My friend Rostov photojournalist Adil Zeynalov went to the Chernobyl zone in the summer. I filmed a lot of material there, about a city in which there are no people. Now he is busy editing a film about the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (for the next anniversary on April 26).
PHOTO HUNTING ON PRIPYAT
A large teddy bear, which has long lost its original shape and color, lies near the Ferris wheel in the central park of culture and recreation in the city of Pripyat and stares with button eyes into the blue sky. It has been lying like this since that very day in April 1986, when the entire population of Pripyat was hastily evacuated. People were not allowed to pack their things, many left in home clothes. Probably, a mother with a child was put right from the Ferris wheel into a departing bus, and they were not even allowed to pick up the fallen teddy bear ...
- Many people are afraid of Chernobyl, but what lured you there? - I ask a question to Adil Zeynalov.
- I'm extreme by nature. With a camera in hand, I traveled to many countries and exotic places in search of an interesting shot. At one of my photo exhibitions, friends from Kyiv approached me and offered to go to Chernobyl to make a documentary. They described Pripyat where the city where time has stopped. Telephone booths, soda vending machines - all the flavor of the Soviet era has been preserved there intact. I immediately agreed, and the radiation did not frighten me.
(Under the cut of the photo, quite a lot, two dozen, plus Adil's story about this trip)
1. Zeynalov considers this photo the most successful. It seems nothing special, just a bench in the park of culture, near the Ferris wheel... 
2. Adil before entering the city of Pripyat. He looks at the device, and counts x-rays. There are not so many of them here, only 11. And where are they, bastards, hiding? 
Arriving in Kyiv, the first thing I visited was the Chernobyl Museum, there are many exhibits that tell about this unprecedented tragedy. The first strong impressions were there. From Kyiv to the Chernobyl zone 250 kilometers along an excellent highway. As we approached, there were fewer and fewer cars, and finally the track became completely deserted. The checkpoint is located in the village of Dityatki. Polite guards in military uniform at the barrier (but not the military). A thorough check of permission to visit Pripyat. In front of us, a large jeep with Ukrainian numbers drove up to the checkpoint, in which a company of cheerful youth was sitting. A blonde in a miniskirt began to thrust dollars into the security guard so that he would let the jeep pass on a tour of the zone. The blonde was given a U-turn, and I don't think it was because of us. The security there is really strict, - says A. Zeynalov.
In Dityatki, a large electronic scoreboard was installed with data on radioactive contamination of the area. Then there were 11 micro-roentgens per hour. Neighboring villages: Mashevo - 112, Buryakovka - 397, Khoyat - 421 microroentgen per hour.
3. Fork in the road: to the left is the city of Pripyat, to the right is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. 
4. Monument to the firefighters who were the first to rush to eliminate the disaster. 
5. And this is a memorial to the dead firefighters. 
ONLY TOURISTS AND MARAUDERS
The city of Pripyat met the guests with an ominous silence, broken only by the hubbub of birds. The central Lenin Avenue was overgrown with grass and trees so that a car could hardly drive along it. Radiation icons were everywhere. “We were immediately warned: do not walk on the grass, do not approach the thickets,” says Zeynalov.
An ordinary nine-story residential building was surrounded by thickets. Right in front of the entrance, a large tree grew out of the sewer manhole, blocking the entrance to the entrance. With a video camera in hand, the Rostovite squeezed into the entrance, climbed the landing. On the wall is a list of tenants: such were always hung out in houses in Soviet times.
Everywhere the picture is the same: opened, broken doors of apartments, traces of vandalism and looting. Toilet bowls and bathrooms torn from their place, broken furniture. The gaze lingers on the shriveled children's sandal on the floor in the hallway, on the yellowed tear-off calendar, where there was a sheet with the date April 26, 1986.
There was a piano "Terek" in the apartment: none of the marauders encroached on it. Adil touched the keys: the instrument made a clear sound, as if 23 years had not passed since the last time a human hand touched it.
A comfortable bus drove up to the house, a crowd of foreign tourists with dosimeters poured out of it. It turns out that there is a company that organizes trips to Pripyat for thrill-seekers. An hour in an infected area costs $500. Citizens of Israel, Canada, Austria arrived by bus. They looked around frightened, pointing dosimeters at every bush...
