expected. But in February
of twenty twenty two, everything changed. That's when the Russian
convoy rolled through the exclusion zone.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
When the Russians invaded Chernobyl, they brought their tanks through there.
They stirred up the ground. They caused a lot of issues,
and things that were lying dormant has been put into
the air again.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
The dogs had to breathe that contaminated air, and so
did the Russians. The invading army didn't just pass through Chernobyl.
They raised their flag over the Red Forest.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
The Red Forest is an area in right outside of
the power plants where most of the nuclear fallout fell.
And so what it did was it killed all of
the trees and turned all of their leaves red as
they were dying.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
After the Chernobyl disaster, the Red Forest was bulldozed two
Russian soldiers arriving in twenty twenty two, the open ground
looked like a good place to set up camp.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
They were there for thirty days. They were sleeping in
the area, They were cooking their food, they were smoking,
they were inhaling all of the dirt and fumes.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
The soldiers dug foxholes and bunkers with heavy machinery. Some
reports indicate that they set parts of the nearby forest
on fire, releasing clouds of radioactive smoke into their lungs, and.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So they probably did get a significant amount that probably
will cause some problems later in life should they live
that long.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
The Russian troops weren't the only humans at risk. In
twenty twenty two, hundreds of people still worked on remediation
and cleanup at the abandoned plant.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So they rounded up all of the workers and they
put them in a bunker and made them stay in there.
They weren't allowed out.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
About three hundred workers were held captive, forced into an
underground bunker at gunpoint. They survived by rationing food and
sleeping on tabletops and the dogs. In peacetime, most of
them had relied on the generosity of those workers for handouts.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Some of the workers were able to sneak some food
out to the dogs, but most of them were not
able to be fed, so they just sat around and
waited and waited and starved.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Gen two thousands of miles away could do nothing but wait. Then,
in early April, the Russian army withdrew from Chernobyl. Once
the captive workers at the power plant stepped out of
their makeshift prison, they were shocked to see the half
starved dogs.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
When they finally were liberated, the dogs were just a
skin and bones.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Photos posted by the workers eventually landed in front of
gen and.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's when I decided that I needed to get there
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
In the spring of twenty twenty two, doctor Jen Betts
began making plans to return to Ukraine. This time, it
wouldn't be a routine trip. The country was under siege.
Missiles pulverized apartment buildings, air raid sirens howled through the night.
Even so, she started assembling a team volunteers, veterinarians, people
(16:56):
willing to risk entering a radioactive war zone for the
sake of some stray dogs, and she needed them to
understand what they'd be walking into. It turns out that
the dogs of Chernobyl are a scientific mystery. Since nineteen
eighty six, they've endured exposure to radioactive elements, heavy metals, pesticides,
(17:19):
and other contaminants. Scientists have long wondered how have these
dogs survived for so many generations in such a toxic place.
To find out, Jen teamed up with researchers in the
US and Ukraine. In twenty eighteen, she began collecting blood
(17:39):
samples from the dogs and sending vials to labs in
the United States. One of those labs is home to
doctor Meghan Dylan.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I got my PhD in the Genetics and Genomics program
at NC State, where I worked with the Dogs of
Chernobyl project.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For the last several years, Megan has been studying the
DNA of Chernobyl's dogs to better understand the effects of
toxic exposure on their genetic makeup.
Speaker 6 (18:09):
We'd have this opportunity to see about thirty generations down
the line what these different contaminants can do to the
genome into populations.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
With the help of scientists at Columbia Duke, the University
of South Carolina, and the National Genome Project, Megan would
map the dog's genome and compare their DNA to other
stray populations in Russia and Poland.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
And we're able to kind of identify places where we
see these differences, and so we can start to see
banding patterns in the chromosomes, and we can start to
see potential aberrations or malformities in these chromosomes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
She and her colleagues published their findings in twenty twenty three.
The results were startling.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
These dogs are genetically more different than we would have expected.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Remember, the dogs split into two packs. One lives near
the power plant, the second in town a few miles away.
Both groups had DNA significantly different from strays found in
Russia and Poland. What was more striking, the two packs
in Chernobyl were also genetically distinct from each other.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
These dogs that were separated by hundreds and hundreds of
kilometers were actually more genetically similar to each other than
our two populations that are only sixteen kilometers apart. Work.
But we found that we do have this very high
degree of genetic differentiation, or just a high level of
differences in the genotypes for these two populations of dogs.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Now, that was a data point that Megan and her
colleagues wanted to study more deeply.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
So we were very interested in identifying what may be
the driving force for this genetic differentiation.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
They had their hunches. One possible explanation was that the
dogs could be some kind of mutants.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Super Survivors thought it was a possibility that we might
find some evidence of DNA mutations where the DNAs might
persist in a population and be passed down from parents
to offspring all the way down the line.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
In twenty twenty three, they published their findings in the
journal Science Advances. The media pounced on the mutant.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Narrative after we published this paper. That was where a
lot of other minds went. It was based on these
genetic mutants that were living in Jernobyl.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
The dogs had superpowers, they were immune to radioactivity, they
were evolving at warp speed. Behold the knine equivalent of
the Ninja turtles three eyed fish from the Simpsons. When
doctor Jen Betts, who's also an author on the study,
read this media coverage, she rolled her eyes.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
One of the things that bothers me is the misconception
in the news media. You know, people write articles for
clickbait and to get you know, and there's catchy headlines
of the dogs are rapidly evolving and the dogs have superpowers,
or the wolves are immune to cancer, and none of
this is correct.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Over at NC State, Megan shakes her head at how
the press jumped to conclusions.
Speaker 6 (21:36):
It's not like these dogs are turning into a new
species at this point. We're just finding that they're genetically
more different than we would have expected.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
The real story of the dog's survival wasn't about science
fiction level mutations. The real story, Megan explains, might be
best illustrated by Victorian era moths. Back in nineteenth century England,
the peppered moth fluttered everywhere. Some had pale wings, some
(22:12):
had dark wings. But then it came the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
But during this industrial age in England start to see
a lot more soot accumulating on trees, So the bark
is darker, and so we see this directional shift where
the darker moths are able to evade predators and survive
to reproduce better than those lighter moths that are more
(22:39):
easily seen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Industrial areas became so riddled with soot that the dark
moths were blending into their environment, and unlike the pale moths,
living to tell about it, the dogs in Chernobyl might
have a similar story. Like the dark colored moths, the
dog dogs that survived the nineteen eighty six disaster may
(23:03):
have had a built in physical advantage that the other
dogs didn't have. The dogs without that advantage died. Those
that had it lived long enough to reproduce and pass
on their genes, a text bookcase of what's called directional selection.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
It's possible that they have a better ability to repair
their DNA after it has been damaged by these radioactive
contaminants or the heavy metals, and so they're able to
better survive and reproduce than individuals that may have this
(23:43):
slower DNA repair response.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Hearing all this, you might be wondering, cool, Dana, but
why are scientists studying a bunch of radioactive stray dogs. Well,
it's to keep you, dear listener, healthy and alive.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
We know that dogs can be this kind of canary
in the coal mine, and so they do have this
great deal of genetic and epidemiological similarity with humans.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Dogs and humans share a similar biology. Both species suffer
from many of the same diseases and cancers. Both species
routinely share the same environment too. Our pets breathe the
same air, play in the same house, and may even
sleep in the same bed as us. In fact, researchers
(24:33):
have found that dogs are a good predictor for human health.
