The Exclusion Zone. Reactor #4. The Dead City of Pripyat. 

My first glimpse into the world left behind by the 1986 Chornobyl disaster was “The Vice Guide to Travel” in 2007. I was absolutely fascinated by the history of the events that led to the disaster and even more enthralled by what was left behind. In late 2019, I had the opportunity to visit the site myself. This is what I found. 

The cities surrounding the disaster area were ordered to leave en masse in a fleet of buses a few days after the accident. These residents, once hopeful for their future lives in the forested northwest of Ukraine, now had to make quick, panicked decisions about which of their belongings to take and what to leave behind. How much of your life could you put into one suitcase?

Yet outside, an invisible fire was raging at their doorsteps.

There was no time for lethargy. 

Many of those evacuated thought they would return after only a month and packed accordingly, but it is now known that 20,000 years must pass before human settlement of the exclusion zone can resume. A sarcophagus was created to keep death from slithering out of the ruins. The buildings were sprayed down to prevent radioactive dust from escaping into the European winds. Belongings were burned and buried. Finally, an acceptance that those who once lived here will forever remain exiled from the 1000 square mile exclusion zone. 

While winter coats the quiet landscapes in many of the pictures I had seen of the exclusion zone, my visit took place in the waning days of summer in 2019. I was met with the lush wilds growing through the cracks to soak up the worst of humanity’s misdeeds. I watched dogs, birds, and deer walk along the broken roads. I was told that the zone is now a refuge for all sorts of endangered animals in Eastern Europe, and now there are even bears that roam the once proud works of human endeavor. 

Cars and gas stations all sit empty and idle in their ruined state, while the roads they once serviced are ground back into their most basic elements. Apartments and homes were ransacked and left to rot through decades of neglect. Trees spread their roots and thrive even where our poison has spread. So much has been reclaimed already, and each day, the remnants of human habitation are called back to the ground. 

The reason I think this place is so fascinating to so many is because it answers the question of what would happen if all of humanity were to just disappear. What evidence would remain that we existed at all? What would happen to the homes we spend so much time and effort on? What of our workplaces and our shopping centers? Our favorite bars and restaurants? 

Standing in the center of the zone, it is clear that under the shadow of disaster and through the breakdown of an ordered society, all of our wonders of ingenuity could one day be swallowed up whole by the natural world.

What is genuinely haunting... is how little time it takes…

 “For out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”