Untouched apartments in pripyat. Stalker apartment, pripyat

I have long wanted to write a post on this difficult and unpleasant topic. I think that it is imperative to write and talk about this.

Looting in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has existed practically from the first day of the appearance of the Zone itself and in one form or another continues to this day. I would single out two large waves of plunder of the ChEZ - the first wave was in the late eighties, when looters dragged household appliances, furniture, carpets and everything else more or less valuable from Pripyat. It must be said that at this time the looters did not act very actively, since measures were taken in Pripyat to protect buildings and prevent the taking away of things, many of which represented a direct radiation hazard - everything more or less valuable was taken to the Rainbow store (for further use for the needs of the ChEZ), and some of the things were taken to burial grounds. The entrances of the city were under alarm, the wires of which were connected to the central checkpoint of the city, and the streets were patrolled from time to time by armed guards on the BRDM-2.

The second wave began around the end of the nineties and was actively developing in the two thousandth - after Pripyat finally abandoned and curtailed many research projects that were based on the city's infrastructure. Those few household items that were at that time in Pripyat were already morally outdated and did not represent any value, and the "second wave" came to the city, mainly ferrymen and color divers - their prey was cast iron, steel, copper and aluminum from various buildings and structures. One of the major thefts of those years was covered in detail on the Internet - a whole truck arrived in Pripyat to remove cut-down cast-iron batteries from apartments.

So, today we will walk through the buildings and structures of the Chernobyl Zone and look at the traces of the marauders' activities.

01. Pripyat, building of the savings bank. He was one of the first ransacked, ransacking everything from top to bottom in search of money and bonds - I believe that this happened in the second half of the eighties. Pay attention to the absence of glazing in the staircase - these are already traces of the "second wave" marauders' activities, who stole huge aluminum windows in almost all central buildings of the city, including the savings bank, the Energetik recreation center, a restaurant and many others.

To be honest, I have no idea how it was possible to carry out such a large-scale operation - apparently, the guards at the checkpoint were bribed and pretended not to hear the hammering of punchers and did not see the trucks loaded with aluminum leaving the checkpoint.

02. Central department store of the city. Upholstered furniture appeared here from the second floor of the same building, where there was a furniture department - someone pulled it down. The panoramic windows were still intact in the building, but in the two thousandth they disappeared.

As the Ukrainians joke, about the same time, Obolon beer appeared in Ukraine in aluminum cans :)

03. Ticket offices of the cinema "Prometheus". Apparently, they were also plundered back in the eighties. Behind the bars are two long-opened metal safes. In general, cash desks and banks were robbed in the first place - they were looking for savings books, checks, bonds and money.

04. Pripyat commission. There are a bunch of electrical cabinets from nearby buildings lying around. It's hard to say who brought them here and when.

05. Household goods store. Perhaps, of all the shops in Pripyat, it is in the worst condition - there is literally nothing left inside. There is a green frame from some kind of road bike lying around, there are a couple of racks left, the remains of showcases - and that's it. The store has been in this state for a very, very long time. I think he was robbed one of the first "on a tip", because they knew that there could be valuable things here.

06. Cafe "Pripyat" on the embankment of the city. Here you can see traces of not only looting, but also real vandalism - overturned bar counters, broken remains of stoves in the kitchen. Someone just broke the cafe.

07. To prevent theft, some of the household appliances in Pripyat were taken to the huge premises of the central store "Raduga". The store was signaled until about the end of the nineties. Now all the things in the store are no longer needed by anyone and the looters are not interested - time has done its job.

08. Now let's take a look inside the residential buildings. A typical Pripyat entrance looks like this. All mailboxes have been opened, all equipment has been stolen from all electrical boxes long ago. The entrances were in this state by the end of the nineties - in the German video about Pripyat in 1999, the electrical boxes had already been broken.