If your dog gets cancer because of an environmental contaminant,
there's a good chance you might get sick from it too.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
By studying these dogs, we really have the ability to
kind of infer possible responses and other species, especially including humans.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
A dog's health can be a crystal ball into the
future of human health, and that's important. The World Health
Organization estimates that twenty three percent of all human deaths
are caused by risk factors in the environment, and right now,
over seventy million Americans live within just three miles of
(25:17):
a superfund site. The dogs of Chernobyl live in one
of the world's most stressful environments. It's riddled with radiation, pesticides,
heavy metals. They're helping us peer into the future of
human health and giving us time to develop treatments before
(25:38):
it's too late.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
Harnessing the data from these species is really allowing us
to kind of accelerate these discoveries that will benefit both
dogs and humans.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Before the Russians abandoned Chernobyl in April twenty two, they
littered the area with booby traps like trip wires and
land mines. Jen Betts wanted to go anyway, but first
the dogs needed food and fast, so she contacted Andrew Simon,
(26:17):
a university professor and scientist who lives in Ukraine. Like Jen,
Andrew has been studying Chernobyl for years.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I spoke with him and said, you know, if you're
going to Chernobyl, can you please please bring some dog food.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jen wired him funds to buy three hundred kilograms about
six hundred and sixty pounds of kibble. Andrew loaded it
into his trailer and set out for the exclusion zone.
The journey was harrowing, bombed out roads, burnt out vehicles.
(26:55):
Andrew nears a river and comes upon the mango remains
of a bridge. He spins around and tries a new route,
turning down another bombed out road, obstacles everywhere. Andrew improvises
it takes nine hours to make a trip that usually
(27:17):
takes an hour and a half. But finally Andrew arrives.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
At that point he could get into Choble Town, but
he couldn't get all the way to the power plant,
and so we left all of the food at one
of the checkpoints there.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Andrew drops the food at a checkpoint and then Jen
messages a handful of power plant workers who will be
arriving by bus in a few days, asking them to
help move it those last few miles.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Even people that didn't like dogs, they were all helping.
It was I have pictures of all of the workers
on the bus with the bags of dog food all
in the aisles.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Meanwhile, Andrew scouts out the damage. Near the check point
is a science lab where the Dogs of Chernobyl program
keeps some of its supplies. He pops over to check
on it. Turns out the Russians had broken in.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
They kicked in the doors, pried open the locks.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
The room has been turned upside down. It's a mess.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It didn't destroy any they just stole. I thought it
was pretty hilarious that they They stole the coffee pot,
the microwave, the weed eater, the chainsaw, the lawn equipment,
but they left the microscopes and all of the expensive
scientific equipment.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Other officers around the power plant, however, weren't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
All of the offices throughout the interturnal, they were all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Russians destroyed nearly seven hundred computers, plus a total of
one hundred and thirty five million dollars worth of equipment.
By June twenty twenty two, Jen couldn't wait any longer.
She had to see things with her own eyes, so
she booked it to the airport. Commercial flights into Ukraine
(29:16):
were grounded, so Jen landed in Poland and boarded a
lumbering eighteen hour train ride to Kiev. Just a few
months after the invasion. Jen turned up in Kiev. Passengers
sat in uneasy silence as conductors checked their documents. Jen
(29:36):
could immediately see and feel the human cost of war.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
People are sad, people are scared. You hear air raid
sirens going off constantly.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
In Kiev, Jen reunited with some of her fellow volunteers.
There was Andrew, who had helped bring all that dog food,
and there was a young Ukrainian lawyer named Vidim. For
Vadim Chernobyl was home. He was born in Pripyat, shortly
before Reactor number four exploded. His father still lived in
(30:15):
the region. He split his time shuttling between Kiev and
the exclusion zone. In twenty eighteen, he bumped into doctor
Betts while she was helping the dogs at Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Videm comes rolling up on his bicycle with no brakes,
and he comes rolling up really fast, and then he
sticks his foot in his front tire to use as
a break. His English is okay, he's learning, and he says,
I want to I love dogs, I want to help.
And he said okay, and so he started helping us,
and he came back at year after year.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Like Jen, Vidim is anxious to get to Chernobyl, where
his father was trapped during the Russian occupation.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Vadim was not in Chernobyl at the time, but his
father was, and he also was trying to get into
Chernobyl to bring supplies. There were people that needed insulin,
there were his father needed some medication.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The team loaded up a van with food, gear and
supplies and set out for the long, tense drive to Chernobyl.
Out the window, Jen sees the country She loves torn apart.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
If you drive around Ukraine anywhere, you're gonna see destruction.
They are targeting civilian they're chart targeting apartment buildings, they're
targeting hospitals. You can't not see it. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Destroyed bridges forced them to ford shallow rivers. At checkpoints,
armed soldiers examine their papers and ask why they're headed
into one of the most exclusive places in the country.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Who are you, Why are you here? Show me your
certifications to get in. We stopped, I believe it was
around six times before even getting into.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
With each checkpoint the questioning gets more severe. Vadim and
Andrew do the talking.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
He got in some ways just because he knows everybody
there and was able to bring humanitarian aid, and then
he also became our liaison.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
The final checkpoint waves them on with a warning stay
on the road, there are land mines. As the van
crept closer to Chernobyl, arriving in the settlement of Ivan Kiev,
an eerie silent loomed over them.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
There was a lot of destruction in that area as well,
and so it was just everything was silent, and none
of us spoke. We just sat there and drove and
with our jaws open and just went down to the
area and it was, you know, it was kind of
just devastating experience.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
They lurch closer to the reactor site and pull up
to the red forest where Russian soldiers had camped. The
car stops, the doors swing open.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I did go into the trenches where they had dug
up in that area, and you know, all of that
had I was worried about that all of that had
been cleared. And our friend vedem He's had been in
that area as well, So I trusted trusted him and said, okay,
you sure there's no landmines. All I'm just going to
follow right behind you, so you go first.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
After hours of traveling, they pull up to the power plant.