6. City of Pripyat. In the foreground is a shopping center, in the back is a residential building at the address: Lazarev Street, 1/14. 
7. Until recently, I was an ardent fan of the Stalker game - I took the Energetik Palace of Culture by storm. I remember how difficult it was, soldiers, Monoliths dug in here, and zombies were still hiding in the corners. It turns out that the authors of the game copied the building from nature. 
8. The same - the hotel "Polesie". According to the game, it was necessary to find some kind of hiding place here. In real life, everything is looted.
THERE IS NO ONE IN THIS CITY
- I was struck by the cleanliness of the city: nowhere was there a piece of paper or a cigarette butt, as if they had gone through a vacuum cleaner, - says A. Zeynalov. - It is understandable, since there are no people, and there is no one to litter. And the rains have washed away all the garbage. And there was also an amazing green: unnaturally bright, shiny, looking like plastic.
Before the trip, Zeynalov was warned to bring bread for the fish. The fish lived in a diversion channel near a nuclear power plant. When the bread began to be thrown into the clear water, giant two-meter catfish rose from the bottom, swallowed the treat and again went into the depths. They were not at all afraid of people: for almost a quarter of a century not a single fisherman appeared on this coast. The fish have an unusual color: they are spotted like panthers.
Behind the barbed wire is a cemetery of equipment that participated in the liquidation of the accident. A long line of red ZiL firefighters with their hoods open as if to fall. They could not be taken out of the “zone”: after all, the metal gained a crazy level of radiation. But the ubiquitous vandals still removed batteries, carburetors, and other spare parts...
Fans of the computer game "Stalker" can easily recognize the buildings of the hotel "Polessie" and the Palace of Culture "Energetik", which in the virtual world have to be taken by storm. In real life - a booming foyer, covered with debris and broken glass, on the wall is a poster for the film "Aty-bats, soldiers were walking": he went to the Palace of Culture at the end of April 86th ...
9. Everything is terribly overgrown with shrubs and trees. To enter the entrance of an ordinary residential building, you need to squeeze through real thickets. 
10. The list of residents of the entrance (a common thing in modern times) is read like a martyrology. 
11. Cemetery of old technology - there is a lot of radiation here. 
12. Rengen marauders do not care: the cars opened their hoods and mouths, batteries and carburetors have long been picked out of them. 
13. And this is a monument of Soviet times: a peaceful atom in every home!
Here is the building of the fourth destroyed power unit of the nuclear power plant. As before, it is surrounded by a high concrete fence with barbed wire. Crews of builders are working here on a rotational basis: they are erecting another shell over the concrete sarcophagus that covered the damaged reactor. It will pose a danger for several millennia.
14. Adil Zeynalov near the destroyed fourth power unit. 
15. Another photo - a park of culture. By the way, it is strictly forbidden to touch the greenery, walk on the grass. The vegetation is juicy, unnaturally bright in color, like plastic. 
16. In general, the whole city of Pripyat is unusually clean: no paper, no mote. If there are no people, who is to litter? And in the city, Adil noticed wild boars running through the streets, just like in the game "Stalker". But the huge catfish that live in the canal near the nuclear power plant have a strange spotty color. 
17. The same shop - there are daredevils who dared to sit on it! 
18. This teddy bear was probably dropped by a child in a panic when he and his mother were hurriedly put on buses for evacuation. People were forced to leave without even being allowed to seize property. 
19. Just think, the bear cub has been lying on the ground for almost 24 years! "The mistress abandoned the bear" ... One of the symbols of the tragedy of the city of Pripyat. 
20. And in the distance, the building of the once top-secret radar tracking station loomed in a huge array of cyclopean dimensions. Exactly the same was blown up in the Baltics, and another one remained in Azerbaijan, near Baku. There is a version that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was built for the sake of this radar station, and subsequent tragic events were associated with it. 
21. For the sake of a good shot, I had to climb into the thicket. But everything worked out, the grass in this place did not "fonil". 
22.
23.
24.
The tour ended unexpectedly. One of the escorts ran up, shouted: we are leaving here quickly, von three hundred micro-roentgen! Obviously, somewhere there was a release of radiation, or a cloud pulled in our direction by a breeze. We immediately got into the car and drove away,” recalls Adil Zeynalov.
