Things from apartments in Pripyat. SFW - jokes, humor, girls, accidents, cars, photos of celebrities and much more

A successful IT specialist from Minsk, Artem (name changed), could have afforded to fly to the Philippines or Goa on vacation, but he went to Chernobyl zone alienation. I settled for several days in an abandoned Pripyat apartment, drank filtered river water, walked along the roofs, admiring the sunset and the illumination of the new Chernobyl nuclear power plant dome. “Are you asking what I forgot there, why do I need all this? What attracts climbers to the mountains and divers to the bottom of the sea?

26-year-old Artem answers a question with a question. “I couldn’t resist the pull of the zone.” I am publishing his story about a risky five-day journey.

Until I started working actively, I climbed everything I could in Belarus. Missile silos, Cold War bunkers, abandoned factories, walked the entire underground Nemiga. I’ve been wanting to go to Pripyat for a long time... This fall, my friend and I decided: it’s time. Don’t think that I’m one of those who played “Stalker” and have an idea of ​​the zone only from the computer game. I have been interested in the topic for a long time. At one time, a documentary filmed in the first months after the tragedy made a strong and painful impression on me. The film “Chronicle of Difficult Weeks” sank into my soul.

Today you can enter the zone quite legally. Only from Minsk to Chernobyl and Pripyat are transported by several companies. Official excursions there are conducted along certain routes, from which you cannot deviate. If you want, for example, to go into a residential building, they won’t let you. Well, what’s the interest in wandering around well-trodden places, photographs of which are littered with the entire Internet? We wanted to see another area, not a tourist one.

Having surfed the sites and social networks, we found a guide. He agreed to take us to Pripyat, bypassing police patrols, put us up in an apartment there and show us different places. They were well aware that such a raid was illegal. Once we crossed the barbed wire, we automatically became lawbreakers.

What responsibility did we face? Illegal entry into the exclusion zone in Ukraine is considered administrative offense and is punishable by a fine of 400 hryvnia. Belarusians can be fined 680 hryvnia for violating the rules of stay in Ukraine. With our money, this is something like 520 thousand. But if you take metal with you, this is already a criminal offense, and you can get a prison sentence. By the way, metal in the zone is still being sawed and forests are being cut down with all their might. Later we became convinced of this ourselves.

Having agreed on everything with the conductor, we bought train tickets to Kyiv. Of course, when going to Ukraine, I did a stupid thing by dressing like I was going to war. I was wearing a Bundeswehr parka, camouflage pants, and in my backpack were chemical protection boots, thermal underwear, a burner, a sleeping bag, and a water filtration system. The border guards spent a long time asking where I was going and why.

From Kyiv we took a minibus to the village of Ivankov. When it got dark, I and my guide got into a taxi and drove to a semi-abandoned village on the border of the 30-kilometer exclusion zone. There at night we crossed the barbed wire.

Our guide is a man who is fanatically devoted to the zone and knows almost everything about it. He has taken tourists to Chernobyl 50 times and knows well where it is possible to go and where it is not worth the risk. He has an instinct for the police. We entered carefully and remained undetected throughout the entire five-day campaign. But one of my friends, with whom we planned to meet in Pripyat, was unlucky. He decided to go alone and crossed the border 15 kilometers from us. Having passed the “thorn”, he went out onto the road, where a patrol car drove up to him. The guy was tracked down, fined and escorted out of the zone.

For the first two hours we made our way through some kind of swamp, where I was fatally unlucky: I lost my sleeping bag. They rushed to look, but where was it? We just got exhausted and spent another hour and a half. What to do? You can’t make fires (it’s a polluted area, after all), and there were frosts at night. The first thought is to go back. And then he waved his hand: to hell with it! I’m not new to hiking, there have been more dangerous situations.

Moving further, we saw stacks of cut trunks along the roads. Whether this is done legally or not, I don’t know. The guide told us that shift workers and lumberjacks officially work in the zone. There is probably nothing wrong with such preparation if it is controlled and the products are checked for radiation. Another thing is the black “metal workers”, pickers of berries, mushrooms, and apples. They have not yet disappeared and our guide has met more than once.

Having walked 12 kilometers on the first night, we slept in an abandoned village. Our guide has a shelter there - mattresses, some furniture. He was a terrible fool - he pulled on two jackets and two pants. During the day I warmed up with tea and cooked stew with buckwheat.