Dogs are everywhere. The strays clearly found the food Andrew brought.
They're putting on weight, and it seems they've become healthy
enough to breed too. There are dozens of pregnant dogs.
(33:46):
Jen quickly realizes if she wants to stabilize the population
and provide all these new pups with medical care, she
needs to kickstart a SPAE and newter operation soon. But
that is a tall task because first you have to
catch them, which is harder than it sounds.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
We had problems for years and years being able to
catch these dogs. It's an industrial area, there's stuff everywhere.
The dogs run under fences, you know, to get away.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In the past, volunteers tried dressing up like the plant
workers who fed them. The dogs weren't fooled. They tried
using blow darts to sedate them.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
No dice, you you know, blow dart one dog. The
dog takes off running and all of the other dogs say,
I know what's happening. I'm gone, and then that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
With the war raging around them, Jen knew there was
no time to play games. If she wanted to give
these dogs medical care, she'd have to find a way
to trap dozens at a time. She returned to America
and started assembling a team of vets, vet texts, and
dog handlers to run a field hospital. Meanwhile, in Chernobyl,
(35:04):
she enlisted a local plant worker named Yuri to start
training the dogs to be corralled into makeshift pens.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
We spent months and months training them to go into
these makeshift areas that we could close the gate on them.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Four months later, in October twenty twenty two, Jen would
return to Chernobyl. This time she came with thirteen volunteers,
plus vials of vaccines, medicine, and surgical gear. It was
time to get to work. It started with Yuri. Over
(35:41):
the last few months, the dogs had come to trust him,
and so like the pied Piper, he walked into one
pen and lured a pack of pups inside.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
We were able to house thirty or forty little dogs
in one location at one time, and then each one
of those we could either go in and handcap with
the workers.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Or ourselves one by one. The team started bathing and
shaving the strays, but.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Every single animal that comes through, we freaks them for
radiation and decontaminate them before we touch them, and we
simply wash their fur, or we clip their fur with
the clippers and then rescan them and then they're fine.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Jen enticed the most skittish puppies by feeding them meatballs
laced with sedatives went to sleep. They were carried to
a mash unit surgical tables fashioned from ironing boards, oxygen tanks,
machines for anesthesia and monitoring. For four days straight, the
team worked around the clock, stumbling to bed exhausted as
(36:44):
the war echoed around them.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
You get woken up in the middle of the night
hearing a schehi drunk go right over your head. It's
destination is Kiev and not Chernobyl. But still you never know,
and so you can't sleep. You're on a constant edge.
Everybody is anxious and it's just not a good situation.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Still, with the help of more than a dozen volunteers,
the team cleaned, vaccinated, spade, and neutered and treated one
hundred and twenty five dogs. It was their most successful
mission yet. Jen returned to Kiev and the team celebrated
(37:23):
over dinner. They left toasted their success. They had a
good time. For a moment, they forgot they were in
a war zone. But war has a way of making
itself known. Just a few hours after they left.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
We're eating dinner at this one place, and right across
the street the building there was bombed and destroyed.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Soon war would touch the team in more unimaginable ways.
The deem had helped make the spay and neuter operation possible,
but he wasn't there to help. A Few weeks before
the mission, he made up his mind to join the
Ukrainian military. He was quickly sent to the front lines.
(38:11):
Jen has a selfie scent of him sitting in a
foxhole in fatigues holding a rifle.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
His brother had gotten drafted into the army, and he
decided to join alongside his brother, and unfortunately was killed.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Three months later, in January twenty twenty three, a rocket
hit Vadim's unit during the Battle of Bakhmut. He and
several other Ukrainian soldiers were killed in action. The eager
young man who rolled up on his bicycle offering to
help preserve the fragile lives of stray dogs became another
(38:54):
casualty of war. Three years later. The war continues to
chase Jen and her friends in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
It's everywhere. I just had a friend of mine just
last week her veterinary clinic, her clinic that she's set up,
was hit by missiles and thankfully none of the dogs died.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And yet, despite all the risks, Jen has returned to
Chernobyl six times since that visit in twenty twenty two.
Against all the odds, the dogs of Chernobyl are surviving
and with Jen's help, they're thriving.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
In the past, yes, because of predation, because of fighting
amongst each other, because of lack of food, because of
the attrition rate, some of them did not last very long.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Many rarely made it past four or five years now.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But since our program has started and we've had control
over the population, we have dogs that are twelve, thirty,
even fourteen years of age at this point. I have
started a lot of them on arthritis medication, and you know,
I'm trying to keep them as comfortable as possible.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
In a place long associated with death, The dogs of
Chernobyl remind us that life endures, and Jen plans to
keep returning for as long as necessary.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. But
I'm more drawn to the place now than ever, and
I have since the war. I have so many more
friends and loved ones there that I'm very very close
with and you know, talk to on a daily basis.
Chernobyl is a funny place and that it captures you
and all you want to do is just, for some reason,
(40:43):
just be in Chernobyl.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
She has just one wish for the war.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It's a reality. It's it just needs to stop.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It just needs to stop. If you would like to
help the dogs of Chernobyl, you can send donations to
cleanfutures dot org. You can specify donations to the dogs,
to the local children, or even the cats. And if
(41:13):
you want to help out more, Jen says, come volunteer
with her. She needs help doing social media, Dana.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
When we were at Mental Floss, some of our best
performing stories were photo essays from people who managed to
get into the exclusion zone and photograph the ways that
nature had retaken the Chernobyl. We'll find out if that
applies to anthology podcasts.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
There's something kind of just romantic about it, the thought
that even without people and even in the aftermath of
like a massive piece of human cause destruction, that life
still exists and these poor dogs.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
This one has so many great moving moments, compelling moments,
but like I was really just struck by the character.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Videm Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Arrives on a bicycle, wants to help duo.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Yes, I mean he's pulling up the foot break, putting
this on the wheel. I can totally see that moment.
And he's just such a powerful moment for a character's intro.
You can just immediately know who this guy is with
just one gesture.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
It just sort of makes you realize, like how much
impact a single person can have.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yes, true, sometimes for.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
A situations where you look around and you're like, okay,
well surely someone else will step up and take care
of this, but sometimes it just has to be you,
and if you act, you'll make a huge difference.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
M did you guys have any very special characters for
this one?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
I mean doctor Betts, Well, doctor Batts is the obvious winner,
So maybe for Yuri, I'll give very special moment for
arriving in town and getting the dogs to trust him
to the point that they will follow them into the
pen and let the healing begin, a very sweet moment.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
I definitely like that mind's a little bit less sweet.