09. Often near the entrance you can see the remains of some things that were dragged, dragged, and not dragged.

10. Inside some entrances you can see a smoked ceiling - these are already traces of the "second wave" marauders' activities - they collect wires and burn insulation to obtain pure copper and aluminum - a work that is very mysterious to me because of the disproportionate effort invested and the resulting funds.

11. Some entrances are literally littered with the remains of broken furniture that someone once pulled out of apartments and threw on the stairs.

12. An old chair at the garbage chute.

13. The remains of a broken stove, some kind of raskurochenny electrical appliance, pulled out cabinets and armchairs. Even several square meters of tiles were stolen from the floor. On some floors, there are cut-off parts of plumbing pipes - apparently, copper taps were screwed off them.

14. The metal structures of the elevator shaft are still intact - I think this is due only to the complexity of their dismantling without special means and without the skills of urban mountaineering.

15. Elevator shaft of the Pripyat sixteen-story building. All equipment is broken. These metal plates resembling the letter "Ш" are parts of the transformer core, on which copper wire was once wound - now it is all stolen.

16. Corridor of one of the Pripyat "three rubles". Everything was ransacked and taken out back in the eighties and nineties - it was done either by disinfecting soldiers or marauders. Or both.

17. All apartments in Pripyat look something like this. At one of the forums I once met a question - is it possible now in some distant corner of Pripyat to find an apartment, "which everyone has forgotten about," and where everything remained "as in 1986". I can say with absolute certainty that the last such apartment ceased to exist in the late eighties and early nineties. All apartments in Pripyat have now been opened and broken, looters have visited every dozen times. A "standard" Pripyat apartment looks like this - empty closets in the hallway, a sofa and the remains of a broken "wall" in the living room, an empty bedroom, a broken stove on a stove, children's sandals and old photographs on the floor of the nursery. Everything.

I won't write much about the apartments, I've talked about them more than once.

18. The roof of a sixteen-story building. Someone pulled out an old mattress here, which had already decayed. I fully admit the version that the mattress has been here since 1986 - in Pripyat it was quite popular to sunbathe on the roofs of buildings. In the nineties, I heard a story that someone sunbathed on the roof on the ill-fated day of April 26, 1986, having received a "nuclear tan" in a few hours (the sun quite decently enhances the effect of background radiation). Perhaps it happened right here.

19. Roofs of houses. Surprisingly, the television antennas have not yet been cut.

20. Electrical box at the Prometheus cinema. One switch was stolen, and the other was left for some reason.

21. Administrative buildings of the cinema. All the doors have been opened long ago, the rooms have been ransacked.

22. The cut off battery, which for some reason was not dragged to the car.

23. On some entrances of the city, you can see the remains of the contact signaling that operated in Pripyat until the early 1990s.

24. Building of a fish farm near the Fourth power unit; it functioned as a scientific base until about the early 2000s. As you can see, everything has already been stolen here too.

25. The former kitchen at the base. The burners were knocked out and stolen from the stove, as always. What is valuable about them? Why are they always stolen?

26. Buildings ZGRLS "Duga", the famous "Chernobyl-2". There is a whole bunch of assembly farms from old computing devices lying near the entrance.

27. Inside the premises there are whole rooms filled with electrical boards, from which, apparently, some valuable parts containing gold and platinum were removed.

28. Former hardware room. These racks are the remnants of old computers, most likely working on punched cards. There is nothing inside. However, I think that in this particular case it is not the work of marauders, but simply the equipment was taken out of here.

29. The dismantled motor of forced ventilation and the angular knee of the ventilation box - and this is definitely the work of the marauders - were knocked down from the ceiling and ripped apart.

30. Lecture room from the "study". There were some electrical blocks in these chipboard consoles, which are now all torn out.

31. Electric switch box near the Dugi antennas. Only mechanical parts and wires-terminals remained inside.

32. The building of the barracks. This black ceiling is the same traces of fires made of wires as in the Pripyat entrances.

