Chernobyl Oddities: The Elephant's Foot, The Untold Story

Chernobyl Oddities is a series focused on the strange and unknown objects and locations in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The Exclusion Zone is both very documented and undocumented at the same time, with areas such as Pripyat receiving much attention, and other areas receiving none. This series examines those areas that have received little to none.

The Elephant's Foot is by far the most famous of all the corium masses throughout the Sarcophagus, however the precise information about its discovery, research and ultimate fate remains untold to the general public. This video examines all points, as well as some interesting trivia about some of the people famous for their involvement with the Elephant's Foot, and the objects close by.

00:00 - Introduction
00:32 - From the Ashes
01:33 - December, 1986
03:38 - 1987
05:07 - 1990
05:50 - Artur Korneev
07:58 - Bitter Dust
10:11 - Trivia

[DianaDeLuna]

"The most radioactive mop in the world" is the quality content I come to YouTube for. No irony—just facts. ✌🏼

[reedr]

"How close can you get to the elephant's foot?" I don't know. I like to ask, "How far away can I get from that damn thing?"

[ZZactionwow]

"Dont run to the Elephants Foot" sounds like a sentence in an arg/creepypasta

[PrettySwelll]

Found your channel through the iceberg, and stayed for the quality content. It’s great to have you back!

[nfwrambo]

3:52 this is the most Soviet thing I have ever heard in my entire life

[fratercontenduntocculta]

Crazy to me that the core interior is just as hot today as when it exploded in 1986. The cooling system is interesting all on it's own.

[bmstylee]

This part of history is fascinating to me. So much I wrote a paper on it in high school. Some years ago when Top Gear went through the Chernobyl exclusion zone and passed by block 4 I was as amazed as they were of the remains. Pripyat is one place I would be fascinated to see.

[LeCharles]

It crumbles because as the radioisotopes decay, they end up decaying into gases creating voids and weakness in the structure.

[eddjordan]

Didn't know about the mop. Excellent vid.

[doggonemess]

12:40 I heard that The Mop grants wishes to anyone who can make it to the core. XD

[JayB]

I also did some research on this. When it first happened the foot was so radioactive if someone got within 20 ft of it they would die within a couple minutes.

[jungledyret]

The Mop was the createst thing that I heard this week. And yes, I wrote Mop using capital letter and I will proceed to do so from now on when talking about this specific Mop.

[wdavem]

About the 'dotting' in the photo from the book and compression: there is the half tone pattern of dots used in offset printing of photos in books and news papers and anything printed with an offset press. The dots change size to 'create shades'. Computer scanners often hate halftone because well... digital photos DONT have dots that can change sizes. and the pattern of dots is 'offset' at an angle, which makes proper alignment to the digital pixels all but impossible. While technically this is not a form of compression, it could be argued that it saves the need for thousands or millions of shades of each color of ink to reproduce an image cheaply enough. Apologies if you already know this. I really really like your videos!

[bluetiger]

Woooo! New video!! Please keep going with this channel ❤, been a while since you posted something new and I understand life can get in the way sometimes. Tho, I'll quickly jump to your channel when the stars alig and a new video is out. You have a good narration voice and radiation talk is a cool niche content to target on YouTube.

[rakaman]

In soviet Russia: go to the police, the army and the KGB to get a gun
In America: "hey bob, reckon you can shoot that there elephants foot?" "I'll get my AR-15 from the truck."

[deRohNyn]

Thanks for your dedication to research on this subject. Learned a few new facts about it.

[shikharforfriends]

Wow you have done a great deal of research on the Elephant Foot

[satrah]

mop is currently on eBay and stored safely in its sarmophagus

[General_X]

Our man just fact-checked Kyle Hill with _conviction_ lol

[jcdenton]

We need the chernobyl mop lore deep dive. I can just picture some delinquent liquidator attempting to furiously mop up the corium as it oozes.