MAPS OF HISTORY · COLD WAR · BATTLES AND EVENTS · Chernobyl disasterCold War · SITE OF MEMORY · 1986
Chernobyl disaster (1986)
On the Cold War map as “Chernobyl”
26 Apr 1986 — Reactor 4 explodes at Chernobyl. Fallout crosses Europe while the state lies for days. About 50 people die directly, thousands more deaths are projected, and 350,000 people are displaced. Gorbachev later calls it “perhaps the real cause” of collapse. Remember.
When 26 Apr 1986 Type Site of memory Chapter Gorbachev and the 1989 revolutions (chapter 11 of Cold War)Atlas The Cold War, 1945–1991 Also in Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia SITE OF MEMORY · THE COLD WAR, 1945–1991 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 · North Atlantic Treaty: Algerian departments cease to apply from 3 July 1962 · Berlin’s four-power status and its termination · The rise and fall of the Berlin Wall · Cliopatria v0.2.1 historical polities · Decolonization of Asia and Africa, 1945–1960 · Occupation and reconstruction of Germany, 1945–1948 · NATO membership chronology · Natural Earth v5.1.2 country geography · Natural Earth administrative references · The collapse of the Soviet Union · South Yemen: independence and alignment chronology · South Yemen: Soviet relationship, 1971 intelligence estimate
Source details US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced NATO, treaty footnote 2. Historical treaty facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced US government historical publication. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY 4.0 · Selected dated records; documented component selection, unions and shared-edge extraction. US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication National Army Museum. Historical facts cited; no source artwork or prose reproduced NATO. Historical facts cited; no artwork or prose reproduced Natural Earth contributors. Public domain · Full source components and holes retained; documented historical unions and repairs. Natural Earth contributors. Public domain US Department of State, Office of the Historian. US government publication US Department of State. US government historical publication US Department of State, FRUS 1969–1976, volume XXIV, document 182. US government historical publication This political-alignment geography uses national and administrative extents; it does not map every military front. Modern-reference perimeters are explicitly recorded where no more suitable reviewed historical geometry was adopted. All source parts and holes are retained.
The Soviet, Yugoslav, Czechoslovak, Sudanese and other historical unions remove later internal borders. Occupation and armistice lines retain their separate meanings.
South Yemen uses the 1969 source as a geographic proxy for earlier Aden/protectorates. The boundaries and status of individual protectorates are not resolved at this scale.
Dated assignments correct omissions across the legacy views: independent Algeria is non-aligned after July 1962; Greece and Turkey join NATO in 1952, and Spain in 1982. South Yemen is separate from North Yemen, with British administration before late 1967 and the Soviet-aligned Marxist government after 1969.
The narrative date for the chapter is 1989.87; the displayed source state is the named e89 timeline reference. Each layer records its date-specific source intervals and nearest-date choices.
proxy: 1945–1990, later municipal exterior reference · proxy: Natural Earth v5.1.2 contemporary reference · reconstruction: 1945–1991 · reconstruction: 1945–1991 geographic union · reconstruction: 1958–1989 · reconstruction: 1976–1989 · reconstruction: Postwar Yugoslav reference · reconstruction: Postwar division reference · vector: 1958–1959 · vector: 1969–1975 · vector: 1987–2005
Layer records and reconstruction methods
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