I just love that the dogs could get fed a
little bit and then pregnant. So the pregnant dogs. I
was so into that, as like life finds away right there.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Amazing.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, tackle you, Dana. I was really touched by that.
Is there a movie here?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
There's a TV show for sure.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
But yeah, definitely a TV show. I tried to do
my best on castings. Sook for veterinarian doctor Jennifer Betts.
I went with Jennifer Lawrence. I thought she could pull
that off. And then for doctor Megan Dylan. I liked
Florence Pugh. I thought she could definitely play someone who's
studying the DNA of Chernobyl dogs. And for Andrew Simon,
the university professor, the scientist cat. I was having a
tough one with this one, so I went with a
(43:31):
young Ed Norton. I don't know why I went young
Ed Darton, right, but I liked that call. And then
for the young Ukrainian lawyer Vadin my Man. This one
was difficult. I even went and looked up lists of
Ukrainian American actors, and the best I could do, who
is somebody who was Ukrainians. I wanted to cast Ukrainian
for this, or Ukrainian American was Jason Gould, son of
Elliott Gould and Barbara Streisand for some reason I thought
(43:53):
he had the right energy.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
So there you go, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I love that. I have to look him up. I
can't picture his face.
Speaker 5 (43:59):
Well, just imagine Barbis Streisan and Elli Gould put together
by like Ai nicewear.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
To God, that's what he looks like.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans.
The show is hosted by Danis Schwartz, Sarah Burnett, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode
was written by Lucas Riley. Our story editor is Virginia
Prescott from School of Humans.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Producers are Amelia.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Brock Etali's Perez and Gabby Watts. Editing and sound design
by Jesse Niswanger, Mixing and mastering by Jesse Niswanger. Research
and fact checking by Lucas Riley and Austin Thompson. Original
music by Elise McCoy, show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Social
clips by your Berry Media Executive producers of today's episode
(44:49):
are Virginia Prescott and Jason English. Very Special Episodes is
a production of iHeart Podcasts Yeah
It's five am in Portland, Oregon, when doctor Jen Betts's
phone starts buzzing. At first, it's just a couple of notifications,
then more a cascade of alerts.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I woke up at five o'clock or so in the
morning with my phone just going off crazy boom boom boom.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Half asleep, she reaches for her phone and scrolls through
the flood of texts. It's February twenty fourth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Everybody was texting and saying, you know, Russia had just
invaded Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
For Jen, this isn't just breaking news. Ukraine is like
her second home.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
So it was a very scary moment.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Jen starts texting her friends there, checking in anxious for replies,
but her message just hang unread.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
It was very difficult trying to get information a long
moment until we were able to find out what's going on.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Later, she would watch CCTV footage that explained.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Why everything was cut off. The first thing they did
was cut off all communication.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
The camera catches tanks barreling down a road outside Chernobyl.
Plumes of diesel smoke curl into the air. One after another,
Armored vehicles rolled through a Russian convoy stretching for miles,
armored trucks, fuel tankers, missile launchers, and then a dog
(01:40):
pokes its nose out from the barren woods peers across
the road, ghostly white, small tail wagging nervously as it
weaves between tanks. Jen leans closer into her screen, her
eyes flicker with recognition. She knows this dog.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Her name is Snow, and so this one particular dog
we see her running across the street, obviously very confused
as to what's going on.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Snow is one of hundreds of strays living in the
shadow of history's worst nuclear disaster, and Jen, a retired veterinarian,
is their lifeline.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'm the veterinarian medical director for the Dogs of Chernobyl program.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
You know that Chernobyl, the radioactive, post apocalyptic wasteland abandoned
by humans after history's worst nuclear disaster some thirty nine
years ago. Since twenty seventeen, Jen has volunteered with the
Clean Futures Fund, a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities affected
(02:57):
by the Chernobyl disaster. Of the mission is to vaccinate, sterilize,
and administer medicine to Chernobyls stray dogs, the descendants of
pets abandoned decades ago.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
This is an industrial area, this is a nuclear power plant.
This is not a place where dogs should be roaming
around freely. And so right now we have this situation
where they are just here and they are multiplying. But
that's the hand they were dealt, and that's where they live,
and we try to provide them the best comfortable place
(03:34):
that they can have considering where they are.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Dogs like snow, suffer harsh winters, are preyed on by wolves,
and yes must deal with radioactive fallout from one of
the world's worst man made disasters. Now, with Russian troops
occupying the site, Jen had only one thought, how do
(03:59):
I get back there? Welcome to very special episodes and
I heart original podcast. I'm your host, Danish Schwartz and
this is the Dogs of Chernobyl.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Welcome back to very special episodes. She's Danish Schwartz. Hey,
he's Aaron Burnett.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
What up?
Speaker 3 (04:28):
I'm Jason English Now and Lucas Riley first pitched this story.
I think I still believed some of the viral headlines
that the Dogs of Chernobyl have superpowers and the laws
of biology don't apply to them, But as we'll come
to learn, some of that was a little overblown.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
I just want to go on record.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Before we begin. These are still very good dogs and
they should be celebrated.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
Yes, they would be rated highly.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
They're good dogs. All dogs are good dogs, but these
are especially good dogs.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Completely.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
Also, that's the phrase, the world's most radioactive dogs. That's
like a line of poetry, or maybe like an MF.
Doom lyric. I don't know, but I love that phrase.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
The obvious media recommendation here is the HBO classic show Chernobyl,
which I've managed to not watch yet, and I will
rectify that. Have either of you read the book The
World Without Us by Alan Wiseman?
Speaker 1 (05:21):
No, No, but that sounds intriguing, a very cool book.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
It imagines what would happen if humans just disappeared from
the world, but all our stuff was left here, and
what would happen and how nature and water would reclaim things.
This story reminds me a little bit of that in
some regard, I could totally see.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
That life finds a way to understand why all this matters.
I want to take you back to nineteen eighty six.
It's late to April in the Soviet Union. The city
of Ukrainian Creepyet is blooming roses dot the streets. People
(06:03):
are bustling about. A new amusement park with a ferris
wheel and bumper cars is almost ready to open for
May Day. Two decades earlier, creep Yet didn't even exist,
but now it's home to almost fifty thousand people. Scientists, engineers,
their families, with hotels, schools, and good jobs, lots of
(06:27):
them at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant just two miles away.
But on Saturday, April twenty sixth at one twenty three
a m a safety test in the plant's reactor four
goes horribly wrong. The core overheats. Engineers scrambled to shut
(06:49):
it down, but the rods to cool the system fail.
