Chapter 62
The exclusion zone around Chernobyl was a desolate wasteland of abandoned buildings. A triumph of Soviet-era planning, the once thriving model city of Pripyat and the smaller town of Chernobyl were hurriedly evacuated shortly after the reactor explosion. The temporary evacuation soon morphed into abandonment, with time estimates before resettlement could be considered safe for human occupation being some 20,000 years.
Entire hospitals, schools, theatres, sports halls, apartment buildings and swimming pools remained, abandoned and unchanged for decades. Acres upon acres of wooded forest were stripped by the fallout, the remnants now pumping out its own radiation. Pripyat even included a fairground with carousels, bumper cars and a huge Ferris wheel, completed just days before t
