Chernobyl and Pripyat. What about the plants? Fauna in the “dead city”

It's really a jungle. For 30 years the city disappeared into the forest. In another ten years, buildings will begin to crumble en masse. Therefore, you need to go to Pripyat right now, it will only get worse. It’s not difficult to get here; even a kind of tourism is developed.

But I managed to see a little more, and I will show you the Exclusion Zone from an unusual side. Welcome to a place where the USSR never ended, and radiation in some places is still 50,000 times higher than normal.

1 Today everyone can visit the famous ghost town. This is a little more difficult than going to Kyiv, the area for 30 kilometers around is still considered a closed zone, but getting there is as easy as shelling pears, and the trip will not be more dangerous than an hour-long plane flight. What I will talk about in this report is my personal experience, yours may be slightly different, but it’s better to really see it once. I wanted to go to Chernobyl ten years ago, but for some reason I put it off, I was afraid of radiation and couldn’t find a reason to go. Conclusion - in vain, the further you go, the less remains, nature takes its toll, buildings are destroyed, artifacts disappear. So, let's go!

2 checkpoint “Dityatki”. The border between the living and the dead, the gates of the Exclusion Zone. Everyone who travels to it legally enters the Zone through this checkpoint. If you are not an employee of the nuclear power plant (and it is still operating!), then most likely the only way to get to Pripyat is to buy a tour for one or two days. It costs, taking into account the road from Kyiv and back, paperwork, lunch and overnight accommodation, 100-150 dollars, and the Zone itself takes most of it for paperwork. It is much cheaper for Ukrainians than for foreigners. I can’t recommend a guide, since I traveled privately with the help of friends: for the two of us with Dasha, we paid about 10 thousand rubles for a one-day tour.

3 At the entrance there is an information and souvenir kiosk of one of the travel companies. Which one to choose - decide for yourself, study sites and reviews, share in the comments.

4 There are strict rules for visiting the Exclusion Zone, and the program itself is clearly written out on paper. Step aside and you risk being expelled from the territory. They say that sometimes you can retreat from them, but the main thing is not to get noticed by other groups: otherwise the guide will get hit hard, and the tourists will not find it enough: competitors are happy to “knock” on each other.

5 Another outpost, already 10 kilometers from the Chernobyl station. Here the police check the route sheet, make sure everything is in order and let you inside. Then it all begins. Looking ahead, I will write that the Zone is much more lively than it might seem at first glance, and Chernobyl itself is an inhabited city with shops and cafes. Inhabited, but very strange. The next story will be about why people still live here, and what kind of life it is after a nuclear disaster.

6 This sign welcomed visitors to the Lenin Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, now the letters have been removed and only the torch remains. I don’t recommend stopping here even for a minute: a rusty stele with a torch is one of the most contaminated places in the Chernobyl Zone, located on the territory of the Red Forest. Its trees bore the brunt of the radioactive dust released during the explosion in 1986, turning their crowns brownish-red. Later the trees died, and at night a glow was observed at this place. (according to legends and stories, nothing really shone there)

Radiation is a terrible thing, and many are afraid to come here for fear of the consequences. The trouble is that it is not visible. Walking in a seemingly quiet place can be deadly. So, let's move on.

7 Pripyat entrance sign. Go left to the residential part of the city, straight or right - to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The city of Chernobyl itself remained on the sidelines. He has nothing to do with the disaster, although he ended up inside the Zone after the accident. Why the Chernobyl station and not Pripyatskaya? I've always been interested in this. It began to be built earlier than the satellite city, and was named simply by the name of the area, the center of which is Chernobyl. In order not to get up twice, let’s discuss another myth: what kind of name is CHERNOBYL? Black reality? Curse? Those who do not believe in conspiracy theories will answer that this is simply the Ukrainian name for wormwood, which grows abundantly here. The more impressionable will remember the Holy Scripture, where wormwood is a symbol of the Lord’s punishments: among the ancient Jews, the plant was mentioned as a synonym for poison, bitterness or curse. In the New Testament, in the Revelation of John the Theologian, a fallen star or angel is called “Wormwood”:

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of this star is “wormwood”; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many of the people died from the waters, because they became bitter.

And here you don’t have to believe in mysticism at all, but the result of the reactor explosion was, among other things, the pollution of water systems not only in the surrounding area, but also in many areas of Europe. So think for yourself whether this is a coincidence or not.

8 We step onto the streets of the city, which in reality has become symbols of bitterness and sorrow.

9 For thirty years now, Pripyat has been stuck in Groundhog Day. Time froze forever in 1986, and this is for real. The Soviet Union did not collapse here, the Internet and satellite TV did not appear, and stores have the same shortage as throughout the country in the same years. But then in Pripyat, an exemplary Soviet city, there was no shortage of food.

