On April 26, 1986 at 1:23 am, reactor number 4 in Chernobyl's Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine went out of control. Two explosions and a 10-day fire released billions of radioactive particles into the environment, contaminating vast territories in numerous countries. An exclusion zone within an approximately 30 km (19 mile) radius around the plant was created, prohibited to all human life. The next day, the 135,000 inhabitants living inside this zone were evacuated. They would never return. Within this zone now prohibited to human life, the wild fauna and flora were left on their own. What has happened to them during all these years? This is the silent, slow story of the animal and vegetable world subjected to radioactivity, as told by those who have observed and studied them since this fateful accident in 1986, the scientists.