Once upon a time there was a Soviet scientist who worked in an institute of high energies. He was going about his day doing important science work when the particle accelerator he was working with when one of the magnets ensuring safety of the machine broke down and a particle beam travelling at an insane speed pierced his head with a flash of light. But, being a Soviet scientist, this man did not surrender to the beam and its radiation. He was too cool to die. He survived. In fact, he is still alive and looking well.
I like stories that sound straight from the comic book pages, but are still true, even though hard to believe. The man on the picture above had one such story happen to him.
His name is Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski and he was a scientist at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, USSR. At the time of the event he was 37 years old. On 13 July 1978, he was checking a particle accelerator for a malfunction when the safety mechanism broke down.
He had to go directly to the devices installed on the path of the particle beam extracted from the accelerator. It turned out that during the previous experiment, a high beam intensity was not needed, so the automatic door lock was turned off, and then it was not turned on by mistake. The sign on the door did not glow because of a burned out light bulb. In addition, Bugorsky, having called the control panel, said that he would be in the channel in 5 minutes, and he came running, apparently, a little earlier than the operator removed the beam.
Anatoli was leaning over the machine when he stuck his head in the path of the 76 GeVproton beam. Even though this figure is comparable to approximately 1/13 of the kinetic energy of a flying mosquito, it is a formidable power if it is concentrated like this. He says that he saw a flash "brighter then a thousand suns" but did not feel any pain(most likely because it cauterised everything on its way and also because the brain can not feel pain).
The radiation dose he received was more than 200,000 rentgen, enough to kill a person. He thought his days were counted and so thought the medics and other scientists, so he was brought to a clinic in Moscow so they could observe and learn from his eventual death. Anatoli looked like this right after the incident:
As you see, part of his face is swollen, there is a patch of naked skin on the side of his head where the beam left the body. Despite his looks and expectations of the medical personnel, he did not die shortly but recovered and even proceeded his work as scientist at the same institution. One of the reasons why he did not die could be that the beam was localised and did not disperse too much.
Alas, there were some setbacks. He lost hearing in one ear and left side of his face is still partially paralysed. Also, sometimes he has seizures. On the other hand, nowadays a man in his 70s, he is still alive and kicking, living in the same town in Russian Federation.
Judging by his interviews to the Russian media, it seems like he would like to get his case checked by the Western science, but he can’t afford to leave his hometown. He thinks he would make a fascinating object of study for the study of war medicine of the future: "This is, in effect, an unintended test of proton warfare," he claims. He believes, "I am being tested. The human capacity for survival is being tested."
Due to the secrecy in everything related to high energies and the general way of doing business in USSR, his incident was unknown for the general public for at least 10 years, surfacing only after the Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe.
And, as with most accidents in the Soviet Union, Bugorsky was not allowed to talk about it. He continued to visit the radiation clinic periodically for routine examinations, but it wasn't until decades later that he finally spoke about the accident.
“As former inmates, we always know each other. There are not many of us, and we know the stories of each other's life. In general, these are sad fairy tales. "
Anatoli Bugorsky did not immediately become a celebrity after the accident. However, I think he wouldn't mind too much. Probably, he was just happy that he stayed alive and could proceed with physics, the path he chose in life. After all, this is the way our civilisation works, we show up despite the setbacks the fate throws in our knapsack.
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