The last procedure was the exit from the zone, through a special chamber, where both people and all things are carefully checked for radiation contamination. The metal door parted, the Chernobyl zone remained behind.
25-26. There is a special checkpoint at the exit: you need to stand in front of the dosimetric installation in a special way so that the automatic door opens and you can leave the area. 
I have almost finished editing the documentary film under the working title “24 years later,” Adil Zeynalov concludes the story. - I want to dedicate it to the "Chernobyl victims", the liquidators of the consequences of the disaster at a nuclear power plant. The dead city of Pripyat remains a great monument to this disaster.
27. On the way back, the tourists were escorted by a rainbow, also unnaturally bright. As if congratulating them on the fact that they got out without picking up radiation. 
This short reportage is just a preamble to the film that Zeynalov is preparing. The conclusions that the journalist will make are also interesting. In a word, we are waiting for the premiere!
Everyone knows about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. This terrible explosion crippled thousands of destinies. Someone died immediately, and someone only after a while, suffering from radiation.
More than 30 years have passed, and people are still interested in the nuclear power plant tragedy.
In contact with
The following victims are known:
- 2 people died during the disaster;
- 31 people died in the next few months;
- 134 suffered from radiation sickness;
- more than 60,000 people received high doses of radioactive exposure.
Virtual walk through the exclusion zone
Despite the fact that the Chernobyl accident occurred more than 30 years ago, people are still interested in this city. Travel offers to Pripyat are becoming more and more popular: excursions around Chernobyl are being organized, agencies are being created that offer not quite ordinary tourist services. People are rushing to the exclusion zone with all their might, not paying attention to the consequences of this event.
Thankfully, technology doesn't stand still. If you can’t come to the site of the Chernobyl accident, then you can travel virtually. You can see the panoramas of Pripyat without exposing yourself to dangerous radioactive radiation. Perhaps this idea will seem boring to you, because a virtual walk cannot be compared with a real one. But there is no doubt that with access to online maps, you can see everything you want. Panoramas of Chernobyl, the 4th power unit, old buildings, eerie decorations left over from ancient times - all this will be revealed to the gaze of a virtual traveler through the screen of his computer.
You can get acquainted with the surroundings of Pripyat without leaving your home using:
- Google maps.
- panoramic videos.
- Photos posted on social networks and on historical portals.
Causes of the Chernobyl disaster
Since we are talking about panoramic views of the devastated city, it is worth saying why Chernobyl hastily left its entire population. Everyone knows that an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant associated with the fourth power unit. The course of events of that fateful night is known down to every second. However, it is still impossible to say exactly what exactly led to the explosion of the reactor. At the moment, there are several versions: some of them are both truthful and absolutely delusional. Over the many years that have passed since the accident, Pripyat has become overgrown with legends and speculations of the people that have nothing to do with reality.
Initially, it was believed that employees of the nuclear power plant were to blame for the explosion. But later, all charges were dropped from the workers - they acted according to the rules of exploitation. In connection with this fact, low safety requirements are considered one of the reasons for the terrible catastrophe at the fourth power unit of the nuclear power plant.
Chronicle of events at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
The explosion happened at once, which is why all the events of that night can be retold down to every second. The power unit remained fully operational until the accident itself. Firefighters arrived on the scene at the same time and quickly extinguished the fire. However, people received large doses of radiation, which led to inevitable death. Within an hour after fighting the fire, the first symptoms appeared. 28 firefighters died from radiation sickness at nuclear power plants. Both the reactor and the power unit itself were destroyed.
Nuclear explosion
Disputes about the explosion do not stop to this day: scientists say that it was similar to a nuclear one. In simple terms, a chain reaction occurred in the device of an atomic reactor, which is similar to the explosion of nuclear bombs. The reaction itself occurred in less than a second, before it could turn into a full-fledged nuclear explosion. The substance contained in the nuclear reactor was thrown out, and the fuel dissipated.
But the Chernobyl accident contributed to the steam explosion. It is generally accepted that the pressure inside the device increased by about 70 times, due to which the multi-ton plate that covered the reactor fell off.
Consequences of the accident in Chernobyl and our days
The disaster in Pripyat is considered one of the most serious man-made explosions in the world. Its consequences are so detrimental to the environment and people that even now, after three decades, the problem is still relevant.
