Chernobyl - Motorcycle ride through ghost town.

[Vovchandr]

I don’t believe this has been posted yet after I’ve searched. The story is quite old but it’s still great.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html

Ghost Town - Introduction

My name is Elena. I run this website and I don’t have anything to sell. What I do have is my motorbike and the absolute freedom to ride it wherever curiosity and the speed demon take me.

This page is maintained by the author, but when internet traffic is heavy it may be down occasionally.

Biking

I have ridden all my life and over the years I have owned several different motorbikes. I ended my search for a perfect bike with a big kawasaki ninja, that boasts a mature 147 horse power, some serious bark, is fast as a bullet and comfortable for a long trips. here is more about my motorcycle
I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations leads North from Kiev, towards so called Chernobyl “dead zone”, which is 130kms from my home. Why my favorite? Because one can take long rides there on empty roads.
The people there all left and nature is blooming. There are beautiful woods and lakes.

In places where roads have not been travelled by trucks or army vehicles, they are in the same condition they were 20 years ago - except for an occasional blade of grass that discovered a crack to spring through. Time does not ruin roads, so they may stay this way until they can be opened to normal traffic again… a few centuries from now.

Roentgens

To begin our journey, we must learn a little something about radiation. It is really very simple, and the device we use for measuring radiation levels is called a geiger counter . If you flick it on in Kiev, it will measure about 12-16 microroentgen per hour. In a typical city of Russia and America, it will read 10-12 microroentgen per hour. In the center of many European cities are 20 microR per hour, the radioactivity of the stone.

1,000 microroentgens equal one milliroentgen and 1,000 milliroentgens equal 1 roentgen. So one roentgen is 100,000 times the average radiation of a typical city. A dose of 500 roentgens within 5 hours is fatal to humans. Interestingly, it takes about 2 1/2 times that dosage to kill a chicken and over 100 times that to kill a cockroach.

This sort of radiation level can not be found in Chernobyl now. In the first days after explosion, some places around the reactor were emitting 3,000-30,000 roentgens per hour. The firemen who were sent to put out the reactor fire were fried on the spot by gamma radiation. The remains of the reactor were entombed within an enormous steel and concrete sarcophagus, so it is now relatively safe to travel to the area - as long as we do not step off of the roadway…

The map above shows the radiation levels in different parts of the dead zone. The map will soon be replaced with a more comprehensive one that identifies more features.

It shows various levels of radiation on asphalt - usually on the middle of road - because at edge of the road it is twice as high. If you step 1 meter off the road it is 4 or 5 times higher. Radiation sits on the soil, on the grass, in apples and mushrooms. It is not retained by asphalt, which makes rides through this area possible.

I have never had problems with the dosimeter guys, who man the checkpoints. They are experts, and if they find radiation on you vehicle, they give it a chemical shower. I don’t count those couple of times when “experts” tried to invent an excuse to give me a shower, because those had a lot more to do with physical biology than biological physics.

600 years

On the Friday evening of April 25, 1986, the reactor crew at Chernobyl-4, prepared to run a test the next day to see how long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical power supply went off line. This was a dangerous test, but it had been done before. As a part of the preparation, they disabled some critical control systems - including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms. 

Shortly after 1:00 AM on April 26, the flow of coolant water dropped and the power began to increase.

At 1:23 AM, the operator moved to shut down the reactor in its low power mode and a domino effect of previous errors caused an sharp power surge, triggering a tremendous steam explosion which blew the 1000 ton cap on the nuclear containment vessel to smithereens.

Some of the 211 control rods melted and then a second explosion, whose cause is still the subject of disagreement among experts, threw out fragments of the burning radioactive fuel core and allowed air to rush in - igniting several tons of graphite insulating blocks.

Once graphite starts to burn, its almost impossible to extinguish. It took 9 days and 5000 tons of sand, boron, dolomite, clay and lead dropped from helicopters to put it out. The radiation was so intense that many of those brave pilots died.

It was this graphite fire that released most of the radiation into the atmosphere and troubling spikes in atmospheric radiation were measured as far away as Sweden - thousands of miles away.