We spent the whole day in the village. Driving on the roads at this time is dangerous. You can run into anyone: the police, zone employees, foresters. There wasn't much to do. We played chess, then went to explore the surroundings. We came across the remains of collective farm buildings and greenhouses, rusty frames of combine harvesters in a mechanical yard, and truck cabs.

The local granary turned out to be a copy of one of the locations in Stalker.

Every now and then I asked the conductor when the radiation would start. On the first day, our dosimeter did not record excesses of the background. 0.12, 0.15, 0.2 microsieverts per hour - no more than in Minsk. Our guide said the phrase “Now turn on your dosimeter” only at night, when we approached the notorious Red Forest, which received the largest share of radioactive dust emissions. During decontamination, the forest was destroyed and new trees were planted in its place. And yet, the trunks buried in the ground continue to emit a decent amount of noise.

4, 6, 8 microsieverts per hour - the background increased with every step, hastening us. It’s a well-known fact: you can’t physically feel the radiation, and this makes you a little uneasy. Coming out of the forest, we continued along the straight road to the Jupiter plant.

By that time our water supplies were running low. Empty eggplants were filled at the factory, where the conductor showed the flooded groundwater cable collector. Having already reached the apartment, the water was filtered and boiled on a portable burner. You can drink.

That night another misfortune happened to me, comparable in its fatality to the loss of my sleeping bag. When we were already in Pripyat, calluses exploded on my feet, which were chafed by boots. The pain is unbearable. It’s good that we only had to hobble a couple of kilometers to the apartment.

Each guide in Pripyat has one or more apartments for tourists to live in. What does this home look like? There is no ceiling leaking, there are doors and intact glass in at least one of the rooms, there are beds with mattresses, wardrobes, bedside tables - a minimal set of furniture. Wallpaper, as a rule, is glued and does not hang from the walls. There are probably about a hundred such apartments in the whole city. If the police discover a transshipment base, the apartment is included in the patrol route. Therefore, guides are forced from time to time to look for new places to spend the night. Stalker's apartments are carefully guarded: at dusk, the windows are covered with black bags so that the light from candles and lanterns does not break through, thereby revealing the presence of people.

It is customary to go to the toilet either on the balcony, where everything is washed away by the rains, or in apartments located several floors above or below. So the proximity of the stalkers’ “den” can be determined by a specific smell.

Having settled in, we went up to the roof, from where we had an impressive view of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the new shelter of the fourth power unit.

Spending the night in an abandoned high-rise building, of course, is still creepy. Doors and windows are creaking and banging throughout the house, and something is rattling in the elevator shaft. However, we quickly got used to these sounds. The main thing is to understand that Pripyat is simply a city abandoned by people, a place with a tragic fate. There can be no mysticism or devilry here.

For three decades without people, the city almost disappeared into the forest. You walk along a narrow asphalt path - and this is actually a former avenue. Suddenly you look: somehow out of place, a reinforced concrete lantern has appeared among the trees. If you step to the side, the entrance to a gray high-rise building suddenly emerges from the thickets.

All that remains of the local football stadium are stands, lighting towers, and a running track. Where they once played ball, a forest grows as tall as a nine-story building.

This is what the pier looks like on the embankment where passenger ships moored.

Near the embankment there is the former Pripyat cafe. There are rusty soda machines along the wall. The cut glass was probably brought with him and left by some photographer looking for an atmospheric shot.

Inside one of the local schools.

Palace of Culture "Energetik".

Pripyat is not just an empty city. This is a monument to the largest man-made disaster in history. Nature takes its toll, but people still cause more damage,” argues Artem. - Over the years, not only scrap metal disappears, but also something spiritual. This spring a cynical incident occurred. Some youngsters entered the city with spray cans and painted over the touching inscription on the wall, “Forgive me, my dear home,” with their scribble. She was dear as a memory for all the migrants.

In the city amusement park, the autodrome cars and the Ferris wheel continue to rust. This place is considered not the safest. In 1986, helicopters landed at a site nearby and dropped lead into the smoking mouth of the reactor.

The dosimeter gives a false sense of security, showing only 0.62-0.72 microsieverts per hour. The norm was exceeded by approximately 3-3.5 times.