About 180 tons of nuclear fuel was in the reactor at the time of the accident. A third of it was thrown out, polluting the territory of Chernobyl.
At the moment, a restricted area has been created around Pripyat, also called "exclusion zone". And even now, after so many years, there is an excess amount of radioactive isotopes in the contaminated soil, in connection with which any agricultural activity is prohibited in the region.
Chernobyl will be abandoned for at least another few decades: the decay of some substances varies from ninety years. Generally speaking, the situation is improving slightly, but radiation manifests itself in different ways. For example, it is known that some of the decaying radioactive elements acquire a new form - sometimes even more active. There is an opinion that by 2086 americium will reach even more than after the explosion thirty years ago. We can only reassure ourselves that this threatens us with increased alpha radiation, which is relatively easy to protect against.
Online walks at the Pripyat nuclear power plant
The fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant The place is very interesting, albeit unsafe. Panoramas of Chernobyl attract people of all ages, including the younger generation. You can understand the craving of people who dream of visiting the territory of the famous nuclear power plant, because they want to know the history that is relevant in modern times. But it should be understood that the panoramas of Chernobyl 4 power units are a dangerous pleasure.
However, at the moment there are tours, the organizers of which promise travelers complete safety. They are not cheap, but there are daredevils who are ready to shell out considerable sums just to get into the mysterious ghost town and see the place where the inhabitants of Chernobyl lived peacefully before the accident at the nuclear power plant.
Panoramas of Chernobyl on the map for online viewing of the city streets. Journey on an interactive map of the city of Chernobyl - street panoramas. with search + weather discussed earlier. You move through the streets of the city in real time
Panoramic photos of the streets of Chernobyl
We look at the sights and the city plan in the photo, what to see, pictures of the Kyiv region (Ukraine). You can enlarge or reduce the panoramas of the streets of Chernobyl using the zoom tool +/- . The nearest settlement and surroundings nearby is the city of Slavutich.
A virtual tour of the streets of Chernobyl and a walk along the roads of the region is up to you. Panoramic photos - pictures provide control using arrows on photo images from Google Maps. Even easier - where you clicked with the mouse, you moved there. To view now in detail st. Vatutin Kirov.
Pictures-panoramas of Chernobyl (Chornobyl) and the Kyiv region in Ukraine are available to everyone for an online tour without leaving the computer. They also work on mobile maps of cities and towns. You can take a virtual walk-tour, move in real time along the roads, show the route with names, find out how to get to the street. Frunze.
Coordinates - 51.270,30.2196
Map of Chernobyl (Ukraine) with photo - image and panoramas of the region provided by the map service "Google Street View"
Virtual walks about Chernobyl give the user the opportunity to assess the scale of a long-standing tragedy, see everything in detail and see what is happening now in a place that is infamous to the whole world.
Catastrophe of the 20th century
This event, which took place on April 26, 1986 in the city of Chernobyl, Kyiv region, is still remembered by mankind. It entailed global changes in the global ecology. Now Chernobyl and Pripyat are called cities without a settlement, but there are still residents here. These are employees of enterprises serving the Exclusion Zone, as well as self-settlers. 
Despite the spoiled ecology, some returned to empty houses. Basically, these are elderly people who found it difficult to change their lives.
Features of the virtual walk
Employees of such well-known Internet resources as Yandex and Google made an excursion to the Exclusion Zone and prepared a report. Thanks to him, each user of the network can go on a virtual tour of the places of a man-made disaster. Participants will see all objects of the closed territory. Here is their list:
- The city of Chernobyl and the stele "Chernobyl region",
- Exclusion Zone,
- The village of Kopachi
- Zalesye village,
- Sarcophagus.
Participants of the virtual tour of Chernobyl can walk along the interactive streets, see abandoned houses, kindergartens, and an amusement park. The thought that life was in full swing here thirty years ago evokes a poignant feeling. 
Now individual excursions are organized to Chernobyl, but they are expensive. A virtual walk is an opportunity to touch the history and see the place of the world tragedy with your own eyes.
Panoramas of Chernobyl on Yandex Maps
For a long time, Yandex advertised their panoramas, but accessing them required installing their web browser, which turned many users off. Not so long ago, these panoramas became available to everyone without any "additional conditions". Chernobyl is a small city, but still not all views are interesting there. We tried to select the most notable ones.