10 The city is very overgrown, you can’t even see what’s written on the store sign behind the trees and bushes. In summer there are completely impassable jungles here: a real concrete jungle is here!

11 But this is Lenin Avenue, one of the main streets of the city of 50 thousand people!

12 A double tree sprouted through the sewer hatch and rushed to the sky. The tree grows in the courtyard of one of the schools: powerful, dense, 15 meters in height.

13 One of the main official prohibitions is not to enter buildings. They say that it is dangerous and they can collapse at any moment. But it’s impossible to be here and just walk the streets!

14 If you really want to, no one will stop you from entering empty high-rise buildings. The most interesting ones are 16-storey high-rise buildings, they offer excellent views. It’s better not to go to those with coats of arms: they are really in very poor condition, plus they are in the center, it’s easier to “burn yourself out” there.

15 How nice life was in 1986: no intercoms, no iron doors! Come in, comrade, it's open! And they didn’t put air conditioners on the facades, they simply didn’t exist. Although they have already begun to dabble in home-made glazing of balconies...

16

17 Inside, they are very similar to the 16-story buildings of the Moscow series; a strange feeling immediately arises. Such tall residential buildings are rarely seen abandoned in the former USSR, so you immediately feel that Pripyat is a special place.

18 Mailboxes...yes, in some houses and in residential entrances there are such!

19 For a building that has been empty for so many years, the order is almost perfect. Almost all residential buildings have intact elevators, no writing on the walls - graffiti can only be found in the center. They were made after the accident. I was lucky to find an apartment with intact batteries: today this is a rarity, over the past 15 years the city has been pretty well robbed. But can you imagine what it was like here in the early 2000s? Everything is whole!

20 People left their apartments for three days, not knowing that they would not be able to return home even after thirty years.

21 In some apartments the glass is intact, while in others it is broken. But it’s not the vandals; they simply didn’t reach many houses. Wind. Although looters swept through Pripyat like a hurricane twenty years ago, most of the contents of the apartments were carried away by the liquidators of the accident: furniture to a burial ground, some equipment for storage to stores. The Rainbow store still has a warehouse of old stoves, sideboards and pianos.

22 We go up to the top floor. We pass by the machine room. The door is open, the equipment is opened, but not taken out. The copper windings of the motors were first removed from the elevator equipment. In general, copper cables are the No. 1 target for looters.

23 We go out onto the roof of a 16-story building.

24 In good weather, there should be a view of the nuclear power plant and the Fourth Power Unit from here, but in the fog you can’t even distinguish the city. But look how overgrown its streets are: click on the “right” arrow and compare it with a photograph taken from exactly the same angle in 1995.

25 We continue our walk around Pripyat. One of the most recognizable places, the corner of the Rainbow store with bright yellow telephone booths. And one of the very first childhood memories of the Chernobyl tragedy: a television picture with this particular house and booths was forever etched in my memory. And the residential building where the store was located was called the “White House” because the entire city elite lived in it, from the director of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant to the head of the railway station Yanov. 4-room apartments are commonplace there.

26 The advanced Soviet nuclear city was richly decorated with all kinds of communist slogans. “May you be a warrior, not a soldier.” There is also a story about this sign that a day after the accident, some joker climbed onto the roof and knocked down the first letter “a,” which is why the inscription acquired a completely different meaning. Later, the entire inscription was “put” on the roof, but a few years ago illegal “self-propelled vehicles” raised the letters back.

27 Hotel “Polesie” on the central square of Pripyat, next to the Energetik cultural center. Little remains inside. In general, in Pripyat it is more interesting to walk as far as possible from the center, where there is a much greater chance of encountering interesting artifacts rather than bare walls. The hotel, like some other facilities, continued to operate long after the accident: dosimetrists lived here to monitor the level of radiation in the city.

28 Amazing neon signs! I would love to see with my own eyes how they worked. If they ever invent a time machine, I will definitely return to Pripyat in 1985.

29 Graffiti with bears appeared on the building of the Energetik Palace of Culture recently, I haven’t seen it in other reports. No real bears have appeared in the city, but packs of wild boars regularly run around the city. Sometimes wolves come in. Semyon the fox also lives in Pripyat, he often comes out to guests. Almost tame, here is his portrait. But the domestic cats and dogs were gone. Although they were not taken out of the city, residents were not allowed to take their pets, they had to be left behind, they gathered in packs and attacked. liquidators. They say that at some point they were all shot... is it true or another Chernobyl myth?