Moss, known for its ability to accumulate radiation, already produces 2 microsieverts per hour - ten times the norm.

Before the trip, I thought that I would not feel at ease in Pripyat. Imagination painted gloomy pictures of a ghost town. In fact, I have never before felt as calm as I do here. No phone calls, no internet, no man-made sounds. Clean air, bright stars and the triumph of nature over civilization. There was time to be alone with myself and think about different things.

During their stay in the city, Minsk residents met only two people. It was another guide and a 46-year-old Ukrainian tourist accompanied by him.

We heard their voices when we entered the 16-story building,” recalls Artem. - We hid for some time and watched: what if the police came. Then we met and started talking. It turned out that they walked to Pripyat not for two days, like us, but for four.

Medical unit No. 126 is considered one of the dirtiest facilities in all of Pripyat. Or rather, her small basement. In the first days after the accident, firefighters who had received lethal doses of radiation were brought to the medical unit. Their clothes, literally glowing with radiation, were thrown into the basement. Among the researchers of Pripyat, from time to time there are desperate guys who risk going down there. Their white protective suits and gloves are lying on the ground floor of the building.

The liquidators' belongings are still there. For ideological stalkers, this is almost a holy place. Go down to the basement, see everything with your own eyes, bow to the feat of the people who were the first to take the blow of radiation,” says Artem. - I didn’t take any risks. If you swallow radioactive dust, it will poison you for a long time. An ordinary respirator will not save you from this dust. All I had to do was touch the helmet of one of the firefighters. The dosimeter showed more than 50 microsieverts per hour.

Artem, together with his friend and guide, spent three days in the city. Next according to the plan was the Chernobyl-2 radar station - a giant structure of antennas 9 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Due to blisters, the loss of a sleeping bag and frosts, we had to abandon the continuation of the hike.

I wanted to let my friend and the guide go further, and I would go to surrender at the checkpoint. You won't get lost in the zone. You can always call the police and tell them where you are, go out onto the road and wait to be noticed and detained. The most unpleasant thing that awaits you in such a situation is just a fine and a conversation with a special officer in Chernobyl. And then - a minibus, Kyiv, a train station and a train to Minsk. But my friend decided not to leave me. The guide called someone and said that a car would pick us up in the morning on the outskirts of the Red Forest.

The conductor collected the rest of our food in a bag and took it somewhere - he made a “bookmark”. Maybe it will be useful to other guys who will live here after us.

We set out from Pripyat at night to make our way to the appointed place in the dark. Then we hung around for at least an hour at the edge of the forest. The background in that place ranged from 4.5 to 9 microsieverts per hour. The sound of a motor was heard. We didn’t know who was coming, so we ran to hide in the forest. And there the background jumped to 20 microsieverts - a hundredfold excess of the norm. We are sharply back. No matter who goes there, let them notice that health is more important.

We reached the border of the zone quickly. I never found out who gave us a lift. Maybe one of the forest rangers. The good thing about guides is that they have their own people in the zone...

Ask me if I picked up radiation? The data from the meter suggests that in total I received a third of what I get when undergoing fluorography. This does not mean that the zone is safe. A seasoned stalker who knew phony places walked with us. Therefore, everything ended relatively well, except for the lost sleeping bag and feet damaged by calluses. But it’s probably better not to go there alone.

Do you want to know if I will go to Pripyat again? The issue has long been resolved. The zone is so addictive...

We got an apartment in Pripyat at the end of December 1977. Happy, we celebrated New Year in an empty apartment with only a couple of mattresses and a table with snacks.

This is where I spent my youth, this is where I returned with trepidation from my student travels. Once I even took a foreign friend from Panama here.

1. Here I am standing with my young wife among relatives who came to my parents’ silver wedding in the summer of 1985:

2. And here I am standing at my entrance 20 years later. Now I will go in and see what I have seen in my dreams many times:

3. All the windows are still intact, there has been no evacuation or looters yet:

4. Parents take us to the bus station, February 1984:

5. My son is sitting in this same place on the wreckage of furniture taken to the burial ground in 1986:

Nowadays even bad photographs are valuable, because you can see familiar corners of Pripyat on them.

