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Photo TR: Pripyat Amusement Park and Chernobyl


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Last October myself and 5 friends finally decided to go to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. a trip that had been on the cards for years. We wanted to get it done before the massive new sarcophagus slid into place in November

 

It is one of the weirdest and creepiest places I have ever visited but if you are ever in Ukraine it is a place I highly recommend you don't miss. Along with the Museum to the disaster in Kiev. It is both fascinating, terrifying and heart wrenching in equal measures

 

Here are some pictures from the trip. I shall start with the abandoned amusement park as well this is a Theme Park site.

 

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The entrance to the long abandoned city of Pripyat.

 

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Our first stop was the Pripyat Amusement Park. A park that never opened to the public before the disaster. Call Of Duty Modern Warfare fans should recognise this.

 

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Tick Tick Tick

 

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Bumper cars that never got to bump

 

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Close up of one of the cars

 

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There appear to have only been 4 rides on site at the time. I doubt it would be in any enthusiasts bucket lists if the accident didn't occur.

 

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A small swinging boat style ride

 

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Another rotating style swing ride and the ferris wheel.

 

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The rides are really starting to fall apart.

 

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Close up of the now iconic ferris wheel.

 

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You could if you really wanted walk right into the ferris wheel. I wouldn't though, it's pretty rusty.

 

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A friend of mine on the trip is doing an art project with this creepy rabbit mask. Which served to make the place that little stranger.

 

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Last shot of the Ferris Wheel before we moved on

 

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A shot of the truely enormous Duga Nuclear Missile Early Warning Array just outside Pripyat ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar ) marked on the maps of the time as a summer camp.

 

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The reactor that caused it all in its old Sarcophagus which has begun to fall apart

 

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close up of the reactor site.

 

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Myself and my 5 friends at the reactor. This is about as close as you can get to it. Which to be honest. With it being a melted down nuclear reactor. This is close enough.

 

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The new Sarcophagus which was slid over the reactor in November.

 

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That mask again. This time at the reactor site

 

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Back to the city of Pripyat itself and some urban exploring. Things start to get pretty creepy.

 

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That's not weird at all.

 

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view of the reactor from one of the tallest buildings in Pripyat

 

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Nature is slowly but surely taking back the city

 

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Abandoned lift shaft with the doors just open... nope... just nope.

 

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The abandoned sports complex and swimming pool is another one for COD fans.

 

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Part of the abandoned school complex.

 

All in all it was one of the most interesting days on a holiday I have ever had and certainly one for the bucket list. I'm just glad we got to tick it off before the new Sarcophagus was put into place as the old reactor casing certainly had a more distinct and iconic look to it.

Even with that now under cover the whole city of Pripyat is worth a look just for the strangeness of seeing a city as nature completely takes back control. We took a tour from the city of Kiev for around £60 ($75) which was for a full days tour, guide and travel. Tours are the only way you can get into the area but there are a number of options including a 2 day tour which includes a nights stay at one of the hotels which actually still operates in the exclusion zone (albeit at the edge) for workers still working around the site.

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Love the photos. I took a trip there a couple years ago, and agree that it is definitely a trip for the bucket list. It is one of those trips that stays with you, and seeing that city........

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  • 2 weeks later...

Very eerie--thanks for the photos. I remember watching Chernobyl Diaries, a horror flick about some tourists being trapped in the Exclusion Zone, and it looked like a fascinating, if morbid, place to visit.

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I love this. I've always been fascinated by shortwave/radio anomalies and the Duga radar system specifically. If you're not already aware of it there's an interesting documentary called The Russian Woodpecker, which deals with the purpose of the system but also the Chernobyl disaster in general.

 

One disturbing aspect about the disaster that I wasn't aware of was that children were prioritized for isolation from exposure, and therefor many kids were separated from their families by the Soviet government and placed in orphanages where they were told to forget about their parents, who presumably were already exposed to deadly levels of radiation by that point.

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Great report. Thanks for sharing. If you're interested in an eerie read, check out Voices from Chernobyl. I went through a Chernobyl phase a year or two ago where I watched a few documentaries and read a couple books, with the aforementioned book of first hand accounts being hard to put down. Of course, like most things, I've forgotten most of what I learned about the incident.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

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Great report. Thanks for sharing. If you're interested in an eerie read, check out Voices from Chernobyl. I went through a Chernobyl phase a year or two ago where I watched a few documentaries and read a couple books, with the aforementioned book of first hand accounts being hard to put down. Of course, like most things, I've forgotten most of what I learned about the incident.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Chernobyl-History-Nuclear-Disaster/dp/0312425848

 

Thanks for the book tip, Prozach626. I've already put a hold on it from my library. Gave me chills just reading its description and reviews.

 

Alice

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That is a seriously awesome trip report! I had hoped myself to get there before they place on the new sarkofag, but that's not gonna happen.

 

Let's also remember that there is a lesson to learn here: Never cheap out and build your reactor without the containment building and never ever turn of your security system in the middle of the night to run an unauthorized experiment.

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Being part Nuclear Engineer major I know the Chernobyl disaster quite well, one of the most fascinating things from the entire disaster was the special ops team they deployed to the roof top to clean the exploded graphite and debris off down to the ground for bulldozers to clean up. Needless to say, those men's lives didn't last much longer past that night but truly an incredible story to say the least.

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