Great Book: "Wolves Eat Dogs" by Martin Cruz Smith... A Murder Mystery with Detective Arkady Renko... (we met him in Gorky Park) Set in Chernobyl, Ukraine among the Squatters who live in the Forbidden Zone...

The poison was radioactive Cesium... it happens to look exactly like Table Salt... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolves_Eat_Dogs

This Book has a Detailed Study of the Lifestyles and Philosophy of People that Moved TO THE ATOMIC DISASTER ZONE because of the Free Housing that was abandoned by people FLEEING the Deadly Radioactivity...

For Example: Poor Old People... They Understand That Radioactivity will kill you in about 20 years BUT... If You Are Already Sixty Years Old... Everything will kill you in about 20 years... so why NOT move into the FREE Houses...

One thing I Did Not Know is... Chernobyl IS IN Ukraine... Not Russia... But at the Time of the Disaster... It Was a Part of the Soviet Union - USSR... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster