Travel

Google Maps Street View: Ruined ghost town harbours horrifyingly sinister past


Google Maps Street View allows its users to explore the ruined and decaying town of Pripyat in Ukraine. Pripyat was completely devastated in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of April 1986 – and is now a ghost town frozen in time. The horrible accident happened when Chernobyl Nuclear Station exploded during a reactor test. Dangerous amounts of radioactive chemicals were spewed into the air in the explosion, contaminating the western USSR and other European countries.

Approximately 30 people died in the explosion, according to The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and several thousand others were later killed as a result of radiation and higher cancer incidence.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), an excess of 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011 among the wider population.

Anyone living close to Chernobyl – about 116,000 people – were immediately evacuated and a 30km exclusion zone imposed around the damaged reactor (which was later expanded).

Pripyat was a neighbouring town to Chernobyl and was once a beautiful and luxurious city. It had been founded in 1970 to house workers from Chernobyl.

The town was just three kilometres from the explosion and the population of over 49,000 residents was forced to evacuate in just three hours afterwards.

Pripyat has remained abandoned by humans ever since, after being declared too radioactively dangerous for human habitation for at least 24,000 years.

Today it is a ghost town quite literally frozen in time – all clocks have stopped at 11.55, the time the electricity was cut on that fateful day.

ALSO READ  Spain holidays: Ibiza hotels slam plans to open due to lack of tourists

The town provides an insight into what life was like in the Soviet Union in the ’80s.

Communist propaganda can still be seen on the walls. The hammer and sickle symbol – a sign of proletarian solidarity adopted during the Russian Revolution – decorates lampposts.

The belongings of those who lived there are still scattered on the streets and left in deserted buildings, abandoned in the desperate rush to evacuate Pripyat.

While humans no longer live there, wildlife has managed to flourish since the explosion.

Animal populations grew after the people quit the town. Deers, boars, moose, wolves and lynxes prowl the spot now, apparently unaffected by the aftermath of radiation.

Pripyat can be visited by tourists – although a day pass needs to be procured from the Ukrainian government.

The main safety issue today is the crumbling buildings as there is no longer a risk from radiation in the atmosphere – although all tours end with a screening just in case.

Google Maps Street View has captured many such places with fascinating and disturbing pasts.

Just on example is Gunkanjima Island off the coast of Japan – today a mass of ruined buildings in various states of disrepair and collapse. 



READ SOURCE

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept our use of cookies.