The first panorama is a panorama of Chernobyl. Recall that Chernobyl and Pripyat are not the same thing.
The city is uninhabited, because it is captured by the forces of nature.
Central square of the city.
Today, the history of Pripyat is shrouded in the darkness of secrets and terrifying stories about radioactive zombies and five-headed wolves that roam the city. But before the settlement of Pripyat turned into an Exclusion Zone with a couple of hundred wildlings, it was quite a prosperous city in the USSR. How was the ninth atomic city of the Soviet Union built? What happened to the satellite city after the Chernobyl accident? What do they say about Pripyat today of the electric power industry of the world?
We have collected only the most interesting facts from the past and present life of the city and will reliably tell you everything about Pripyat.
The history of Pripyat dates back to 1967. It was then that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to be planned, and with it a mini-city for builders and workers of the station. Seven sites were considered for the construction of the satellite city. The area of the future Pripyat was chosen due to its convenient location - a railway station already existed nearby and there was a place for road construction. In 1969, they released a project for a workers' settlement - Pripyat did not immediately become a city - with drawings of the first future buildings. The city began to be built on the banks of the Pripyat River, which is a tributary of the even larger Dnieper River. It belongs to the Kyiv region. Pripyat is only 94 km from the capital of Ukraine. Not far from the city is the territory of Belarus. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located two kilometers from Pripyat.
The first buildings of Pripyat
Based on the main needs of the then population, the first in Pripyat began to build hostel No. 1, canteen No. 1 and the construction management building. The first street on which the buildings were located was Druzhby Narodov Street. In August 1971, the city had already acquired the features of a settlement. Problems with drinking water and sewerage were solved, the first house with 90 apartments is completely ready for operation. A year later, in 1972, the first school was completed in Pripyat. April 14, 1972 can be considered the real birthday of the city. On this day, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR assigned the then name of the builders' settlement - Pripyat, in honor of the river near which it was located. The status of the city of the settlement will be given only in 1979.
It's interesting that:
- Pripyat became the ninth city of the USSR, which was founded as a satellite town of a nuclear power plant. Prior to this, Obninsk (Obninsk NPP), Sosnovy Bor (Leningrad NPP), Kurchatov (Kursk NPP), Udomlya (Kalinin NPP), Novovoronezh (Novovoronezh NPP) were rebuilt. In fact, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has two satellite cities, since after the closure of Pripyat and the emergency power unit, the station worked for another 4 years. The city of Slavutych was built for workers and their families, which is still alive and well. The population of the city is about 25 thousand people.
Pripyat of 1986 is a comfortable city with a developed infrastructure and almost 50 thousand inhabitants. Lived there, as we understand, mainly nuclear scientists. In order to provide jobs for family members of power engineers, the Jupiter plant was opened, which produces electronic equipment.
Pripyat and Chernobyl
The history of Pripyat is often confused with the history of Chernobyl. It is important to understand that Chernobyl and Pripyat are two completely different cities. Pripyat is located two kilometers from the nuclear power plant, Chernobyl is about 13 km.
The Pripyat nuclear power plant was called Chernobyl because the station is located in the Chernobyl region. The station has nothing to do with the city itself. The history of the city of Pripyat began as a satellite of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1970, while the city of Chernobyl has a long history.
What is Pripyat? This is a satellite of the first nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which gave impetus to the construction of the city.
The building of the nuclear power plant, approved by the project of 1967, could accommodate three different types of reactors: pressurized water VVER, graphite-gas RK-1000 and graphite-water RBMK-1000. It was decided to supply the station with RBMK-1000, which at that time had already been tested at several nuclear power plants of the Union. By 1986, 4 reactors were operating at the station. The capacity of each of them is 1000 MW. Two more nuclear power units, reactors No. 5 and No. 6, were under construction at that time. They were stopped in construction after the Chernobyl disaster. The construction of new power units, which were never launched, was carried out from 1981 to 1983, respectively.
Few people know, but in addition to the well-known disaster of 1986, there was another relatively major accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat. In 1982, on September 9, the reactor was launched at the Chernobyl power unit No. 1 after a scheduled repair. Reactors consist of several channels where atomic fuel is laid. Outwardly, they look like large holes where fuel assemblies are placed - bundles of tubes with uranium inside.