The causes of the accident are described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology.

In keeping with a long tradition of Soviet justice, they imprisoned all the people who worked on that shift - regardless of their guilt. The man who tried to stop the chain reaction in a last desperate attempt to avoid the meltdown was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He died 3 weeks later.
Radiation will stay in the Chernobyl area for the next 48.000 years, but humans may begin repopulating the area in about 600 years - give or take three centuries. The experts predict that, by then, the most dangerous elements will have disappeared - or been sufficiently diluted into the rest of the world’s air, soil and water. If our government can somehow find the money and political will power to finance the necessary scientific research, perhaps a way will be discovered to neutralize or clean up the contamination sooner. Otherwise, our distant ancestors will have to wait untill the radiation diminishes to a tolerable level. If we use the lowest scientific estimate, that will be 300 years from now…some scientists say it may be as long as 900 years.

I think it will be 300, but people often accuse me of being an optimist.

I remember…

In Ukrainian language ( where we don’t like to say “the”) Chernobyl is the name of a grass, wormwood (absinth). This word scares the holy bejesus out of people here. Maybe part of the reason for that among religious people is because the Bible mentions Wormwood in the book ofthe revelatons - which fortells the end of the world…

REV 8:10 And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

REV 8:11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

If I tell someone that I am heading to a “dead zone”… the best case response is; “Are you nuts?”

My dad used to say that people are afraid of a deadly thing which they can not see, can not feel and can not smell. Maybe that is because those words are a good description of death itself.

Dad is nuclear physicist, and he has educated me about many things. He is much more worried about the speed my bike travels than about the direction I point it. My trips to Chernobyl are not like a walk in the park, but the risk can be managed. It is similar to walking on a high wire with a balancing pole. One end of the pole is the gamma ray emission intensity and the other end of the pole is the exposure time. But the wire is also covered with a slippery dust, and this is the major risk. I always go for rides alone, sometimes with pillion passenger, but never in company with any other vehicle, because I do not want anyone to raise dust in front of me.

Dad and their team have worked in the “dead zone” for last 18 years doing research about the day it all happened. The rest of the team is comprised of microbiologists, doctors, botanists and other professions with long names and many syllables. I was a schoolgirl back in 1986 and within a few hours of the accident , dad put all of us on the train to grandma’s house. Granny lives 800 kms from here and dad wasn’t sure if it was far enough away to keep us out of reach of the big bad wolf of a nuclear meltdown.
The Communist government that was in power then kept silent about this accident. In Kiev, they forced people to take part in their preciously stupid labor day parade and it was then that ordinary people began hearing the news of the accident from foreign radio stations and relatives of those who died. The real panic began 7-10 days after accident. Those who were exposed to the exceedingly high levels of nuclear radiation in the first 10 days when it was still a state secret, incuding unsuspecting visitors to the area, either died or have serious health problems.

Heading north

Time to go for a ride. This is our road. There won’t be many cars on those roads. This place has ill fame and people try not to settle here. The farther we go, the cheaper the land, the less the people and the better the roads… quite the reverse of everywhere else in the world - and a forecast of things to come.

As we pass the 86th kilometer, we encounter a giant egg - which marks the point where civilization as we know it ends - and the Chernobyl ride begins.
Someone brought the egg from Germany. It represents LIFE breaking through the hard shell of the unknown. I am not sure if this symbolism is encouraging or not. Either way, it makes people think, and for us this is our last chance to stock up on edible food, drinkable water and uncontaminated fuel. Our journey from here is a gradually darkening picture of deserted towns, empty villages and dead farms…

cruising around

This is what left of a fertile village with a population of 4.500. It lies 50 kms South of ground zero - the reactor

Now we are 50 kms West of the reactor.

This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness. They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy…but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes. It appears that the people with the most courage were the first to die here. Maybe that is true everywhere.

[Vovchandr]

Belorussia

We are now crossing the border into Belorussia - which is a separate country. The evil dark wind of that day brought 70% of the Chernobyl radiation here. As we travel deeper into Belorusian territory, we begin to grasp the immensity of the total area that was poisoned, and will still be poisoin in the year 2525. Most of the houses here are made of wood - and it absorbs radiation like a sponge. 

