Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: Pripyat
The city of Pripyat is a true ghost town, completely abandoned after the Chernobyl disaster. It was a closed city in the Soviet Union, purposely built to service the massive nuclear power plant with 6 reactors (only 4 were complete and operational when the 4th blew up on April 26, 1986). Many of its 50 thousand residents were awoken by the blast and saw the red glow burning in the direction of the station, only a few kilometers away, emitting insane amounts of invisible but deadly radiation. Many even came out to watch the fire on the road toward the station, probably receiving a deadly dose. Many fell ill with headaches and metallic taste in their mouth. The next day, almost 36 hours after the accident, buses arrived en masse and people were told to take only the minimum necessary with the to be temporarily evacuated for 3 days. They would never come back! It would be another days before the Soviet government in Moscow even acknowledged that something was wrong, and another 2 weeks before a relatively full gravity of the situation would be announced. Walking around Pripyat is like being in some Hollywood post-apocalyptic movie – everything is decaying, old Soviet slogans getting rusty and falling apart. Radiation spiked in a few hot spots to over 30 msv (normal allowable level is 0.3).
