As Many As 93,000 People Died In The Disaster
We don’t know exactly how many people died in the Chernobyl disaster. The official Soviet record indicates that only 49 people died, including the two engineers who perished in the initial blast — however, estimates of the number of people who died range from 4,000 to as high as 93,000.
Many of the deaths in the Chernobyl area occurred because of lethal doses of radiation, which can cause cancer, severe congenital disabilities, and many other problems. Children born to people who had been in Chernobyl that spring were born with some of the most severe congenital disabilities in history.