Boris Baranok

By Joey

Nuclear has a lot of meanings, like warfare or chemistry but today I'm here to tell you about nuclear power plants. Disaster strikes in Pripyat, Ukraine at the nuclear power plant Chernobyl.

On April 6th, 1986, a safety test in reactor number 4 triggered the power to drop and then surge by accident. This caused a huge explosion spreading radiation and debris all around the plant. The police and firefighters evacuated people in under a day which was more than Anough time for the radiation to get into your body. Many people never saw their homes again. 4 days after the explosion they discovered a puddle of radioactive water under the reactor and soon scientists realized it would melt through the final safety guards. It would cause a series of explosions and would destroy a lot of Ukraine.

Someone had to do something to save millions of people. The plan was for three people to go down and use the release valves to release the puddle and make sure it didn't melt through the safety guard, but the problem was they still needed to find three people. Soon after that fortunately three people stepped up and their names were Alexei Anenenko, Valeri Bespalov, and Boris Baranov. These people knew there were going to be long term problems or probably death. Alexei Anenenko knew where the release valves were, Valeri Bespalov was an engineer, and Boris Baranov held the light and helped in other ways.

They went down on May 6th, 1986, and they wore basic diving equipment with wetsuits and radiation monitors. The more time the three were down there the more radiation poisoning they would get, so they went as fast as they could, but they knew no matter what they did they would still get a lot of radiation poisoning either way. They released all the water and came back later that day with a completed mission. After, the only side effects the divers got were increased chances of cancer and other diseases. They all lived surprisingly, and Boris Baranov was the only one who has died and that was in 2005 to a heart attack. Soon after the dive, all three of the divers received a high ranked reward called the hero of Ukraine.

So, these three stepped up to save millions with pure bravery, and they went in expecting they wouldn't come back but they defied what everyone thought. They didn't get paid to do this; they fully volunteered without even being asked. And through these actions they saved millions.

Sources: Wikipedia, sky history channel, stories for boys who dare to be different.

Eddie Aikau

 

By Joey 

         Your about to find out about the coolest surfer, the man who saved 500 people, the real Poseidon. His name is Eddie Aikau. He was born on May 4th, 1946, in Kahului Maui as the third child of his family. They were living poorly on the streets. As a kid he loved surfing and he surfed anytime he could and sometimes even Dearing school. When he was old enough, he got a job at a pineapple factory and as soon as he could he bought his own surfboard. He lived on Oahu Island, the third largest island in Hawaii. After that he got his first job as a lifeguard, and he covered the whole north side of the island. Eddie saved over 500 people as a lifeguard without letting anyone die at all. He was saving people in 25-foot waves. He died on March 12th at 32 years old. 

 

One day he joined a reenactment crew to go on the journey taken by Polynesian migrants between the Hawaiian and Tahitian islands. They would go in a wooden boat navigating by the sun and stars. Soon they hit a giant storm. The boat flipped over, and they were in the water. Eddie volunteered to swim to shore. Luckily, they had a surfboard, so he used that as a raft, and he took off his life jacket because it was too clunky. The others were rescued. There was a search crew looking for Eddie, but he was never seen again. Scientists think that the waves got up to 50 feet in that storm. 

 

To this day, Hawaii holds a surfing computation called The Eddie every year to celebrate Eddie Aikau. Only the top surfers in the world do it because they only hold it when the waves are about 20 to 40 feet tall. They include Denten Miyamura, Keown Downing, Clyde Aikau, Bruce Irons, Noah Johnsen, Kelly Slater, and Ross Clarke. Eddie could not be stopped and even the greatest people looked up to him.