33. Locksmith's workshop. Everything of value has been stolen long ago.

34. At the checkpoint "Chernobyl-2" you can find the following remnants of some kind of electronics:

35. In the city of Chernobyl itself, in the uninhabited part of the city, such houses have survived.

36. Inside, everything has long been plundered and broken.

The main problem of the illegal export of things, equipment and materials from the ChEZ is that radioactive items and materials end up in uncontrolled circulation. A tile from Pripyat now lies in someone's house, the remelted irradiated ferrous metal continues to "shine" in new details, and people continue to breathe radioactive dust from old radios.

At the mention of this city, everyone has different thoughts. Someone wants to get here and just take a walk. Someone will be saddened by the memory of that terrible accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which claimed the lives of thousands of people. And someone will have an acute longing for home ... for the departed ... for the lost forever ...
The city of Pripyat is the famous city of nuclear scientists, built for the workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A unique experiment of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the closest place to the unfulfilled utopia of built communism. Specialists who came here were given warrants for an apartment, on the shelves of shops one could even find something that was not in Kiev. In the city, creative and other hobbies of residents were encouraged and supported in every possible way. Private business was even partially allowed. Such a policy was absolutely atypical for the Soviet Union, and even more so for a secure closed city, and it bore fruit. The city's population grew rapidly. The annual population growth was about one and a half thousand people, of which more than half were newborns. The average age of the population was about 30 years. The city of nuclear scientists was rapidly expanding, land was being developed, new houses, schools, kindergartens were built, the plans remained to build a spacious embankment and the 6th microdistrict, until a terrible disaster struck ...

Instead of an introduction:
Less than a day later, after the accident, due to the sharply deteriorating radiation situation, a plan for the evacuation of the city was urgently developed. For this, about 1200 buses and 200 trucks were involved. The city was conditionally divided into 6 sectors. The routes of movement and the addresses of the settlement of residents were determined. On April 27, 1986, at 14:00, a complete evacuation of the city began. In two and a half hours, the 48 thousandth city was completely empty. Only the workers of the station remained, who conserved Pripyat, employees of law enforcement agencies and other ministries.
Unfortunately, the city was polluted too much. Living in it, despite the complex of works on decontamination, turned out to be impossible. For almost 28 years now, the city has been abandoned and gradually plundered by looters.
Residents were allowed to return to their apartments for their belongings only at the end of the summer of 86. By the May Day holidays, the refrigerators were completely filled, and at the doorstep we met the corpses of cats and dogs left for a couple of days. There was a terrible stench in the closed apartments. They took mostly documents and personal belongings, and only those that were allowed to be taken by the dosimetrists. Until that time, the entire city (as well as Chernobyl and many villages) was undergoing decontamination: houses and asphalt were washed, the top layer of the earth was removed and buried. The liquidators, accompanied by the police officers on duty, climbed the fire escapes to the balconies and dumped all things from there and took them to the burial grounds. After the residents took their belongings from the apartments, all that remained was sent to the burial grounds.

We made a long way to the center of the zone along the "western trail" and by the end of the day we settled in an empty apartment not far from the center of Pripyat. It's time to plunge into the atmosphere of a dead city. The day began with a tour of the neighboring apartments.

Crumbling plaster and wallpaper that has come off the walls is a typical situation in the Pripyat apartment.

The reason lies in the high humidity and precipitation (most of the windows in the apartments are broken). During the liquidation of the accident, roofing material was removed from the roofs of houses and taken to the burial grounds. Understandably, waterproofing from such measures was broken. After rain, the upper floors of almost all houses leak, and moisture seeps into the lower ones. The photo shows large smudges and drip marks on the floor.

Glass is broken in many apartments. During the liquidation of the accident, all things were thrown off directly from the windows. Many of them did not even bother to open them.

Due to the small amount of furniture (everything of value was taken to burial grounds or stolen), an atmosphere of renovation reigns here. At the same time, mainly large-sized wardrobes, sofas, plumbing fixtures and sometimes refrigerators with stoves remained.