This is a Belorusian Cemetery. In many villages, hasty scratches on wooden crosses are the only chronicle that remains of the rich lives that dwelled here. Many of the loved ones who prayed over them are probably here, too.
I couldn’t find this village on my map, but the town cemetary tells the tale that from the early 1800’s, until 1986, all of the people who lived in this village were Smirnovs.

It must be sectarian village, where brothers married sisters and all have the same last name.

I put this village on my map and named it Smirnovka. It is how we call a famous vodka. I wonder if there is a connection to the people who lived in this place and the people who make Smirnoff Vodka?

I can only guess, because there is nobody here to answer the question.

checkpoint

This is a credential control point, one of two dozen checkpoints that lead into dead zone. Special permission is required to enter the zone of exclusion. Mine is issued by a governmental organization. Thank You, Daddy!

This is where they give careless or unlucky visitors a chemical shower.

As I pass through the check point, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell something at me…something that I strain to hear…something that attracts and repels me both at the same time. It is divinely eerie - like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks.

Losses

These are radioactive technics as far as the eye can see. They are a type of army truck. Most of these vehicles were full of troops on that day.

How many people died of radiation? No one knows - not even approximately. The official casualty reports range from 300 to 300,000 and many unofficial sources put the toll over 400,000.
The final toll will not be known in our lifetime, and maybe not our childrens either.

It is easier to calculate material loses. It was a crippling economic catastrophe for the region - from which it may never recover.

The fire engines never returned in their garages, and the firemen never returned to their homes.
These fire engines are some of the most radioactive objects in all of Chernobyl. The firemen were the first on the scene, and they thought it was an ordinary fire. No one told them, what they were really dealing with.

THE LIQUIDATORS

The Liquidators are those people who were recruited or forced to assist in the cleanup or the “liquidation” of the consequences of the accident.
As a totalitarian government the Soviet Union forced many young soldiers to assist in the cleanup of the Chernobyl accident, apparently without sufficient protective clothing and insufficient explanation of the danger involved.
Over 650,000 liquidators helped in the cleanup of the Chernobyl disaster in the first year. Many of those who worked as liquidators became ill and according to some estimates about 8,000 to 10,000 have died from the radioactive dose they received at the Chornobyl Power Plant. This group apparently includes those who built the containment building over the destroyed reactor No. 4 which is called the SARCOPHAGUS.
picture: Cleanup workers (Liquidators) going to the Chornobyl Plant. Photo by Lu Taskey.

This hellish inferno became a sort of paradise for wild animals - at least on the surface. They thrive with no humans to prey upon them, but nobody fully understands how the nuclear poisons have altered their genetic makeup, the extent of their migration or their interactions with the adjacent “safe” areas. Grotesque mutations have been reported, but zoologists deny that.
Populations of wolfs and wild boars grow rapidly. They occupying the abandoned houses and sheds. They are curiously unagressive here. Maybe that has something to do with the food supply which plentiful for all species except man, but contaminated. It’s not unusual to see a wolf, a fox, a wild boar or a wild deer casually crossing the road.

These are Prejevalsky Horses. Someone brought a couple of them from Asia a few years ago, they liked it here and now there are 3 herds running in Chernobyl area. They are a sturdy breed and are always on the move. They have a prehistoric look about them. When they sweep by at full gallop, it feels like you might see a herd of ancient Eohippus next.
Zoologists also brought two American Bisons to the area, but the idea to breed them didn’t work out. The male bison run away. I don’t know if he run away from Radiation or from his bride, but he was last seen in Belorussia, heading west. He may have decided to return to America.

This is the town of Chernobyl - The entire population was evacuated in 1986 - but not until long after the danger enveloped them. It was a base for the Atomic Power Plant workers. Geiger counter reading here now is 20-80 microroentgens. This is the safest area in the dead zone.

It is 18 kms from the town of Chernobyl to the APP, and 22 kms to the Ghost Town.

entering Chernobyl area.

