- Pripyat- A Communist Dream Turned Toxic Nightmare
A WALK THROUGH THE FAMOUS RADIATION NEIGHBOURHOOD
SUBMITTED TO: THE EXPEDITION (A U.S. PUBLICATION).
PLEASE NOTE: AMERICAN SPELLINGS HAVE BEEN USED TO COMPLY WITH THE EDITOR’S SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS.
DISASTER. INTRIGUE. FASCINATION.
A little after 1 am on April 26th, 1986, reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant destabilised during a scientific experiment and exploded, releasing high levels of radiation into the atmosphere. The Soviet government tried to conceal the disaster and only 48-hours later, when scientists 683 miles away in Sweden detected radiation in the air, did any acknowledgement begin to take place. The people of Pripyat, a city just west of the power plant, were left at the mercy of its radiation. A mass evacuation and horrific deaths followed.
32 years on, I flew to Kyiv in Ukraine, bought a permit to visit and went to look around the Chernobyl exclusion zone for myself (all before the HBO series aired too).
The eeriness of Pripyat descended on me as soon as I jumped down from the tour vehicle and into the February snow. The dosimeter on a lanyard was swinging side to side like a pendulum. I halted it with my hand and tucked it into the gap between my jacket buttons, pulled my beanie down over my ears and buried my hands deep in my pockets. The van could go no further up the narrowing frozen trails. It was walking only from this point. The forgotten city awaited.
I passed the military checkpoint with a sideways glance at its armed guards and meandered through the dense collection of trees towards the outskirts of the city. A flash of brown and grey went by on my left. The wolves the tour guide had informed me about chased each other in the surrounding woodlands like eager locals rushing to welcome tourists. Between the crunching of snow underfoot, heavy breathing and the occasional cough there was silence. Almost like life had never existed inside in this place. A sense of isolation gripped me in its below zero clutches. The trail soon condensed its formation into a narrow tread; a frozen soil scratch carved out in the snow. Shallow banks rose either side to reveal vast areas of untouched snow. Many areas of the city were still highly contaminated, and any contact could easily transfer radioactive material onto boots and clothing. Any deviation from the trails was strictly forbidden (unless, according to the tour guide, I didn’t mind having my clothing and footwear incinerated at the end).
Downtown Pripyat was overrun by a forest, breaking the illusion it was once a city. The skeletal fingers of tree branches did their best to conceal the concrete housing blocks on either side of an estate, but they refused to stay hidden. The rows of windows reflected the trees, making them looked shattered. Some were just gaping black holes, sucking down contaminated air into the lungs of the building.
A series of rusty vehicles sat abandoned and frozen in time in between the tree trunks. The old tyres, flat through decades of decompression, were sunk deep into the crystallising snow.
Surprisingly, the air here felt light. It was fresh like the stuff I’d breathed in beneath the Alps. Odourless. Normal. Then the dosimeter pressed against my chest and I remembered where I was.
The graveyard of spindly trees thinned as the Pripyat hospital materialised in the middle of an unrecognisable urban neighbourhood. I ran up a slippery bank to reach the main entrance. A beam blocked the path and the front doors were missing. The reception area of the infirmary was cluttered with fallen clumps of plaster and concrete, steel rafters, cracked porcelain tiles and fragments of rusted metal. Any remaining doors held on to their hinges, desperately trying to stay suspended. The paintwork on the walls was scorched or bubbled and flaking away. Wires dangled down from the ceilings like nooses. Equipment and furniture overturned or broken. From the maze of corridors, the place exhibited panic and abandonment; drawers and their contents were strewn across the floor, noticeboards were ripped down from the walls and chairs sat vacated in the middle of rooms. Corrosion had set a coppery tinge over the many medical containers lying about, all of them now empty and hollow. Hardly a homage to such an important city building.
About a block away, the local school was in worse disrepair. Towards the west wing of the building, decay had caused the concrete wall to give up and collapse, leaving ten-foot mounds of rubble. Desks on the fourth floor awaited the inevitable drop, perilously balanced on the ledge.