Let's go upstairs. All exits, both to the apartments and to the roofs, are open. During our entire stay in the city, I did not notice a single whole castle.

Here is such a dull landscape opens up from above.

There are still objects and things thrown from the windows near the houses.

We set off to explore the city itself.

Pripyat appeared to my eyes like an autumn gloomy and gloomy. There is complete silence everywhere. Not only the usual city noises are absent, but even birds. Only occasionally did the wind rustle the foliage and slam open doors and windows.

We begin our inspection from the main stadium. A popular place among tourist routes, so we got up early so as not to bump into the excursion group.

The entire stadium field, as well as most of the open areas of the city, is overgrown with trees that have managed to grow to the level of the 4th floor and higher in 28 years.

Main lobby.

Corridor under the tribune.

It should be noted that the background radiation in the stadium field is quite high. In some places, the dosimeter showed a value of 1000 μR / h.

While we were enthusiastically exploring the stadium, somewhere nearby we heard the mechanical noise of an engine. Everyone immediately crowded together, as if on command. In the next instant, two white vans drove around the corner of a nearby house. There was no time to think, instincts worked. The next moment everyone was on the ground.

Meanwhile, the vans drove even closer to us and stopped some 50 meters away. Due to the lack of greenery, we could easily be seen in the low and sparse grass. Whispering quickly, we did not wait for what would happen and rushed from a low start to the nearest house. The building turned out to be a hostel.

Hidden on one of the upper floors, we carefully looked out the window. An excursion group was in the buses. Some people looked in our direction. Still would! To go on an official tour and see "living stalkers" :) We were in no hurry to leave the building and decided to study it a little.

Illegible slogan. Everything here is saturated with former Soviet patriotism and pride.

Study room.

Let's go up to the roof.

To our pleasant surprise, from above there was an excellent view of the central amusement park. In the center - the famous Ferris wheel, which has become a kind of visiting card of the "ghost town".

Most of the open areas in Pripyat have experienced high levels of contamination. This applies not only to squares and streets, but also to roofs. As I wrote above, one of the reasons for the leakage of houses is the "removed" layer of roofing material during the liquidation of the accident. On the remaining pieces, the background greatly exceeds the norm, in the cleaned areas only dozens.

The Chernobyl NPP complex is only 3 km away from us, but because of the gloom it seems as if the station is 10 kilometers away.

The official opening of the park was scheduled for May 1, but it is known that a trial run of the rides was made before the opening. According to one version, it took place on April 27 to avoid rumors about the accident and distract from thoughts of evacuation.

And this is how a woman eyewitness recalls the opening of the park: “The Ferris wheel also managed to work before the accident. I personally rode it myself. And not for free, I bought a ticket. I wanted to ride on typewriters, but there was no way to get to them - the crowd was huge. But there were significantly fewer applicants for the wheel. But the woman who controlled it, apparently did not have time to study the instructions on how to properly seat people, so it turned out to be a serious incident. Trukhanuli we were great then. This worker put people in every booth. And when half of the wheel was densely filled, and the second, on the contrary, remained completely empty, the wheel spontaneously broke off and began to roll up and down, seeking balance, until the loaded booths were at the bottom of the wheel. The sight was eerie, because the axles on which the wheel was attached were very loose at the same time. There was a feeling that the wheel would fall on its side. Some of the boys, who were located lower, jumped in all directions. The woman herself was very frightened. Disconnected the wheel. When it stopped, it began to gradually turn on and off, first from every second booth, then even less often, until everyone dropped off. We were lucky, we made 2 more rounds for free. Maybe because of this incident, it no longer worked, or maybe some flaw was found in it. We rode exactly a week before the accident, because I only came home to Pripyat on weekends, I was at a pedagogical practice in Polesskoye. Such a fact took place in the history of the culture park that has not yet opened. "

In addition to the wheel, the park has an autodrome, boats and a children's carousel. Little is left of the boats now. One of them is pulled out in the middle of the square - teddy bears or dolls with their legs torn off are planted in it and staged photographs are taken against the background of the wheel.

