The frozen city — Chernobyl's ghost town where time stopped on 26 April 1986
Pripyat was a Soviet model city of 50,000 people built to house workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant — abandoned overnight on 27 April 1986, the day after the reactor explosion, and never reoccupied. The fairground Ferris wheel (never used — it was due to open 1 May), the rusted bumper cars, the empty apartment blocks with wallpaper still on the walls, and the school with books still open on desks make Pripyat one of the most powerful dark tourism sites in the world. Tours depart daily from Kyiv into the 30km Exclusion Zone; radiation levels are now low enough for day visits. The HBO…
The Chernobyl disaster of 26 April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in history. Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded during a safety test, releasing 400 times more radiation than the Hiroshima bomb. The Soviet authorities delayed evacuation for 36 hours; 50,000 residents of Pripyat were told to pack bags for three days and never returned. The cleanup involved 600,000 liquidators, many of whom died or were sickened from radiation exposure. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone remains one of Europe's largest wildlife sanctuaries — wolves, lynx, bears, and horses (the Przewalski's…