Steam builds to catastrophic levels. The reactor got hotter and hotter,
and then two explosions tear through the reactor. Steel and
(07:10):
concrete fly like shrapnel. Two workers are killed immediately. Radioactive
particles caesium, iodine, strontium rise into the night sky over
Ukraine and Belarus. But in prip Yet, no one is
told what's happening. Citizens woke up that weekend like any other.
(07:32):
Children played outside adults walked to the market, babushkas hung
laundry to dry, unaware that invisible radioactive dust was settling
on their clothes, hair, and skin, until eleven a m
On Sunday, when the city loudspeakers crackled to.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Life venuemania, mneumania, mneumonia, mneumonia, A.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Little faint and eerie at first attention, attention, there's an emergency,
But by then it was already too late. Shut up.
Just a few miles away, the smoldering reactor had released
fifty to one hundred and eighty five million curies of
(08:22):
radio nucleotides, the same amount of radioactive material as four
hundred Hiroshima bones.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Who knew at.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Buses pour into the city, women, men and children pile inside.
In roughly three hours, almost the entire town empties. Families
are told pack light and leave your pets at home.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
They were told they were going to be gone for
three days. To not take anything. You weren't allowed to
take your dogs. Just pack stuff for three.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Days, believing they'd soon return. Many left behind bowls of
food and water out for their animals.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
But they were never allowed back.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Crepiet became a ghost town. Overnight, but in homes and apartments,
countless pets weight, dogs, wine and closed doors, cats pace
along windowsills. Some animals wander onto the empty streets confused. Meanwhile,
(09:28):
the Soviet government tries to stop the disaster from snowballing.
Helicopters pour sand to stop the fire. They build a
concrete sarcophagus around the reactor to contain the fallout, and
Soviet troops arrive with a grim task.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
The government went in and tried to kill all of
the animals to prevent spread of the radiation.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Soldiers armed with rifles sweep through Prepiet. They shoot dogs
and cats on site. It's a brutal, haunting scene. But
the plan to cull all the pets doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
A lot of them ran off into the woods and
weren't able to be killed. And since then they have
been living in this area and breeding, dying and reproducing.
And so that's where these dogs came from.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
These are the ancestors of today's stray dogs of Chernobyl
generations have come and gone in this radioactive wasteland. They
endure brutal winters and disease. They fend off wolves and
bears lurking in the forest they scavenge for food, relying
(10:45):
mostly on the humans still working at the power plant.
By the time gen Bets first came to Chernobyl in
twenty seventeen, there was an estimated one thousand strays living
in the exclusion zone that's the almost twenty mile radius
surrounding the power plant. The dogs split into two packs
(11:08):
within the zone. One lives near the power plant, another
in the town of Chernobyl City, just a few miles away.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So it's Ukrainian law that nothing can be removed from
the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and that includes dogs.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
And for good reason. It's one of the most radioactively
contaminated places on the planet.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
These dogs, they roam around, they roll around in the dirt,
they have it in their fur, they are ingesting it.
There's particles of graphite around on the ground and down
in the dirt, and so these animals are ingesting this
and once ingested, it does get absorbed into the bones.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And like everything else around Chernobyl, the dogs can be
radioactive too.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
I have puppies where the radiation isotopes were embedded in
their skull, so no matter how much I tried to
wash them, we couldn't we could not get it out.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
For years, Jen made routine trips into this restricted area
as a volunteer veterinarian. Each visit requires careful planning and
safety protocols.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
When we're in the zone, we wear a docimitter where
we are tracked the entire time we are there, and
they take our measurements before we go into the area.
When we come back out of the area, we take
those measurements and those measurements are kept in a database
where molt radiation is cumulative.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Surprisingly, the air in Chernobyl is not actually that bad. Today.
Background radiation is similar to, if not less than, what
you'd be exposed to during a commercial flight. The problem
is what's on the ground. Radioactive particles cling to soil,
(12:50):
some off the charts hotspots more than one thousand times
normal levels are scattered about.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
You don't want to sit on the ground. You don't
want to put your hands in your mouth. If there's
a huge dusty area, you want to wear protection for
your eyes in your mouth. I'll put something over your faith.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Even with those dangers, Gen's work has kept the dogs
healthier and living longer than anyone expected. But in February
of twenty twenty two, everything changed. That's when the Russian
convoy rolled through the exclusion zone.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
When the Russians invaded Chernobyl, they brought their tanks through there.
They stirred up the ground. They caused a lot of issues,
and things that were lying dormant has been put into
the air again.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
The dogs had to breathe that contaminated air, and so
did the Russians. The invading army didn't just pass through Chernobyl.
They raised their flag over the Red Forest.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
The Red Forest is an area in right outside of
the power plants where most of the nuclear fallout fell.
And so what it did was it killed all of
the trees and turned all of their leaves red as
they were dying.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
After the Chernobyl disaster, the Red Forest was bulldozed two
Russian soldiers arriving in twenty twenty two, the open ground
looked like a good place to set up camp.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
They were there for thirty days. They were sleeping in
the area, They were cooking their food, they were smoking,
they were inhaling all of the dirt and fumes.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
The soldiers dug foxholes and bunkers with heavy machinery. Some
reports indicate that they set parts of the nearby forest
on fire, releasing clouds of radioactive smoke into their lungs, and.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
So they probably did get a significant amount that probably
will cause some problems later in life should they live
that long.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
The Russian troops weren't the only humans at risk. In
twenty twenty two, hundreds of people still worked on remediation
and cleanup at the abandoned plant.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
So they rounded up all of the workers and they
put them in a bunker and made them stay in there.
They weren't allowed out.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
About three hundred workers were held captive, forced into an
underground bunker at gunpoint. They survived by rationing food and
sleeping on tabletops and the dogs. In peacetime, most of
them had relied on the generosity of those workers for handouts.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Some of the workers were able to sneak some food
out to the dogs, but most of them were not
able to be fed, so they just sat around and
waited and waited and starved.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Gen two thousands of miles away could do nothing but wait. Then,
in early April, the Russian army withdrew from Chernobyl. Once
the captive workers at the power plant stepped out of
their makeshift prison, they were shocked to see the half
starved dogs.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
When they finally were liberated, the dogs were just a
skin and bones.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Photos posted by the workers eventually landed in front of
gen and.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
That's when I decided that I needed to get there
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
In the spring of twenty twenty two, doctor Jen Betts
began making plans to return to Ukraine. This time, it
wouldn't be a routine trip. The country was under siege.
Missiles pulverized apartment buildings, air raid sirens howled through the night.
