The following version of this book was used to c­reate this study guide: Higginbotham, Adam. Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2019.

Midnight in Chernobyl starts with a short epilogue, written from the point of view of some of the first rescuers on the scene. Then starts “Part One: The Birth of a City,” which recounts the rise and fall of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station.

Chapter One, “The Soviet Prometheus,” describes the mad-dash way that the Chernobyl nuclear reactor was built, and introduces the reader to plant director Victor Brukhanov, an electrical engineer who was put in charge of building a nuclear power station and its accompanying city because of his rising star in the Communist Party.

Chapter Two, “Alpha, Beta and Gamma,” goes over some basic physics that explains why nuclear radiation is dangerous. It also explains a far more dangerous force – the culture of secrecy and speed that built up around nuclear development, especially in the Soviet Union, and how domestic nuclear power has always struggled to escape its military origins.

Chapter Three, “Friday, April 25, 5:00pm, Pripyat,” gives background on some of the people who were present the night of the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. It tells what their lives in Pripyat were like, what it had taken them to get there, and what kind of culture they worked within.

Chapter Four, “Secrets of the Peaceful Atom,” talks about the history of the Soviet nuclear energy program, and its origins in secretive military operations. This is compared and contrasted with the West, where nuclear power also struggled to escape the culture of secrecy and experimentation that accompanied its military origins, but where its flaws were more publicly discussed.

Chapter Five, “Friday, April 25, 11:55 p.m., Unit Control Room Number Four,” covers the hour leading up to the Chernobyl nuclear explosion. It describes the safety tests that had been delayed in order to meet other production quotas, and what had gone wrong with the ones that had been carried out.

Chapter Six, “Saturday, April 26, 1:28 a.m., Paramilitary Fire Station Number Two,” lays out the scene of the explosion, which occurred during a safety test gone horribly wrong. It describes the immediate reactions of the plant workers, nearby firefighters, and their party bosses.

Chapter Seven, “Saturday, 1:30 a.m., Kiev,” details the assembly of panels of experts and government officials who were put in charge of responding to the explosion at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station. It shows the spread of contradictory information and that the main priority was preventing panic.

Chapter Eight, “Saturday, 6:15 a.m., Pripyat,” shows the conflict between those who wanted to make sure that everyone in the city of Pripyat was safe, and those who wanted to maintain a sense of calm and get everyone back to work.

Chapter Nine, “Sunday, April 27, Pripyat,” covers the eventually evacuation of the city of Pripyat and the beginnings of the large-scale efforts to put out the fire at Unit Four.

“Part Two: Death of an Empire,” deals with global fallout, both political fallout, and literal nuclear fallout.

Chapter Ten, “The Cloud,” shows how the weather carried nuclear radiation from the explosion across the Soviet Union and Europe, and how party leaders dealt with that.

Chapter Eleven, “The China Syndrome,” describes scientists working to make sure that all nuclear fallout, including the potential molten radioactive sludge that had the potential to burn through the ground into the water supply, were contained, while party leaders made sure to control the release of information.

Chapter Twelve, “The Battle of Chernobyl,” details attempts to finish putting out the reactor fire and built something that could capture any materials moving through the ground, with men working as quickly as possible in extremely hazardous conditions.

Chapter Thirteen, “Inside Hospital Number Six,” describes the medical conditions that afflicted those who had been exposed to radiation inside Chernobyl and the lengths some of their loved ones had to go to to find them.

Chapter Fourteen, “The Liquidators,” follows continued efforts to clean up the radioactive “exclusion zone” surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Even as hundreds of thousands of were conscripted and called up to serve, making the area habitable again began to look impossible.

Chapter Fifteen, “The Investigation,” actually contains multiple investigations – scientific investigations into the faults of the nuclear reactors that were used to make internal changes but kept classified, and publicized criminal investigations into whom to blame for the explosion in reactor four.

Chapter Sixteen, “The Sarcophagus,” describes the efforts to contain the spread of nuclear radiation by building a giant concrete structure around unit four of the Chernobyl reactor. It describes men working in harrowing conditions, and a government that hailed them as heroes, but forced them into harm’s way without their consent or full knowledge.

Chapter Seventeen, “The Forbidden Zone,” takes a look at the lives of those who survived the explosion and its initial death toll. The firefighters were the greatest heroes, plant workers mainly ignored or blamed. Evacuees of Pripyat experienced great sympathy when people thought they were temporarily displaced, but resentment and suspicion when the city was abandoned for being too radioactive.

Chapter Eighteen, “The Trial,” looks at how the Soviet state decided to blame and punish those it publicly deemed responsible for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster while quietly trying to fix the problems within nuclear reactors they had determined were the real issue.

Chapter Nineteen, “The Elephant’s Foot,” covers the ongoing investigations into the remains of unit four and the materials left inside of it.

Chapter Twenty, “A Tomb for Valery Khodemchuk,” looks at the legacy of Chernobyl in the post-Soviet era, and the construction of a new facility to house the remains of the disaster lead by international agencies. It also describes the trips Higginbotham took to Russia and Ukraine to research this book.

Epilogue briefly covers the fates of several key players, including some people who played a large part in the book, and some people who played small parts, but are currently more prominent.