Goiânia, Brazil

In Goiânia, Brazil, one of the strangest and most dangerous nuclear accidents ever occurred, and the majority of people have never heard of it. At Goiânia, neither a nuclear weapon test nor a nuclear reactor existed. Moreover, garbage wasn't kept there. There was a hospital, though, and they had left it for dead.

In 1987, scavengers broke into the town's abandoned hospital and found a vintage teletherapy machine that had been used to cure cancer. Nobody knew that the machine had a nuclear core made of cesium-137. In an effort to sell the old unit for scrap metal, thieves seized it and started disassembling it. They quickly exposed themselves to intense radiation after releasing the radioactive core.

One of the men was amazed by the blue glow and told his friends and family about it. 112,000 persons had been exposed to radiation in total, and 249 had received high doses. Radiation evidence was found 100 miles distant. One of the first persons to discover it developed it to such a severe degree that he required arm amputation.

When authorities realized there was a radioactive leak somewhere, they called in specialists from both the US and the USSR. Forty residences had to be razed since the radiation irradiated the structures themselves and resulted in the deaths of four people from exposure. In addition to the radiation-related illnesses that thousands of people experienced, the town as a whole was boycotted, and the Brazilian government revised its regulations on the storage of radioactive materials.