A handheld, shaky video vlog recorded by Soviet liquidators standing on top of the destroyed Chernobyl Reactor 4, amid twisted metal, collapsed concrete, and lethal radiation. The sky is overcast and ashen. Ash and radioactive dust float in the air. The video is unfiltered, raw, and without subtitles.

One of the liquidators faces the camera, breathing heavily through a cracked gas mask. His voice is rough, English with a thick Russian accent:
“We are here. On the heart of the beast. The core is open. No time.”

Behind him, the exposed reactor burns slowly — molten steel, collapsed walls, eerie blue radiation glow. Steam rises from the rubble. The Geiger counter is screaming nonstop. The men work fast, shoveling radioactive graphite, laying sandbags, welding broken pipes, coughing violently.

A second liquidator briefly films a glowing hole in the rubble:
“This… this is death. Pure.”

One man vomits and keeps working. Another films his own hands — the skin red and blistering under his gloves. Static interference corrupts parts of the video. Someone yells offscreen in Russian. The camera turns and catches a collapsed colleague. No one stops.

The video ends with a liquidator walking to the edge of the ruined core. He turns the camera on himself one last time and says:
“We are shadows now. But someone must do it.”
Then he sets the camera down facing the glowing wreckage, and walks into the smoke.