Photos of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

I thought I'd share my trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone with everyone here:

A grocery store



The inside of a House of Culture. The banner on top of the stage reads in Ukrainian, "Long live communism - a bright future for all of mankind."



An abandoned car. Can any of you guess the make?



A soviet magazine



Liquidator gas masks



The edge of Red Forest



The bleachers of the Avanhard Football Stadium in Pripyat



Bumper cars in the Pripyat Amusement Park



Pripyat Ferris Wheel



Propaganda



Palace of Culture "Energetic"



Hotel Polissya



Cafe Pripyat



Pripyat Hospital. This is where all the clothes of the firefighters that battled the blaze at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, are still laying in the basement. Radiation levels in the basement are still so high that not even the most dedicated stalkers dare to enter.



"Complex" City Executive Committee Building. This is where the decision to evacuate the city was taken.



Carbonated water vending machines



The actual still very irradiated robots and heavy equipment used in the cleanup of the reactor, some of which were originally designed for space exploration.





Residential building where some of the top brass lived, including plant manager Viktor Bryukhanov.



Duga Radar



Finally, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant #4 itself.



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very nice photos, was there a man who said "I said come in, don't stand there!" ?

Quote:

An abandoned car. Can any of you guess the make?

lada 2105/2107

Kirov wrote:

was there a man who said "I said come in, don't stand there!" ?

Haha, all the time. The guides are extremely strict about safety over there. Crossing the ‘border’ into the exclusion zone includes going through three passport controls and being checked for radiation levels every time you enter or exit a building.

EDIT:

Once there was some Polish guy who climbed over the fence at the reactor in an attempt to take a closer selfie, but he was quickly chased, knocked and held down at gun point with an AK-47 to his face by one of the guards. He was arrested and banned from entering Ukraine for a minimum of five years and from entering the zone for life.

Incredible photos Yeqon. Thanks for sharing them.

Looking at the photos is strange, although it must be different in person. Growing up, it fascinated me that a whole city was empty, and a big part of it was because I saw a lot of similar ruins of Soviet civilization growing up in 90s Russia - a car junkyard, abandoned or unfinished buildings, old books and propaganda. But gradually it's all been fading.

After capital repairs, the 1962 khrushchevka I live in doesn't really feel soviet, and neither is there any community among residents, who are now either poor, upper middle class or migrants, and now too different to talk to each other beyond a hello in the stairwell. Even with the train I take to work, the platforms have been torn down and replaced with new ones in a track expansion, except the one I get off at, ironically enough called Serp i Molot (hammer and sickle) after the adjacent steel mill, also torn down to build condos. And the office I work at, at the Red October chocolate factory, converted to a loft, is a parody of itself, with the buildings named after the function they once held.

Probably the best analogy I can think of for how I feel is the former military base near my wife's village. When I went there, there was not a stone left standing, as the villagers pulled the whole thing apart to use in their homes and gardens. However, you could still see where they lived by the footprints of where the foundations used to be, the shrubs where the edges of their properties were and largely bitter mock strawberry still growing where they had their patches. I have the same feelings regarding these photos, where I don't really associate them with a whole city abandoned, but rather with something fading and disassociating from memory.

The Russian government's retconning of Soviet monuments to project its own aspirational messages in foreign policy, economic development and technology/space exploration probably doesn't help much either, as you've probably seen at the renovated VDNKh and in the "Stalinist" metro stations. On the other hand, it's probably better than in Ukraine, in that the government was able to keep building on what came before, to the point of displacing it, as opposed to failing to do anything substantial and then trying to destroy all memory of what came before to try to establish its identity that way.

Those really are some great pics. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it reminds me of the game STALKER.

'Nice' to see that Lada's engine removed - 100% probability some marauders took the parts to another city and sold them, with someone probably getting cancer as a result.

Also, Kirov, very depressing and totally true analysis of modern Russian daily life. At least you're fortunate to still live in a Khrushchevka, instead of the multi-coloured 23 storey Lego shit they're building everywhere these days.

soviet78 wrote:

At least you're fortunate to still live in a Khrushchevka, instead of the multi-coloured 23 storey Lego shit they're building everywhere these days.

Hey, don't jinx me comrade. I live in one of those multi-coloured high-rise complexes, incidentally located right next to the Khrushchevka where I was born, and I haven't had any problems since I moved in. I like it, it reminds me of Pyongyang; very basic working/middle class condos. I only wish they'd play morning music here just like in Pyongyang.



Our building also has a very communal feel to it, as we the residents tend to pool our resources for things like maintenance, gardening, security and holiday decorations; instead of having to rely on an often incompetent ЖЭК (housing and utilities office).

It's really a shame, I was looking at apartments at this one because it's in a good location across from the botanical gardens and VDNKh, but I think I'd go insane from looking outside and seeing these clown-ass buildings every day