30 The disaster occurred a week before one of the main Soviet holidays, Workers' Day. Cultural workers prepared for it, printed and drew posters for the demonstration. They remained standing in the corner of “Energy”.

31 One day for a trip to the Zone is very little, especially in winter, when daylight hours are short.

32 I was in the city for the first time, and could not remember the names of all the objects. I don’t remember what kind of building it was with the beautiful mosaics, whether it was a club or a music school. The infrastructure in Pripyat was at its best, in the Soviet years they really cared about the comfort of scientists, therefore working at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and living in Pripyat was considered a great success, the best brains of the country came here.

33 Cinema “Prometheus”...click on the arrow to the right, see what it looked like in the 80s. Today the place is almost unrecognizable. Not a trace remained of the fountain, everything was overgrown with trees, and the sculpture of Prometheus was moved out of harm’s way to the territory of the nuclear power plant, thanks to which it has been preserved to this day (click on the arrow again).

34 The famous amusement park with its yellow Ferris wheel turned out to be not as grandiose as I imagined. I was even disappointed... the attractions themselves made the cat cry, besides the wheel and the race track there is only a carousel and swings. The park is very tiny, how could everyone fit in it? The Ferris wheel was supposed to be opened only on May 1, 1986; it was a gift for the holiday and never had time to work. Here's another legend. In fact, many people were able to ride the wheel, and not for free. Below I will quote the recollection of one of the former residents:

I rode it myself. And not for free, I bought a ticket. I wanted to ride the cars, but I couldn’t get a chance to ride them - the crowd was huge. But there were significantly fewer people willing to take the wheel. But the woman who managed it apparently did not have time to study the instructions on how to seat people correctly, so it turned out to be a serious incident. We had a great time then. This worker put people in each booth. And when half of the wheel was tightly filled, and the other, on the contrary, remained completely empty, the wheel spontaneously broke off sharply and began to roll up and down, seeking balance, until the loaded booths ended up at the bottom of the wheel. The sight was creepy, because... the axle on which the wheel was mounted wobbled greatly. It felt like the wheel would fall on its side. Some of the boys who were lower down jumped off in all directions. The woman herself was very scared. Turned off the wheel. When it stopped, she began to turn it on and off little by little, first from every second booth, then even less often, until she had dropped everyone off. We were lucky, we did 2 more laps for free. Maybe because of this incident it no longer worked, or maybe some flaw was discovered in it. We rode exactly a week before the accident, because I only came home to Pripyat on weekends and was at a pedagogical practice in Polesskoye. This is the kind of fact that took place in the history of the cultural park that never opened.

35 The attractions generate a lot of noise, the iron collects all the radiation, so I don’t advise you to linger in the park. Especially standing near the race track. I didn’t know about this, I stood there taking pictures, but my fellow travelers pulled me back.

Later it turned out that the park is generally one of the dirtiest places in Pripyat. The dirtier places in the center are only on the square in front of the Energetik Palace of Culture and the Polesie Hotel.

And in the neighborhoods there is surprisingly little radiation. The second most infested place within the city is the river pier. We will go there again.

36 Beautiful bridges over a small stream on the way from the park to the central square.

37 It was unbearably sad in the abandoned school. It seems like I’ve seen all this dozens of times in pictures, how someone wrote their name and class at the time of study in ’86 with chalk on a blackboard, but it touches your soul. The children of Pripyat took the tragedy especially close, and some of them connected their adult lives with the city, making films, conducting research and organizing tours to the Exclusion Zone.

38 Some school interiors and artifacts. Browse through the gallery.

39 Where are you now, Nikolai Korotkikh?

40 The third school is in very poor condition, the inside is 100% damp. And the building of school No. 1 has already collapsed.

41 Children's gas masks on the dining room floor.

42 Details of the past: old road signs, a handle from a diplomat and a lid from Soviet kefir.

43 Pripyat was a young city in all respects. The average age was only 25 years old, and the city itself barely had time to celebrate its 16th anniversary... And how loved it was that they still can’t forget it?!

44 After the accident, there was talk that after decontamination, perhaps they would be allowed to return to the city and it would come to life again. It was carefully “washed” of radiation by liquidators, and many of them paid for it with their health and even their lives. The terrible truth was revealed later: Pripyat and the entire Chernobyl Zone will not be inhabited for a very, very long time, at least until the middle of the 21st century. Some areas were not cleared. We are standing on the border of the “clean” zone; further on the radiation will be stronger.

45 Abandoned river station. From here high-speed “missile” boats went to Kyiv or Belarusian Mozyr. There was an excellent summer cafe in the station building.

