Welcome to Pripyat!
On the 25th and 26th of April 1986 an inadvertent explosion at reactor number
four at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union led to the most infamous
nuclear accident of all time the economic environmental and political
fallout of the accident hastened the demise of the Soviet Union in the
immediate aftermath of the accident liquidators worked around the clock in
very hazardous conditions in order to try to remove the radioactive material
and debris and to put out the fire at reactor number four many of these men if
not all of them were exposed to radiation levels that were way in excess
of what were safe levels of radiation and many of them died in the years that
followed the accident the 50,000 inhabitants of the town neighboring the
nuclear power plant Pripyat were evacuated they believed
that they were just living for a very short period of time like a couple of
days in fact they never returned
So this crazy thing behind me is known as Duga and it's basically a Soviet
radar system so that it could track inter-ballistic missiles if they were
fired from the US this is remember in the middle of the Cold War that this
all this was built here and it's incredible it's like almost one
kilometer long 800 meters going up tall it's 150 so you probably seen a radar
that goes like from side to side and beeps all the time this is designed so
you didn't actually need to turn it from side to side that's why it's just so
long it's like one solid way to track what's happening so it's pretty crazy
this is a really historical place and reason why it was actually built here
near to Chernobyl I was actually to get the electricity to power it apparently
and it's also quite a secluded area this was a secret area in the ... during Soviet
times and actually only the workers and the soldiers who were based here knew what was going
on you what this is for everyone else kind of probably just if they could see
it even they could see it in the distance somewhere and just thought okay
it's a weird thing I shouldn't ask any questions about but definitely it's a very cool
spot to check out when you're on the tour to Chernobyl it's not just about
the power plant and Pripyat it's also got a super cool historical relic of the Cold War
So one interesting side effect of the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is the
fact that there's very little human activity and that actually has allowed
nature to come back and reclaim a big area and wildlife actually flourishes in
the exclusion zone of Chernobyl today there's a lot of myths online that
you're gonna see mutants with you know animals with three heads and 25 legs
that they're not supposed to have all that kind of stuff I didn't see any
mutants there in fact it doesn't see me any mutants at all when I looked online
Well in the nineteen nineties just after Ukraine's independence they reintroduced
some wild horses to the Chernobyl exclusion zone and they have actually
really bred very well there's actually a huge number of them now and they are
called Prezwalski ... Prezwalski horses so
they reintroduced these Prezwalski horses to the exclusion zone they
actually took them from the south of Ukraine in the Kherson region and
they've actually done really well in terms of breathing in spite of the fact
that they're in a radioactive exclusion zone that just shows you that it's
actually humans that disrupt wildlife and nature more than the radiation that
came from the accident
We've arrived at our destination the infamous reactor number four that exploded in
1986 right behind me there this is a memorial to the people who died as a result
we're not sure exactly how many people died due to the Chernobyl disaster of
course you had the firefighters who came who were the first responders also those
who flew the helicopters that dumped all the sand and other materials on to
reactor 4 in an attempt to limit the radiation and put out the fire but it's
very hard to estimate exactly how many people have died directly there the Soviet
Union was a secretive dictatorship at the time and they didn't ... weren't into
giving us full disclosure information so it's very hard to calculate exactly how
many people lost their lives as a result of the disaster now it's actually
covered by sarcophagus so they put this containment structure over it that'll
hopefully will allow them then to completely dismantle and get rid of
anything that's dangerous inside of it but it's gonna take them a few years to
achieve that actually I was here maybe about seven or eight years ago and this
structure was actually in the process of being built they had an old sarcophagus
that the Soviets built the year following Chernobyl but who knows how good that
was but eventually anyways they replaced it after 25 years hopefully this one lasts
a bit longer and we get it all taken care of
So today entry to the Chernobyl region is limited to a 30 kilometer exclusion
zone for which you need to actually have permission to enter of course you can
take a tour in order to get that permission to enter the area
So I want to give a big shout out to Sergei of adventure tours in Ukraine for
organizing this trip to Chernobyl for me he has a lot of badass tours for the
Kiev region other parts of Ukraine including like tank driving shooting all
that great stuff and in fact we went out and we recently filmed me driving an
armored personnel carrier and he drove it over an old
Soviet car it was pretty badass
If you're planning to come to Ukraine you want to do this kind of more crazy
alternative tour stuff than definitely that is a great option also has a
YouTube channel a lot of that amazing footage that we've been filming over the
last while so definitely go and check those out in the description
For me it's really like a time capsule for the end of the Soviet Union because you actually
get to see more or less what it would've been like now that's great if you want
to like go to some of my favorite places for example are going to see what the
school was like and actually getting to see what the school books that children
would have read would have been taught with also what was up you know the
posters they had the propaganda what it looked like because whilst you can find
these vestiges of course still in many cities in the former Soviet Union to
actually see what it was like in 1986 also you have the iconic ferris wheel
which actually never turned because it was due to be opened actually for the May
Day celebrations just after the accident of course the area had been already
evacuated at that stage so it never actually operated
It's starting to deteriorate quite rapidly so I would definitely encourage you to go as soon as you can
to see before it just becomes basically a museum and everything is left out just
for you to photograph which is a pity and I think there is a little bit of
that already at the site just because so much of this stuff was taken
unfortunately and also the the elements the weather elements have just like
basically deteriorated everything that's around it as it's just decaying right so
you need to go as soon as you can go check out Chernobyl and Pripyat!