00:00Did you know the Soviet government sent thousands of men to do a job that destroyed robots in
00:04minutes?
00:05After the Chernobyl explosion in April 1986, the roof of the reactor was covered in chunks
00:10of radioactive graphite.
00:12That graphite had to be cleared by hand.
00:14Engineers first tried remote-controlled machines.
00:17Purpose-built robots, some sent by West Germany, some designed in the Soviet Union.
00:21They lasted minutes.
00:22The radiation fried their circuits and they stopped moving.
00:25So the government made a decision, if machines could not survive it, men would do it instead.
00:30Thousands of soldiers were conscripted.
00:32They were given lead vests that blocked almost nothing at those radiation levels.
00:36Each man was handed a shovel.
00:38Each man was given exactly 90 seconds on the roof.
00:41Shovel the graphite over the edge.
00:43Get down.
00:44Get your dose recorded.
00:45Then the next man goes up.
00:46The Soviets called these men bio-robots.
00:49Not soldiers.
00:50Not volunteers.
00:52Robots made of flesh.
00:53Used exactly like the machines that failed before them.
00:56Some received a lifetime's worth of radiation in under two minutes.
01:00The government told the world everything was under control.
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