6. Our entrance:

7. Little has changed. Only the paint is a little peeling and for some reason the lights don’t light up and the elevators are turned off :)

8. And here is our apartment. The door is of course knocked down, the meters are removed, welcome!

9. 1985 My parents' silver wedding. We meet guests in the corridor near the door:

10. The same corridor 20 years later. And whoever needed to tear off the trim from the door, they probably looked - it wasn’t an armored door? Those were still calm times and almost no one had iron doors...

11. Our cozy room. The schoolgirl sister is proud of her student brother. The sideboard contains dishes for numerous feasts and souvenirs brought from various trips:

12. On the table in the hall are gladioli grown by my mother at the dacha:

13. Now only a miraculously preserved strip of wallpaper on the wall reminds of those times:

14. Parents have golden hands. My father built a dacha with his own hands back in Siberia, then in Pripyat, and now near Kiev. Mom has a magnificent garden and we always had fresh flowers in the summer:

15. Now all I have to do is drink cognac for those calm times:

16. Sister sitting on the sofa in the living room:

17. This piece of sundress is all that we could find from the clothes left in Pripyat in April 1986:

18. My friends and I are drinking tea in the living room, sitting on this very sofa. There are peacock feathers on the wall - my mother is a veterinarian by training, she worked in Siberia at the city zoo:

19. Of all the furniture, only this sofa with cut up covering remains:

21. In Pripyat nine-story buildings there were 6-meter loggias and from the hall you could go to the kitchen. The surrounding Polesie forests are famous for porcini mushrooms:

22. Through this loggia, the “partisans” dumped all things into trucks when they centrally cleaned apartments in the winter of 1986-1987:

23. Mom is in the kitchen. Cooks something delicious for the always hungry students :)

24. Someone carefully removed all the tiles from the wall and unscrewed the plumbing fixtures. Some people probably still have it hanging on their wall, playing phonics :)

25. 1985 My young wife shows her mother-in-law that she also knows how to wash dishes :)

26. Strangely, the figured glass in the kitchen door has been preserved:

27. Morning. My wife enters our room. On the jamb there are marks with my height:

28. And here only a strip of wallpaper reminds of those times:

29. And for some reason my piano remained. There was also a Yonika electric organ, but my parents took it out in the fall of 1986, when they allowed me to go to Pripyat to get things, and now it’s in my house. And now my son portrays me in my wild youth:

30. Photos from the celebration of the parents’ silver wedding. We had a lot of books; they were in several cabinets in different rooms. In the fall of 1986, dad had to make many trips from the 6th floor to the first to carry them down to the car. And many acquaintances never visited Pripyat, and their family archives and old books disappeared :(

31. Some of the furniture remained in this room:

32. Uncle Volodya says a toast. From above, the whole company is illuminated by the same lamp that is in the hands of the son in the previous photo:

33. Near the window there were mattresses removed from the bed. When we tried to push them apart, they simply crumbled into dust, like mummies of pharaohs :) And we also found our bell!

34. Sisters with a neighbor in the hallway near the front door in 1986:

35. Despite the fact that there are 3 floors above us (we lived on the 6th), the ceiling is leaking and the wooden floor in the corridor has rotted and is collapsing under our feet. A little more, and this will happen throughout Pripyat:

36. And all we have to do is drink cognac, say goodbye to the apartment and quietly leave from there...

And there was still a meeting ahead with my favorite Pripyat places...

The terrible tragedy of Chernobyl collected many victims. The decontamination of Pripyat also cost serious victims, since many liquidators of the consequences of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant received a large share of radiation. Now there is a lot of debate about the feasibility of these works, because already in May 1986 it was clear that it would not be possible to live the same life in Pripyat. Nevertheless, decontamination helped to avoid the massive spread of radioactive objects outside the exclusion zone, although looters are still finding something to profit from. In this post we will take a look at how the work to decontaminate the city of nuclear scientists took place.

First, let's evaluate the scale of the work. Here is a post-accident photo of Pripyat - this is spring or early summer of 1986; Almost the entire city was included in the photo. As you can see, Pripyat was very small and compact - 5 microdistricts, each of which was a large block. The whole city is similar in size to a residential neighborhood in a city like Minsk or Kyiv. However, the decontamination work was quite extensive, because it was necessary to remove radioactive soil - even in such a small area this amounts to hundreds of tons.

