The monotonous commencement of shifts was a carefully choreographed routine that did not change from week to week or month to month. And that particular morning of April 2, 1979, seemed like any other morning. But it wasn’t. A potential problem existed unknown to the four young men trudging off to their work stations. No one had the slightest premonition of the disaster that was about to occur.

The Sverdlovsk facility dealt primarily with two types of microbes: Bacillus anthracis and Clostridium botulinum. The weaponized forms of these bacteria were spores of the former and crystallized toxin from the latter. The mission of the factory was to produce as much of both as possible.

When Yuri had first started working at Compound 19, he’d been rotated through various work stations to familiarize him with the operation of the entire plant. After the first month’s rotation he’d been assigned to the anthrax department. For the two years he’d worked at the factory, he’d been in the processing section of the plant. It was here that the liquid cultures coming from the giant fermenters were dried into cakes, and the cakes were then ground into a powder that was almost pure anthrax spores. Yuri’s specific job was monitoring the pulverizers.

The pulverizers were rotating steel drums containing steel balls. Careful testing with live animals in another part of the facility had determined that the deadliest and most efficacious size of the powder’s particles was five microns. To achieve this size the pulverizers were rotated at a specific speed with specific-sized steel balls and for a predetermined period of time.

Normal operating procedure had the pulverizers inactivated during the night for routine maintenance. The shutdown was done by the supervisor of the evening shift. There was no equivalent shutdown of the dryers, which continued to function in order to produce a large supply of the light tan-colored cakes for the day shift to process. It took longer to dry the cakes than to grind them.

As he always did, Yuri began the day by hosing down the area around the pulverizers with high-pressure, heavily chlorinated water. Although the crushers were sealed units, tiny bits of the powder invariably escaped, especially if the unit had been opened for maintenance. Since a microscopic amount could kill a man, daily cleaning was mandatory even though no one approached the machinery without biocontainment suits.

Initially, Yuri had been terrified at the concept of working in an environment of such a deadly agent. But over the months he’d gradually adapted. On that particular morning of April 2nd it didn’t even occur to him to be concerned. Yuri was like Ivan Denisovich in Solzhenitsyn’s novel, demonstrating once again that humans have an inordinate ability to adapt.

After his cleaning duties were complete, Yuri turned a large hand crank to pull in the hose. The effort brought beads of perspiration to his forehead. Any degree of exertion turned the impervious biocontainment suit into a mobile sauna bath.

Once the cleaning apparatus was stored, Yuri went into the control room and closed the door. Insulated glass separated the control room from the pulverizer. When the unit went online, the noise was deafening, jarring, and generally annoying.