Elephant's Foot

Submission 43,546

Part of a series on Chernobyl Disaster. [View Related Entries]

About

The Elephant's Foot is the nickname given to a large radioactive mass of corium and other materials that formed underneath the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant during the Chernobyl Disaster of April 1986. Following the rise in general awareness of the Chernobyl Disaster assisted by the 2019 HBO Chernobyl TV series, the Elephant's Foot has been referenced in various memes online, particularly as an exploitable in photoshops or image macros.

Origin

The Elephant's Foot is a cooled-down mass of black corium (a mixture of nuclear fuel, fission products, control rods, structural materials and other materials that form during a reactor meltdown) that externally resembles tree bark and glass.^[1] The object, named for its wrinkly appearance similar to that of a foot of an elephant, lies beneath Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and is estimated to weigh two metric tons.^[2] Elephant's Foot is a small part of a larger mass of corium beneath the reactor (photographs shown below).

The object is highly radioactive. At the time of the object's discovery approximately eight months after its formation, the radioactivity near the object ranged between 8,000 roentgens and 10,000 roentgens an hour, which is a median lethal dose of radiation within five minutes. The radiation level near the Foot has since subsided, measuring at 800 roentgens an hour in 2001.^[3]

The two photographs of a worker standing next to the object were made in 1996 when Deputy Director of Shelter Object Artur Kornyev visited the room with the Elephant's Foot (shown below). Despite popular belief, visible distortion in the second photograph is likely caused by Kornyev moving during a long-exposure camera shot, and not by high radiation.

Spread

The Elephant's Foot did not appear significantly in memes until mid-2019, soon after the HBO limited mini-series Chernobyl premiered, leading to an increased public interest in the Chernobyl Disaster. On June 4th, 2019, Twitter^[4]^[5] user @jimfuckey made the first two humorous posts about the Elephant's Foot, with the tweets gaining over 2,800 retweets and 7,900 likes and 190 retweets and 630 likes in three years (shown below, left and right). On July 5th, 2020, Tumblr^[6] user punballwizord reposted both images, with the post gaining over 98,500 likes and reblogs in three years.

On June 7th, 2019, Tumblr^[7] user aviculor posted an image in which comedian Hannibal Buress was edited in sitting atop the Foot. On June 8th, 2019, Tumblr^[8] user ms-gyroscope replied with an edited Wack meme, with the exchange gaining over 55,700 likes and reblogs in three years (shown below).

More viral posts about the object were made in 2020. For example, on September 27th, 2020, Facebook^[9] page Rappers in Peculiar Places posted a two-panel meme featuring rapper Gucci Mane eating the Foot (an edit of a GigaChad meme)^[10] that gained over 1,700 reactions and 680 shares and was widely circulated online^[11] (shown below, left). In late 2020, an It's X [Weekday] meme about the Foot gained viral spread. For example, on December 11th, 2020, Instagram^[12] page site_17b posted it, gaining over 11,000 likes in two years (shown below, right).

Demon Core

Demon Core is a nickname given to a spherical core that was experimented on as a part of the Manhattan Project. The core was involved in two fatal incidents in 1945 and 1946, with one of the incidents caused by severe safety protocol violations as a physicist let a screwdriver, with which a beryllium hemisphere was held, slip. Starting in 2018, the incident gained popularity as a historic reference, particularly among Japanese artists, inspiring memes and fan art of anime girls experimenting with the core.