 This video is proudly sponsored by NordVPN, more about that later on. It is 1996 and a soldier presents himself to medical doctors from the Georgian army. He has been working at the Lilo training base around 25km east of the nation's capital, Tbilisi. He has unexplained burns and marks on his skin. Odd, thinks the doctor, but he is sent to Tbilisi for burns treatment, however In 1997, over a few months, more men report with similar unexplained injuries. Wiringly, these symptoms are remarkably similar to radiation burns, but surely that can't be right. The mystery of the patient's illnesses would be tracked down to where they worked, hinting at months of prolonged exposure to which the victims were well unaware. But the more they find, the bigger the mystery as to where they come from becomes apparent. Today we're looking at the Lilo radiological event and I'm going to rate it here, free on my disaster scale and here free on my legacy scale. But let's see if my ratings are correct. Our story, like many covered, starts with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Georgia is a transcontinental country located between Eastern Europe and Western Asia. The country had become under the influence after the Soviet Union's rise to power and fell behind the Iron Curtain throughout most of the 20th century. As such, the Red Army had postings throughout the country. One such place was in the village of Lilo. This small and relatively unknown village does have one big claim to fame as it was the birthplace of Berezin Jugashvili, who is that you may ask? Well, you have most certainly heard of his son, Joseph Stalin. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate at the end of the 1980s, the Georgian government, sensing the change in the air, declared independence on the 9th of April 1991. In 1992, the Russian soldiers based in Lilo handed over the site. During their vacating of the area, they didn't tell the Georgian authorities what the base was used for, instead leaving a semi-disused compound. The Lilo military base will be repurposed for border force training in the new independent Georgian army. Although a bit of a dump site to begin with, the Lilo complex seemed OK, pretty much what you'd expect from an abandoned old army base. There were three main areas, the management and living area, which included several buildings for soldiers and officers, the living quarters, where some of the officers lived with their families and the empty buildings used for training. In total, the centre covered approximately 150,000 square metres. As far as the new owners were aware, nothing strange presented itself about the base, until 1997, when a number of soldiers began to report some strange ailments. The first of the soldiers to report to army doctors had experienced burns on his body, similar to an extreme kitchen burn as early as June 1996. The doctor, confused by these injuries and knowing where the soldiers worked, Lilo sent the man off to Tbilisi for burn treatment. But only the symptoms were looked at rather than the cause. When more soldiers with similar issues came to see army doctors, the unexplainable burns and contact dermatitis couldn't be written off as just one oddity. Strangely, most of the men had a characteristic burn on their chest. This pointed at the soldiers' environment, as all had been based in Lilo. Upon reviewing the soldiers' injuries, the medical staff all pointed to one thing, radiation exposure. But how? The military are trained for the effects of nuclear war. But it didn't add up. A second opinion was sought from a hematologist and a dosomatrist from the Institute of Biophysics in Moscow in August 1997. The diagnosis of the burns was confirmed to be that of a radiation exposure and a prolonged one at that. One of the soldiers had been recruited as early as 1995, with many others joining in 1996. Could they have been exposed all of that time? On the 27th of August, a radiation hotspot was discovered at the Lilo base near an underground shelter. The survey was carried out by officers from the Chemical Radiological Biological Protection Division of the Georgian Army. This was later double-checked on the 5th of September, and the dose rate was measured at roughly 45mg an hour. The Georgian authorities contacted the Safety and Radiation Protection Department of the Centre of Applied Research of the Institute of Physics. This, along with the Army, secured the required monitoring equipment needed to survey the hotspot. A working group of physicists was established to assess and survey the radiological situation on the site on the 10th of September. They started close to the underground shelter and localised the source of the radiation. But due to the team having no suitable container, recovery was delayed until the 13th of September. The source was found inside a pocket of a Winter Army jacket that was used by the Georgian soldiers during guard duty. Once extracted, it was then placed inside a lead container. But this wouldn't be the end of Lilo's contamination. But before we come on to that, let's talk about this video sponsor, NordVPN. As you may know, I like my anonymity, hence you only ever see my hands or more likely to see my dog's face. Saying that, I think most people would prefer to look at her face than mine anyways. I've been using VPNs for a number of years now and for around 18 months specifically Nord. Being in the UK, this is really vital for my YouTube channel as it allows me to access websites that are region locked because some of my research sources are only available in certain countries. 