The background radiation in the park greatly exceeds the norm. This is due to the fact that during the liquidation, helicopters that participated in extinguishing the fire at the station landed on an open area.

A mechanical noise was heard somewhere nearby, and we decided to go to another place.
Information stands.

The hotel "Polesie" was located next to the park. In April 1986, there was a dosimetric post in the hotel and the military lived.

Main lobby.

Elevator hall.

Nature captures houses from the inside, breaking through thick ceilings.

In most houses, looters cut out all the metal, but in the central part of the city, handrails and batteries still survived.

Marauders are a problem in the current exclusion zone. They work, most likely, under the guise of the protection of the zone, tk. the results of their labors are exported on an industrial scale, and it is almost impossible to do it illegally.

We rise to the roof.

The central square of the city. On the right is the building of the House of Culture "Energetik" and the City Executive Committee. Against the background are two 16 levels with coats of arms. We'll climb on one of them later.

A sign on the nine-story building between the two towers reads: "Hai bude is an atom worker, not a soldier." It turned out that the peaceful atom is not so harmless ... By the way, this house was faced with tiles brought from Togliatti, and the people called it Togliatti.

Pripyat is one of the surviving monuments of Soviet architecture and style. Everything here is frozen in the distant 86th. Sectional panel houses, spacious streets, signs - all this conveys the spirit of the Soviet past. I am so used to annoying advertisements of large cities that walking along deserted streets with a complete absence of informational rubbish was a real pleasure for me.
The central street of the city is Lenin Avenue. Popularly dubbed it "Broadway".

View of the ChNPP complex.

We move towards one of the skyscrapers. By the time we descended, several excursion groups had appeared on the square. Directly walking is not far away, however, we go around the main square of the city in roundabout ways. Due to the lack of foliage, the streets are clearly visible, and all the transitions have to be done with large hooks, while the crossholes of the streets had to be crossed carefully and quickly.

Pripyat apple tree. The background is slightly above the norm.

Throughout the city, here and there the famous graffiti - "Shadows of Hiroshima". They depict the shadows of people burnt out during the outbreak of a nuclear explosion, painted by a group of artists 20 years after the accident.

Meanwhile, several sightseeing buses appeared on the square at once.

Just in case, we do not protrude much.

Chernobyl NPP from another angle.

A little chronicle:

Within six months after the accident at the station, dangerous work was going on to clear the territory from debris and build a protective complex "Shelter", popularly referred to as "sarcophagus".

At the cost of incredible human effort and material costs, the task was completed in a short time. After eliminating the consequences of the accident, the stopped 1,2 power units were launched, and after half a year, the third. For almost 15 years, the Chernobyl NPP has been functioning and bringing in income, which made it possible to maintain the exclusion zone without additional subsidies from the outside. However, under the influence of politicians, including from the European Union, a program was developed to completely close the station. In December 2000, the generation of electricity was completely stopped.

In April 2012, the construction of a large-scale arch-shaped structure “Shelter - 2” began, which will be pulled over the existing sarcophagus. The height will be 92 m, and the length of the arch span will be 257 m.

The existing sarcophagus (“Shelter” object) still provides isolation and protection from radiation, but does not allow work to be carried out to extract nuclear fuel from the sarcophagus. The new protective structure should, in addition to protecting the environment, both allow the start of work on the processing of radioactive materials contained within the Shelter, and repair the damaged parts of the Shelter itself. The official name of the project is “New safe onfinement”.

At the moment, all work on the construction of the structure is planned to be completed in 2015, but this is only the beginning ...

Inside the structure, robotic systems will be installed for the phased dismantling of the power unit structures and the remains of the reactor down to the base.

