PRIPYAT FROM ABOVE …
By FITSNEWS || There’s still one place in Russia that hasn’t de-Sovietized itself … a place where the hammer and sickle logo of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is still visible above government buildings.
We’re referring to Pripyat, established on September 4, 1970 as the Soviet Union’s ninth “nuclear city.” Once home to a population of 50,000, Pripyat was abandoned in the aftermath of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster – which along with the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is the only incident ever to register a Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
After the incident, Soviet authorities created the Chernobyl Zone of Exclusion – a 1,000 square mile area surrounding the Chernobyl facility that remains essentially empty. Currently administered by the government by Ukraine, the Zone of Exclusion is home to an estimated 150 or so permanent residents and 3,000 or so workers – who monitor the decontamination of the area.
Pripyat? It’s a ghost town …
Recently, U.S. photographer Philip Grossman traveled to the Zone of Exclusion and took numerous still pictures of the deserted city – and the abandoned nuclear facility.
Those images included views of the Chernobyl sarcophagus and the control room of reactor number four, where a sudden power spike during a routine systems test on April 26, 1986 resulted in a botched shutdown attempt – one that caused a series of steam explosions and the rupture of the reactor vessel. Thirty-one people died in the initial event, while tens of thousands more were exposed to harmful radiation – thousands of them eventually succumbing to the exposure.
Grossman also used an unmanned drone to take aerial videos of the city and the plant.
According to Grossman, his video represents “the first ever aerial footage shot by an unmanned aerial vehicle in the Chernobyl Zone of Exclusion.”
It’s breathtaking …
(Click to play)
(Vid: Via)
Yeah … it’s almost like looking at Detroit.
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6 comments
Post number 2 that was on zerohedge this AM.
Nice.If you’re interested in more surrealism,check out China’s abandoned cities-
http://io9.com/chinas-brand-new-abandoned-cities-could-be-dystopian-m-1238731420
Hate to correct you, but Pripyat is in Ukraine, which you mentioned in another article on your page. Ukraine became in independent country with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and is still an independent country, despite your allegations.
“We don’t need no stinking containment dome!” — Atomic apparatchik in old USSR, but same claim soon to be heard from US atomic apparatshills for a new generation of nuclear plants here in the US.
We have the same problem at the Savannah River Plant. Thousands have already died prematurely or contracted unusual cancers usually only read about in textbooks
A number of documentaries concerning this community (including a good one on “Life After People”) on the Discovery Network have covered the “ghost town”
Something to seriously consider and think about but all the same = “PLAYED”!!!!!!!!!!!!!