46 In the completely razed building, a beautiful, cleverly made mosaic has been preserved.

47 And in the soda machine there remained “that same” faceted glass from which all Soviet people drank, but no one got sick.

48 The second super dirty place within the city is this staircase. The sound is so loud that your ears are shaking, but there is no other way to get down to the pier...

49 Why am I telling this? So that you understand: on the one hand, a trip to Chernobyl in 2018 is easy and quite safe, but on the other hand, you need to be careful and should not walk on your own and without a dosimeter.

50 Remember the wooden pier in the archival photo in the gallery five paragraphs ago? The landing stage was carried a hundred meters to the side by the current, it ran aground and partially sank. But still well recognizable...

51 Over three decades, the nature of the Zone has been restored, large lush mushrooms and juicy berries grow here. Some visitors, especially those who walked on their own and “survived” in the Zone for several days, willingly eat them: but in my opinion, it’s not worth it.

52 And now it's time for some real horror. The building in the photo is the most terrible and dangerous place in all of Pripyat, this is not a joke or an exaggeration. Just the sight of him evokes horror. Any abandoned hospital is intimidating, but it's hard for me to put into words what I experienced there.

53 Medical unit No. 126, the only hospital in Pripyat, received the first victims of the accident: firefighters who extinguished the fire of the Fourth Power Unit went here immediately after the call. In the hospital basement, they took off all their clothes because they were contaminated. All the uniforms are still there, and even the most desperate people who visited the basement were freaked out by what they saw and are unlikely to go back a second time. Dust with “hot” particles flies in the air, the background reaches a million decays per minute (per square centimeter in beta). In the room with the remains of firemen's uniforms, you can see both 20 and 50 millisieverts per hour on the dosimeter.

54 In front of the entrance to the reception room there are brand new boots that have not been worn at all. Someone threw it away, and this someone was clearly in that very basement.

55 Of course, we didn’t go into any dungeons, but a walk around the first floor was enough.

56 Yura measures the background near the reception desk in the hospital. The Geiger counter squeals like a butchered pig. The readings are off the charts - 50 thousand times (!) higher than normal.

57 This is the sound of a fireman's helmet, once pulled out of an ominous basement. Later, a metal tablet was brought here and placed next to it: touching such a radioactive thing, much less moving it from place to place, would be dementia and courage.

58 Radiation is the main reason why Pripyat is still relatively well preserved, even among the looters there are few fools.
(Yura corrected: no, of course not, it’s just that this is a restricted area, and you can get jail time for taking away goods. Yes, it’s a long way to walk from the border of the zone, and driving illegally by law means giving a car to the first cop)

59 And here is a clear reason why they ask not to enter the buildings... Now is the time to go to the Zone. The farther, the more the city will collapse, many places will soon simply not remain: without the help of people, by the forces of nature itself, they will disappear forever under piles of unnecessary concrete.

60 What's left of the bookstore. It was his roof that caved in in the previous photo.

61 The collapsed wall of the first school revealed a wonderful stand about the methods of party propaganda.

62 Despite everything, this dead city did not die completely. Until the early 2000s, life was in full swing here; Pripyat enterprises worked for the employees of the nuclear power plant. They didn’t live here, but they came here. And the Chernobyl nuclear power plant stopped generating electricity only a year ago in the 21st century, because the three other reactors were completely operational! They were gradually closed, the last, 3rd block was stopped in 2000 according to European requirements.

63 Now in the nuclear city they heat with wood...

64 The laundry of Chernobyl NPP employees still operates here to this day: yes, yes, the station is still functioning and several thousand people work there. Their clothes need to be disinfected, and there was no better place.

65 At the same time, radiation hazard signs are painted over.

66 On the way back, in the evening, we drove past the nuclear power plant itself. Unlike Pripyat, I experienced absolutely nothing there. Although I saw it with my own eyes for the first time, the nuclear power plant itself is almost an exact copy of the Desnogorsk nuclear power plant in the Smolensk region, many years ago.

67 This is what the infamous fourth power unit looks like today, where the explosion occurred. Last year it was covered with a new sarcophagus - an arch that will last a hundred years, and will allow the reactor to be dismantled and buried in parts during this time.

The idea to close the torn open mouth of the reactor arose almost immediately after the explosion. By November 1986, a “Shelter”, better known as a “sarcophagus,” was erected over the fourth power unit. The old sarcophagus was, in fact, a large concrete box (its construction took 400 thousand cubic meters of concrete mixture and 7 thousand tons of metal structures). Erected in haste, it nonetheless contained the further spread of radiation from the reactor for 30 years. However, its ceilings and walls have already become dilapidated and have begun to collapse.