In a global perspective, it is planned to completely re-cultivate and turn the territory of the nuclear power plant into an open field. How long it will take to implement the entire project is unknown, but certainly not one decade. The specifics of the work are "jewelry" and mistakes are not forgivable here.

St. Kurchatov.

Another street art.

Lastly, we made a group photo on the coat of arms. Andrei filmed the plot with a video camera and, when he was zooming in on the surroundings, drew attention to the trinity, walking separately from the excursion groups, the trinity. The silhouettes were in atypical clothes for a tourist, and seemed to be peering in our direction. Through the viewfinder it was clear that they were looking at us through binoculars. A few seconds later, brave stalkers rushed headlong down the stairs

We were faster and fled to the next block. But they did not relax.
Studio.

All shops in the city had their own numbering.

Evening is approaching and the streets are gradually getting dark. There is no point in walking around the city at night - visibility is zero, and once again you shouldn't flicker with a lantern, and we have already attracted attention to ourselves. Therefore, we go to our squat.
Evening is approaching and the streets are gradually getting dark. It's better not to walk around the city in the dark - visibility is zero, and you can't flicker a flashlight once again, and we have already attracted attention to ourselves. Therefore, we go to our squat.

On the way to one of the apartments, we came across a piano. How many years and how many curious hands have been trying to play on it, but it is still in working order.

Upon arrival at the squat, it turned out that we did not have water for making dinner. Where can you find clean water in Pripyat, while not happing fluorescent particles? Do not believe it! - 10 meters from the radioactive waste burial ground. We leave with Andrey in search of her.

This is a city water supply. Its location was suggested to us by the guys we met on the way to the center of the zone. If not for their advice, most likely I would have had to run for water right up to the embankment of the river. Pripyat.

This place was the only one of our entire trip, where the water turned out to be clear and did not have the taste of swamp mud.

We successfully coped with the task, and after a hearty dinner with sincere gatherings, we went to bed. Let me insert a picture of our squat again. It's already painfully cozy :)

Ahead of us is a visit to some famous places in Pripyat: the recreation center “Energetik”, the “Lazurny” swimming pool, a kindergarten, as well as a run through the city burial ground. All this in the next review!

The terrible tragedy of Chernobyl has 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 the radiation. Now there is a lot of debate about the expediency 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 items outside the exclusion zone, although looters still find something to profit from.

In this post we will take a look at how the work on the decontamination of the city of atomic scientists went.

First, let's estimate the scale of the work. Here is a post-accident snapshot of Pripyat - this is spring or early summer 1986; the photo includes almost the entire city. As you can see, Pripyat was very small and compact - 5 microdistricts, each of which was a large quarter. The entire city is similar in size to a residential neighborhood in a city like Minsk or Kiev. Nevertheless, the decontamination work was quite voluminous, because it was necessary to take out the radioactive soil - even in such a small area, these are volumes of hundreds of tons.

Now let's look at a map like this. On it you can see the location of the city in relation to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, plus on the map I marked the city's microdistricts, as well as the main streams along which radioactive emissions diverged. To some extent, Pripyat was lucky - during the days of the accident, the wind developed in such a way that the main radioactive masses, as it were, "circled" the city from two sides, forming two lines of high radiation pollution, later called the Northern and Western tracks. Even taking this into account, the exposure background in Pripyat by the evening of April 26 averaged 1 roentgen per hour (approximately 70-100 thousand times higher than the norm); you can imagine what the background would be in Pripyat if the streams went directly 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 were of different levels of admission - "Pass to Chernobyl", "Pass to Pripyat", "Pass everywhere". Documents were checked at the entrance to the city; getting to Pripyat for a random person at that time was absolutely unrealistic.

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

Buildings were washed with the help of such special fire engines, which gave the necessary pressure. Regarding what was washed - I came across different versions. Someone writes that it was ordinary water, and someone says that it was a special polymer composition, which, when dried, turned into a kind of analogue of a film that binds dust and which could then be collected as garbage.

