My grandfather, who is a nuclear scientist, and my mom also come from a small closed-off city in Siberia (Russia).

Visiting my grandparents I remember we had to go through a sort of border control to get there.

My mom told stories of how the government would change the asphalt every year in that city to cover the nuclear dust.

Wow, thank you so much for sharing this. It’s fascinating and deeply moving to see how similar our childhood memories are, despite being thousands of miles apart.