We all know about the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant disaster that occurred in the Soviet Union in 1986. I’m not all that interested in the actual disaster at the facility. I find the area around the plant to be a much more compelling topic of study. In one of my first posts I wrote about North Korea and its status as a living relic of the Cold War. North Korea is a figurative ghost town whose government and population still fight a war that ended long ago. Chernobyl, on the other hand, is a literal ghost town, tainted with a plague of radiation that will endure in the area for many centuries. In Chernobyl, Ukraine the date is still April 26th 1986 and will remain so for a long time. While travel through the area is technically forbidden, it doesn’t appear to be enforced very well. Roadblocks and checkpoints prevent cars from entering but motorcycles can get through easily. From what I’ve read it’s not very hard to get a permit from the Ukrainian government to enter the area. Finally, a couple hundred people do still live in the area (mostly farmers who refused to leave after the explosion.) The real enforcer of the area’s “forbidden” status is the radiation. Overall levels aren’t dangerous for short term exposure but can creep higher when one ventures into buildings and heavily forested areas where more radioactive particles would have settled.

Far and away the best website I’ve found about Chernobyl is that of Elena Filatova. Upon visiting her site today I discovered that she had to move it to free hosting due to financial difficulties. All of the pictures and information remain there, fortunately. For all of the terrific stuff she has there it’s really a shame that she’s not making any money off it. She even has it all translated into various languages and organized for fast viewing. She is kind enough to allow unrestricted use of her photos so I picked one of the creepiest ones to show here:

Taken in a Kindergarten. The gas mask probably wouldn’t have been deployed for the Chernobyl meltdown. It’s more likely that it was removed from storage by looters sometime in the past 20 years (Soviet schools had gas masks on hand to be used in the event of an attack by the United States.)

I also found this site, which is organized better and loads faster than Elena’s site. It’s also a good read.