Video: Inside the Chernobyl “Zone of Alienation”
On April 26, 1986 a massive accident occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in what is now the Ukraine. A nuclear reactor exploded, sending radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and killing more than 50 people, with another 800,000 exposed to radiation and increased risk of cancer. Around the Chernobyl plant is a 30-kilometer Zone of Alienation (I’m not making this name up), established to prevent people from entering the most heavily contaminated area (and hurriedly evacuated, as you can see by what has been left behind). But people go there anyway, and when they do, what they find is super creepy. It’s your typical post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, where nature is slowing retaking the cities, and human activity is frozen where it stopped in 1986. Below is a recent video of the Zone of Alienation (also called the Zone of Exclusion). Warning: lonely and creepy, but also beautiful and wistful.
