Chernobyl

While in Ukraine I took a tour of Chernobyl. The site of the world's worst nuclear disaster, which occurred in 1986, lies two hours north of Kiev. It is now safe to visit, though you must stay in designated areas, as radioactive patches that have not been cleaned with acid still remain quite dangerous. There are two exclusion zones, a 30 km perimeter and 10 km perimeter, that workers cleaning up the Chernobyl site can only stay in for a couple weeks at a time, and then must live outside the zone for a similar period of time so their body can absorb and neutralize the radiation.

The first place we visited in the 30 km exclusion zone was the Firefighter Memorial. When the Chernobyl power plant first exploded, firefighters rushed to the scene to try in vain to put out the fire. They all succumbed to radiation sickness in a few days: driven mad, badly burned, and their skin detached from their flesh, the flesh detached from their bones. 

The Japanese sent robots to help clean up the mess, but their internal wiring fried early on due to the strength of the radiation. This little tonka truck is still highly irradiated.

Most buildings were torn down in the 30 km exclusion zone, but this creepy elementary school inspired by the movie Evil Dead still remains.

Just as creepy inside.

Part of the Chernobyl power plant complex, inside the 4 km exclusion zone.

The power plant that blew its top. The old metal sarcophagus originally put over it is now being replaced with a new state of the art one that I couldn't take a picture of in case I was a terrorist. The Geiger Counter was freaking out here, so we decided to play it safe and headed out, even though many people work here on the sarcophagus two weeks at a time.

Welcome to Prypiat, the town of 50,000 that had to be completely evacuated because of the Chernobyl disaster.

Abandoned gym/pool complex

Abandoned school

Gas masks for the school's students and faculty in case of a chemical or nuclear attack

The halls were filled with books.

Straight out of Call of Duty

A spot here was as radioactive as just outside the power plant.

For posterity's sake, so people understand why I have a couple extra fingers.

Always watching

Government building

When you leave the exclusion zones, you have to go through this machine to make sure you weren't contaminated during your trip. Nobody had any dangerous radioactive particles on them nor had absorbed dangerous levels of radiation this time.