[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: Chernobyl, it's empty now.
You know that, right?
Because they had the reaction.
PELLA KAGERMAN: Yeah, I know.
SHANE SMITH: They had a bad reaction to radiation.
So it's totally deserted.
But then all the wolves and the bears came.
So you've got three-eyed wolves and five-legged bears
that are in Chernobyl now.
So we're going to go.
And we're going to hunt them.
PELLA KAGERMAN: But is this serious?
SHANE SMITH: Yeah, it's serious.
MALE SPEAKER: It's the 20th anniversary of the meltdown of
the Chernobyl reactor, which was the biggest nuclear
catastrophe in human history besides
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Even now, there's an area the size of Great Britain that's
still radioactive.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: In Italy, or all over the place, in Eastern
Europe, too, they come up to you with little wagons of
panini and birra--
birra, birra, panini, birra, birra, panini, birra--
they yell out.
And you go, oh, [SPEAKING ITALIAN].
But here, they don't have that.
MALE SPEAKER: Where are we going?
MALE SPEAKER: Chernobyl.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: Neutron.
Neutron.
We're in Chernobyl, which was apparently 600 times worse
than Hiroshima.
The only guys that survived here were the firemen, because
they were bombed when they were putting out the fires.
It's the same as the doctors in Hiroshima.
They lived because they got drunk.
So we've been drinking, haven't we, Pella?
PELLA KAGERMAN: Yes.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: There's a lot of people living here.
There's a whole city here.
Look.
That's not good.
YURI TATARCHUCK: Some people work here,
some people live here.
SHANE SMITH: But isn't it dangerous to live here?
YURI TATARCHUCK: Actually, this territory was evacuated
in 1986, after the accident.
But in the period of time from 1986 to 1988, more than 1,500
people came back here.
After the explosion of 1986, April 26, on the reactor unit
number 4, it was made decision to evacuate.
April 27 was the date of the evacuation of Pripyat town.
And later in the week, it was evacuated
neighborhood villages.
And afterwards, it was established Chernobyl
exclusion zone.
Average level of radiation in Chernobyl nowadays is 35 micro
roentgens per hour.
And the natural background we consider from 12 to 20.
SHANE SMITH: So it's double.
YURI TATARCHUCK: It's double, yes.
SHANE SMITH: What's going on here, now?
YURI TATARCHUCK: They hunted some animals just to
investigate what's going on, what processes are going on,
what kind of mutation or changes
are possible in nature.
SHANE SMITH: Were there a lot of mutant animals?
YURI TATARCHUCK: It was very clear that some species are
very contaminated.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: Apparently, I have radiophobia.
Radiophobia is when you come to Chernobyl, people think
that they get a sore throat, or their eyes water, or they
have diarrhea.
And it's not because of the actual radiation is infecting
you with cancer.
But it's because you think you're afraid.
It's all psychosomatic.
This is [INAUDIBLE].
This is going to help us live.
So that used to be a whole village.
And they buried the village.
YURI TATARCHUCK: Right.
The big elements of the houses were buried there on the side
of the hill.
MALE SPEAKER: Oh, it's going bananas, dude.
We're at 400.
SHANE SMITH: We're at 400?
This is the reactor that blew up.
MALE SPEAKER: So that's all concrete, right?
YURI TATARCHUCK: No.
The northern wall, for example, is concrete.
And as for the western wall, it's made of metal.
And the roof, also metal.
SHANE SMITH: What happened?
Why did it blow up?
What went on?
YURI TATARCHUCK: First of all, it was the
construction of reactor.
SHANE SMITH: It was the Russians, those bastards.
YURI TATARCHUCK: It was Soviet.
SHANE SMITH: Soviet bastards.
YURI TATARCHUCK: It wasn't Russian or Ukrainian.
Was Soviet!
SHANE SMITH: They blew us up.
YURI TATARCHUCK: [INAUDIBLE].
SHANE SMITH: Holy shit.
YURI TATARCHUCK: Environment [INAUDIBLE].
SHANE SMITH: This is the radioactive town of Pripyat.
And apparently, there's wolves and bears living in these
buildings now.
And they're not mutated.
They're changed.
There's no mutations.
They're changes.
YURI TATARCHUCK: Look, we can see the civil defense.
These procedures were never used.
SHANE SMITH: So if there was a meltdown or a war, you'd just
put a mask on and--
YURI TATARCHUCK: And you escape to the shelters.
SHANE SMITH: Are there shelters here?
YURI TATARCHUCK: A shelter is any kind of a basement.
SHANE SMITH: As you can see, not so different from us.
They liked to play some basketball, some volleyball,
maybe a bit of track.
This is in high school.
How to kill a tank, how to attack,
how to throw a grenade--
oh, that's amazing.
How to spot what different kind of plane,
F-111, B-52, F-14.
Nuclear energy is the future, then.
YURI TATARCHUCK: I think yes.
SHANE SMITH: If this is the future, then we're fucked.
YURI TATARCHUCK: This amusement park was planned to
open on the first of May, 1986.
So it was never opened.
SHANE SMITH: This is what happens when we play with
technology we don't understand.
YURI TATARCHUCK: Now here we measure, and it shows
average 100, 150.
SHANE SMITH: Why so much?
175--
YURI TATARCHUCK: It's not too much.
Look.
SHANE SMITH: 200.
YURI TATARCHUCK: On the soil, under the snow,
there is the most.
SHANE SMITH: Why here so much?
YURI TATARCHUCK: It's mostly under the snow.
Mostly, it's absorbing all this dust and this radiation.
SHANE SMITH: It's at fucking 600, dude.
YURI TATARCHUCK: More than 600.
Without snow, it's 1,500.
SHANE SMITH: Really?
Did you see that fucking thing there, dude?
The thing went up to 800.
800 is bad.
800 is very bad.
MALE SPEAKER: 1,283, 1,273, 1,284, [INAUDIBLE], 1,294,
1,300, 1,300, 1,297, 1,300, 1,300, 1,275.
SHANE SMITH: We bribed our guide to get
some machine guns.
And we're going to hunt the radioactive wild boars.
Now, what we have to do is be very quiet.
We're in a deserted building.
And we have to wait a little bit.
And when we see the wild boars-- there's hundreds of
them with big fucking toothed fangy things.
And when we see them, we're going to shoot them with
machine guns.
[ROCK MUSIC PLAYING]
SHANE SMITH: So after we shot at the boars, they ran into
the forest.
And me and Pella go running after them.
And they're like, no, no, no, no.
If you go in there-- it's called the red forest.
It's the most radioactive place on earth.
And if you go in there, you're going to die.
You really feel like this is the apocalypse here.
There's no fear of death because everything is dead.
The ground will kill you.
The water will kill you.
The trees will kill you.
My shoes are radioactive right now.
The beasts are fucking-- they show no fear
because they're mutants.
Everything's been destroyed.
Everything's been killed, abandoned.
It's some heavy, heavy fucking shit here, dude.
It's going to be OK.
PELLA KAGERMAN: It was a bit too much?
SHANE SMITH: It's going to be OK.
I gotta throw these shoes away.
I think they're radioactive.
[MUSIC PLAYING]