Find real stories about mutant people. Are there zombies in Chernobyl? Is it dangerous to eat meat from animals living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone or pick mushrooms and berries there?

The history of cinema includes hundreds of films in which the heroes are mutants. But in real life there are also people who became or were born different. Mutants are people who have suffered from a transformation of the genotype under the influence of the external or internal environment. The mutation cannot appear as a result of injury or disease; it is initially located in our genes and can appear after several generations. Mutants are people with physical abnormalities, which, fortunately, can almost always be “corrected” by modern medicine. Today we will give several examples of mutant people and prove that mutant people are a reality.

“The Elephant Man” was what the children at school called a boy named Huang Chongkai. He was born in 1977, in Hunan Province. At the age of four, Huang was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis. When Huang turned thirty, the tumor already weighed more than 15 kilograms, and the guy went blind in his left eye. At that time, the guy entered adulthood and firmly decided to get rid of this “burden.” Huang underwent five operations and began to live a full life.

Dede Kosvara

It’s impossible to believe, but this man suffered from papillomavirus, which strangely manifested itself on Dede’s skin. Typically, when a person has this virus, several large warts may appear on the skin. In the case of Dede, this is an inexplicable phenomenon. At the age of 15, a young man from Bandung, West Java, accidentally cut his leg. A few weeks later, a wart appeared at the site of the scratch, followed by others that began to appear. Doctors claim that the man could have died, but not from tree syndrome, but from tuberculosis. Dede went to the hospital 12 years later with complaints of chest pain, but the doctors were more struck by the abnormal growths on the man’s limbs. Since then, Dede has become famous for his unusual wooden limbs. When Dede lost his job at a construction site, his wife could not stand it and left the guy, taking their two children. Dede couldn’t get over the breakup for a long time and even spent the night on the street for a while. Dede’s “lifeline” was the circus arena, where he could shock the audience with his wooden arms and legs.

Shiloh Pepin

A girl with “mermaid syndrome” - Shiloh Pepin - has the most touching life story. Pepin was born with fused limbs and was missing one kidney and the lower part of her intestine. The doctors were sure that the girl would not live even two hours, but Shiloh managed and lived a bright, full life. In the history of medicine, there are few cases of children being born with “little mermaid syndrome.” Most children with a rare disease live no more than two days. Shiloh Pepin died at the age of ten, but she lived a happy life. Sheilo was a swimmer, took dance classes, attended school, loved amusement parks, and performed on popular television programs. The girl had to take a lot of medicine every day; her immune system could not cope. Shiloh Pepin fell ill with a cold, which developed into a complex form of pneumonia.

Twinkie Dwivedi

Can you imagine that instead of sweat and tears, a person can produce blood? Twinky Dwivedi is a girl who cries tears of blood. Currently, doctors remain powerless and cannot explain such an anomaly. For the first time, the girl cried red tears in a lesson at school at the age of eleven. Twinkie recently turned 20 years old and feels quite healthy. Twinky Dwivedi controls his emotions well and tries never to cry.

They turned out to be immune to a dangerous disease to which they seemed predisposed

A major study conducted by Mount Sinai Medical Center has found that some people with a dangerous genetic mutation are immune to the deadly disease that the mutation causes. Experts suggest that they are protected by some other, as yet unstudied, feature of the genome.

Scientists have collected data on the genes of 590 thousand people. Some of them carried mutations that had previously been associated with rare genetic diseases. In total, the attention of specialists was attracted to 874 genes, the presence of mutations in which affects human health starting from childhood. The task of the specialists was to find out whether among the owners of “dangerous” genetic variants there are people who, nevertheless, remain not susceptible to the disease.

As it turns out, such people really exist. Among more than half a million study participants, there were only 13 of them, but they did not show any signs of genetic diseases, despite the fact that mutations were 100% likely (as was previously assumed) to indicate their presence. We are talking about eight diseases, including cystic fibrosis, which leads to dysfunction of the respiratory system and currently has no treatment, as well as a number of autoimmune diseases and diseases that lead to extremely serious problems with the skin, skeleton and mental development.

The fact that the discovered people received a kind of “immunity” to their own mutations, according to scientists, suggests that their genes contain some even rarer feature that allows the deviation to be “neutralized,” reports sciencemag.org.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be difficult to fully develop the study - specialists were unable to contact any of the 13 people with “counter-mutations”; moreover, only for five of them can we assert the accuracy of genetic testing without additional tests. According to the scientists themselves, in some ways they feel as if they “unpacked a box but couldn’t open it.”

