Work in Progress, dont read below if you dont want it spoiled for you.
Pripyat was founded on 4 February 1970, the ninth nuclear city in the Soviet Union, for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979, and had grown to a population of roughly 50,000. Considered ahead of it's time, the city was mainly industrial and modeled itself as such. Most of the residential buildings were constructed like project buildings to maximize space efficiency. Below are some pictures capturing life before the incident.
The Chernobyl incident itself occurred on April 26, 1986. At the time the staff of Chernomyrdin NPP were conducting a safety exercise(ironic right?) when the reactor itself failed to cool. As it began heating up the staff there tried running a immediate shutdown protocol which caused a small explosion and increased the severity of the situation. A second, more powerful explosion occurred about two or three seconds after the first; this explosion dispersed the damaged core and effectively terminated the nuclear chain reaction. However, this explosion also compromised more of the reactor containment vessel and ejected superheated lumps of graphite moderator. The ejected graphite and the demolished channels still in the remains of the reactor vessel caught fire on exposure to air, greatly contributing to the spread of radioactive fallout and the contamination of outlying areas. According to observers outside Unit 4(the effected unit), burning lumps of material and sparks shot into the air above the reactor. Some of them fell onto the roof of the machine hall and started a fire. About 25 percent of the red-hot graphite blocks and overheated material from the fuel channels was ejected. Parts of the graphite blocks and fuel channels were out of the reactor building. As a result of the damage to the building an airflow through the core was established by the high temperature of the core. The air ignited the hot graphite and started a graphite fire. At this point massive amounts of radiation was pouring out of the facility and no one knew the severity of the situation.
Firefighters were called in to extinguish the flames on the roof, they were told that it was an electrical fire that had broke out across the plant. From the testimony of the few surviving firemen who tended to the lower level fires, there those who went on the roof were never seen again and presumed to have died almost instantly from the radiation.
Despite all this commotion the public wasn't notified for 2 days of what actually happen and the radiation was allowed to harm the local populace. Thousands of hospital entries of people with a heavy metallic tastes in their mouths, seeing random flashes of light, fainting, feeling of needles all over their bodies, uncontrollable fits of vomiting and coughing but still the soviet government refused to admit what happened. Only after radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden did the Soviets inform the citizens of what happened through a 20 sec commercial that consisted of 3 sentences, hardly stating the severity of the situation.
The radiation itself did a considerable amount of damage through all of europe and is estimated to be the direct cause of over 40,000 premature cancer cases.
This amount of concentrated radiation also managed to create some of the world's most bizarre phenomenons. One such wonder is the red forest. It's a section of the neighboring wilderness surrounding the power plant that received the highest doses of radiation. Notice how you can see the cone shaped trajectory stemming from the smokestack.
It's red as if locked in a permanent autumn season, the radiation also formed the odd shapes within the trees.
The red forest is infested with wild boars, whose population multiplied 8x between the years 1986 through 1988.
