Chernobyl and Pripyat

Day Three

Kindergarten/Day Care

Another one of the more visited buildings in Pripyat is a kindergarten building. It's relatively easy to access as it's close to a main road, so it's a prime spot for photographers and explorers to enter.

And it didn't disappoint! Though it's been through 26 years of abandonment and decay, there are still plenty of artifacts in nearly every room. There are many rooms full of small beds, cribs and toys long forgotten. There are lockers with clothes and shoes still hanging inside, undisturbed for over two decades.

Given how many tourists the building sees - probably many dozens or even hundreds per year, there are many places with staged scenes. There are dolls wearing gas masks, toys placed closer to windows for better lighting and the such. I've long had the mantra of leaving no trace and disturbing as little as possible when I explore. I want to preserve these locations for future visitors to experience it as close to how it was as I can.

That said, I took full advantage of some of the placements. They are just too creepy!

School #2 - High School?

We moved on to where the older kids were taught. I enjoyed the high school a lot more than the kindergarten - it had a lot more human presence that wasn't nearly as creepy! Walking the halls of the school, I found all sorts of educational materials, from math posters to maps and even a closet full of Soviet propaganda. There were even some trees sprouting up in the cracks of some of the upper floors, seeds brought in through the open windows.

I stumbled in to a gymnasium that has nearly given in to the decay. The floor is hardly structurally sound any more, and there are all sorts of artifacts strewn about it.

And of course I climbed one of the basketball hoops to get a nice vantage of the room.

Brief Stop at Jail

When we were driving through town again, Arek pulled off at a small nondescript building which he said is the jail. We spent a few minutes walking through it, but there wasn't much left behind after the evacuation. It was still fun seeing the cells, pretending to be convicts and accidentally almost locking ourselves in for a much extended stay in the city.

I didn't bring my tripod inside, but I got some snapshots lit by a handheld flashlight.

Jupiter Electronics

Another one of my favorite locations lies just outside of town, and was our next stop. It's the Jupiter Electronics facility, where they manufactured electronic goods.

It has a special place in my heart, as I work in the industry here in the U.S. so I recognized some of the parts that were strewn about the buildings.

The complex is several buildings, the highest being nine stories high with roof access and a basement. We meandered through as much as possible, but there was a lot missing including most of the machinery.

It's also an interesting location because it was operational for many years after the Chernobyl disaster, they just kept working through the radiation. Given that, they spent a lot more time cleaning the facility up after it was shut down for economic reasons. There was a lot of paperwork, stray office supplies and the like, but no more machines. The roof of the manufacturing floor has collapsed, and most of the building is exposed to the elements, leaving awesome icicles in the decaying mess.

Community Center & Pool

Another iconic location in Pripyat is the community center, in which is the pool made famous in the video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequel. They did a very good job of modeling the video game after the real location.

This was one of the very few places in the city where we found graffiti, which I was sad to see but glad that there wasn't much more of.

In the same building there is another iconic place, where a room is littered with the radiation masks that were distributed to citizens and workers in the city after the disaster. Similar masks can be found in nearly every other building in the city, but for whatever reason there was a stockpile in the community center. Perhaps it was a triage area where people could meet and leave the city together.

Unfortunately it's also very popular with the tourists, and I was told that the number of masks has been slowly declining year over year as the area is exposed to more and more tourism. Such a shame that people disrespect the location, but I'm glad to have the opportunity to visit. It's a catch-22.

16th Floor

We drove to the edge of town to visit the roof of the tallest building in Pripyat, a 16-story apartment building that is on the outskirts of town. We climbed flights of stairs passing through the remnants of this once occupied building, until we reached the roof.

And what a view it was! We got a good look of the entire city, which is backdropped by the power plant in the distance mere kilometers away. We could see the ferris wheel poking out above the other buildings, and the Jupiter Electronics plant very clearly on the outside of town.

It's astonishing how uniform the entire city is - the hospital, housing buildings, markets, offices - everything is styled in the exact same dreary manner. This beacon of a town sure looks bleak, even in the melting snow of the early spring when we visited.

Mini Vehicle Graveyard & Radiation

There used to be a large vehicle graveyard in Pripyat, but over the past few years contractors have been given permits to clean up and scrap the helicopters, trucks and cars that were there. Inside the town, however, there still exists a small number of mostly military vehicles that were left after the disaster. We had a hell of a time in the deep snow getting from vehicle to vehicle, watching our Geiger counters along the way.

One of the pieces is a claw that was on the end of a crane used in the cleanup efforts very soon after the explosion. We approached with caution, as signs warned with the universal symbol of increased radiation. I held my Geiger counter near it, and it registered 324.4 uSv/h - keep in mind that background radiation even in the above-average Boulder where I live is 0.15 uSv/h or so.

Granted, I bought my Geiger counter online from a less than reputable Chinese manufacturer. I contacted them upon my return, and found that the counter stumbles near the very digital number 65,536 counts per minute (that's 2¹⁶ for the less nerdy) and doesn't read accurately. It was reading 64,888 in the photograph above. Based on my findings, a firmware fix is in the works that should increase the upper limit of the device. The man who wrote the firmware had never seen a reading remotely near what I showed him, and he questioned the legitimacy of the photograph.

Music School

We walked through what I assume is some sort of music school, based on the theater and various instruments that were strewn about it. Kim is a pianist, so she tried playing a few notes on the baby grand that was on stage, but it had less than ten working keys, and as you can imagine it wasn't in the best of tune.

The entrance, however, was a sight to behold. The entire front of the building is a mural made from thousands of pieces of chipped tile and glass of various colors and translucency.

Café & Bus Stop

Our last stop of the day was a café and bus stop at the other edge of town. The café had a large stained glass front facing the street, and it was beautiful. It's a rendition of the Mother Motherland.

The bus stop was interesting as it had the ticket counters and the lockers where you could stash personal belongings still relatively intact.