In channel No. 62-64, the fuel assembly collapsed and, as a result, the channel broke. The emergency protection did not work. For another 20 minutes, the reactor power was very high - 700 MW. This led to sad consequences. As a result of the accident, not only the first, but also the second power units were damaged. A radioactive mixture of steam and gas was released into the atmosphere. The territories adjacent to the station were contaminated. But since the Soviet media very reluctantly advertised the incident, they did not learn about the accident at the Pripyat nuclear power plant, just like the entire Soviet Union.
As you can see, there have already been problems with the RBMK-1000 reactors. By the way, not only at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Several accidents also happened at the Leningrad nuclear power plant, which operates at the same power units.
Insufficiently well designed and constructed reactors are one of the main reasons that is called the culprit of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Along with it, there is an opinion that the station workers are to blame for the accident.
Pripyat. The day that changed everything
What did Pripyat suffer from, how was it? Today, many people know about what happened to the city of Pripyat from documentaries and films. The history of Pripyat is known to many from the personal stories of people who fled the city, but they learned about the disaster more than a day after the accident. What was happening at that time at the scene, in the heart of the station, at power unit No. 4 of the NPP? Let's try to figure it out.
The largest nuclear accident in Pripyat occurred on the night of April 25-26, 1986. On April 25, the station workers stopped power unit No. 4 for scheduled repairs. During the shutdown, it was planned to test a new emergency power supply system proposed by the Hydroproject Institute. For testing, the reactor power was reduced by half in advance. The emergency cooling system was turned off, this was required by the conditions of the experiment.
The power of the reactor continued to be reduced, at one point they even lost control over it. Several times the power jumped from low to high levels. Management was returned to the hands of the station workers. All this was just preparation for the experiment. At 1:23:04 the test began. Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl NPP began to involuntarily increase its power. After 30 seconds, the operators gave an emergency signal. In this case, absorbing rods should enter the reactor core and stop the fission of uranium atoms.
As it turned out later, the emergency rods were incorrectly designed and they failed to stop the reactor. The power of the reactor grew rapidly and in a couple of seconds the system went out of control. There were several strong blows.
At 1:23:47, that is, 43 seconds after the start of the test, reactor No. 4 completely collapsed.
Everything was just beginning...
As a result of the explosion of the reactor at the station, about 30 fires arose, including the roof of the turbine hall. All special response units were alerted. At 5 am on April 26, the fire was completely extinguished. After the fire, the operation of all equipment of the fourth reactor was stopped, and the neighboring power unit No. 3 was also disabled. But the catastrophe in Pripyat expanded more and more. At 8 pm on the same day, due to the accumulation of flammable substances in the premises of the station, a new fire broke out in the central hall of power unit No. 4. They did not extinguish it with the usual means, instead they sent helicopter equipment.
Later, experts will say that by spraying chemicals and dumping sand, helicopter pilots only aggravated the situation and heated the reactor even more. It was possible to extinguish all the foci only in a week! According to some reports, a month after the incident, on May 23, a third fire broke out in Pripyat, which was extinguished by about 300 people for 8 hours. However, the fact of the fire remained classified by order of Gorbachev himself.
Pripyat in 1986 has become a fire-wracked city, curtained with smoke and radioactive emissions.
Radioactive emissions into the atmosphere
Today, the abandoned city of Pripyat is a radioactive zone, which is not safe for health to stay in for a long time. The catastrophe in Pripyat "brought" a lot of dangerous radioactive compounds to the settlement. The total release of radioactive substances after the destruction of the reactor was approximately 14 × 1018 Becquerels (a unit of measurement of radiation activity), which is approximately 380 million curies of radioactive substances. For comparison, this is 100 times more than radioactive compounds were released into the atmosphere in 1945 after the Americans dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the territory of the station, the wind carried isotopes of uranium and plutonium, cesium, strontium and iodine. Ukrainian lands were infected by 50 thousand square meters. km. Emissions hit 12 regions of the country. But there are also neighboring Belarus, Russia, European countries… Radioactive rains after the disaster were registered even in Germany and Ireland. About 95% of radioactive substances are still in the reactor building. Yes, yes, they have not been destroyed in 30 years. The reactor is covered by the Sarcophagus and should not let dangerous compounds through, but world experts have long argued that the shell of the Sarcophagus is falling apart, and the station is in dire need of additional protection. The leadership of Ukraine has been “solving this issue” for several years now.
