What they triggered instead was the beginning of the worst civilian nuclear accident in human history.
In seconds, the unstable RBMK-1000 reactor—mortally wounded by a disastrous circus of operator violations and a fatally clever design—roared past one hundred times its rated thermal output. Roughly 2,000 tons of radioactive steam, vaporized fuel, and red-hot graphite blasted skyward. As journalist Adam Higginbotham put it in his award-winning Midnight in Chernobyl, by the moment the test commenced the technicians had effectively created a pistol with a cocked hammer. All that remained was for someone to pull the trigger.
This Sunday, April 26, 2026, marks the 40th anniversary of what happened when that nuclear trigger was pulled.
For me this is not an academic exercise. My long-time friend Victor Kubik, founder of LifeNets, traveled to Pripyat (the then-all-new privileged city built from scratch to support the construction and operation of the Chernobyl power plant) and the first Chernobyl sarcophagus with an Indianapolis delegation in 2003. As a former technology columnist I have long been interested in matters of nuclear development. I joined Victor recently on his Kubik Report podcast to talk about what really destroyed Reactor No. 4.
The technical answers to the disaster are sobering. But as we jointly explored, the spiritual answers are more sobering still.
Following is a summary of our 40-minute discussion.