Even so, she started assembling a team volunteers, veterinarians, people
(16:56):
willing to risk entering a radioactive war zone for the
sake of some stray dogs, and she needed them to
understand what they'd be walking into. It turns out that
the dogs of Chernobyl are a scientific mystery. Since nineteen
eighty six, they've endured exposure to radioactive elements, heavy metals, pesticides,
(17:19):
and other contaminants. Scientists have long wondered how have these
dogs survived for so many generations in such a toxic place.
To find out, Jen teamed up with researchers in the
US and Ukraine. In twenty eighteen, she began collecting blood
(17:39):
samples from the dogs and sending vials to labs in
the United States. One of those labs is home to
doctor Meghan Dylan.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
I got my PhD in the Genetics and Genomics program
at NC State, where I worked with the Dogs of
Chernobyl project.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
For the last several years, Megan has been studying the
DNA of Chernobyl's dogs to better understand the effects of
toxic exposure on their genetic makeup.
Speaker 6 (18:09):
We'd have this opportunity to see about thirty generations down
the line what these different contaminants can do to the
genome into populations.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
With the help of scientists at Columbia Duke, the University
of South Carolina, and the National Genome Project, Megan would
map the dog's genome and compare their DNA to other
stray populations in Russia and Poland.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
And we're able to kind of identify places where we
see these differences, and so we can start to see
banding patterns in the chromosomes, and we can start to
see potential aberrations or malformities in these chromosomes.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
She and her colleagues published their findings in twenty twenty three.
The results were startling.
Speaker 6 (19:00):
These dogs are genetically more different than we would have expected.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Remember, the dogs split into two packs. One lives near
the power plant, the second in town a few miles away.
Both groups had DNA significantly different from strays found in
Russia and Poland. What was more striking, the two packs
in Chernobyl were also genetically distinct from each other.
Speaker 6 (19:30):
These dogs that were separated by hundreds and hundreds of
kilometers were actually more genetically similar to each other than
our two populations that are only sixteen kilometers apart. Work.
But we found that we do have this very high
degree of genetic differentiation, or just a high level of
differences in the genotypes for these two populations of dogs.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Now, that was a data point that Megan and her
colleagues wanted to study more deeply.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
So we were very interested in identifying what may be
the driving force for this genetic differentiation.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
They had their hunches. One possible explanation was that the
dogs could be some kind of mutants.
Speaker 7 (20:16):
Super Survivors thought it was a possibility that we might
find some evidence of DNA mutations where the DNAs might
persist in a population and be passed down from parents
to offspring all the way down the line.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
In twenty twenty three, they published their findings in the
journal Science Advances. The media pounced on the mutant.
Speaker 6 (20:40):
Narrative after we published this paper. That was where a
lot of other minds went. It was based on these
genetic mutants that were living in Jernobyl.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
The dogs had superpowers, they were immune to radioactivity, they
were evolving at warp speed. Behold the knine equivalent of
the Ninja turtles three eyed fish from the Simpsons. When
doctor Jen Betts, who's also an author on the study,
read this media coverage, she rolled her eyes.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
One of the things that bothers me is the misconception
in the news media. You know, people write articles for
clickbait and to get you know, and there's catchy headlines
of the dogs are rapidly evolving and the dogs have superpowers,
or the wolves are immune to cancer, and none of
this is correct.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Over at NC State, Megan shakes her head at how
the press jumped to conclusions.
Speaker 6 (21:36):
It's not like these dogs are turning into a new
species at this point. We're just finding that they're genetically
more different than we would have expected.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
The real story of the dog's survival wasn't about science
fiction level mutations. The real story, Megan explains, might be
best illustrated by Victorian era moths. Back in nineteenth century England,
the peppered moth fluttered everywhere. Some had pale wings, some
(22:12):
had dark wings. But then it came the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
But during this industrial age in England start to see
a lot more soot accumulating on trees, So the bark
is darker, and so we see this directional shift where
the darker moths are able to evade predators and survive
to reproduce better than those lighter moths that are more
(22:39):
easily seen.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Industrial areas became so riddled with soot that the dark
moths were blending into their environment, and unlike the pale moths,
living to tell about it, the dogs in Chernobyl might
have a similar story. Like the dark colored moths, the
dog dogs that survived the nineteen eighty six disaster may
(23:03):
have had a built in physical advantage that the other
dogs didn't have. The dogs without that advantage died. Those
that had it lived long enough to reproduce and pass
on their genes, a text bookcase of what's called directional selection.
Speaker 6 (23:22):
It's possible that they have a better ability to repair
their DNA after it has been damaged by these radioactive
contaminants or the heavy metals, and so they're able to
better survive and reproduce than individuals that may have this
(23:43):
slower DNA repair response.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Hearing all this, you might be wondering, cool, Dana, but
why are scientists studying a bunch of radioactive stray dogs. Well,
it's to keep you, dear listener, healthy and alive.
Speaker 6 (24:00):
We know that dogs can be this kind of canary
in the coal mine, and so they do have this
great deal of genetic and epidemiological similarity with humans.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Dogs and humans share a similar biology. Both species suffer
from many of the same diseases and cancers. Both species
routinely share the same environment too. Our pets breathe the
same air, play in the same house, and may even
sleep in the same bed as us. In fact, researchers
(24:33):
have found that dogs are a good predictor for human health.
If your dog gets cancer because of an environmental contaminant,
there's a good chance you might get sick from it too.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
By studying these dogs, we really have the ability to
kind of infer possible responses and other species, especially including humans.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
A dog's health can be a crystal ball into the
future of human health, and that's important. The World Health
Organization estimates that twenty three percent of all human deaths
are caused by risk factors in the environment, and right now,
over seventy million Americans live within just three miles of
(25:17):
a superfund site. The dogs of Chernobyl live in one
of the world's most stressful environments. It's riddled with radiation, pesticides,
heavy metals. They're helping us peer into the future of
human health and giving us time to develop treatments before
(25:38):
it's too late.
Speaker 6 (25:39):
Harnessing the data from these species is really allowing us
to kind of accelerate these discoveries that will benefit both
dogs and humans.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Before the Russians abandoned Chernobyl in April twenty two, they
littered the area with booby traps like trip wires and
land mines. Jen Betts wanted to go anyway, but first
the dogs needed food and fast, so she contacted Andrew Simon,
(26:17):
a university professor and scientist who lives in Ukraine. Like Jen,
Andrew has been studying Chernobyl for years.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
I spoke with him and said, you know, if you're
going to Chernobyl, can you please please bring some dog food.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Jen wired him funds to buy three hundred kilograms about
six hundred and sixty pounds of kibble. Andrew loaded it
into his trailer and set out for the exclusion zone.
The journey was harrowing, bombed out roads, burnt out vehicles.