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Let's get back to Lilo and the unfolding radiological nightmare facing Georgian authorities. After the initial source was recovered, more radiation above background had been discovered, located 130 meters from the underground shelter near some offices and buried 30 centimeters below the surface of the soil. This was also recovered, but more radiation was still present. This led the team to near the smoking area where another source also buried was discovered. In just one day, three items of sizable radioactivity were discovered and by now there's only one option available to survey the whole military base. It seemed like the entire site had varying levels of contamination with one more source discovered on the 14th, three more on the 19th and one more on the 20th. Not only that, but two more sources were found inside lead containers abandoned on site. As well as something that would have made David Han proud, some 200 devices containing Radium-226 used for gun sites. Once all the radiation items were collected and contained, they were stored correctly on site next to the scrapyard to await proper disposal. The radiological waste was still yet to be determined to the exact radionuclei involved. But after gamma absorption measurements were carried out using a lead screen, cesium-137 was determined to be amongst the waste on site, a deadly gamma ray emitter. On the 9th of October 1997, the IAEA were contacted by the Minister of Health of Georgia, stating that nine servicemen of the Lilo Training Detachment of Frontier Troops had developed local radiation-induced skin diseases on various parts of their bodies. In turn, the IAEA then informed the WHO and Georgia then requested assistance. And the IAEA attended the site between 11th and 14th of October 1997. They set out to survey the site and they concluded that no other sources were still around and the highest levels were recorded off the first discovery at 164 gigabit quills, giving out 13,000 microgray an hour, one meter from the source. When exposed to this for prolonged periods of time, acute radiation syndrome can be experienced. With that, let's look at the exposed personnel and their experiences. The total number of people affected by the orphaned sources was actually 11 and they ranged from a dose of 1.6 to 0.1 grey. For reference, three grey or above could be deadly in a single dose. Before hospitalization, all but one of the exposed persons experienced nausea, loss of appetite, tiredness and weakness. The first patient was sent to Tbilisi for care at the Russian military hospital where he was diagnosed with a non-radiation condition in July 1996, almost a whole year before the discovery of radiation at Lilo. After receiving a failed skin graft and with other patients presenting with similar conditions, he was readmitted in October 1997 and diagnosed with ARS, or Acute Radiation Syndrome, subacute phase and radiation burns of the fourth degree to both thighs. Treatment of the remaining overexposed persons was performed at the Curie Institute and the Percy Hospital of the Armed Forces, both in Paris and the dermatology department of the University of Ulm at the Armed Forces Hospital in Ulm, Germany. This was arranged for by the WHO. On 22 October 1997, two patients were admitted to the Curie Institute and two to the Percy Hospital of the Armed Forces. The remaining seven patients were hospitalised in the dermatology department of the University of Ulm. Six of the lesser injured soldiers were discharged from hospital and were allowed to return home in Georgia. Each would still have painful movement and psychological issues for years to come, however. Five of the remaining had to undergo a nightmare number of skin grafts, amputations and multiple surgeries to remove necrosis of the skin. One of the men lost his fingers on his right hand and all five had to undergo multiple treatments to heal recurrent radiation-induced ulcers. Two had to keep on intermittent treatment all the way into the early 2000s and this was accompanied with lower T-cell counts. But there's still a big question. Why on earth was the army base at Lilo so contaminated? Well, when the Russians pulled out, they didn't tell anyone completely what they had been doing there. Instead of it being a usual army base, it was actually used to train soldiers in the event of a nuclear accident or nuclear war. The sources were used for calibration of survey equipment and for training in radiological monitoring. The reason for the buried sources was to train soldiers on radiation detection. These sources, rather than properly disposed of, were just left in situ and the only possible outcome then played out on the unsuspecting Georgian soldiers. Georgia, apparently, is one of the big dumping grounds of Soviet-era nuclear devices, as multiple RTGs and scrap radioactive sources kept on being found during the 1990s and one of these I've covered in a previous video. It is thought that many ex-Soviet Union states still have hundreds of orphaned sources waiting to be discovered by some unwitting poor soul. A big thank you to NordVPN for the sponsorship. If you're interested, check out NordVPN by going to www.nordvpn.com slash Plainly Difficult to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount. Their support really does help out the channel. This video is a plainly difficult production. All videos on the channel are created by Commons Attribution Share Ike License. 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