It's a very cool story that seems to be completely made up to me. While the nuclear accident was in large part caused by what one may call "Soviet factors", th

It's a very cool story that seems to be completely made up to me. While the nuclear accident was in large part caused by what one may call "Soviet factors", the Soviet authorities were not some comically stupid villains. They certainly understood the dangers radiation presents to living beings so thousands of cattle from the surrounding area were killed, starting shortly after the meltdown. In the 80s, the USSR didn't have famine-level food shortages either. Yes, there were the unforgettable queues, some rationing and overall shortages, but no famine risk and no incentive for the government to try and feed radioactive cows to the population. And technically, flipping a bit on an SM-1800 (which wasn't a PDP-11 clone like most SM-series machines, the 1800 was more or less an Intel 8080 machine), with the 80s transistor sizes, would certainly require a considerable level of radiation. The cows in the story weren't using the computer terminal, they'd be passing at least a few meters away even if the train track was close, radiation falls off quite rapidly. On top of that, Chernobyl fallout was mostly the wrong isotopes for this. Iodine-131 is terrible for people but decays quickly (half-life of 8 days so 86% would be gone in a month), Cesium-137 was very widespread but neither of these produce alpha rays, which are the main source of bit flips, the isotopes produce gamma rays which are less likely to flip anything. Finally there's the bit where "Sergei decided to move his family out" in 1986, and "filed immigration papers with any country that would listen". That wasn't a thing. The Soviet Union did not allow people to freely leave until just a few months before its collapse, leaving the country was very challenging, few people got approved, it only became easier in 1987 to get an exit visa and a computer engineer in 1986 definitely didn't have the option of deciding to file immigration papers with several countries. I'd say this is some embellishment of the story to give it a fun conclusion, but with the rest of it, I'm pretty sure it's just made up.