City 40

Saw this at the Movies That Matter film festival 2017 in The Hague. The first half of the documentary presents a good overview of the purpose of City 40, what is happening there, what binds its inhabitants to the city, and what urges them to stay there. All this is perfectly understandable, despite the fact that the people living there have a restricted life and cannot tell anything about it to the outside world. But its infrastructure and provisioning is far better than elsewhere in the country, and luxury goods as well as cultural events are available, also much better than in the rest of the country. And as one of the talking heads said: "scientists are busy with splitting atoms, and the rest does not interest them as long as they can continue with splitting atoms." Having a scientific background myself in physics, I fully recognize the truth in this statement.

The second half was more worrying and made us aware of hidden side effects, particularly considering environmental issues with nuclear waste and accidents, of which Chernobyl is just an infamous example. Same applies to the people living in the city, who must sustain radiation and related dangers much more than at other places. Though not proven, there were suspicious effects on offspring due to genetic problems, probably becoming worse in future generations. I would not be surprised when there are many more of such places, hidden for us in the interest of National Security, and certainly not in former communist countries alone, but also in "our" part of the world.