There are no commercial gas/petrol stations in the area, so the tank must be full and I check the fuel reserve and tire repair kit. I don’t want to be marooned in the middle of nuclear desert.

[Vovchandr]

This is the village election house.

It was quite boring to participate in an election with one candidate from one party, so the turnout was very low. That is, until the local officials hit upon the idea of offering free drinks in return for a vote. This inspired the electorate to become very interested in politics.

The door on the right is free drink room and door on left is the election room. I don’t know if the authorities came up with idea of making the day after the elections a holiday so the voters had time to sober up before returning to work. Old man who told me this story could not recall.

Atomic Plant

Usually, on this leg of the journey, a beeping geiger counter inspires to shift into high gear and streak through the area with great haste. The patch of trees in front of me is called red - or 'magic" wood. In 1986, this wood glowed red with radiation. They cut them down and buried them under 1 meter of earth.
The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal. If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight. Maybe this is why they call it magic wood. It is sort of magical when one walks in with biker’s leather and walks out like a knight in a shining armor.

This is the territory of the Atomic Power Plant. The geiger counter reading here is also 500-3000 microroentgen per hour.

The plant was closed down for good in 2000.
They must build a new sarcophagus soon, because the original one was hastily constructed and is disintegrating.

This is the final checkpoint. Protective radiation suits are required beyond this point…I am not that curious.

Ghost Town

With a 4 kilometer leap, we are at the gates of the Ghost Town. It was founded in 1970 and located 4 kms North of the reactor. 48,000 people lived here and loved their town. In 1986, it was a modern, green and cozy place to live.

silence

This town might be an attractive place for tourists. Some tourists companies have been trying to arrange tours in this town, but the first group of tourists found the silence unnerving and downright SPOOKY. And it is. They charged 1200 hryvnas for a 2 hour excursion and after some 15 minutes, they wanted to flee to the outside world. The silence here is deafening.

Quiet town.

This is the residence of the town guard.

At first glance, Ghost Town seems like a normal town. There is a taxi stop, a grocery store, someone’s wash hangs from the balcony and the windows are open.
But then I see a slogan on a building that says - “The Party of Lenin Will Lead Us To The Triumph Of Communism”…and I realize that those windows were opened to the sping air of April of 1986.

There are many places that not structurally safe, or have collected pockets of intense radiation. There are places where no one dares to go, not even scientists with protective gear. One such place is the Red Wood forest and another is the Ghost Town Cemetary. The relatives of the people who are buried there can not visit, because in addition to people, much of the radioctive graphite nuclear core is buried there. It is one of the most toxic places on earth.

bike shop

Maybe it was not hard to guess that this would be the first place I wanted to visit.
It’s a biker thing.

No motorcycle shop could survive a catastrophe like this.

This is a sales sticker for a Chezet, 26hp, 343cc, motorcycle. Price = 1050 rubles. Chezet! It was the ultimate dream machine for all young bikers in the Soviet Union. I remember being a school girl in a crowd of bad boys hanging outside and drooling on the showcase window of the cycle shop…dreaming of what we could do with 26 hp bike, because Grandpa’s crippled dinosaur had only 15 ponnies but how the HELL could we ever afford it in this lifetime??? The average monthly wage was only 180 rubbles then.
When the town siren went off on Sunday morning, mass panic ensued. With the police evacuting along with everyone else, banks and even jewelry stores went relatively unnoticed, but this shop was emptied out in a matter of an hour. The police began shooting looters in May, when radioactive TV sets began to appear in the pawn shops of Kiev.

hotel

We are at the reception desk of largest hotel in a Ghost Town

This is a room with trees growing through a stone floor.

This is the banquet room. It was used for weddings, celebrating birthdays and office parties. There are more signs of life here than anywhere else in Ghost Town.

[Vovchandr]

Houses

It is safe to be in the open air in Ghost Town. It is inside the houses where the real danger lies. One must be especially careful in houses with open windows facing the Atomic Power Plant. 

Taking such a walk with no special radiation detecting device is like walking through a minefiled wearing snowshoes.

All doors are open to reduce the risk. Through the door is a distant echo of what life was like here.