Collection of soil on the territory of one of the kindergartens. As can be seen from the exposed curbs, the earth was removed quite deeply.

More soil collection.

Break in work The soil on the left side of the lawn has already been razed, on the right it still needs to be done.

Collecting soil into trucks in one of the yards.

The terrible tragedy of Chernobyl collected many victims. The decontamination of Pripyat also cost serious victims, since many liquidators of the consequences of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant received a large share of radiation. Now there is a lot of debate about the feasibility of these works, because already in May 1986 it was clear that it would not be possible to live the same life in Pripyat. Nevertheless, decontamination helped to avoid the massive spread of radioactive objects outside the exclusion zone, although looters are still finding something to profit from.

In this post we will take a look at how the work to decontaminate the city of nuclear scientists took place.

First, let's evaluate the scale of the work. Here is a post-accident photo of Pripyat - this is spring or early summer of 1986; Almost the entire city was included in the photo. As you can see, Pripyat was very small and compact - 5 microdistricts, each of which was a large block. The whole city is similar in size to a residential neighborhood in a city like Minsk or Kyiv. However, the decontamination work was quite extensive, because it was necessary to remove radioactive soil - even in such a small area this amounts to hundreds of tons.

Now let's look at this map. On it you can see the location of the city relative to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, plus on the map I marked the microdistricts of the city, as well as the main flows through which radioactive emissions dispersed. To some extent, Pripyat was lucky - during the days of the accident, the wind was such that the main radioactive masses seemed to “circle” the city on both sides, forming two lines of high radiation contamination, which were later called the Northern and Western traces. Even taking this into account, the exposure background in Pripyat by the evening of April 26 averaged 1 roentgen per hour (about 70-100 thousand times higher than normal); you can imagine what the background would be like in Pripyat if the flows went straight to the city.

Almost immediately after the accident, the city acquired a “special status” of a closed settlement. In order to get to Pripyat, you had to have a special pass; they came in different levels of access - “Pass to Chernobyl”, “Pass to Pripyat”, “Pass everywhere”. Documents were checked at the entrance to the city; It was absolutely unrealistic for a random person to get to Pripyat at that time.

All deactivation activities can be divided into two main types of work - cleaning buildings from traces of radioactive dust and cleaning up soil - all main work falls under these two categories, plus we will also add a separate item for the removal of things to burial grounds. The photo below shows the decontamination of the dormitories of the Jupiter plant; as you can see from the map, in those parts of the city the background was quite high (and in general, in the Jupiter area, even now it is quite dirty).

The buildings were washed with the help of these special fire engines, which provided the necessary pressure. Regarding what they washed with, I came across different versions. Some write that it was ordinary water, while others say that it was a special polymer composition, which, when dried, turned into some kind of analogue of a film that bound dust and which could then be collected as garbage.

I think that both versions are plausible - in some places they could have used a special compound, and in others - ordinary water. In general, neither concrete nor brick are “activated” by radiation in any way (unlike metal) and are washed quite easily - you just need to remove all the dust and radioactive particles.

Filmed here preparatory work- Apparently, filling the car tank through a special hose.

A photograph of the laundering process. As you can see, the jet is strong enough to reach the upper floors of a typical nine-story building. I think that the pressure had to be adjusted depending on the height - after all, with a jet of such force that reaches the upper floors, you can easily break out the windows on the lower floors.

In addition to fire trucks, at least one BelAZ, converted into a UMP-1 watering truck, was also used to clean buildings. In the photo below you can see this car washing roads on Lenin Avenue, which runs between the First and Second microdistricts of the city. I think that BelAZ was initially planned to be used for cleaning tall sixteen-story buildings, but the water compressor was too strong - according to eyewitnesses, the stream of water from BelAZ easily knocked out windows in houses.

Another part of the work (much more large-scale) involved the removal of radioactive soil and, apparently, was carried out after the buildings had been cleaned. The soil was collected in different ways everywhere. Somewhere these graders were used to cut the soil.

But basically everything was done by hand. In the photo below, a group of decontamination service soldiers manually collects soil into the back of a MAZ, the photo was taken in the courtyard of Pripyat dormitories in the First or Second Microdistrict.