Evacuation of the population of Pripyat
What happened in Pripyat, no one knew for a long time, except for some station workers. Either the directors underestimated the scale of the accident, or they tried to hide the incident to the last, or they were playing for time. What happened in Pripyat was not really understood by the country's leadership either. How else to explain the fact that the evacuation of Pripyat took place more than a day after the accident?
The Chernobyl Directorate of Pripyat appealed to the city authorities with requests for the removal of residents on the morning of April 26. But the authorities refused, as the representatives of the nuclear power plant were silent about the details of the accident and did not explain their request. The whole of Pripyat remained in the dark - the evacuation seemed to be some kind of extreme, to which there was simply no need to resort.
The decision to urgently evacuate people from the city was made only at 12 noon on April 27, a day and a half after the accident! The evacuation from Pripyat was announced for the population only at one in the afternoon. It was announced to the whole country that “an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the reactors was damaged."
In general, the Soviet people listened to the stories of the authorities about small and insignificant events in the city of Pripyat, that it was not the reactor that exploded, but its design was damaged, that only harmless substances fly around from the emissions. About almost instantaneous death from radiation sickness, of course, was also silent.
Stories about Pripyat passed from mouth to mouth with a variety of details. The population was sure that they were leaving the city for a maximum of a couple of days. Everyone was instructed to take only documents and some food with them. Most people were taken to Chernihiv and Kyiv. Several hundred people were evacuated to Russia and Moldova. 47 thousand people fled from the city. Pripyat in 1986 became an abandoned settlement.
The population of the cities nearby with Pripyat was resettled over the next four years!
At first, people were entertained with promises to return everything to its place, but experts knew that the city of Pripyat was lost forever. However, there were those who did not agree with this.
Suicide self-settlers
A year after the accident, part of the population began to return to the city. In 1987, there were 900 "self-settlers of Chernobyl" in the city of Pripyat who wanted to live in the abandoned territory. According to social studies of the 1990s, 80% of self-settlers in the city of Pripyat are people over 60 years old.
Most of them called homesickness the reason for returning, the other part claimed that there was no radiation exposure and they didn’t want to hear about what happened to Pripyat.
In the 1990s, self-settlers lived mainly on “what God sends”, they hunted, for example. However, some even tried to plant vegetable gardens and earned money by telling fascinating stories about Pripyat to journalists.
Although Ukraine called the empty ghost town abandoned, it did not deprive the status of the city, however, like Chernobyl. The city of Pripyat remains a city of regional significance.
But in fact, the history of the city of Pripyat ended in 1986, when the main population left from there. Now Pripyat is a city of rumors, legends and self-settlers, who, by the way, almost all have departed to another world, from old age or radiation is unknown. And modern people, whom the Pripyat Zone attracts as a place of permanent residence, are much less than extreme pensioners in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, the history of the city of Pripyat remembers the chase of prisoners who escaped from prisons and hid in an abandoned forest area. Unlike radioactive zombies, these are not the horrors of Pripyat, but quite real facts. Many, by the way, were detained and returned to places of deprivation of liberty. Many, but not all!
The abandoned city of Pripyat is an ideal place for such fugitives, since law enforcement agencies rarely appear on the territory of the Zone. Today, the gray, ruined and abandoned city of Pripyat is visited only by travelers - extreme people who want to see with their own eyes whether all the horrors about Pripyat are true. And there are a lot of horrors. During the years of inactivity, the city was overgrown with polynya and turned into a barely passable jungle with destroyed buildings. Some visitors see three-headed dogs and wolves there, which may still be true. Others observe radioactive zombies, which they enthusiastically talk about on social networking pages. You can look at dogs, zombies and abandoned buildings by visiting excursions to Pripyat. The programs even include a visit to the reactor closed by a sarcophagus and communication with self-settlers, who claim that they will tell everything about Pripyat as truthfully and interestingly as possible. Well, or not very truthful, the main thing is to be very interesting.
By the way, not only guides and self-settlers talk about Pripyat, but also computer games, for example. In two missions of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, players are surrounded by the Pripyat Zone.
Today, Ukraine allows entry to the city of Pripyat without hindrance. There is even an electric train going to the city of Slavutych.