New beginning

Children had to part with their favourite toys. People had to leave everything, from photos of their grandparents to cars. Their clothes, cash and passports has all been changed by state authorities. Incredibly, people had homes, motorcycles, garages, cars, country houses, they had money, friends and relatives. People had their lives. Each had their own niche. And then in a matter of hours , their entire world fell to pieces.
After a few hours trip in an army vehicle, they stood under a shower, washing away radiation. Then they stepped in a new life, naked with no home, no friends, no money, no past and with a very doubtful future.

These are bikers taking part in a town parade in 1985. They ride old Soviet wimpy bikes. Ohh, a lot of things have changed since 1985, and one of them is technology. My big Ninja probably produces more horsepower than all of them added together.

And their flag was still there.

All of this happy horseshit was for the May 1st Labor Day parade.

The post office is decorated for the Labor Day parade.

May 1st never came in this town. On April 27th, the whole population was evacuated and this street has not seen a parade since…and probably never will again.

The Ghost Cafe

This was the town in the early 1980’s.

This is how it looks now. The park is the most radiaoactive section of town because it is directly in front of the reactor. On the day of the disaster, the North wind brought the first clouds here and it is said that people ran for their lives as they searched for their children in the atomic smoke… I don’t know if it’s true.

Perhaps future archeologists will compare this town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here - in the radiation that will last for many centuries.
Every step toward the little cars adds 100 microroentgen to my geiger counter reading.

In the Russian language a big dipper is a devils wheel. Well, this look pretty much like one.

On the carousel we read 103 micro R/hr. This place symbolizes what really happened here.

This is the highest building in town. On the day of disaster, many people gathered on this roof to see the beautiful shining cloud above the Atomic Power Plant.

[Vovchandr]

climbing upWe are climbing up to the roof of this building.

Elevator doors are open forever.

Someone didn’t recieve their mail. A couple of papers and the April edition of “Fish and Hunt” magazine. Maybe they were out of town. Either way, they never returned.

The feelings expressed on this wall is Vovik+Tanya=love. One wonders if they survived. And if they did, where they are now. Maybe they will come across this site and see this picture and remember a happier day.

This man never got his paper. The news in it suddenly became unimportant. The calendar shows that Saturday, April 26. was a special day. Judging by things he left at the door, he liked to fish. The Sundays and Year on this calendar were in red ink and has now faded.

He probably left for a fishing trip and never came back. I wonder how he felt. It’s like you life has been cut into two pieces. In one is your slippers still under you bed, photos of a first love that are left on the piano…in the other is you yourself, you memories and a fishing rod.

There is nowhere to hide from rain in Ghost Town.
Up on the roof

From here, the shining cloud above the reactor must have been a staggering sight.
Standing on the roof of the highest building in this empty town brings a feeling of being completely alone in the world - like this whole town is.

They call it a town where time stands still.
Maybe it is because the clocks here don’t measure time - they measure radiation levels.

There is no phone service. Cellular phones don’t work either.

The day after the accident, this place on the bridge provided a good view of the gaping crack in the nuclear containment vessel that was ruptured by the explosion. Many curious people came here to have a look and were bathed in a flood of deadly x-rays emanating directly from the glowing nuclearcore.

This is what is left of the swimming pool “Azure”

Beethoven’s moonlight sonata lies trampled in a gutter.

[Vovchandr]

Kindergarten

It is time to thank you all for reading this.
The last photos are of the town kindergarden.
There are hundreds of little gas masks, a teachers diary and a last note saying that their walk on Saturday has been canceled due to some unforeseen contingency.
The remaining photos don’t need any comments - they tell the Ghost Town’s story in a way that no words can.

Prometheus fire.

This sculpture was in the center of the town, it was moved to the nuclear power plant after the accident.
It is Prometheus stealing fire from Gods and giving it to the humans…

Photos on this site are mostly mine or from my dad’s archive. Few pictures were taken by other photographers. Unfortunately, I do not know the names of authors of those photos because I received them through the internet.
If authors of those pictures can be found and want me to remove or add their names or include more photos on this site, here is my contact address.
Ukraine 03187 Kiev-187 Zabolotnogo 20/A Post Box 25 Elena

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter27.html

[Vovchandr]

Now for those of you who don’t know this tale, is just that a tale to the point where motorcycles aren’t allowed in the “red zone” and neither is going there alone.

