Forgotten Places
Ukraine
50,000 people packed one bag for three days. They never came back.
The Forgotten Atlas — Field Report
50,000 people packed one bag for three days. They never came back.
On the morning of April 27, 1986, the residents of Pripyat were told to pack a bag for three days. The evacuation would be temporary, the authorities said. Bring identification, warm clothing, food for three days. Do not worry. They left their apartments, their furniture, their family photographs on the walls, their children's toys on the floors, their food on the kitchen tables. They walked out of their doors and locked them and got on buses and drove away. Thirty-eight years later, none of them came back. The photographs are still on the walls. The toys are still on the floors. The food has long since rotted. The doors are still locked.
Pripyat is the most powerful place I have ever been. Not because of the radiation. Because of what it shows you about how quickly everything can be taken away.
The Forgotten Atlas
The Ferris wheel in Pripyat's amusement park was scheduled to open on May 1, 1986, for the May Day holiday. It never did. It stands in the overgrown park, rusting orange, the gondolas still swaying slightly in the wind. It has become the most photographed symbol of Chernobyl — not because it is the most dramatic thing here, but because it captures the particular sadness of the place perfectly. A thing built for joy, for children, for a holiday that was supposed to happen. Stopped before it started. Left standing as evidence.
In the absence of humans, nature has moved back into Pripyat with extraordinary speed. Trees grow through apartment floors. Roots split the concrete of the main boulevard. The swimming pool, the school, the Palace of Culture, the hotel — all are being steadily consumed by vegetation. Wildlife surveys have found wolves, lynx, wild boar, and Przewalski's horses living in the exclusion zone in numbers that do not exist in comparable inhabited areas. The absence of humans is, for the ecosystem, a gift.
Tours leave from Kyiv and take 2 days. Only go with a licensed operator who monitors radiation exposure. The exclusion zone is safe for short visits but requires a guide.
The Ferris wheel. The bumper cars. The café that was being painted for the May Day opening when the evacuation came. The most affecting corner of the city.
Gas masks on the floor. Children's drawings on the walls. A piano with vegetation growing through it. One of the most powerful interiors in the city.
The main civic building. The cinema, the gymnasium, the swimming pool. Nature is reclaiming all of it simultaneously.
3km from Pripyat, the Chernobyl reactor itself is now enclosed in the New Safe Confinement — a vast steel arch. You can see it from the exclusion zone.
Workers in the exclusion zone eat here. You can too. Basic Ukrainian food — borsch, cutlets, bread. Strange and somewhat moving.
Base yourself in Kyiv and eat well there. The Ukrainian capital has one of the most exciting food scenes in Eastern Europe.
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