A video game from UK-developer, Rebellion, has been inspired by one of the world’s worst nuclear incidents.
Windscale in Cumbria is the UK’s biggest nuclear accident, when a reactor caught fire and burned for 3 days, releasing radioactive material.
Atomfall imaginations a worse case scenario of the events of 1957, complete with killer bees and monsters.
Set in Northern England, 1962, 5 years after the incident, the post-apocalyptic survival-action game, encourages players to try and uncover the mystery of what happened at the “Atom Plant and escape the Quarantine Zone.”
The fictionalised adventure across the Cumbrian countryside includes a cast of “weird and wonderful characters” and will be available on Xbox, Steam, PS4 and PS5.
Games studio, Rebellion is behind titles including Sniper Elite and Zombie Army. Founded by brothers, Jason and Chris Kingsley in 1992, it’s based in Oxford, with a North West studio in Runcorn and Rebellion North in Wakefield.
It currently employs more than 450 staff.
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The Windscale plant, which is now known as Sellafield, had 2 gas-cooled nuclear reactors, but in 1957, a routine heating got out of control. In total 10 tonnes of uranium were on fire, with temperatures reaching 1300 Celsius.
The International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which classifies the seriousness of nuclear events on a scale out of 7, ranked the incident at level 5, the same as Three Mile Island. Chernobyl and Fukushima scored 7.
During the fire radioactive material was released into the atmosphere and led to the government banning the sale of milk produced across a 200-square-mile area. It’s also believed to have directly resulted in more than 200 cases of cancer.