(26:55):
Andrew nears a river and comes upon the mango remains
of a bridge. He spins around and tries a new route,
turning down another bombed out road, obstacles everywhere. Andrew improvises
it takes nine hours to make a trip that usually
(27:17):
takes an hour and a half. But finally Andrew arrives.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
At that point he could get into Choble Town, but
he couldn't get all the way to the power plant,
and so we left all of the food at one
of the checkpoints there.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Andrew drops the food at a checkpoint and then Jen
messages a handful of power plant workers who will be
arriving by bus in a few days, asking them to
help move it those last few miles.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Even people that didn't like dogs, they were all helping.
It was I have pictures of all of the workers
on the bus with the bags of dog food all
in the aisles.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Meanwhile, Andrew scouts out the damage. Near the check point
is a science lab where the Dogs of Chernobyl program
keeps some of its supplies. He pops over to check
on it. Turns out the Russians had broken in.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
They kicked in the doors, pried open the locks.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
The room has been turned upside down. It's a mess.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
It didn't destroy any they just stole. I thought it
was pretty hilarious that they They stole the coffee pot,
the microwave, the weed eater, the chainsaw, the lawn equipment,
but they left the microscopes and all of the expensive
scientific equipment.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Other officers around the power plant, however, weren't so lucky.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
All of the offices throughout the interturnal, they were all destroyed.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Russians destroyed nearly seven hundred computers, plus a total of
one hundred and thirty five million dollars worth of equipment.
By June twenty twenty two, Jen couldn't wait any longer.
She had to see things with her own eyes, so
she booked it to the airport. Commercial flights into Ukraine
(29:16):
were grounded, so Jen landed in Poland and boarded a
lumbering eighteen hour train ride to Kiev. Just a few
months after the invasion. Jen turned up in Kiev. Passengers
sat in uneasy silence as conductors checked their documents. Jen
(29:36):
could immediately see and feel the human cost of war.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
People are sad, people are scared. You hear air raid
sirens going off constantly.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
In Kiev, Jen reunited with some of her fellow volunteers.
There was Andrew, who had helped bring all that dog food,
and there was a young Ukrainian lawyer named Vidim. For
Vadim Chernobyl was home. He was born in Pripyat, shortly
before Reactor number four exploded. His father still lived in
(30:15):
the region. He split his time shuttling between Kiev and
the exclusion zone. In twenty eighteen, he bumped into doctor
Betts while she was helping the dogs at Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Videm comes rolling up on his bicycle with no brakes,
and he comes rolling up really fast, and then he
sticks his foot in his front tire to use as
a break. His English is okay, he's learning, and he says,
I want to I love dogs, I want to help.
And he said okay, and so he started helping us,
and he came back at year after year.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Like Jen, Vidim is anxious to get to Chernobyl, where
his father was trapped during the Russian occupation.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Vadim was not in Chernobyl at the time, but his
father was, and he also was trying to get into
Chernobyl to bring supplies. There were people that needed insulin,
there were his father needed some medication.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
The team loaded up a van with food, gear and
supplies and set out for the long, tense drive to Chernobyl.
Out the window, Jen sees the country She loves torn apart.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
If you drive around Ukraine anywhere, you're gonna see destruction.
They are targeting civilian they're chart targeting apartment buildings, they're
targeting hospitals. You can't not see it. It's everywhere.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Destroyed bridges forced them to ford shallow rivers. At checkpoints,
armed soldiers examine their papers and ask why they're headed
into one of the most exclusive places in the country.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Who are you, Why are you here? Show me your
certifications to get in. We stopped, I believe it was
around six times before even getting into.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
With each checkpoint the questioning gets more severe. Vadim and
Andrew do the talking.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
He got in some ways just because he knows everybody
there and was able to bring humanitarian aid, and then
he also became our liaison.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
The final checkpoint waves them on with a warning stay
on the road, there are land mines. As the van
crept closer to Chernobyl, arriving in the settlement of Ivan Kiev,
an eerie silent loomed over them.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
There was a lot of destruction in that area as well,
and so it was just everything was silent, and none
of us spoke. We just sat there and drove and
with our jaws open and just went down to the
area and it was, you know, it was kind of
just devastating experience.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
They lurch closer to the reactor site and pull up
to the red forest where Russian soldiers had camped. The
car stops, the doors swing open.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I did go into the trenches where they had dug
up in that area, and you know, all of that
had I was worried about that all of that had
been cleared. And our friend vedem He's had been in
that area as well, So I trusted trusted him and said, okay,
you sure there's no landmines. All I'm just going to
follow right behind you, so you go first.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
After hours of traveling, they pull up to the power plant.
Dogs are everywhere. The strays clearly found the food Andrew brought.
They're putting on weight, and it seems they've become healthy
enough to breed too. There are dozens of pregnant dogs.
(33:46):
Jen quickly realizes if she wants to stabilize the population
and provide all these new pups with medical care, she
needs to kickstart a SPAE and newter operation soon. But
that is a tall task because first you have to
catch them, which is harder than it sounds.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
We had problems for years and years being able to
catch these dogs. It's an industrial area, there's stuff everywhere.
The dogs run under fences, you know, to get away.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
In the past, volunteers tried dressing up like the plant
workers who fed them. The dogs weren't fooled. They tried
using blow darts to sedate them.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
No dice, you you know, blow dart one dog. The
dog takes off running and all of the other dogs say,
I know what's happening. I'm gone, and then that's it.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
With the war raging around them, Jen knew there was
no time to play games. If she wanted to give
these dogs medical care, she'd have to find a way
to trap dozens at a time. She returned to America
and started assembling a team of vets, vet texts, and
dog handlers to run a field hospital. Meanwhile, in Chernobyl,
(35:04):
she enlisted a local plant worker named Yuri to start
training the dogs to be corralled into makeshift pens.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
We spent months and months training them to go into
these makeshift areas that we could close the gate on them.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Four months later, in October twenty twenty two, Jen would
return to Chernobyl. This time she came with thirteen volunteers,
plus vials of vaccines, medicine, and surgical gear. It was
time to get to work. It started with Yuri. Over
(35:41):
the last few months, the dogs had come to trust him,
and so like the pied Piper, he walked into one
pen and lured a pack of pups inside.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
We were able to house thirty or forty little dogs
in one location at one time, and then each one
of those we could either go in and handcap with
the workers.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Or ourselves one by one. The team started bathing and
shaving the strays, but.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
Every single animal that comes through, we freaks them for
radiation and decontaminate them before we touch them, and we
simply wash their fur, or we clip their fur with
the clippers and then rescan them and then they're fine.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
Jen enticed the most skittish puppies by feeding them meatballs
laced with sedatives went to sleep. They were carried to
a mash unit surgical tables fashioned from ironing boards, oxygen tanks,
machines for anesthesia and monitoring. For four days straight, the
team worked around the clock, stumbling to bed exhausted as
(36:44):
the war echoed around them.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
You get woken up in the middle of the night
hearing a schehi drunk go right over your head. It's
destination is Kiev and not Chernobyl. But still you never know,
and so you can't sleep. You're on a constant edge.