She was really there, she did take the pictures and told quite the story, but she was there with her husband on the controlled “tour” of Chernobyl on their bus.

[Jammer]

Didn’t we have a thread on this, ****Edit…it was just a link
either way, awesome re-read.

[cazwrx187]

"The male bison run away. I don’t know if he run away from Radiation or from his bride, but he was last seen in Belorussia, heading west. He may have decided to return to America. "

I don’t blame him! :rofl

[Vovchandr]

I searched the most obvious string I could find “Chernobyl” and didn’t find that thread.

All I found is the BMW forum guys visiting the same site, during what seems like the same tour, she may have been mentioned there.

Either way, I’ve just realized I’ve never actually read through the “story” so this was a first for me, before I was simply aware of her and the trip, but not the details.

Hard to get enough of this, I’d love to make a trip out there one day and go on that tour.

[Singh1]

ive read little about this before, but this was a really interesting read, until i found out she really didnt bike thru this alone and was on a tour… wtf

[Wayne64SS]

@Vovchandr

I searched the most obvious string I could find “Chernobyl” and didn’t find that thread.

All I found is the BMW forum guys visiting the same site, during what seems like the same tour, she may have been mentioned there.

Either way, I’ve just realized I’ve never actually read through the “story” so this was a first for me, before I was simply aware of her and the trip, but not the details.

Hard to get enough of this, I’d love to make a trip out there one day and go on that tour.

IN if you are srs. I need someone to go with, Trace don’t wanna go.

[Singh1]

@Wayne64SS"

IN if you are srs. I need someone to go with, Trace don’t wanna go.

and vlad speaks russian so youre good to roll

[Wayne64SS]

I’m sure he can hook us up with some back stage shit too. LOL

[Vovchandr]

@Wayne64SS"

IN if you are srs. I need someone to go with, Trace don’t wanna go.

I wonder what a trip like that would cost.

Do some homework Wayne.

[Wayne64SS]

***** i can’t read Russian. All them sites are mostly in russian.

[MX-5]

“The fire engines never returned in their garages, and the firemen never returned to their homes. These fire engines are some of the most radioactive objects in all of
Chernobyl. The firemen were the first on the scene, and they thought it
was an ordinary fire. No one told them, what they were really dealing
with.”

That got me. It’s a dangerous job, hell not even a job, the majority of us are volunteers. Can be scary not knowing what lies ahead of you

[Vovchandr]

Get in

Pripyat is located 110 kilometers from Kiev and about 16 kilometers from the border with Belarus.
To gain access to Pripyat, Chernobyl or any of the surrounding villages, you will need to enter the 30km exclusion zone - and to do that, you will need to arrange a day pass. The easiest way of obtaining one of these is through a tour operator, of which there are many based in Kiev.
Most chartered tours take the form of a bus ride from Kiev. Travel agencies:

• Tour2Chernobyl [1] - you can check the available dates for group tours to Chernobyl on their web site. Chernobyl Tour, Chernobyl Zone, Prypyat. This is not Hollywood but the real time aftermath of the world’s worst peace time nuclear disaster.

• Kiev lodging Hostel The only hostel in Kiev that has tours to Chernobyl; This tour is recommended by Travel Channel TV and the tour is backpacker friendly [2]Phone no +380938133958

• The travel agency Hamalia [3] has a good reputation for ecological tours to Chernobyl. When you book a tour, better book in advance because there is an official registration and permission needed.

• SoloEast Travel [4] - you can check the available dates for group tours to Chernobyl on their web site.

• SAM travel company [5]

• Lupine Travel [6] - a UK based firm offering 1-3 day Chernobyl tours including optional airport transfers and apartment stays in Kiev.

• UkrainianWeb.com [7] - a North America based firm offering all-inclusive, English guided tours to the Chernobyl zone. Tours include: Kiev pick-up and drop-off, Zone access pass and transportation, English guide, lunch. Friendly service; fast and convenient booking; various payment options.

