Chernobyl: Masses of Tourists Are Eager for a Dose of Radiation

In the nearest future, Black Sea health resorts in Crimea may have to share the pedestal of a leader among Ukrainian Nature Preserves. It’s hard to believe but it’s true: 25 years after the terrible accident at a nuclear reactor, Chernobyl opens out its hospitable arms! What the beaches, jellyfishes, or “Swallow’s Nests” can be there, when here you are offered to take a walk through the “extinct city”, collect a herbarium of plant mutants, get a spicy dose of radiation. And you can get all of this for a purely nominal price.

“The scene of the terrible catastrophe of humanity of the nuclear age appears before the extreme sports enthusiasts traveling to the Chernobyl exclusion zone”, the advertising leaflets of the enterprising tour operators say. They classify any visit to Chernobyl as ecological or adventure tourism. “You must see this with your own eyes!” travel agencies invites, apparently, with the hope that the sci-fi movies’ scenes will start flickering in the satiated exotic brain of domestic and foreign tourists-intellectuals.

It should be recalled that after the explosion of the reactor number four in 1986, it was established restricted area within a radius of 30 km from the ill-fated nuclear power plant. Today, this destination attracts the curious tourists with terrible force. Extreme tours have been organized here for the past few years. Indeed, perhaps only here, people feeling nostalgic for the days of stagnation can admire the abandoned Soviet city. As to the young people, they can play in the sci-fi movie heroes in Chernobyl zone.

The walks along the ghost town of Pripyat, all 47.500 inhabitants of which were forced to leave their homes without taking anything the next day after the accident, of course, cause a special courage. The most dangerous excursion is a visit of parking lots of thousands infected trucks, helicopters, armored personnel carriers that were in the inferno of the accident. For dessert, you will inspect the abandoned apartment buildings, schools, hotels, kindergartens, and even meet with the elderly “residents of the zone of alienation” (a godsend in the spirit of sham Indian chiefs who delight the tourists in the U.S.).

However, God forbid you forget that you’re on the ground that is affected by radiation emission of 50 million curies! “When you walk through the contaminated area without proper equipment, it could be an impression that it is not so bad”, an ecologist, director of public fund “CITIZEN” Maxim Shingarkin says. “Trees are on their places; homes are on their places too … But! The entire area is strewn by the tiny, micron-sized “hot particles”, each of them, if ingested, is lethal to humans. Chernobyl exposure as itself is not terrible. Namely, this negligible dust is terrible and very scary; after the lapse of two decades, dust is preserved in a large quantity in Chernobyl.”