A hundred years ago, an old woman lived in one of the villages of the Krasnograd district of the Kharkov province. The peasants did not like her: she was rich, literate, and was inveterate as a pilgrim. But most of all, people did not like her speeches about the coming war, revolution, hunger and godless power. Even the gendarmes from Kharkov more than once arranged "soul-saving conversations" for her about such outrageous prophecies.
The old women stopped laughing at the speeches a year after her death, when the First World War broke out. And forty years ago, her most terrible prediction came true that in these parts it will be as light as day at night, and many of the other world will become seriously ill.
In 1970, a powerful gas field was discovered near Krasnograd. A year later, 17 wells were drilled, but while drilling the eighteenth, a fire broke out at a depth. A one-hundred-meter torch that burst out to the surface destroyed the drilling complex.
From the terrible roar of flame in the neighboring village of Khrestishchi, window panes trembled and the ears of the inhabitants ached. Within a radius of fifteen kilometers, chickens refused to lay eggs, and cows refused to give milk, people began to lose their minds for no apparent reason. Later it became clear that the "culprit" was the infrasound emitted by the fire. The authorities ordered to turn off all electrical appliances and even forced them to hand over the matches: gas began to spread from cracks in the ground.
It was impossible to extinguish the fire. Multi-ton concrete blocks, which were used to close the well, were thrown away like chips. They also failed to pump concrete under pressure: the hot gas "spat out" it out.
Then they decided to use the last resort: "solder" the well with a nuclear explosion with a capacity of about four kilotons. The preparations were carried out in the strictest secrecy. By all accounts, the probability of failure was only one percent.
In the early morning of July 9, 1972, all residents of the eight-kilometer zone were ordered to board buses. They said that they would put out the fire, but in what way they kept silent, and this silence lasted two decades. Everyone in the cordon was ordered to stand on tiptoe so that the underground blow would not break the spine. At 10 in the morning, the device went off, the fire began to go out, and there was applause. But already 20 seconds later, a powerful fiery fountain mixed with the rock burst out again to a kilometer height, and a minute later a characteristic cloud of a nuclear mushroom was formed.
The high authorities quickly realized what was the matter, and immediately evacuated.
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Meanwhile, the buses were taking people back to the villages. The sight was terrible: broken windows in houses, cracked walls, fallen off plaster, twisted door frames. Dead bees lay like a carpet on the grass near the hives: not a single apiary had survived. A few hours later, the mortality of poultry began, followed by larger livestock.
In the evening, when people gathered to have supper, they were struck by a strange glow in the sky, and those who could not sleep for a long time that night remember that they even managed to read the newspaper. A few days after the rain, leaves suddenly began to fall: and this is where the trees stand green until mid-October. And the next winter, in December, the gardens began to bloom. People constantly had headaches, their skin had acquired a strange bronze tint, their legs and spine ached badly. But doctors had no right to tell the truth to their patients. In subsequent years, people began to mow cancer. It was then that the local old men remembered the prophetic woman who predicted such passions, and realized that they were laughing at her in vain. They even tried to find her grave, but none of the numerous old woman's relatives remained in the area.
The fire was extinguished only next summer. I had to dig a well. When the pit was dug, despite the heat, they had to break through the ice masses formed as a result of the pressure caused by the nuclear explosion.
Today, nothing reminds of what happened forty years ago. A high-speed highway Kharkiv-Simferopol was laid through the accident site, along which many happy and unsuspecting vehicle owners go to Crimea on vacation.
Alexander DMITRIEVSKY