I think that both versions are plausible - in some places a special composition could be used, and in some places - ordinary water. In general, neither concrete nor brick is "activated" by radiation (unlike metal) and can be washed easily enough - you just need to remove all dust and radioactive particles.

Here preparatory work was filmed - apparently, filling the tank of a car through a special sleeve.

Photograph of the laundering process. As you can see, the jet is strong enough to hit the upper floors of a typical nine-story building. I think that the force of the pressure had to be adjusted depending on the height - after all, with a jet of such a force that finishes up to the upper floors, you can easily knock out the glass of the lower floors.

In addition to fire trucks, at least one BelAZ, converted into a UMP-1 watering machine, was also used to clean the buildings. The picture below shows this car washing the 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 high 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 (on a much larger scale) consisted in the removal of radioactive soil and, apparently, was carried out after the cleaning of the buildings. The soil was collected in different ways everywhere. Somewhere such graders were used, cutting the ground.

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

Collecting soil on the territory of one of the kindergartens. As can be seen from the exposed curbs, the earth was torn down deep enough.

Another collection of soil:

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

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

A break in work The soil has already been dug on the left side of the lawn, while the right side has yet to be done.

Collecting soil in trucks in one of the yards.

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

Military in Pripyat.

Construction.

A rare snapshot - the work of disinfectants was filmed; most likely it is late autumn 1986. All things are taken out of the houses (some are simply thrown out through the windows), collected in trailers and bodies and taken out to burial grounds.
Only a few bulky things like "walls" and sofas remain in houses.

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

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

BRDM-2 on the streets of the city.

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

Walking around Pripyat, I decided to go into one more or less normally preserved house, to see how the apartments looked like, abandoned by a person almost three decades ago (has it really been so many years?). From the outside, the house looks good enough, almost like an ordinary residential building, but the eye notes some dissonances unusual for an ordinary city - black openings of broken windows, wild thickets around and a cushion of green moss near the entrance to the entrance.

The house has been preserved quite well, you can walk on its entrance without fear that the floors will "fold" under your feet. From the street, the facade looks like this, a typical picture for modern Pripyat - thickets of Polissya jungle, among which, if you look closely, you can unexpectedly make out the skeletons of high-rise buildings.

Let's go into the entrance.

We will enter carefully and carefully - remembering that the abandoned city must be preserved for future generations - this is an invaluable museum. The sign at the entrance to the entrance acquired a new, unexpectedly bitter meaning.

The entrance is impressive. It is impressive, first of all, by how nature begins to take its own from man (I will write about this in more detail in a separate post about Pripyat). Waterfalls flow down the walls, there are many types of mold and moss everywhere.

Let's take a look at one of the apartments. At the entrance, I pay attention to the electrical panel - in Minsk, in houses of the same year of construction, they look different. There is no content for a long time - most likely, it was stolen by "black metalworkers", of whom there are quite a few in Pripyat even now.

Apartment. On the right is the entrance to the room, double doors. Most likely it was the living room. There is no covering on the floor for a long time - bare concrete underfoot.

Living room with balcony. On the right is a polished chipboard section. All sections of the section have long been ransacked by looters. The chair was upside down - they were looking for something under his pillow too.

Another room. Pay attention - the former residents even managed to change the wallpaper once - at first the room was yellow, and then it turned blue.

Kitchen. A lot of dry leaves were poured into the open window. There is only one skeleton left from the electric stove.

Most likely, this is something like a shoe cabinet, or the lower part of the dressing table. I once saw something like that in my childhood, but I can't remember what it was. By the way, I often had this very interesting feeling in Pripyat - as if yesterday did not disappear in one second, but remained somewhere in the form of a whole and complete world - along with things, smells and sounds - and now slowly disappears into oblivion, disintegrating into parts.

Another playground. To better represent the location - the shooting point is located on the site of the entrance itself, behind the first doorway we see two doors - to the left and straight, these are apartments - one-room and three-room. And on the right is an electrical panel.