Construction of the second sarcophagus began in 2007. It was planned that it would be a movable arch that would cover the reactor along with the old sarcophagus, after which it would be possible to begin dismantling, decontaminating and burying the remains of the power unit. The project was originally going to be completed by 2012/13, but the deadline was pushed back due to financial problems. The new sarcophagus became the largest above-ground mobile structure: Since it was dangerous to build an arch directly above the old sarcophagus, it was built in parts at an assembly site near the power plant. The assembly and lifting of the elements of the first half of the arch lasted from 2012 to 2014; by 2015, the second half was also assembled. Afterwards, both parts were connected into a single structure. By November 2016, the installation was completely completed.// gazeta.ru

68 Unfinished power units 5 and 6. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant should have been even larger...in 1986, the construction site was abandoned as it was, along with the construction cranes, and throughout the USSR the construction of new nuclear power plants was urgently stopped: they remain abandoned at varying degrees of readiness.

69 Another new facility is spent nuclear fuel storage facility No. 2. It has just been put into operation. Another storage facility has begun to be built nearby, where waste from the operation of the Rivne, Khmelnytsky and South Ukrainian nuclear power plants will be stored. Now the fuel is exported to Russia, and Ukraine pays us about $200 million a year for this.

70 Time to leave the Chernobyl Zone. We get into the car and drive all the way to the Dityatki checkpoint. On the way we go through radiation control twice: everything is clean.

I hope my report was useful for those who have not yet been to Pripyat. Now you have definitely decided whether you want to go there or whether you will never dare to take such a trip. Those who have been will probably remember familiar places. If you liked the post, don’t be lazy to “like” it below.

The infamous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the tragedy that occurred here in 1986 became the reason for the creation of the so-called Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This area of ​​increased danger and radioactive contamination also includes the city of Pripyat, which emerged as the main place of residence for Chernobyl NPP workers and their families. For more than 20 years, Pripyat, which has not been deprived of the status of a populated area, has been an abandoned place, where numerous excursions are periodically organized.

The construction of a working village for nuclear workers began in 1970. This place received city status only 9 years later, when the population attracted from all over the Soviet Union became large enough for the village to become a full-fledged city. Great hopes were placed on Pripyat not only as a city where world-class specialists could live, but also as an important transport hub of the Ukrainian SSR. Here a railway line was launched from Chernigov to the western regions.

The street layout of Pripyat also had significant differences from many Soviet cities with so-called “standard” buildings. The plan for the distinct Central district of Pripyat was developed in such a way that even between outbuildings there was sufficient distance and wide roads. Thus, Pripyat was supposed to become a city in which traffic jams are impossible. The calculation of the population was carried out within 85 thousand people with a possible expansion of residential development.

The infrastructure of Pripyat was also excellent. Already at the beginning of 1980, high-rise residential buildings began to appear here, including the famous sixteen-story buildings, an amusement park was created for family recreation, and various sports and cultural institutions were built. The city created one of the largest cinemas in the region, accommodating 1,200 spectators, as well as 2 large stadiums, not counting small public swimming pools and shooting ranges. The industrial potential of Pripyat, which did not relate to nuclear energy, before the year of the accident was estimated at half a billion rubles in annual profit.

Propaganda films have been shot about Pripyat since the active development of the city; the city was supposed to become an exemplary scientific center of the Soviet Union. Specialists from far abroad were invited here for exchanges and work trips, for whose comfortable stay the Polesie Hotel was built, which has survived to this day. All this could have received further development as part of independent Ukraine, if not for the tragic events of April 26, 1986.

The April night for all residents of Pripyat ended with a loud message about the accident. The 4th power unit of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was destroyed by at least two reactor explosions, which were the consequences of scheduled repairs and testing of the reactor. The explosion released a huge amount of radioactive substances with a minimum half-life of 25 years into the air around the station. An urgent evacuation was announced in Pripyat.

Due to the fact that the Chernobyl NPP management hid a number of facts revealing the scale of the disaster in the first hours after the accident, the population of Pripyat was notified of a “temporary” evacuation, and few people immediately knew that they would not return to this city. The radiation level of each refugee was checked upon leaving the city; many were forbidden to even take personal items other than documents - the risk of exposure was so great.

At first, after the evacuation was announced and the liquidation work began, police officers were on duty at the station in the city, whose main task was to protect residential buildings. But when it became clear that further living in Pripyat was impossible, the houses were left unattended. In the first 5 years after the disaster alone, looters stole almost all the equipment from sports centers, hospitals and other institutions. Everything that could be carried away from the opened apartments was taken out, Pripyat was plundered.