Everybody is anxious and it's just not a good situation.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Still, with the help of more than a dozen volunteers,
the team cleaned, vaccinated, spade, and neutered and treated one
hundred and twenty five dogs. It was their most successful
mission yet. Jen returned to Kiev and the team celebrated
(37:23):
over dinner. They left toasted their success. They had a
good time. For a moment, they forgot they were in
a war zone. But war has a way of making
itself known. Just a few hours after they left.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
We're eating dinner at this one place, and right across
the street the building there was bombed and destroyed.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Soon war would touch the team in more unimaginable ways.
The deem had helped make the spay and neuter operation possible,
but he wasn't there to help. A Few weeks before
the mission, he made up his mind to join the
Ukrainian military. He was quickly sent to the front lines.
(38:11):
Jen has a selfie scent of him sitting in a
foxhole in fatigues holding a rifle.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
His brother had gotten drafted into the army, and he
decided to join alongside his brother, and unfortunately was killed.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Three months later, in January twenty twenty three, a rocket
hit Vadim's unit during the Battle of Bakhmut. He and
several other Ukrainian soldiers were killed in action. The eager
young man who rolled up on his bicycle offering to
help preserve the fragile lives of stray dogs became another
(38:54):
casualty of war. Three years later. The war continues to
chase Jen and her friends in Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
It's everywhere. I just had a friend of mine just
last week her veterinary clinic, her clinic that she's set up,
was hit by missiles and thankfully none of the dogs died.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And yet, despite all the risks, Jen has returned to
Chernobyl six times since that visit in twenty twenty two.
Against all the odds, the dogs of Chernobyl are surviving
and with Jen's help, they're thriving.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
In the past, yes, because of predation, because of fighting
amongst each other, because of lack of food, because of
the attrition rate, some of them did not last very long.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Many rarely made it past four or five years now.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But since our program has started and we've had control
over the population, we have dogs that are twelve, thirty,
even fourteen years of age at this point. I have
started a lot of them on arthritis medication, and you know,
I'm trying to keep them as comfortable as possible.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
In a place long associated with death, The dogs of
Chernobyl remind us that life endures, and Jen plans to
keep returning for as long as necessary.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future. But
I'm more drawn to the place now than ever, and
I have since the war. I have so many more
friends and loved ones there that I'm very very close
with and you know, talk to on a daily basis.
Chernobyl is a funny place and that it captures you
and all you want to do is just, for some reason,
(40:43):
just be in Chernobyl.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
She has just one wish for the war.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
It's a reality. It's it just needs to stop.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It just needs to stop. If you would like to
help the dogs of Chernobyl, you can send donations to
cleanfutures dot org. You can specify donations to the dogs,
to the local children, or even the cats. And if
(41:13):
you want to help out more, Jen says, come volunteer
with her. She needs help doing social media, Dana.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
When we were at Mental Floss, some of our best
performing stories were photo essays from people who managed to
get into the exclusion zone and photograph the ways that
nature had retaken the Chernobyl. We'll find out if that
applies to anthology podcasts.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
There's something kind of just romantic about it, the thought
that even without people and even in the aftermath of
like a massive piece of human cause destruction, that life
still exists and these poor dogs.
Speaker 5 (41:54):
This one has so many great moving moments, compelling moments,
but like I was really just struck by the character.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Videm Yeah, it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Arrives on a bicycle, wants to help duo.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Yes, I mean he's pulling up the foot break, putting
this on the wheel. I can totally see that moment.
And he's just such a powerful moment for a character's intro.
You can just immediately know who this guy is with
just one gesture.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
It just sort of makes you realize, like how much
impact a single person can have.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
Yes, true, sometimes for.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
A situations where you look around and you're like, okay,
well surely someone else will step up and take care
of this, but sometimes it just has to be you,
and if you act, you'll make a huge difference.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
M did you guys have any very special characters for
this one?
Speaker 3 (42:37):
I mean doctor Betts, Well, doctor Batts is the obvious winner,
So maybe for Yuri, I'll give very special moment for
arriving in town and getting the dogs to trust him
to the point that they will follow them into the
pen and let the healing begin, a very sweet moment.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
I definitely like that mind's a little bit less sweet.
I just love that the dogs could get fed a
little bit and then pregnant. So the pregnant dogs. I
was so into that, as like life finds away right there.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Amazing.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, tackle you, Dana. I was really touched by that.
Is there a movie here?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
There's a TV show for sure.
Speaker 5 (43:10):
But yeah, definitely a TV show. I tried to do
my best on castings. Sook for veterinarian doctor Jennifer Betts.
I went with Jennifer Lawrence. I thought she could pull
that off. And then for doctor Megan Dylan. I liked
Florence Pugh. I thought she could definitely play someone who's
studying the DNA of Chernobyl dogs. And for Andrew Simon,
the university professor, the scientist cat. I was having a
tough one with this one, so I went with a
(43:31):
young Ed Norton. I don't know why I went young
Ed Darton, right, but I liked that call. And then
for the young Ukrainian lawyer Vadin my Man. This one
was difficult. I even went and looked up lists of
Ukrainian American actors, and the best I could do, who
is somebody who was Ukrainians. I wanted to cast Ukrainian
for this, or Ukrainian American was Jason Gould, son of
Elliott Gould and Barbara Streisand for some reason I thought
(43:53):
he had the right energy.
Speaker 4 (43:54):
So there you go, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I love that. I have to look him up. I
can't picture his face.
Speaker 5 (43:59):
Well, just imagine Barbis Streisan and Elli Gould put together
by like Ai nicewear.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
To God, that's what he looks like.
Speaker 3 (44:08):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans.
The show is hosted by Danis Schwartz, Sarah Burnett, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode
was written by Lucas Riley. Our story editor is Virginia
Prescott from School of Humans.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
Producers are Amelia.
Speaker 3 (44:27):
Brock Etali's Perez and Gabby Watts. Editing and sound design
by Jesse Niswanger, Mixing and mastering by Jesse Niswanger. Research
and fact checking by Lucas Riley and Austin Thompson. Original
music by Elise McCoy, show logo by Lucy Quintonia. Social
clips by your Berry Media Executive producers of today's episode
(44:49):
are Virginia Prescott and Jason English. Very Special Episodes is
a production of iHeart Podcasts Yeah
Host
Jamie Loftus
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