Collection of soil on the territory of one of the kindergartens. As can be seen from the exposed curbs, the earth was removed quite deeply.

More soil collection:

Loading soil into the car body. I will assume that the equipment was used somewhere in the area of ​​the Jupiter plant, where radiation levels were much higher than in other microdistricts.

As can be seen in some photos, the soil was cut not only with shovels, but also with some kind of hoe. In the middle of the frame you can see a dosimetrist conducting field measurements of exposure dose with something like a military dosimeter DP-5.

Break in work The soil on the left side of the lawn has already been razed, on the right it still needs to be done.

Collecting soil into trucks in one of the yards.

Control measurements of the decontaminated area, apparently this is some kind of kindergarten. Interesting details in the photo - for some reason the windows of the supposed kindergarten are covered with film, and for some reason there is no glass at all in the windows of the top floor of the high-rise building in the background. There is an assumption about the film - the kindergarten was used as a dormitory for liquidators in the spring and summer of 1986, and the film served as an additional dust filter.

Military in Pripyat.

Construction.

A rare photo - the work of disinfectants was filmed; Most likely this is late autumn 1986. All things are taken out of houses (some are simply thrown out through windows), collected in trailers and bodies and transported to burial grounds.
Only a few large-sized things like “walls” and sofas remain in the houses.

Collection and removal of contaminated items, area of ​​the Sporting Goods store.

A fire escape near one of the Pripyat houses - I assume that things were collected in this way, which were then supposed to be used inside the perimeter of the ChEZ.

BRDM-2 on the city streets.

Attention attention! Dear residents of Pripyat! The City Council of People's Deputies reports that due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the city of Pripyat, an unfavorable radiation situation is developing. Party and Soviet bodies and military units are taking the necessary measures. However, in order to ensure the complete safety of people, and, first of all, children, there is a need to temporarily evacuate city residents to settlements Kyiv region. For this, to everyone residential building today, the twenty-seventh of April, starting from fourteen zero zero hours, buses will arrive, accompanied by police officers and representatives of the city executive committee. It is recommended to take with you documents, extremely necessary things, and also, in case of emergency, food. The heads of enterprises and institutions have determined a circle of workers who remain on site to ensure the normal functioning of city enterprises. All residential buildings will be guarded by police officers during the evacuation period. Comrades, when temporarily leaving your home, please do not forget to close the windows, turn off electrical and gas appliances, and turn off the water taps. We ask you to remain calm, organized and orderly during temporary evacuation.

I continue the story about the city of Pripyat (first part: http://lleo.me/dnevnik/2015/04/20_pripyat1.html).

Our accompanying person was Sasha Sirota, a wonderful person whom Yura Ilyin introduced us to (I’ll tell you about them later - after all, I later visited Sasha in a village near Chernobyl). Sasha famous
a journalist writing about the accident, the main organizer and inspirer of the website http://pripyat.com and generally an active public figure in everything related to the Chernobyl accident and nuclear safety. And his mother, Lyubov Sirota, by the way, is the author of the famous book “Pripyat Syndrome”. Sasha Sirota constantly organizes excursions to the station and to Pripyat (you can sign up on the same website http://pripyat.com), but for him Pripyat is the city of his childhood, where he was born and lived for the first ten years before the accident. And of course it’s very hard for him to see the city of his childhood in such a destroyed state. But here we argued with him: after all, if you think about it, he is one of those lucky few who can come and see the city of his childhood - with mosaics, signs, houses. But, let’s say, I can’t come and look at the city of my childhood. I can’t even go to the dacha farm where I spent my summers as a child: now, instead of a swamp and two sheds, there are billboards, cottages and a supermarket. And, perhaps, the only place on the whole Earth where you can see a living piece of the real Soviet Union from the 80s of the last century is the city of Pripyat.

The remote control of the Edison-2 music installation was the name of the famous city disco:

To plunge into the atmosphere of the 80s and this place, to appreciate the style, clothing, and facial expressions of those times, I recommend watching an archived video from the collection of the site pripyat.com:

And today this House of Culture looks like this:

A former grocery store. There were display cases, baths for live fish, but under the ceiling there was an eternally frozen fan:

City bookstore. Thrown along with the books:

Now the bookstore looks like this:

Books are lying on the floor. These are, of course, books from that era. “The Soviet Union in the struggle for peace and collective security in Asia”:

Books cover the floor in an even layer:

"Book to read." One. For reading.