The marauders were not stopped either by the high level of radiation or by the military personnel on duty at the checkpoints, whose main task was to prevent people from entering the radiation contamination zone. Only in the last few years did the radiation level within the city begin to fall, thanks to the sarcophagus erected above the 4th power unit. Pripyat began to become extremely desolate: quite tall trees had already sprouted through the asphalt, and most of the open space was covered with wormwood and other weeds.

Currently, not a single resident is registered in the city. The so-called “Stalkers”, who still live in the Exclusion Zone, prefer to settle as far as possible from the empty ghost town. In total, more than 100 people live in the outlying areas of Pripyat, most of them are elderly people who have their own wooden houses and subsistence farming.

Currently, only one organization is engaged in official excursions to Pripyat at the international level, it is called "Chernobyl-Tour". All other companies that allegedly provide guide services to the Exclusion Zone are illegal, and it is inherently dangerous to use their services. Excursion groups are conducted to the famous sites of Pripyat - an amusement park, the Polesie hotel, several sports centers and residential buildings. All objects along the route have been explored long ago and are as safe as possible.

For potential guests of Pripyat, there are a number of behavior restrictions that must be strictly observed throughout the trip. The strictest rule here will be prohibition, which applies not only to alcohol, but also to any consumption of water and food in the open air due to the increased level of radiation. The same applies to photographic equipment, which must always be held in your hands and not placed on the ground.

A strict dress code is required when visiting Pripyat. Clothing should be as closed as possible and fit as close to the body as possible. There are also restrictions on travel routes. Not a single person should lag behind the group or, on the contrary, go ahead. The radiation background is most pronounced in ditches, lowlands and near large trees - these places are significantly off all excursion routes.

At the exit from Pripyat at the checkpoint, the background radiation of visitors’ personal belongings is measured. If an item is not deactivated in a special chamber, then it is subject to confiscation. The rule is extremely unpleasant, but mandatory for everyone.

About the city and the accident

Pripyat is located 94 km from Kyiv and two kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The city received its name from the river of the same name, on the banks of which it stands.

The settlement of Pripyat was founded in 1970 to house people involved in the construction and further maintenance of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The power plant was given the name “Chernobyl” after the name of the regional center. Chernobyl itself, located 18 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, is not directly related to it.

The design of the city focused on one goal - the comfort of residents, for which a “triangular building” unique to the 70s of the last century was used. The peculiarity of this layout is the alternation of five-story buildings with taller buildings and large spaces between buildings.

In 1972, the first concrete block was laid in the foundation of the power plant. The city grew along with it - residential buildings, cinemas, cultural centers, the Palace of Pioneers, sports complexes, and recreation parks were erected at an accelerated pace. People from all over the country went to the all-Union construction site. The average age of the population of the young city was only 26 years. Every year more than a thousand little inhabitants were born in Pripyat, so great attention was paid to the construction of kindergartens and schools. The city was considered exemplary; foreign delegations were constantly brought to Pripyat to demonstrate how well the Soviet people lived. By the mid-80s, almost fifty thousand people of 25 nationalities lived in the city.

On April 26, 1986, at half past one in the morning, an explosion occurred at the fourth power unit of the nuclear power plant. A huge radioactive cloud covered Pripyat. The population of the city was not immediately notified of what had happened. The coming Saturday was sunny, people were enjoying the good weather and working in their summer cottages. The children had fun on the rides, which were launched ahead of schedule that day to create a deceptively calm environment.

Catastrophically, a lot of time was lost; the city’s residents received severe radiation, which over time led to serious illnesses and deaths. During the Soviet era, man-made accidents were hushed up so as not to destroy people’s faith in the reliability of everything Soviet and not to sow panic.

And only more than a day later, on April 27 at 11 am, the residents of Pripyat were informed of immediate evacuation. 3 trains and 1,200 buses arrived in Pripyat to transport people. The townspeople were allowed to take with them only documents, the most necessary personal items and a small supply of food. Residents were assured that the evacuation was temporary, and after the situation normalized they would be able to return home. No one could have imagined that they would never see their home or their hometown again.

In just three hours, from 14.00 to 17.00, 49,614 people were taken out of Pripyat. People were placed in temporary accommodation and then relocated to the city of Slavutich, built shortly after the accident, 50 km from Pripyat.

In early May, evacuation began from the 30-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. More than 60,000 head of farm livestock were also removed from the affected area. In total, about 165,000 people left the radiation-contaminated zone over 5 years.

During the time that passed after the accident, Pripyat was robbed by numerous looters, who took away everything of any value from here.

The former fairy tale city has become a ghost, looking at the lifeless streets through empty window openings. The houses are dilapidated and partially collapsed, lush vegetation has taken over the streets and squares of Pripyat, and there is an eerie silence on the city streets.

After the accident, decontamination work was carried out in the contaminated area, which made it possible to significantly reduce background radiation. But despite this, it will be impossible to live in this area for at least another hundred years.

Now the entire city is surrounded by barbed wire, and a checkpoint (checkpoint) has been installed at the entrance to Pripyat. Station employees, builders of the new “Sarcophagus” and military personnel live in the city. In the vicinity of Pripyat live about 500 people - “self-settlers” - people who returned to their native places, who were unable or did not want to start life in foreign lands.

There are only four operating facilities in the city: a water fluoridation station, a checkpoint, a specialized laundry and a garage for cars transporting radioactive waste.

Every year, at the end of April, several thousand people come to Pripyat - former residents and liquidators of the accident. Some are drawn here by longing for their youth spent in these places, others want to meet with colleagues and friends and remember those whose lives were claimed by the nuclear disaster.

Excursions to the exclusion zone

These days, Pripyat attracts many fans of abandoned and unusual places. You can visit the city as part of an organized tourist group that has a special permit and is accompanied by a guide.

Illegal trips to Pripyat are very popular among extreme sports enthusiasts, giving them the opportunity to uncontrollably enter any building, visit abandoned hospitals and schools, and completely immerse themselves in the apocalyptic atmosphere of the consequences of a global catastrophe. Such people want to feel like real stalkers, penetrating into a forbidden, deadly zone. Unauthorized forays are dangerous to health, since uninvited guests are not familiar with the radiation situation in a particular place in the city. The route of organized excursions passes through the least contaminated places, in which the level of radiation does not exceed the corresponding indicators of a large metropolis.

Pripyat is often visited by artists who draw inspiration from the deserted city, which succumbs to the onslaught of nature. The walls of many houses are covered with graffiti, adding gloom to the surrounding landscape. Some creative people create expressive installations from preserved objects and furniture.

Sights of Pripyat

Places of pilgrimage for tourists are objects associated with the Chernobyl accident and characteristic buildings of the Soviet era. Excursions to Pripyat are one-day, a walk around the city lasts from 3 to 5 hours.

The nuclear power plant is the center of a nuclear disaster, which has become the most destructive in scale and in terms of the number of deaths and illnesses. Over the course of several years, 600,000 people were involved in eliminating the consequences of the accident. The station operated until 2000, when, under pressure from the world community, the Ukrainian authorities stopped its work. Nowadays, the most pressing task is to normalize the situation around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

“Sarcophagus” is the unofficial name of the “Shelter” structure, created to isolate a nuclear reactor destroyed by an explosion. The unique structure was erected by several thousand people around the clock; it was necessary to protect the environment from radiation as soon as possible. At the cost of their own health, and often their lives, the liquidators of the consequences of the reactor explosion were able to do it in a record short time - 206 days. The construction of the shelter required 7,000 tons of metal, more than 400,000 cubic meters of concrete and the participation of 90,000 people. There is an observation deck on the Sarcophagus where visitors are allowed, but you can only stay here for a few minutes. The protective structure is gradually collapsing and needs urgent repairs, otherwise the fourth block could again cause mortal danger.

Next to the Sarcophagus there is a monument to the liquidators of the accident - the fallen heroes who prevented the large-scale spread of radiation.

One of the darkest and saddest symbols of the city is an amusement park that never became fully operational. A terrible impression remains from dilapidated carousels, rusty chairs swaying in the wind and a frozen Ferris wheel. A scary place where particularly impressionable people can hear the distant laughter of children.

The exclusion zone is an area located 30 kilometers in diameter from the epicenter of the accident. In the vicinity of the zone, excursions are held with visits to the houses of self-settlers, farmers and unique museums. Due to the fact that this place has become a hotbed of illegal tourism, the rules for traveling to and staying in the zone have recently become stricter. Oddly enough, the local forests are home to many animals: hares, wild boars, lynxes, horses, bears, badgers, roe deer, wolves. Contrary to all the negative forecasts, birds and animals did not mutate, nature survived and flourished due to the absence of human influence.

Another of the attractions of Pripyat is a football stadium overgrown with trees. A depressing impression remains from the sight of the stands surrounding not a field, but a young grove. An ideal place for those who want to look at the planet from which people disappeared.

The Bridge of Death is an object where the highest level of radiation was recorded in April 1986. The townspeople did not know about this and came to the bridge as the most convenient place to observe the burning reactor. The tragic landmark is still extremely dangerous to visit.

The cooling pond for the reactor is also one of the most contaminated monuments of the disaster in its time. Huge catfish live in the channel through which water enters the reservoir. The fish always swims out to the tourists who feed it, who love to take pictures with the big barbel.

