Pripyatin Chernobyl, Ukraine

A dead and long-neglected ghost town is widely known throughout the world after the tragedy that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

When you look at photos of an empty ghost town, it's hard to believe that life was once boiling here. New sixteen-story buildings were being built, a modern hospital complex was working daily, a new amusement park was about to open, and smiling children ran along the school corridors. In one tragic day, the life of the inhabitants of Pripyat was divided on before and after the Chernobyl disaster. And this one day cut off lives of thousands of people.


Photo: The city Pripyat before the accident at the Chernobyl NPP

The youngest city in the USSR, Pripyat, was only two kilometers from Chernobyl and took the biggest impact. To save people they were literally taken from the streets away from the place of the catastrophe without money and documents, children were taken from the kindergartens and schools not by happy parents, but by rescuers. In this whole mess, often it took several days to find their loved ones, and then for years to restore their documents.


Photo: Pripyat, © Wiltsguy @flickr


Photo: School in Pripyat, © Jennifer Boyer

Residents were not allowed to take away pets (they stayed around the city or were shot to prevent the spread of radiation). It was impossible to take things from the apartments, and the clothes were burned after the evacuation. Therefore, although the dead city was plundered by marauders and stalkers, it is still possible to see abandoned apartments in which Soviet furniture remained, and communist posters and paintings hang on the shabby walls.




Photo: Pripyat, © Jaroslav Popelka
 
Now the abandoned city of Pripyat looks like a shot from a horror film. Wild animals roam on once picturesque wide streets, the houses are almost destroyed, and trees have grown on their roofs. Once a modern medical unit turned into a horror house with broken windows, walls with peeling paint and droppers and medicines lying on the floor. Toys blackened by age are scattered throughout the school. Carousels and attractions in the amusement park turned into heaps of scrap metal. And only the huge Ferris wheel which never worked, reminds of the existence of the amusement park. It became a symbol of a dead ghost town Pripyat and the whole Chernobyl disaster.


Photo: Somewhere in Pripyat, © Michael Kötter


Photo: © Jaroslav Popelka