However, the researchers hope that their discovery will lead to more effective methods of combating rare genetic diseases in the future. They published their research in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology.

The Chernobyl exclusion zone is a 30-kilometer zone, prohibited for free access, around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, formed as a result of the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. Like any forbidden place, it is overgrown with many legends and rumors - about terrible mutants, giant mushrooms and fruits, huge levels of radiation.

Are there mutants in the Chernobyl exclusion zone?

No. Of course, if we argue that any organism is a mutant in relation to its parents, since it borrowed its genetic code from the DNA of both parents, then yes. But there are no terrifying mutants from science fiction films, books or the STALKER universe in Chernobyl. You won't find any bloodsuckers, burers, zombies, or even pseudo-dogs there. But ordinary plant and animal life flourishes quite well in the absence of humans - there are deer, wild boars, wolves and many other living creatures.

Do people live in the Chernobyl exclusion zone?

Yes. And a lot. Firstly, these are those residents who did not want to leave their homes during the evacuation, as well as those who returned there after some time. Currently, these are old people aged 70-90 years old, quietly running their households.

Secondly, these are workers servicing the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (the Chernobyl nuclear power plant continued to generate electricity until the shutdown of the last operating power unit in 2000), as well as builders and engineers involved in the construction and installation of a protective sarcophagus over the destroyed power unit 4. Slavutych-Semikhody electric trains travel to the Chernobyl exclusion zone several times a day, delivering workers to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Thirdly, if the weather is good, many tourists go to the Chernobyl exclusion zone who want to see the ghost town of Pripyat and other local attractions.

But after the explosion of a nuclear reactor, a lot of radioactive material was scattered throughout the exclusion zone. There must be radiation everywhere

Most of the scattered stinking debris was collected by the accident liquidators in the first days after the accident and disposed of. Therefore, at the current time, the radiation background in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is not much higher or does not exceed the natural radiation background in any other place on the planet. Of course, there are places with much stronger radiation, where there is a risk of receiving a very large dose of radiation in a short time, so it’s not worth wandering around there without a dosimeter. A certain video blogger MS has repeatedly visited the exclusion zone, about which he recorded many videos with detailed explanations of what is happening, and also filmed precisely those places where the background radiation greatly exceeds the norm. Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/user/urbanturizm

Are there anomalies in Chernobyl?

No. In the Chernobyl exclusion zone there is nothing similar to the anomalies described in many science fiction works from the STALKER series. There are also no artifacts, which is logical, since according to the authors of such books, artifacts are born in anomalies.

Are there stalkers in the Chernobyl exclusion zone?

Since there are no anomalies, artifacts, the Monolith and other fictional things and phenomena, there is no need for stalkers to be there. All sorts of valuable things from abandoned apartments, as well as other things that can be sold without problems, such as scrap metal, were taken out of there long ago by looters, so the exclusion zone is unlikely to be of interest to them at the current time.

On the Internet you can find many photos of a lamb or calf with two heads or an extra pair of legs. Where do such mutants come from, if not due to the effects of radiation?

Yes, such mutants do exist. Only the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and, in general, any other nuclear power plant have nothing to do with it. Even in the cabinet of curiosities created by Peter I, in the anatomical section there was a two-headed lamb. The same creepy-looking animals have been collected in museums in different countries since the Middle Ages.

And in the Annals of Tacitus there is a mention of similar things back in the time of Nero (37 - 68):

(1) At the end of the year, ominous signs frighten the people: lightning strikes more frequent than ever, the comet star, which Nero always tried to appease with the shedding of glorious blood, (2) babies with two heads found in the streets, and the same young animals discovered when slaughtering victims in cases where custom requires the sacrifice of a pregnant animal. (3) In the Placental district, near the road, a calf was born whose head was fused with its leg;

Typically, such mutants, in addition to external oddities, have many problems with the development of the body and do not live long or are even born dead. The reason for the appearance of such organisms is a failure in the mechanism of mutation or crossing of genes, which can be caused by a variety of both external and internal factors - from poor nutrition and diseases of parent animals to magnetic storms and bad air.

Is it dangerous to eat meat from animals living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone or pick mushrooms and berries there?

Yes. Plants and especially mushrooms can accumulate a lot of radioactive elements from soil and water, and their consumption can be hazardous to health. The same applies to animals, as well as to equipment, materials and decorations pulled out by looters from the exclusion zone.

Due to radiation, mushrooms, vegetables and fruits grow in enormous sizes in the Chernobyl zone

No, there is no reliable evidence of any plants or other organisms in the Chernobyl exclusion zone that would differ significantly in size or other properties from their relatives elsewhere on the planet.