Just Before it all went wrong
It was Saturday in Pripyat, in the Soviet Union. The next weekend would be the annual May Day celebrations, the new amusement park would open with it big Ferris wheel that towered over this 16-year-old city of 49,360 people built to house the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
Something, however, was not right. The residents woke up to the sight of plumes of smoke coming from the reactor number 4. An overnight stress test of the systems had gone horribly wrong.
Evacuation
36 hours later authorities started to evacuate the city. Just a few days, they said to the people. At the most maybe a week or two, and then they could home. They never did. Pripyat became a ghost town by that May Day weekend.
Liquidators
Liquidators were a special squad of people sent in to shut down the town. Including groups of female janitors who went from house to house to dispose of any food left behind to prevent infectious disease outbreaks and special hunting squads to remove any domestic animals left behind. This lasted for years with liquidators being rotated to limit exposure to radiation. Some of the liquidators felt unsettled about walking around in the abandoned city. To help with this they set up loudspeakers so the city would not be so quite.
Life After People
As you can see from the before and after images above, the trees have taken over the city. Buildings have been looted and are crumbling.
Photo Credits:
- Swimming Pool 1996-By Darek83 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Swimming Pool 2009-By Timm Suess CC BY-SA 2.0,