A living room with an adjoining room, most likely there was a nursery.

Yes, nursery.

Doorhandle. In Belarusian apartments of those years, there were definitely no pens of this type.

Kitchen. The slab is also punched to the ground. By the way, throughout Pripyat, stoves were electric.

Another room. The sideboard is, as expected, gutted to the ground, literally nothing was left. I don’t want to introduce people who robbed the apartments of the abandoned city. It is possible, of course, that the extra things were simply collected and taken out by the disinfectants - they, for example, threw full refrigerators out of the windows to avoid epidemics, but I think that banal looters were rummaging through the sections.

Sofa. Gray dust on it for several decades has formed some kind of colonies and islands of life. And exactly the same yellow wallpaper existed in my Minsk apartment many years ago.

Another room. By the way, pay attention to the battery - in this house they are of some interesting design, reminiscent of the batteries in modern houses.

And here, for some reason, even the mattress cover was opened - what could one look for there? And also pay attention to the balcony, or rather the loggia. It is glazed. I used to think that glazing loggias in the USSR was not allowed at all, years before 1989-90 for sure.

Kitchen. Remains of tiles have been preserved on the walls.

Garbage chute.

Another apartment. Here the wallpaper has almost completely "laid down" on the floor - due to humidity and time. The present Pripyat has already passed that "point of no return" to which the houses could still be restored and made fit for life.

Walk-through rooms. Here I stood for a long time and looked at the electrical box under the ceiling - and they really were once that way.

In the kitchen, instead of furniture and a stove, the remains of some kind of black insulation of a thick cable were found.

And in the room too. I have no idea what it is.

Another room.

View from the window to the city.

The Stalker apartment, Pripyat

When visiting high-rise buildings in Pripyat, I definitely look into apartments. I try to look into one or two on each floor. At one time, back in April 2013, I rented apartments for former residents of the city, located mainly in the 2nd and 3rd microdistricts of the city. Since then I have somehow got used to the apartments, I don't know why, but I am pleased to enter them. The vast majority of them are empty, the remains of furniture, peeling wallpaper and a stove in the kitchen are difficult to consider as a full-fledged apartment inventory. However, sometimes quite good-quality apartments come across. At the very least, we can conclude whether the owners of the dwelling lived well here or not. There is also another, isolated type of Pripyat apartments, which has become a kind of subculture of the housing stock of the abandoned city. We are talking about the so-called stalker apartments or apartments of "illegal immigrants" - people who prefer to visit the Zone on their own and without an official pass. In one of the high-rise buildings of the city, it was possible to get into just such an apartment. The life and "home environment" of illegal immigrants in a typical Pripyat apartment deserves special attention.
1)

We go into the stalker apartment and see this picture in one of the rooms. An entertaining landscape: a doll from the "Jupiter" entrance (the last time I saw it there), beer unpatriotic for Ukraine, "Khlebny Dar" vodka and two solid sofas, which are in excellent condition, taking into account the current Pripyat realities.
2)


A bit of stalker creativity on the walls of the room.
3)


Part of the kerosene stove and other attributes of the stalker table.
4)


Bed in one of the rooms. Immediately striking is her pretty good condition; in many Pripyat apartments, the beds are simply rotten.
5)


Stalker furniture. Quite a comfortable interior, the apartment has where to sleep, drink and relax comfortably.
6)


Another sofa in the room. Very good condition.
7)


Stash in the form of underwear. Lay on the couch.
8)


9)

Illegal table in a stalker apartment. Apparently, the dinner was nutritious here.
10)


Gostovskaya pork stew in the kitchen and an empty bottle of Morshynska.
11)


Remains of the legendary "Mivina" on the windowsill.
12)


And finally, the pretentious Czech castor oil. It is quite a habitable apartment where you can calmly rest for lovers of illegal forays into the Zone. I do not specifically indicate the address and the approximate location of the house.