• Internet project pripyat.com [8] organizes tours to Chernobyl exclusion zone and Pripyat City for site readers and forum members.

If you are interested, former Pripyat residents could accompany you in the City and tell you their stories and memories about days of accident. They do very interesting, informative tours, everything is officially legalized.

• chernobylwel.com [9] These tours provides opportunities to see places, that usually stay unseen (cooling towers 5, 6, meeting with local citizens, cemetery of technics, etc.) They also offer 2-day trips.

More here http://wikitravel.org/en/Chernobyl

Doesn’t seem too bad, a few hundred dollars, sucks that some places aren’t accessible since 2008.

So heres my trip to Chernobyl in pictures.
The trip was booked with http://www.tourchernobyl.com. I just emailed info@tourkiev.com, and got in touch with the guy who runs the whole place, Sergei. Really, really helpful guy who talked me through the whole process and answered numerous dumbass emails i sent him. You can book everything through them, from the flights (cost me about 500 euro) to hotel (160 euro for 2 nights), to a pickup at the airport and dropoff when leaving ($40 each).

BLH's tour of Chernobyl. Hello Digg/Reddit/world!! | GRcade

First off we need to give props to our guide, Yuri. Yuri has worked in the zone for about 8 years now, i doubt theres many people who know the zone as well as he does.
The tour kicks off with him telling us about the zone, how polluted it still is (or isnt, in some areas)

Just outside Yuris headquarters is the monument to the firemen who died after the explosion. The monument was erected by the firemen themselves. After the explosion, firemen raced to the plant withihn 2 minutes of hearing the alarm, unknowingly exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation.

We stop not far from the firemans memorial, at the remains of a tiny village. The village was destroyed, and then buried under orders from the soviets for being too radiactive. The geiger counter here doesnt show much radiation, Yuri believes it was buried out of the soviets desire to cover up the accident more than anything else. Ironically, the name of the village translated to english is called ‘diggers’, kinda prophetic really.

The sign for the ‘diggers’ village

Just across the road from the ex-village, Yuri points out a radar station just past the treeline. Its an abandoned military base that was used to detect incoming missiles, and for general spying on America. Aparrently, it shows up on old maps as ‘pioneers camp’. We move on, closer to the plant now.

A mile or two down the road, and we get our first glimpse of the plant. Reactor 4 (left) is the one that blew up, the reactor on the right was under construction at the time, and was never finished. The geiger counter is beeping stronger here.

Its reading 0.139 Roentgens, and by the time we picked it up out of the grass, it had gone up to .2, and was climbing. Its still nowhere near being lethal, but put it this way, you wouldnt want to stretch out on the grass for the afternoon. The grass is deadly around here, the asphalt was fine however! It doesnt absorb radiation like the soil did.

Further down the road, and we get our first proper view of the reactor. Its a pretty awe (or fear) inspiring sight, and the people on the tour are getting alot quieter, and maybe a bit more nervous now. The only sound you can hear is the geiger counter beeping faster & faster. WE scramble back into the van and head off, directly to the plant.

This is just outside the plant. Everyone was wondering what in gods name this is supposed to be til Yuri told us…go on, guess what it is is. Got it yet?

Its a…

Its a…

Its a dove with an atom in its mouth! Yeah, we couldnt guess either.

This is a memorial to the first people to die from the explosion. Most of them died shortly afterwards, but 3rd right from the center (i think) was the first guy to die, whos body is still in the plant, under the sarcopagus somewhere.

Were directly in front of the sarcophagus now. The geiger counter is going mental. Its getting unnerving at this stage. Stand here for too long, and youll be going home with a healthy green glow. Some dumbass takes off his hat and puts it on the ground while he poses for a picture, Yuri almost kills him. ‘DONT PUT STUFF ON THE GROUND!!!’. Dumbass.

We move on, now were at the Red Forest. So called because on the night of the accident, the whole forest glowed red. The forest was cut down, and buried under 6 meteres (or feet, im not sure) of earth. The only problem being, the trees they planted on top of them, are now dragging the radiation up through their roots, meaning radiation here is going UP instead of down. This is one of the most toxic places on earth.

