Police Seize Huge Haul Of Radioactive Berries And Mushrooms

Summary

August 17, 2020: Police in Ukraine arrested 16 people for illegally foraging berries and mushrooms in the Chernobyl nuclear exclusion zone.

Quantities were high enough to imply they intended to sell them, despite these foodstuffs having more than double the maximum legally allowed radioactive contamination. Ukraine exports many tons of berries throughout Europe each year. If mixed with enough non-Chernobyl berries, they might pass customs inspection while still being randomly lethal to the unlucky consumer.

If convicted, the foragers could face sentences of up to 3 years.

Source

Bibliography

1. Original article at chernobyl-international

2. Another similar article about another arrest <-this article is in Ukrainian, not English, but google translate says it's another 60kg of mushrooms seized

Game and Story Use

• You want kaiju in eastern Europe? This is how you get kaiju in eastern Europe.
  • or super powers.
  • or dead people. Probably dead people.
• A little something to spice up a trip to the Farmer's Market or Street Market.
  • Chernobyl Fungus Feeds On Radiation, so it could be magic or mutagenic foodstuffs for sale. Radioactive contamination and real-world biology are optional.
• Organized Crime might be dabbling in berry-smuggling, or foraging near Chernobyl.
  • Maybe the PCs get called in when some mafia boss or Russian oligarch is found dead in his kitchen. The authorities suspect espionage or turf war, but it turns out it's a forager/smuggler/grey market ring that got a bad shipment.
    • Or the other way around. Maybe its a new twist on Russian assassination/wetwork, something like Mystery poison plot sends Czech mayors into hiding, but they are using the cover story of chernobyl's forbidden fruit for deniability.
  • What other secrets or toxins might get unearthed by such an operation? Did the mushroom-hunters discover a treasure that was left behind when Chenobyl was evacuated? Are they succumbing to the poison/fallout, or are they being killed off one-by-one to keep the truth hidden?
    • If you're going this far down the rabbit-hole, there could be vampires or crashed flying saucers buried in the zone.
  • Maybe they're not selling these to foodies, but to scientists, who want the special properties of the mushrooms.
• A horrible mushroom-themed Dyatlov Pass Incident might happen, and the PCs have to go into the zone to save stranded harvesters, or eliminate the sentient mushroom monsters, or prevent the zombie apocalypse.
• That's someone's spyragic project rodgered then, isn't it? Everyone who has ever played a post-apocalyptical RPG knows that radioactive contamination gives plants and fungi quasi-magical powers…