Thread: A map in real life.

I found this on The us.playstaion.com website

VIDEO!
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THE QUOTE BEGINS HERE: I HAVE NOT BEEN THERE

Alright there, this is my first post so thought I'd start with my visit to Chernobyl last month. I'm based in the North West and been doing UE around here for the past few years but last year did a few international sites including Iran, Macedonia and France but this was the one I'd wanted to do for years, considered it along with Famagusta as the 'holy grails' of UE.

Anyway, here goes:

Picked up in a Lada early on the Sunday morning and we were swiftly driven onto the motorway and onwards towards Chernobyl. I'd read plenty reports on the net if people who'd visited so I was in great anticipation for what lay ahead.

As we approached the 50 km exclusion zone around the site the first signs of paranoia started to hit. From a pretty clear day the sky had seemed to turn a murky dull grey the closer we got. Then I started to notice the driver, who worked for the government daily within the Chernobyl site violently twitch every few minutes. Was this a tick he'd been born with since birth or was it from working in the most radioactive site on earth? I couldn't help feel it was the latter.

We pulled up to the edge of the exclusion zone and documents were passed on to the soldiers at the military checkpoint. After a few minutes there we were allowed to pass and thats when things changed even more. The roads were deadly quiet. Not a single other car there or sign of life anywhere. Not surprising really seeing as the area has been off limits since the explosion 20 years ago. Not really the place you'd want to set up home. Except some mad **bleep** did. Out of all the hundreds of thousands that had to leave there homes after the accident, a few hundred had returned, mostly older people in there 80's who'd lived there all their lives. They weren't allowed to do but the government had turned a blind eye to them. We were offered the chance to go into the forests to search for them and meet them but we declined the offer. Quite what you're supposed to say to a old Russian bloke whose been living in the wilderness growing and eating his own crops planted in the most toxic land in the world apart from "Alright mate" is beyond me.

So onwards we travelled up to another checkpoint at 30km and the final one at 5km. We then travel past huge abandoned building works, cooling towers and more nuclear reactors that were being built at the time of the accident before we reach the damaged reactor itself. We get out of the car for the first time and thats when things start to set in and you realise just where you are. I'd read about the reactor beforehand about how it was covered by a "crumbling sarcophagus" that had been "hastily built" by the Soviet government following the accident and was "long overdue" a new safer containment unit. I didn't think/worry about this too much until our guide reached for his geiger counter. He'd first got the counter out at the edge of the 50km zone where it had given a reading of 20 microentgens. Normal radiation is around 10mgs. As he turned it on now though it started climbing. And climbing. And climbing. And beeping like **bleep**. Until it hit 800mgs and he turned it off. "It ok. We only staying here for few minutes"

And thank **bleep** we did and got back in the car but the only words I could hear in my head were "crumbling sarchopagus, crumbling sarchopagus, crumbling sarchopagus, crumbling sarchopagus HURRY THE **bleep** UP!"

We then headed to Pripyat, a mile from the reactor. Pripyat was a purpose built town in the early 1970's for those who worked at the power plant and their familes.

The eeriness of this place was hard to describe. 50,000 people had just had to up sticks and leave at a minutes notice and everything had been left and abandoned exactly as it was 20 years ago. It must be the most silent place you can possibly visit on earth. Nothing around for 50km so no man made background noise. And no natural noise. No birds, no insects, no wind, no nothing. So silent it seemed deafening.

It was a place stuck in time, a return to the Soviet Union. The buildings still had the hammer and sickle emblems on them. The clocks ahd all stopped. Newspapers on the floor dated April 1986. Half marked registers in the classrooms. Exercise books still opened on the desks. Toys laying on the floor. Rusted fairgrounds. Sports halls with ball prints on the wall like they'd been played in just yesterday. Theatres and libraries. With trees growing in them.

As we were reaching the end of the tour of the city we were left to just view it all from the top of a hotel roof and take it all in. The silence was broken as it always is by a yank, the other guy on the tour. "So like, when all this happened man, what did everyone, like the public who lived here feel about it at the time? Were they angry"?

The incredulous look on the guides face was a site to behold and I expected him to go on a big rant about the effects that it had actually had had on all these peoples lives but he summed it up much better by simply shouting "WHAT YOU THINK?" and walking off.

We headed out of the town after 3 hours so as to not expose ourselves to too much radiation but we still had to pass two contamination control tests at 2 points before we were let out. The agonising 2 second but feels like 2 hours wait for the green light was quite nervy (but not half as bad as waiting for the blue line on a pregnancy test surprisingly).

All in all it was a really good experience but I think I'd probably built it up too much in my head and there seemed to be a little bit of an anti climax to it. As well as the fact it was the first time I'd done anything like this with a 'guide' with me. He was excellent and let us do pretty much anything we wanted but it just isn't quite the same experience when you're not just fully free to roam alone. I suppose the fact that it is so desolate and quiet and off limits, it does actually spoil it a bit knowing that you're there on an official visit. It would kind of be better if you could somehow sneak into the place and wander around for hours on your own! I know thats completley out of the question though but I think its the only way you would fully get to appreciate the place.

Photos here, it was a miserable day hence the poor quality of the shots...


The damaged reactor. Work now started on a new sarcophagus to recover it.


Block of flats. Notice the hammer and sickle emblem at the top

Government offices


Shop


Radioactive moss. This was a lot brighter than it shows on the photo!


Sports hall. There were still ball prints on the wall like someone had just been playing there!


Sports hall noticeboard


View from the top of a hotel overlooking the city. Reactor in the distance, 3 km away.


View from sports hall window


Doll outside nursery




Props from the local theatre




Fairground. This was set to open in May 1986. It never did.



Yeah I did play it. It was severely out of tune!


Plant in hotel lobby. Somehow still alive.


Mailboxes at bottom of block of flats.



School pictures






The odd newspapers that were scattered about had barely faded at all, they looked brand new.


Swimming baths







my idea. This is a wired thing knowing we play a game. That is scary Real.

if u read the top part. The reactor melted down. and spilled it in the air. so everyone had to leve.