The Lazurny pool was open until the end of the station’s operation; it was the cleanest and safest place where the accident liquidators rested and swam.

The “rusty” forest surrounding the nuclear power plant experienced a huge dose of radiation. Most of the trees died, and the surviving ones acquired a red color. At night, the dead trunks glowed - this was facilitated by the reaction of the interaction of radioactive elements with wood. During the decontamination of the area, all the trees were uprooted and buried, but today young growth appears in the place of the dead forest.

The Polesie Hotel became the site where the emergency response headquarters was located in 1986. The roof of the building was an ideal place to correct the actions of helicopter pilots filling the emergency fourth block of the station with sand. Two decades after the disaster, the famous “Shadows of Hiroshima” drawings appeared on the walls of the hotel, depicting black silhouettes of people who died due to radiation. These days the hotel premises are completely empty.

The Energetik Palace of Culture is a typical building of the Soviet era, symbolizing the prosperous life of the people. Like all buildings in Pripyat, the Palace of Culture is dilapidated, but mosaics have been preserved on its walls. The cafeteria of Secondary School No. 3 with hundreds of gas masks scattered on the floor is a hard-to-bear spectacle, as if specially staged by the director of a gloomy disaster film.

The most terrible and dangerous place in the city, approaching which is mortally dangerous, is medical unit No. 126. In the basement of the building, the clothes of the firefighters who extinguished the emergency power unit in the first hours after the disaster still lie. All these heroic people died within three weeks after the accident, having received an unimaginable dose of radiation, several tens of times higher than the lethal one.

In memory of the firefighters in Pripyat, a monument was erected, made by the liquidators of the disaster. The monument is made of the same concrete that covered the emergency power unit.

Everyone who comes to Pripyat considers it their duty to take a photo in front of the large concrete sign installed at the entrance to the city.

Trailer for the mini-series "Moths"

How to get there

You can get to Pripyat as part of excursions conducted by some travel companies and public organizations together with the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Ukraine. An independent trip to a closed city and exclusion zone risks a fine and possible health problems.

PRIPYAT, a city (since 1979) in Ukraine, Kiev region (see KIEV REGION), located on the Pripyat River (see PRIPYAT (river)). Railway station (Janov). Founded in 1970 in connection with the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Due to the accident at a nuclear power plant in... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

- ... Wikipedia

City (since 1979) in Ukraine, Kiev region, on the river. Pripyat. Railway station (Janov). Founded in 1970 in connection with the construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Due to the nuclear power plant accident in April 1986, the population of Pripyat was evacuated. For nuclear power plant workers and their... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Pripet, Prypyats, river, part of the Dnieper; Ukraine, Belarus. Mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years, XII century, as Pripet; modern Russian Pripyat, Ukrainian Cheer up, Belarusian. Sprinkle. The supposed initial glory, form *Pet tributary V. A. Zhuchkevich connects ... Geographical encyclopedia

I river in Belarus and Ukraine, the right tributary of the Dnieper. 761 km, basin area 114.3 thousand km2. Flows through the Polesie lowland. Average water flow is 448 m3/s. Connected by the Dnieper-Bug Canal with the Vistula, Oginsky (not operational) with the Neman.... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary

Noun, number of synonyms: 4 city (2765) ghost town (7) river (2073) ... Dictionary of synonyms

Capital, fortress. See resident, place... neither to the village, nor to the city, go to the Kharkov province to the city of Mordasov... Dictionary of Russian synonyms and expressions similar in meaning. under. ed. N. Abramova, M.: Russian dictionaries, 1999. town, town, fortification, ... ... Dictionary of synonyms

Exist., number of synonyms: 7 Verkhny Mezensk (1) Zashiversk (1) Kadykchan (1) ... Dictionary of synonyms

This term has other meanings, see Pripyat. Pripyat Ukrainian Prip yat Belor. Sprinkle... Wikipedia

Pripyat: Pripyat is an abandoned city in the Kyiv region of Ukraine. Pripyat river in Belarus and Ukraine. Pripyat is a village in Ukraine. Radiometer “Pripyat” RKS 20.03 See also Pripyat swamps ... Wikipedia

Books

• Warriors of the Zone, Alexey Bobl. A mysterious force shoots down an army helicopter over the Exclusion Zone. A special group of military stalkers goes in search of a fallen car to save its only occupant. Unexpectedly...
• Patience of the Devil, Alexey Sokolov. Sapsan, an experienced stalker of the Southern Zone, knew the rules. But the temptation turned out to be too great. Sapsan tried to sell a large batch of swag directly, although he was supposed to bring the loot...