And behind us is a roadsign that fills me with both excitement, and dread:

Pripyat.

Rush hour traffic on the road to Pripyat.

Were standing on the ‘bridge of death’ here. So called because on the day of the explosion, people gathered on this bridge to see the beautiful rainbow coloured flames of the burning graphite nuclear core, whose flames were higher than the smoke stack itself. They were all exposed to levels of over 500 roentgens, a fatal dose.

We drive on, and enter Pripyat town.

And here it is! The finest hotel in all of Pripyat. At least it was, back in 1986.
Were going right to the top of it, Yuri tells us. **** YES!!

Graffiti in pripyat is probably the most bone chilling graffiti ive ever seen.

Check in desk. business is a little slow, noones checked in in almost 23 years.

Someone forgot their newspaper.

I ducked away from the tour for a minute to check out some of the hotel rooms. One room still had its bed, and wardrobe, and someone left their slippers behind.

Almostat the top…

The view from the top of the hotel. Theres broken glass everywhere in Pripyat, not just cause of vandalism, but also down to the fact that all the windows had to be left open in the town, to stop pockets of radiation collecting indoors.

Another view from the hotel roof. The building on the left is the palace of culture. Were heading there shortly.

On our way to the palace of culture now. Its not advisable to sit on these chairs for too long, if you value having working balls.

Inside the palace of culture…where some mong stuck his head in my photo.

The sun shining through a hole in the roof makes an excellent spotlight, on a stage that hasnt seen a performance in almost 23 years.

We quite literally exit stage right, and head around the back of the palace of culture. Apartment blocks in Pripyat still bear all the signs of being a former soviet state, the hammer and sickle is everywhere.

All this stuff in behind the stage in the palace of culture. I think it was due to be used in the labour day parade that year, but it never came.

Yuri tells us were moving on to the amusement park, i can literally feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Yuri puts the geiger counter down on a patch of moss in front of the amusement park, and it goes absolutely ballistic. I think it went up to a full 2 roentgens. 500 roentgens is fatal, 200 would put you int he hospital for a long time, 2 isnt going to kill you, but you sure as hell dont want to go walking on this patch of moss, put it that way. Youd beep so much going through decontamination theyd probably take you for a chemical shower.

The amusement park was setup for the kids for the may day parade (i think it was may day, i could be wrong tho). But for Pripyat, time stopped on April 26th, and may day never came.

And then here it is, the infamous star of the show, the Pripyat eye. In Ukranian, its known as the ‘devils wheel’.

From here, were moving on to the swimming pool.

Lenin puts in another appearance

Inside the sports centre.

Pripyat was a real jewel in the crown for the soviets. And seeing the swimming pool here its easy to see why, its not hard to imagine olympic athletes training here, for the 70’s/80’s, this place must’ve been the best around. The pool is HUGE.

Were moving on to the final part of the tour, and probably the part that brings home just what a tragedy this really was. Suddenly im feeling like i really shouldnt be enjoying this. I feel like one of those rubberneckers who slows down at the scene of an accident to get a good gawp in. We’re going back to school.

Walking under the archway into the schoolyard.

The kids playground is barely visible through the trees that’ve grown up around it. I dont think the rest of the pictures need captions.

[Vovchandr]

BOOK YOUR TOUR TO CHERNOBYL

           You can book a private tour or join one of the scheduled group tours below - depending on the group size the price can be as low as <b>$110.00</b> per person. If you're already in Kiev call us at 406-3500 and we might offer a very good price for you, students discounts for the tours scheduled on the next few days.

http://tourkiev.com/chernobyltour/

Chernobyl Tour Rates: ($130 - $160 - the typical range)

• 5 - 10 visitors: up to $160/ea* (the most typical group size)
• 3 - 4 visitors: $195/ea* (a popular group size)
• 2 visitors: $240/ea*

2021 Chernobyl Tour in Ukraine. Visit Pripyat. Book Trip to Chernobyl.

[MX-5]

This looks like it’d be the most amazing urban exploring experience ever