On the ground floor, one of the classrooms was an evacuation freeze frame. The duck egg blue paint on the walls curled inwards like wood shavings. The floor tiles were disjointed and uneven. Desks were overturned beside vacant child-sized chairs and more brown rust clung to the metal furniture. White chalk scribblings with an untaught lesson remained on the green canvas of the class board. I imagined the screams of children being ordered out by the military. I shivered.
The (once) great music hall was deceiving. The mosaic above the entrance depicted galactic spheres and stars, a grand tribute to the arts. Thousands of tiny tiles of colour worked together to create a pretty fascia to behold. The main double doors below were open and without their inserts of glass. The windows lining either side were smashed and black. It was unnerving.
Inside, the corridors were shadowy and cold blue. Concrete and exposed mesh peaked out from nooks of the crumbling infrastructure. I wandered down an infected looking corridor. It was gutted and stripped of its piping and electrical cabling — all radioactive metals in buildings were removed and buried to prevent further radioactive emissions.
Light was escaping a doorway at the end. Inside, a scratched and withered grand piano sat lonely on the great music hall stage. Wind whistled in through the open windows above. The air was tainted with odours of musty paper and damp from fabric seat covers. The auditorium was buried beneath an avalanche of fallen girders, brickwork and concrete.
The format continued throughout the remaining sites of Pripyat city. The Polissya hotel’s concrete casing was in good condition, but any openings were covered or overgrown with trees and shrubs. An impenetrable thicket of red berry trees blocked the main doors to stop us from entering.
The Voskhod supermarket was a procession of empty aisles, long since looted of their contents, but still with the information signs suspended above. Shopping carts were dotted about, full of rubble and rusted to a halt. The checkout points were knocked over and damaged.
A single gas mask and child’s doll with limbs missing lay abandoned on the ground outside the local sports and recreation center. Entry was prohibited, but the portraits of the earliest contamination victims tacked to the outside wall served as a chilling reminder this was not a commercial made tourist funhouse. This was a memorial to be experienced and educated.
A kilometer or so on, a blanket white sports field lay dormant in the shadow of a singular stand and tall floodlights; a modest stadium by today’s standards. The concrete seats were topped with chunks of untouched snow. Rusty red bars acted as guide rails up the stairwells.
The Azure swimming center in the next neighbourhood was encircled by more trees. The imposing 10-metre diving board rose above the windows to retain its distinction as the tallest among the others. Even during the clean-up operation, technicians and scientists used the pool recreationally. The before and after pictures were unsettling. A home to around 49,000 people at one time; now just a nuclear graveyard.
Pripyat’s prized showpiece — the amusement park — was purposely left until last. Before even entering the confines of the park, the top of the yellow Ferris wheel could be seen against the backdrop of blue sky. I weaved and ducked beneath trees, feeling disorientated as the Ferris wheel momentarily disappear until finally, I stepped down on a plain and was suddenly overlooking the whole park.
The bumper cars were gripped in ice and snow, fixed permanently and unnaturally inside the perimeter of the ride. Never used. The disjointed spinner seats hovered on their threadlike cables, screeching on the breeze. Never used. The yellow bottle top passenger cars on the Ferris wheel swayed too, creaking like rocking chairs on decking. Never used. The dosimeter measured the radiation levels here and revealed that they were one of the most contaminated spots in all of Pripyat, despite numerous cleaning missions on the site.
The park never had its intended grand opening — due just days after the disaster. It felt strange to photograph it. It felt strange to experience it.
This chilling memorial site displays the true horrors of nuclear meddling by an ill-equipped communist regime. Today, it’s an apocalyptic walking holiday that leaves you feeling poignantly fascinated, if not considerably incensed. An entire city left frozen in time by the events of 1986.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant may be the source of the contamination, but Pripyat is the lasting legacy: a reminder that humans can be a very destructive force, even by accident.
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