“Your and My Land” (apparently a collection of political articles). And next to it is “International Terrorism and the CIA”, suddenly rising from the nuclear ashes and again damn “relevant”:

But this is a remake - a cross and a sign of radiation:

The central street of any Soviet city is called Lenin Street. Once upon a time, young mothers with strollers walked here, children rode bicycles. Perhaps someone even rode here on one of the first skateboards in the USSR, brought by their parents from Riga. But today Lenin Street is overgrown with garbage bushes:

The town is decorated with a variety of arts of that era - figured concrete, colored mosaics, multi-colored glass and stained glass. For example:

The famous cafe on the pier of the Pripyat River. Broken stained glass window - made up of colored pieces of glass placed end to end:

Such stained glass windows looked like this:

Everything that disappeared from the walls in Moscow and other cities has been preserved here. Sotsart in all its glory:

Over time, water got under this mosaic panel - the ice tore the mosaic off the wall and brought it down. There is only one figure left - it is held by a tree:

The brutal romantic Alexander Novikov calls her the Mother of God of Pripyat and considers her a symbol of tragedy. In general, many elements of drawings and mosaics acquire unexpected symbolism.

Residents left the city for three days, taking the most necessary things and documents. But they never returned here again. The most ordinary apartment an ordinary house:

First the military men returned to the city, and then various other people. And there are no apartments left in the city with unbroken doors. All belongings, all objects disappeared. Where did all the things from the city covered with radioactive ash go? Something, of course, ended up in markets, flea markets, and second-hand stores. And radioactive dust - who was interested in this at that distant time? But basically (so as not to be taken away in flea markets) all the belongings of city apartments were centrally thrown away and buried. Archive photo from Instagram of A.E.Novikov- this is what the streets of Pripyat looked like during its cleansing:

City Hospital. Ironically, this is the most contaminated place in the city, and indeed in the surrounding area, including the station itself: here, in the basement, are piled the jackets, helmets and boots that the firefighters of that fatal brigade took off when they returned from extinguishing the roof. All this is covered with soot and dust from nuclear fuel. Even after almost 30 years, these clothes transmit up to 1 roentgen per hour: you cannot enter the basement without special suits and respiratory protection.

After the hospital, the dirtiest places in the city are sewers and drains. After all, it was here that rains washed away radioactive dust for decades. In especially dirty places (near the sewerage in the amusement area, in the gutters near the Pripyat River), the yellow “Terra” dosimeter (nuclear scientists call it the most accurate of all household ones) shows 18 microsieverts: a hundred times more than the natural background.

What's next for the city? He has no future. Today, in terms of radiation, Pripyat is thousands, hundreds of thousands of times cleaner than in the days after the accident (up to 1 roentgen per hour). The first week passed, radioactive iodine decomposed - the most dangerous, which ruined a lot of the health of those who did not take iodine tablets in the first days (who knew that they should be taken?). By the 30th anniversary, strontium, cesium and many others complete their decay. But, for example, plutonium-239 is going to decay in 24,110 years - taking into account the past 30, only 24,080 remain. This, by the way, is not a decay period, but a half-life. And the matter will not end with decay either - then the elements into which it will turn will begin their decay. There is quite a lot of plutonium - after all, the RBMK-1000 reactor persistently converted uranium into plutonium (no matter what they say, I personally remain ignorantly in the opinion that it was a Soviet dual-use reactor - in addition to peaceful energy, its task was to synthesize plutonium for nuclear warheads) . One way or another, in a city slightly dusted with plutonium dust, today it is quite possible to walk, breathe without respirators, look, take photographs - it is not harmful. But it is not recommended to touch objects with your hands, sit on the ground, and it is forbidden to eat food, even if you bring it with you. Therefore, the destroyed buildings could be restored and new ones built, but children will never be able to play in the sandbox here. Grannies will never be able to grow radishes in their garden beds. Water for drinking, and probably even for showering, will have to be brought from cleaner places. In other words, this place is lost forever. But this is a reminder of the disaster, as well as a unique reserve of the Soviet era.

This is a repost of the note, the original is on my website: