CHERNOBYL: The People Who Saved The World. (Full Movie)

um [Music] [Music] 50 000 people used to live here now it's a ghost town [Music] on the 26th of april 1986 it was decided at chernobyl to take advantage of reactor number four's downtime by carrying out a safety test on an emergency core cooling feature at 1 24 in the morning an engineer recorded in his diary that the protective system wasn't working at the same moment a huge and catastrophic surge in power caused two explosions as fires raged the core of reactor number four was destroyed a huge cloud rose into the sky spreading large amounts of radioactive fuel and materials into the atmosphere [Music] [Music] today's the day it's finally here after five years of waiting for this we've been talking about this place ever since the dawn times this is what we wanted to get to this is gonna be the holy grail but also one of the most dangerous cities on earth i thought i recognized you what's up man and i'm damask yeah sam nice to meet you yeah yeah i just uh carry 50 pound weight actually we store dead bodies this is absolutely normal one this is like one radiation background for like a big city 0.13 sometimes in bigger cities like new york or whatever moscow is going to be higher like 0.18 0.21 up to 0.30 is considered as normal and that's not considered dangerous like what level would be like dangerous 0.30 is not recommended but for me dangerous is considered over 100 doing something now we're going to be experiencing like around 100 at all uh i can show you a few spots it's 9am with the burgers with such an american move we have a two-hour car ride we're gonna be watching this documentary and doing some research and then it'll be time i'm nervous starting to get real excited scared police officers are sitting there and they check every single person all the way in and on the way out check zone number one apparently we're gonna get a radiation test i assume never had one before but i assume it's kind of like when you stand in the airport you have to put your arms up and that thing goes around it's probably going to be some sort of like machine like that right we're going to like nuclear tsa what he said is that you wear a radar on you the entire time and it will detect how much radiation we got for the entire four days that we're here spending like over 100 hours here in chernobyl and so we're gonna know how many years worth of radiation that we just accumulated we've been spending the last week researching chernobyl and everything and i'm genuinely kind of scared this is going to be very very intense but this is going to tell me like at the end like how much radiation i've picked up dude that's pretty cool feels scared misha is like why are you guys so scared of this here the most important thing that i would like to show you that's the present day map of ukrainian exclusion zone right now we're here do they try to keep like visitors pretty much one way in one way out yes once we get to prepaid which is over here we will be like 13 15 kilometers away from the battle russian building whoa massive territory and eating clothes with the barbed wire i've heard some random people are called stalkers like jump randomly that's true and they are good like every every week every week every wow really see all these like colors beautiful colors it shows like the concentration of radioactive plutonium on the territory of chernobyl exclusion zone the half-life of plutonium is like thousands of years and if you multiply it by 10 is like never ending story so it means that territory of this 10k zone will never be available for human life again ever ever forget 100 000 years millions of years now millions of years it'll still be contaminated yeah we just like killed a spot there's different types of radiation this one he says will probably be okay to live in 300 years other types of radiation at this area won't be okay to live in for hundreds of thousands if not millions of years so even though parts of things are safe other parts will just never ever ever be able to have life again anyway what he said is we are at the southern tip the one way and one way out little zone and we are about to go meet with a scientist in the city of chernobyl welcome to chernobyl we're in the town are all these buildings completely abandoned uh no they are having accommodated by those workers uh all the workers living here during the war some of the like elderly people that once did live and chernobyl came back and those are the ones that are called self-settlers we're going to be meeting with some of them on this trip as well what's up guys it's sam colby today we are here with nate at the infamous chernobyl finally holy [ __ ] guys again i know we said this a lot this is the holy grail as an urban explorer all of us have been doing this since what middle school or before dude we've been looking at chernobyl since we were in high school years of waiting going into this all the way across the entire world in ukraine four days in chernobyl 100 hours spent in the most dangerous city in the world where you can get dosed for your entire life's worth of radiation in seconds if you're not carrying so we can't go tan after this ever we're getting x-ray who needs x-rays but damn i'm sad about the tan we realize that not every single person knows about chernobyl so we want to give a brief overview before we get into all the details before you hear it from all the scientific terms that are a little bit harder to understand imagine the worst like nuclear reactor meltdown in the world the reason europe doesn't do nuclear energy right now it was so devastating to the entire world that they literally thought all of europe could shut down because of it so what happened is just outside of chernobyl we're in right now there are these nuclear power plants one of those was doing a test and it went wrong the ceiling exploded off the top emitting a lot of radiation into the air so what that did is it blew radiation to all the surrounding cities they didn't realize how dangerous this actually was a young city literally had the world's most devastating nuclear explosion of all time it's absolutely insane we've never done an abandoned city abandoned city abandoned nuclear power plant a ban of transportation it has everything radioactive what up radioactive dog he is just chilling so we are in the town of chernobyl and we are standing like uh next to the main square this is the main square nowadays some like 25 of the infrastructure of the town is still in use you can see all these offices where people work there's like one of the local softs and so on to the map of the exclusion down oh it's literally pretty much the same that i showed you at the checkpoint oh yeah yeah you can see the leaves of all those settlements over there all that is all the different settlements that had to be like relocated whoa so these settlements they've had families there for like generations many generations must be so heartbreaking to leave then yeah yeah but that's life the town itself chernobyl had nothing to do with power station the town just gave a name to the power station that's all so that could have been called the pre-power station it could be but the previous town just didn't exist at the time when they started to build it apparently misha used to live around here when you were what five years old yeah to evacuate years old yeah how was that yes like for me as for a kid it was like a kind of adventure i didn't realize that it was like a relocation then that uh that when we're not going to come back for my parents yeah they got prepared they realized what was happening but for me as for the kid it was a kind of adventure yeah okay yeah you go in a big truck in front here you're driving like long distance somewhere it was cool but later on when you when i started to grow up i just realized what actually happened actually you know yeah did your family have to leave a lot of their stuff behind as well like everybody uh no during relocation people were allowed to take all the belongings with the head so it was the difference between evacuation and relocation when you were relocated they provided you with trucks so you could take all your belongings they provided you with recommendations everything it was more organized than evocation during evocation they just told them three days and you will have a chance to return about what age were you when you started to realize like whoa this was actually i think i think at the age of like 15 16 you know when we started to learn that more in details at school did you ever have the urge to go near the zone and just explore it at a young age no what is the same though like it never appeared in my head but the thing why is that because every year me and my family my relatives my parents for example my grandma we used to go and lose in the grave of my grandfather who was buried there like once a year former inhabitants of this territory they are allowed to come here during memorial days and visit like the graves the houses where they used to live like and lay down flowers for their relatives and so on my grandfather he was one of the liquidators liquidator is a person who was involved in liquidating and cleaning the area different kind of waste like removing soil like cleaning like forest and so on and weren't they called bio soldiers at one point those were the soldiers who participated in cleaning the rooftop from highly contaminated debris of the reactor and so how long have you been doing this touring and going at chernobyl 10 years look at me i'm 65. sometimes radiation has some positives yeah 10 years of radiation and you're never scared no that was good and just last question what was the main thing that made you attached and made you want to dedicate your life to touring chernobyl so i think my roots it really reminds me of my childhood more where we live like brings me back like go go go that's the thing and every time every day when i'm driving here when i see all these pine trees birch trees and all this nature around like i always remember oh that's super cool if the liquidators didn't do their job that quickly and like that perfectly it could have affected not only this country but like the entirety of europe as a continent and probably the entire world and dude it's like crazy because like a lot of them went in there knowing like okay this is it it's like i might not come out of here but i'm doing this for the greater good nobody even ought to push them to come they did that on their own wow we want to go it was a kind of like period of patriotism then they were like even like never mentioned anywhere none of the books or whatever wow so many people lost their lives and didn't even get part of a history all of these are names of the towns that got relocated these are towns not individual people like hundreds of thousands of people ended up having to move yeah it's just nuts that like they were forced to you know like you had no choice before we go to lunch we gotta see if radioactive doggy is radioactive all right radioactive scooby-doo video active scooby-doo is more reactive than just walking around he is 17 versus 13. sunflower radioactive sunflowers for kansas dude this used to just be a house that you know regular people lived in until the accident and these guys have turned it into a laboratory for mice i like research about radiation yeah oh my god so they literally test like radioactive stuff on the bicycle on the mice area it's like learn about how it affects like animals and how it affects people and everything she does my superheroes man my name is my position now the beauty head of international uh project department if you could describe radiation if someone's never heard of it is everywhere and we have three type gamma radiation alpha radiation and beta radiation you know it's a knife which can pass through but gum radiation can pass through every everything alpha radiation it's a small particle which we can protect from this gamma radiation by just pepper like a piece of paper radiation so it can't go through almost anything yeah and better uh radiation need a little bit more protection for example this wear all the plastic glass and that's all so gamma rays are the most dangerous yes most most dangerous say if gamma particle put inside your body and with the whole accident that was gamma radiation yeah uh exploded into the air after explosion you mean after explosion after explosion it was all alpha beta and gamma oh radiation all the way around how does a radiation get inside of your body we are a life organism we have a lot of water inside your body this particle like explosion this water and water destroyed on the exit on impact yeah yeah so the particle hits the water yes it is okay all right all right this radiation can influence all the dna material which is located in in your in your cage so basically like uh when particle hits your body it collides with the water in the body and creates like basically uh a sub atomic like explosion and your dna is fine enough that it can be damaged by those particles being hit so that's why you can't see the damage happening to you but it has a profound effect because it's it's damaging uh microscopy deep into your cells so speaking of the effects of what happens if you're you're exposed to high gamma radiation you can very fast die a couple days maybe during a couple weeks it depends how many gamma radiation but if it's just a little bit it's like nausea like diarrhea growing up all that all that right like all those symptoms your skin has a lot of blood you cannot breathe even go out uh some food which you which you eat before you throw up yeah yeah and a little bit later you lose the hair so where does the myth of like bad genetic mutations start with radiation if you get radiated could i grow a second arm type because gamma radiation uh damage the cell next generation have mutation and that's for example uh five legs or two head third leg maybe how does the radiation like affect the mice i don't have seen uh the mice with five legs for example only i couple times have seen problem with ice plus a couple times i have seen on the board the cancer thank you it's great yes thank you thank you oh my broken english apologize i'm just still like so freaked out about the radiation the symptoms that it has on people yeah guys i did not even realize necessarily what radiation is or how it like affects you until this trip i mean the way he was explaining it it's like there's a bunch of different types gamma's the absolute gamma's the worst one i can slice through anything including straight through you even if you had like lead plated on it's so weird too that it's like this invisible thing that you can't see smell feel it's like totally beneath your perception but it can just destroy you like that if in large quantities it gets inside your body it can literally eat you from the inside out so like your skin will deteriorate melt off pretty much yeah cool because imagine like so many rays are like killing each one of your cells that basically your regular skin cells are just falling apart but it's on the cellular level the atomic makeup of you just just falls apart just to put that in perspective of the actual explosion only one person died from like the impact and like the building because most people obviously had to be far away to like protect themselves and press buttons yeah that's what scientists do they just do this over time like there's estimated of up to like tens almost 100 thousands of people that have been affected in some way or another because of the radiation yep totally that was a giant radioactive bee what is this why am i wearing this when it's 80 degrees outside because it looks sick it's free because it looks sick yeah i'm sweating and stuff but i got pockets and you can get pockets too down below [Music] all right guys so we're in the middle of town and like we were saying earlier this is just kind of a time capsule for the soviet union and the ussr all that stuff this is actually a monument of lenin who was the founder and who started everything about the soviet union and like communism all the stuff yeah so basically he was kind of the ideological forefather of uh socialism and communism and it was also the culture that spread from linen and then stalin that made it so that the scientists were very reluctant to release the news of the disaster really it was this guy's fault well i wouldn't go so far as to say this guy's fault i'm just saying that there's a domino effect they were just like so i guess proud i didn't want to tell anybody else they were outside of yeah they were embarrassed biggest mistake in the world it would have been an insult to the state too they say to this day that they blame the chernobyl incident for a lot of the reason why the soviet union crumbled the scientists and the people that were like commanding this entire like nuclear power plant were all hush-hush about everything that was going wrong no one wanted to admit to even the civilians that there was like someone or something going on the people that were in charge of safety around here didn't realize the reactor was on fire for like the firemen and the policemen had no idea they didn't tell anybody it took the radiated cloud to get over countries and literally go to sweden for sweden to call ukraine and be like yo what what's happening let's explain that a little bit the radiation went all the way to not one but two power plants over for them to finally realize this is not all radiation that's not normal this is like toxic let's go around and call other people and figure out what is the problem well and they and sweden found out because their air was becoming radiated so like to a level that our little geiger counter here would uh register as dangerous sweden's air was beginning within 48 hours within 36 hours yes it was so fast like the wind took this miles for the people in the exclusion zone in like chernobyl or pripyat if they'd stayed for four days everyone would have received a lethal dose and they were okay with that because they were just too embarrassed to like tell the people like okay we made a big mistake we got to figure this out it's like imagine like stealing your mom's car and then like wrecking your mom's car what are we your doing calls you like yo it's something going on you're like no no no no no but what's sad is that like because they did that in that 36 hours yeah not that many people were affected because it wasn't lethal dose but there was people that died from radiation poisoning even kids and that could have been avoided if they would have just grabbed their balls and said you know what there's a problem let's get out of here we [ __ ] up they didn't tell firefighters a lot of the liquidators hey there's a lot of radiation there's a lot of danger they didn't tell the citizens or the commanders if there's a lot of danger i didn't tell other countries or other parts of the world that there was danger other countries told the world like we said one of the biggest problems was lack of information especially towards the liquidators again the liquidators are just people that came to clean up to help to basically return this town of chernobyl back to normal some being volunteers the point is a lot of these people did not realize the scale of danger that they were in but one of misha's friend is actually a liquidator and he's going to take us where he used to live in pripyat so let's go meet him right now and hear stories from him personally [Music] this is our friend hey so this is my very good friend vladimir he's the former inhabitant of creepy town so basically we're about to go to the most known visual part of chernobyl which is 3px the biggest city that's where like the explosion pretty much yeah when you see pictures of chernobyl and like look up on google images this is the picture right now we're about to go the most famous part that's the power system three four times as dangerous as we should misha what does that mean is that okay yeah yeah that's fine [Music] now away we're going to drive through the so-called red forest area the red forest uh that's one of the most intimidating parts in the exclusion though right we're driving through that [Music] i'm gonna hold my breath wait radiation can go inside you yeah bro holding your breath we're just [ __ ] after disaster radiation spread depended on wind direction the wind blew to the north to the territory of belarus and then like in few days it shifted and started to glow to the west to the territory of that red forest but why that food is because all the pine trees that used to grow to the west the way all the trees actually turned red because of massive doses of radiation oh check that out that's what it is radiation comes from the soil it comes from the ground and if you hold the geiger counter on your side you will see how high radiation levels still go i told you that up to 0.30 that is considered as a safe level 0.30 right now we're at 1.3 1.5 oh my god 13 14 just right here oh my gosh 16. dude he's 20. being in this forest like even in a car driving bro you know it's sturdy dude you know what's so crazy about it too this literally no physical difference you can tell no i can't tell can't tell anything about this counter immediately like literally only by the trees where it got soaked up was it bad and now it's all chilling again and that will be like that forever we have to go through multiple ones of these checkpoints to get through like this is like the third one super highly secured everything here is run by the government it's very much unlocked what do you need to do you just tap on it you press your hands on both sides look on the screen to the right then when second line sparks up it means that you are okay over here again hey sounds like explodes [Music] didn't die yet that's good cuz i was like rolling around the soil for fun yeah that was really weird like made like a smoothie out of like the concrete minerals we just made it to the town brief yet where we're this is literally the main street oh my god look behind you yeah we're about to go to the apartment block that vladimir lived at this is the main avenue you see of the town that's how it looked like oh before the accident look if you look that way this is the road that we used to drive into the town the entryway was just on the other side pretty much the trees that are like 35 years old in the exclusion zone they look like the trees of 30 years old but outside the exclusion zone so that's kind of like a radiation push you know they become like they grow faster some of them grow faster but some of them stop growing such a strange imbalance too like whereas things typically have a common rate of growth some of them are stuck in time and some of them have been like pushed forward in front of us there was a local hotel and administration and that's how that this is pretty much the main square in front of us there were no trees nothing just some roses but that's how it all changed wow damn so like it's just taken by nature again it's completely covered by nature nowadays and another picture for you for example the laser house or palace of culture look that's the main square radiation in general accelerates all the processes inside of our organisms and those firefighters first who went to struggle against the fire they put so much radiation inside of them that their like inner organs looked like they were like 70 or 80 years old but in fact they were only like 30. so just like the trees they just immediately accelerated your body to be like an 80 year old person at like 25 years old [Music] he doesn't speak english at all but i wonder how he feels right now walking in a place that he used to you know live at while he grew up here this probably is so surreal to come to a place after a major accident like this i wonder if it's like a sad feeling or if he just has learned to accept it over the years [Music] what did you do in the exclusion zone like what was your job you worked at the power station after the accident so he used to live in the town of pripyat think about that like how crazy is that he was 24 hours when the disaster happened and he had to evacuate this building right there he lived right there i can't even imagine i'm trying to like put ourselves in his perspective because like we're 24. and we're in a big city like this pre-pratt was a big city fifty thousand people vladimir was ten years old when his family moved to pripyat yeah described like the the lifestyle yeah so power station used to make a lot of money and they want to spend those money on social projects every year local authorities tried to plant 5 000 bushes of roses in total they wanted to make 50 000. just to have a bush of rose for one inhabitant of wow people were literally provided with everything in the town chernobyl nuclear power station could easily provide them with four or five buses for example if there was a football game in kiev you literally just hop on the bus they take you there you will they give you a ticket and they bring it back people were provided like literally with everything they needed but sometimes they chose more expensive things because they could afford that sometimes they could take like a river like hydrofoil on the river because it was a way cooler like yeah it was the only nuclear power station which was selling electricity abroad so life was really good life was school paradise paradise cool taking into account the loaf of bread cost like do you like remember everything that happened the evening before disaster happened vladimir was just reading a book in his apartment and he was just expecting a rain or whatever because it was like a little like a thunder and such kind of noise wife and him they just went to bed at four o'clock am there was a lady who knocked that door and she said that he needs to appear at his working position at the power station and she brought him also iodine tablet oh no he used to work for the laboratory of metals so they checked all metal which was used at the power station in case of any emergency situation they were obliged to go there and to check so he did go there that night she didn't tell him to go immediately she told him that in the morning with the first bus with the workers you need to appear at the power station and during their drive to the power station he heard that engineers were talking one between another the director is gone they told them you can start getting prepared for evocation his wife and son they stayed inside inside the apartment they didn't go outside so he had a son at 24 two and a wife he the son was like one year old wow in one month he received like a special permission to bring his family to the parisian nuclear power station the winger brought his wife and his kid over there they passed like whole body count to check workers uh told him that the kid obtained so much radiation as a two two annual doses of like exposure for a human being no no oh man [Music] yeah and nowadays the radiation levels in the exclusion zone are more or less one million times lower yeah yeah definitely and just again to like let you guys know the the younger kids were way more susceptible to the radiation than not the adults could he describe like how he was like feeling on like the emotions of that night was because like the workers of the power station they clearly realized that they needed to go and do their job once he knew did that make him scared there was no panic attack the maximum level there was like of 50 rongins back in the days but when they were looking in them there was nothing that they could see so it meant that it was off the scale oh wow so people thought these like little machines were malfunctioning because it was so much radiation that they stopped working which showed nothing wow they were off the scale wow well so it made it impossible for people to understand the scale of the problem you literally had to be zoomed out from the problem in order to begin to understand the magnitude what does it mean 50 wrong gains what was that comparatively to what we just saw give me the geiger count look nowadays i told you that the safe radiation the ground is considered like 0.30 microsieverts an hour or like 30 micro ronkins an hour so one zevert is 100 wrong okay so one micro zebra is 100 micro ronkins so 50 wrong guns it is 50 million micro run oh my goodness dude and the state is considered as 30 micro long holy cow so that's like billion times the dang like the danger zone yeah of what that's like hard to even comprehend were they forced to go back or did they choose [Music] it really does how does he feel now after all these years coming back and seeing places like his old apartment personally it's more like professional thing nowadays but for example for his mom or for his classmates who graduated from the school at this town who fell in love here for the first time who gave a birth for kids here and so on for them it's a heartbreaking for example his mom she never came back no if i come back my heart will just like uh like i will not be able to be harassed he still didn't just live in kiev for example yeah he was pushed to leave but yeah all the time you have like a feeling like it's not home it's not home yeah nowadays it's like professional for you guys but like when you first move or saw it for the first time coming back was it like a pretty emotional thing it was really emotional but in first year in 1986 when people had the chance to come back here because they had a chance to come back here from the apartment when he returned it was in november 1986 it was really emotional he said that there were many people like crying trying to take their personal belongings he didn't take anything pretty much because they had a small kid how about you did that like the first time you came back was it like sad or not am i to my to my second yeah it was really sad from what i remember i returned for the first time when i was maybe 12 years old but it was sad for me because i remember the place but i remember the place when it was nice when we were playing outside when it was like a happy life you know everything and then i returned for the first time the only thing i remember there was just the remain of the fence and one of the walls in the house of your house and it got just just destroyed the rest was just destroyed and like no that is so sad in total roughly like 50 000 people inhabited here 10 or 11 000 among them with kids i mean like small kids and wow that's 16 17 like 18 years like yeah not adults but 11 000 kids why did he return because it was his job still now today like still nowadays he doesn't work for the power station but he works in the exclusion zone yeah like believe me all these people they can't lawyer how would they imagine their life without this territory that's the same story for me believe me passion i will never love like to leave this place anywhere 10 years i'm already here and believe me all my life now i see like working here and showing people around and explaining them like yeah the moral side of this catastrophe is even more sad than radiation effects because many families like got destroyed they're like yeah antidepressants people got so depressed because of everything that happened here i mean it was like the echo of the explosion but in the like the people hearing it from a person that actually lived do it during our age like he is 24. and a girlfriend a kid like imagine just i wonder how different this place looked but the best part of that interview is that when [ __ ] hit the fan he was still courageous enough to be like i have to do something about it and dude like the thing that blew my mind was it wasn't even like i have to save my family or i have to serve my country it was i'm just doing my job there's no pride there's no ego it's just this is what i have to do and i'm doing it like that's just that hits me like right now he did it for his country for his life dude i have like so much respect for this guy he was talking about like if you're not smart about nuclear like fight over money that's cool but when you fight over weapons you destroy a lot more and if this mistake happens again it's over it's over [Music] this used to be a main square a main town square like the center of the town like bustling with life was here and now it's bustling with a different kind of life this sort of post-apocalyptic garden of eden we're in oh my god look at that hotel this is the main square oh this is where the 50 000 roses would be this whole town square if you look at this picture that's how this square looked like back in the days look oh my gosh you see oh wow no trees you see that's how it looked like with all those portraits of communist party leaders and different kind of communist propaganda they literally thought that it would be possible for people to come back wow they started like decontamination of the time what are we at right now we have only 1.2 yeah the average radiation levels in the town of like one point something but there are also any hotspots here taking into account that they washed town like three times it didn't help that much huge recreation center wow bro take like take like 10 other explore locations and put them all in one place all in one place the entire city oh my god look at this dude i'm trying to imagine like the people here like imagine vladimir and his girl and his kid yeah before this happened just like strolling right there that's such a happy piece like our age is walking around yeah you know he's got his kid on his arm yeah i think this is what it use used to be oh my god and then the brick is inside decomposing radioactive titties damn dude oh oh oh my god that's creepy the eyes are freaking white who would do that how do you active baby is it a radioactive baby this was like a old hotel lobby right there wow dang that's a tall one nate just pointed this out but the top of this structure i can't read what that sign says but as a giant contamination misha was just saying that this specific town was allowed to have military training so all these buildings and windows and signs have bullet holes in them just kind of depressing they don't even care about the radiation yeah imagine like just doing your training in a giant radiated city dude that's like playing fallout three wait that's right and this is only two years ago that this happened so definitely all those guys were like i'm in an actual call of duty games oh dude yeah i bet and i bet like some of them like played fallout oh no man i feel like we are in a video game colby is the safety specialist of chernobyl here's colby with uh what two and what not to look in chernobyl he's gonna tell us colby what about this bush right here can you lick that bush bush yeah you can lick the bush you want to look a different bush bush he was just saying that this restaurant right here was built at the end of march of 1986 and guys the blast was in april so this restaurant was only open for a few weeks it hardly got used at all and that dude they had bars here and stuff i'm just trying to imagine if us three were like living in this time as 24 year olds ukrainian women we've been talking about this they're the most beautiful in the entire world yeah so if you're a ukrainian woman and you're watching this thank you official date that the city was built was 1979. the accident being at 1986 that means this entire city was only seven years old young city that was super nicely put together super rich beautiful paradise boom only has seven years to live it's crazy did it happen to like such a good place too right you know not like a torn down thing like this was like new pristine paradise almost like a too good for this world sort of thing and right over here guys is their supermarket oh my god you can even see the carts being used what the signs of the different types of like food and then oh right over there is checkout oh my gosh oh yeah all the shopping carts can imagine if this was your local target right now you know i think they sold white clothes there has to be like a group of kids that were all just like chill and drinking a shot and then heard a boom we're like what was that too huh whatever it just shows have another bro isn't that crazy it just shows that normal life is going on and then everything changes just like that dude look at this i think i think is this a fire hose is this and that one too right there damn that's crazy yeah he just said they were like washing the city i wonder if they just left off yeah this is probably like an after blast firefighter still it just got left here like as soon as they were done decontaminating it they just dropped it and ran we eat those berries mr captain colby yeah i think i'm not sure if i'm going to trust to touch my berries i don't think i'm going to touch his berries dude oh [ __ ] that scared me dude that seriously scared me uh your name uh no english no that was cool i think he's just camping here he's got a camping gear he kind of looks like he might be one of the uh infiltrators that alex was telling us about in the tunnel video yeah oh by the way explore club super rad have gotten a chance to film a couple of the explore club videos with these boys and can honestly tell you they are hella interesting and you'll be able to find out how radioactive my deck is only on explorer club guys for real though if you want to join explorer club you gotta do it we've been posting every single day exclusive content all the time and all the cool kids are doing it so go down below let yourself be peer pressured into this yes peer pressure honestly because the europe content we have gotten for explorer club is some of the most top notch ever yeah also i just started posting there so you'll get some like exclusive nate content that is kind of super unique i won't really post it anywhere else welcome to the club nate yes dude thank you brothers god radio dog oh is he missing an eyeball oh he's missing him or no he's drowning he's just closing down it's shut down does this just shut up oh you gotta click that click the look at that you doggy wait real stuff though dude he's wandering around a place with a lot of hot zones i'm gonna give him a hug do you think that's gonna i don't know if that's a good i don't know if that's a good idea like a hair of the radio doggy on you radio doggy loves me and i don't care i will get thyroid cancer for radio doggy oh went up to 0.7 when i started touching him the accident happened at nighttime one hour 24 minutes what do you do with one hour 24 minutes sleeping or you are sleeping no you don't hear much of the noise even if tanks start to drive around you will not hear that much so basically no one knew what was going on no not not many people heard the noise some heard our plans used to make such kind of noise pretty frequently interesting next day in the morning there was no information about anything just a little bit later on the day some workers from the power station they've started to hear the information that the reactor got destroyed but they said no that's not possible people people couldn't believe that the reactor like exploded people are stubborn that's just like for workers especially for engineers if something can happen because they were taught that according to the safety rules like reactos are non-explosive facilities and objects and that's why everybody we've talked to today is like we don't know everything guys like do your research on nuclear seriously yeah over one thousand two hundred buses we're called to come wow the line of the bus is like stretched for almost like twelve kilometers pretty much from the town of chernobyl and all the way down wow where people evacuated uh next day the next day and it was during seven days yeah no during the night preparations were pretty much done during the night seriously but so it took a full 24 hours or 36 hours to 36 hours pretty much yeah 36 hours to give people 36 hours in the town having like pretty much know much information and they all thought like oh i'll be back soon dude i mean you can just imagine like all those buses like coming through you know and like the steam coming out of like the exhaust pipe people bustling like getting in like being here like brings that kind of intensity a lot so there was like a massive release in local radio people were given like two hours to take only the most important things and they were told that they would be like taken away for three days that's it only three days did we even know enough about radiation back then no to comprehend the scale yeah so we've just like comprehended the scale recently yeah that's great that's crazy yeah and then like within three and a half hours like 45 000 people were actually suffocated from wow wow and 5 000 people workers of the power station they stayed here their duty was just like this day this evening for example or tomorrow morning to go to the power station and to start their job so right now it's at .72 micro yeah yeah go down oh it's clicking you can hear it oh my gosh closer right next open up on it oh [ __ ] oh dude that's as high as the red phone oh my gosh oh my god oh [ __ ] hit 50. damn nate lick it [Music] dude dude dude there it is this is the famous ferris wheel oh my god i swear i've been looking at this picture of like that for five years wow that's another thing like the last ferris wheel in like six flags bro i just feel like they make the most epic fight oh that's so beautiful that's awesome wow and the bumper cars to the left oh [ __ ] wait let's see that [ __ ] oh my god dude this would be an awesome place to go hang out oh this i mean it's a weird combination of like super happy but also so sad wow whoa do you see like this was the stand where like the person was starting to stop it and then this he'd probably sit there and be like god work it on a bumper car ride the amount of life and happiness for the seven years right and then straight to nothing oh my god i would wreck every single kid here in bumper cars that was still around do you think stop it stop it what do you think this is yeah i don't know that almost looks like it could be like a weird oh look at oh that's definitely like they had the swing down a big amusement park they had swings bumper cars there's a merry-go-round very oh wow wow i was always afraid of these things when i was little they go in circles fat dude this is beautiful oh my god we made it the famous ferris wheel i have a weird sense of like fulfillment yeah when we first started exploring this was at every top of the list of like what you need to hit it like almost like inspired us to like do more and go bigger and like when we started 25 by 25 this was like the number one thing on my list you have to do chernobyl no matter what did it before 25 that i don't know makes me really happy i've literally never thought we would i didn't think this was possible but this is only day one so i hope you guys are enjoying so far if you are best way you can let us know is by leaving a like on this right now if this gets 300k likes i'm gonna bring radioactive dog home with me i don't know curfew is at eight p.m here so we don't have much time left out of all the 25 by 25 things this was by far my number one thing i wanted to do i truly didn't know if we were ever going to be able to do it and we did it we did it man we made it [Applause] we're here day two beginning of the checkpoints but we've been here for like five minutes and they're giving our guide miesha a pretty difficult time right now we've got a lot of paperwork glancing at the car well dude and we like blasted through this yesterday in like two seconds don't let him see you with that camera bro there's like three guards talking to misha right now dude today's reactor day though and that's scary in itself that's crazy i'm actually gonna go in a building well and not just a building bro this is gonna be like the sarcophagus that's like the epicenter oh here it comes here it comes i need to wait a little bit my friends oh what happened yeah we're just waiting for some bureaucracy process are we getting deported update has been like 30 minutes but he's finally coming back yep looks like we're good to go figured everything out yeah what was the problem if you don't mind me asking they just asked for the representative of chernobyl nuclear power station to come together in video shoot don't feel anything right now when we get closer we will stop [Music] so we're going to reactor 3 and see the control panel and everything so we can clearly understand like what went wrong and like what did what [ __ ] going to take god yeah man i want to be in a hazmat suit man um [Music] let's go let's do it good thing my pp is too small to get ready you guys know what [Music] i have a golden hole dude it looks like we're going to heaven right now so they said usually the concrete would absorb everything pretty well but it has absorbed for so long that this golden stuff is just another type of decontamination all right so we're about to go into the reactor area and we're going to sign off on getting these devices and they will tell us how much radiation we get from going in there and coming back we'll know if we're [ __ ] here in like two hours don't fall down on the ground power plant we don't produce electricity anymore but we're still involved in general energy system of the ukraine what do you think they're working on exactly like right now it's not hard to say control everything very difficult equipment lots of equipment central control room i didn't understand the plan to still produce energy no no we've got electricity from the west ukrainian two of them operated here and transmitted crazy that all this stuff was placed here in like the 1970s and it's still here today we're still even using the like old tvs all just because it works i've never expected but this is like a smoking zone so it's like we stepped back into the 70s literally this entire place is lost in time they're waiting to see which red button to press which ring button do you think it is i think it's that one didn't that's the red button that just [ __ ] everything up right there [Music] oh [ __ ] these are counters what's it at all the counters are going crazy let's try to get in okay i will switch on the light you can look at all these computers yeah you have to be a freaking nerd to know how to do all this right freaking nerd all of these computers probably had the power of like one iphone so he said this entire facility only had them enough like storage and power for 700 kilobytes that is less than one gigabyte our youtube videos are like 15 gigs per video so every time we make a video it's more storage that's an entire thing times like 10. wait dude so think about that man that means the computers that we're using to run these reactors have less power than what we carry around in our pocket dude bring an iphone back to the 70s and just watch what they do you think they're like dude what what wow whoa dude this is the control room oh the unit number three [Music] this button right here is the button to shut off the entire reactor what'd you do did you just [ __ ] make the same mistake it's like harder to turn your washing machine on and off than that how would you even like figure out what to press your reactor and just go what would be happening if like you know you're just walking and tripping just slam on all these buttons at once i feel like my clumsy ass would trip in here and like smack something eventually my god what if that's like the real story of chernobyl no one will say nate is the producer over here what's up that little woman in blue you just told someone not to touch anything you just came over and like started like no no little did you know did you just send like a ton of energy over back to america or something like that dude look this is the map [Music] all right flash forward after we have realized and learned all about chernobyl over the past couple days we wanted to give you guys now that we know the story a much more detailed breakdown of what happened it's extremely complex and with the whole tour that we did we just want to summarize in one minute so what happened on april 26 1986 in this nuclear reactor the power plant reactor number four they were conducting safety tests they were trying to figure out if for some reason the main power source lost power how could they switch power sources easily at the time the city of kiev was receiving power from the plant and so they requested that the test be postponed so that it was after peak power usage what that did was move the test from the daytime crew to the night time crew one of whom was one of the main scientists and had only been working there for like three months the deputy main engineer of the power plant he was responsible for conducting the test data want to be main engineer very much if you will provide the best best you won't be a main engineer you're saying that like he had to make this test go right or else he wasn't going to get a promotion so he had a lot on the line for himself for himself he was very difficult person he could tell to anybody so [ __ ] get out from here because you're an idiot you don't understand anything so the guy behind the mistake the workers the engineers here they of course should be educated but they should be experienced was very young and he wasn't so experienced so he lost their level of capacity it increased up to 10 megawatts sorry almost stopped and you said the reactor is less stable the lower that it is the only way to increase the level of capacity is to pull out all the control rods all together to 118. he decided to remove all the control rods from the reactor core to increase level of capacity level of capacity start increasing immediately it wasn't minutes it was just a second 200 megawatts then 35 7 10 000 megawatts it went from zero to not even a hundred percent but like ten thousand percent it was way way way higher than they've ever had the reactor running the night shift being new they didn't have the intuition nor the experience to understand quite what was happening it was then that they determined and now we have to shove all the rods back in because if you put all the control rods in in a perfect scenario it would in fact lower everything and again that would decrease the power back to normal here's what happened because the reactor was running so hot the tubes that the control rod slide into had actually warped due to pressure and heat if everything was designed correctly and all the control rods did and were able to go in everything would have been fine of course wow wow so it kind of was the designer no he made the right decision what did they do they pressed like a button they pushed they pressed to install all the control rods it basically created a small spike of reactivity that sent it over the edge and so it was the needle that broke the radioactive camel's back so they were all pulled out and then the temperature in here got super hot they're all pushed back in and when this got so hot and blew off this he was saying exploded up in the air went like this boom boom boom and then landed sideways and this is how it still is today keep in mind the reactor roof weighs tons and it flicked it like a coin all the smoke up top was just completely like radiated smoke that was flying over the city so one last question nobody has really talked about this yet but afterwards the core down here was getting so so so hot that we heard that a lot of people were worried that there was going to be a second explosion it could be an explosion because first days first hours the main danger for nuclear workers is to leave reactor poor without cooling so for the first few hours they kept giving water to cooling down the roof for cooling down the reactor so of course there was no reaction and also all that water collected here in under reactor room so if that fuel will melt it down the foundation and we'll get inside that room so where water collected it could be enormously huge explosion how big do you think uh well from here to our capital to kiev it is 150 kilometers so even key wouldn't stand oh so it would just completely wipe out everything for a hundred and fifty years basically of course which means the radiated like cloud would affect all of europe pretty much probably the entire world in the entire world if they wouldn't have gotten all the water out of the bottom of the basement basically all of europe would have been uninhabitable oh wow it seriously could have affected the swing of the planet we would be walking around radioactive land forever that could increase the death rate to millions if these people didn't go and stop it right then why did this not happen because the chernobyl liquidators were risking their lives to save everybody and it's so easy to think of chernobyl as a gigantic tragedy right i think in reality man what's even more impressive than the accident is how incredible the engineers the miners the liquidators i mean even the communities that were willing to relocate and work together the nurses who healed the people how humanity came together to basically stop this radioactive meteor from hitting the earth is so inspiring to me and what's really special in my opinion about this is the these heroes they weren't really mentioned at all yeah a lot of people don't realize that these people killed themselves so we all didn't die you know they risked their lives they saved us they saved you and every single person watching this your lives have been affected by chernobyl and a lot of people don't even realize i don't know so again i think it's really beautiful like you were saying instead of looking at this as like the biggest disaster in history and look at it in the lens of like the planet came together to figure out how to stop this huge problem that could have killed millions yeah there was a massive accident that caused a lot of sadness but if you look on the brighter side it is like a testament to how if you can work together people can save the world [Music] it's time dude it's time we are going to go into the control center of reactor number four the one that blew up and he said not only do you have to wear special masks and gloves but he never likes to take anybody past a few minutes because that is the level of radiation you can entertain so i'm gonna go shirtless and roll around on the floor he's gonna die but early now so we should switch off your cameras we'll see you guys in there going off that is the normal level the normal level over there was point two here it is here it is holy [ __ ] [Music] that button would have turned everything off yes it used to be here that is the spot that's the button that was pressed that triggered the final explosion pretty much [Music] what if you were just kind of like hey man how you doing that would only happen to you by the way actually why it was re replaced there because somebody could sit here and see whoa that's actually good holy [ __ ] your like silly joke was like true as to why it wasn't a joke i was being serious i cannot believe this this is the room this right here this is the room one of the most dramatic single pieces of history right there that might be what other button in history has ever caused that much damage [Music] all right let's see if colby is okay to live we're gonna find out okay am i good yes yes and apparently that is the most dangerous spot that visitors can go and we survived with that gotta give a good little like and subscribe come on guys guys we've seen that a lot of people that watch our content are not subscribed and to that we say what the frick dude what the frick dude so go down there like it up subscribe notifications let's see if we can get three hundred thousand likes the dagger thing just keeps going on it just shows you how dangerous this area is so this is the water that filled the reactor yeah whoa i thought it would be just like a metal like grey tanks or something like this i didn't know they were going to be this big we've been between like seven and nine micros for this entire month what was the normal uh the safe rate 0.3 27 times the amount of safe and we're going up oh should we jump on three yeah [Applause] oh wait you remember in the control room all those buttons on the wall those buttons were the control rods these are all the control rods right here i bet you so do you think we said pull them all someone had to go over and be like 400 times the nuclear power of hiroshima was this explosion how did they insert these chemicals into these rods help all that machine so operator get in that machine and went in that direction so you know like a claw machine like at walmart this thing is basically like a giant claw machine so this moves back and forth and this moves front and back and someone would fit in there and and come over these pick it up the waist would get revolved into one tube and it would be refueled with another and they would just do that for the entire that's so complex oh my god super complex do you think the explosion was as powerful as a kamehameha dude you almost broke your ankle there did you get two thousand oh i got two thousand as well zero point zero zero and two oh i was like i think i'm gonna die we still got one tenth of max radiation yeah that was like a small amount of time with all this protection in here all right we are back in the city of represent we are going to find a kindergarten school in this forest misha was just saying that there's a ton of kindergarten schools because this is a very young town and they had a lot of babies every year he was saying you know everyone was young here there's no like internet you know nothing to do this is the [ __ ] town bro yeah literally that's what you're saying dude look we're on a basketball court should we hoop it up yeah balls can you who no there's a basketball right there it's not radioactive i'm not sure but you can't touch it i can or no you were ready bro whoa oh my god dude you know what's different about this than other abandoned places aside from you know the obvious radio activity so many things were left behind and this was for like what elementary school kids he said yeah this is a school gymnasium that's really sad i wonder if vlad played here when he was a little kid that's such a sweet thought yeah i mean he was 10 years old probably running around dude i bet black ball we're literally just right next to abandoned skyscrapers oh my god that's 16 stories i think that's one of the apartment buildings 16-story apartment building just right behind you that's why they kept the kindergartners when they were being bad what is this can you explain this is a kindergarten and they had nap time here so there's beds here gas masks everywhere apparently it would be dangerous if they had like beds in my school nap time would be like half the day dude i went to the nurse's office just so i could take a nap like every single weekend elementary school look at that a little tiny baby and a baby gas mask oh [ __ ] that's crazy that's [ __ ] creepy here's all the the beds that they used to take naps on dude there's hella dolls in here there's one right there one right there bunny head little toys left behind so they thought they were going to come back to this i'd be so sad to be like 10 years old here and experience that getting everything stripped away from you imagine you're a little kid and then you you accidentally leave like your favorite toy at school you never see it again you try yourself to sleep every night because families lived in different places you probably also left your friends and stuff like i'm sure you and your buddy wouldn't be going to the same village to evacuate i don't know if you can see the gas masks yeah canisters right there but uh they used to have the kids run drills didn't they yeah they taught kids how to use gas masks they thought where to hide what to do in case of like nuclear attack or whatever do you remember that yeah we did that too even in the really independent times of ukraine yeah you got a little baby a little baby stupid shoes right there looks like these are all classrooms back there hallways i bet every single one of these were classrooms up there as well there's a tiny little kid gas mask yeah you can see like the eye holes like weights smaller crazy to me i think about that like little kids had to run around and practice drills with gas masks it's a different world that's really creepy if you think about it like imagine like a five-year-old army of like hundreds of little kids with like these sort of gas masks too that looks like [ __ ] leads in your slip knot or something like that whoa [ __ ] she has like a third leg oh my god they are all on their separate bed someone set up a bunch of beds all the way across this is like their nap time but they use dolls look how close they were together do you really think any of these kids actually use nap time like if if they were this close every kid would just be jumping on the beds and like confiding each other and [ __ ] they're kids dude kids don't need naps holy cow adults i wonder how many squatters and people that illegally came to chernobyl would just hide in this apartment i guarantee you a lot of them live up there no i thought they could be watching us right now yeah do you think people are there right now like maybe i mean we saw three just yesterday libraries wow look at all those books all completely left here this area over here was more like the hard labor the woodworking arts and crafts stuff like that and then over here was library but they would just read and have their little nap times [Music] what's going on i guess there were people in here there was a tour of just like normal ass people like running through this building what they're not sick they're so he's gonna go put a stop to it i think he's gonna go like put the gabash on the guide oh [ __ ] i can only begin to imagine what this place will look like without all this forest around it like you probably see buildings all around you instead it's like you have to find them and they're like little treasures lost in time this place is its own ghost it haunts itself or maybe it's like it's stuck in time and and we're the ones haunting [Applause] damn getting into the thick of it into the neck of it what the [ __ ] bro god radioactive ow ow look at this oh my god yo if this was poison i would we would be genuinely [ __ ] where's misha i don't know damn oh did he go this way oh my god uh oh [ __ ] dude i don't even know where he went did we see him go this way even or not hello hero somebody save me from the ah poison ivy we made it rubbed down by the turnover radioactive forest so i can't touch a basketball but we can run through i don't know i kind of like being touched that much it's been a minute we could damn go like and subscribe too oh no [ __ ] hugging [Music] we are here at the stadium stadium oh man alicia says this is one of his favorite parts look you can see like where you enter right there little turn style vlad said they used to have two professional football teams here so that means their professional teams would play at this stadium that we're in right now they got these big stadium lights right here oh yeah those are like the street lamps i'll tell you what though dude i love trees i love you too nate the stadium has just kind of become like a garden like a natural garden so this is like the track that's going all the way around look do you remember yesterday we were near the ferris wheel walking around look there was a path that was getting through the fence and then there was a stadium oh how it looks like can we take a left real quick oh nate's a runner he's a runner hit the track sir come on [Music] no we're just trying to trick you and run faster oh [ __ ] we are definitely not on the right track this is the trade track you just have to believe oh what is that this is still the same stadium yeah we're on the other side of the thing like we've ran 200 meters we need to run 200 more i wonder if running and radioactivity affects how you can perform we're also at 1.18 if safe is 0.3 we're running in four times the safe level of radiation right in here obviously used to be just a giant stadium set for soccer and everything like that and now it's an entire forest right there abandoned stadium wow wow this is this is pretty cool dang dude you can almost feel the ghost crowds of people that used to sit here you can't even see the track that just looks like we're on like a street but that's a giant yeah the track right there all the way around 50 000 people most of them our age they probably went to all of these oh we got you they're probably going to a bunch of football games on friday nights saturday nights honestly they probably could have even been watching a game on the saturday night right before the whole accident happened yeah i'm guessing this is where like the commentators would be and stuff rock chalk jayhawk go ku look at this creepy thing oh that's sick is that a gynecologist think either that or like a pregnancy thing this is just out in the middle of the woods for some reason nate didn't you just say you're like a gynecologist yesterday or something nope i didn't say that all right somebody just chucked this out the window and it landed perfectly like this i don't know someone set it up here i think someone had such an intense pregnancy that it launched them out here dude any of your like fans that are females are like you guys are such idiots that's why they brought those first victims of the chernobyl disaster at night time the first victims were brought right over there okay let's go so here it is here is that entrance where they brought all those first victims of the disaster i mean firefighters employees so ambulances brought them here they took them in undressed to them upstairs to the rooms of the hospital that are still those highly contaminated like uniforms helmets boots gloves of the firefighters and so on very radioactive and why did they they put it down there just because they didn't have anywhere else to put it or that was the decision that they made safest place back in the days was just to put them to the basement at the night of the accident like 130 approximately people like victims were brought here wow you know some of the patients who were in the rooms they were sent home because the state of these guys like was like got so much radiation that like nothing would help do you think that they were even aware of how dire their situation was no until they they didn't realize it yeah they had no so it would be like they just showed up to the doctor and we're told you're done but i i don't think that they told them that you're done but i know but like that was that yeah the gist of the information was like sorry we can't do anything and they like firefighters died pretty quickly within the first two three weeks and the decision was made like to bury them in moscow in lead coffins and coffins were concreted they were very like coffee lead coffins put like two meter layer of concrete on top of the coffin because their bodies were so redacted they could poison like other people oh my god that's why their relatives were not allowed to take their dead bodies back home the um nurses and employees that touched the firefighters like clothes weren't they heavily affected like a burns like and everything even surgeons who were doing like operations on liquidators in the 90s some of them had those like lead aprons in front of them even in the 90s so like in the 90s that's crazy literally cooks you from the inside that's why hair starts to fall off that's why skiing because they can't name everything so were the family members of the firefighters even allowed to see them as they were dying no imagine that you have to die alone i hope this doesn't come off as insensitive in any way but it's almost like the closest thing the human race has like experienced like a zombie infection and i'm not saying like where they come back from the dead and like try to kill you but it's like an invisible infection where even dead people if you get too close you'll get it too that's actually like a contagion if i got highly radiated and not we didn't know about it for like two weeks and then you and i were like together i would radiate you a firefighter could walk up to you and be like yo what's up how's it going to my family but in reality he just killed his own family the most radioactive objects in the entire town besides the actual core were the fire fighters uniforms right after they went inside because again these people were the first on the scene got the closest to the blast out of anybody and like they didn't understand the danger so they just went in and went for it and so those clothes are actually stored in the basement of this hospital right here and our buddy josh who's been on a lot of videos you probably know him actually went down there to see these there and they're still there because they're preserved and didn't he say he only had like a five minute limit down there or something oh yeah because again those those things could kill you after after a certain just being in that area you can't even stand around there without yeah he had a full-on hazmat suit and like didn't even dare to go into the room but the nurses were terrified too it affected everybody dude everybody so obviously the firefighters right off the bat were the first on the scene but then as we talked about on the roof before they were able to put on the sarcophagus they needed to get all of the hazardous objects off of the roof and dirt and stuff like just like particles soil everything well dude they had to clear like so many centimeters of soil from the entire place in order to clean it and like the top of the roof was obviously the most radioactive you touch them you die when the town tried to remove them by robot and like machinery or cranes or anything the objects literally destroyed the machinery the radiation was so powerful that nothing would be able to touch these objects there's a difference between two times there was liquidators that like helped so there was the initial firemen who were lied to by the government and just basically sacrificed themselves for humanity but then the following months there were these liquidators who consciously knew like vladimir yes and they knew exactly what they were getting into and they were willing to deal with the radiation just for literally you and i 95 of them went back yeah it's not a small number dude like that's like 95 out of 100 people who are the only ones that can do anything about it said yeah i'll go give my life these guys are heroes what's sad is like they didn't even get that much recognition the people that were there to clean off the roof they were nicknamed biorobots wait think about that for a minute though like that's one thing i was hoping we'd get to bio robot that's i i can't tell if that's like a move to dehumanize them or not because after their actual robots stopped working they put people in lead suits of armor essentially and called them bio robots yeah it was so potent that they were only allowing people to go up for 90 seconds they're like we know that you might get a lethal dose so we're gonna dehumanize you by calling you biorobots and you only have 90 seconds to go up there and do as much as you possibly can to shovel off debris and get out of run out yeah but the sad part is you're only supposed to go up in 90 seconds a majority of people went more than once a lot of them went up to five times so you know they got more than the lethal dose no there was literally dozens that died from cancer later on i just feel it's sad because a lot of people don't know the story of chernobyl yes it's getting way more famous recently but like there were all these people who were absolutely the biggest like heroes of the world they're heroes and they sacrificed themselves knowingly like the miners so as stan like our tour guide was saying underneath the reactor there's a ton of water and if the nuclear meltdown surpassed all the concrete went down into the water it would contaminate all the water stream underneath which the pre-pratt river was connected to that i think the pre-river was the second largest european reservoir in existence yeah so it would have infected and contaminated literally miles of crops animals and crops and water are basically rendered useless forever if the miners didn't save it what they were doing by going down there and preventing the thorium from melting past that layer was preventing a second much larger explosion and so it was literally like a race against time but what those miners ended up doing was they had to literally dig a tunnel underneath between the water and where the reactor was because again if it melted down that's what would contaminate it imagine how hot it was in those tunnels underground no ventilation you can't give them anything because if they were to breathe in the particles they could die of radiation it's really a story about like heroism and people saying okay yeah we messed up but look we got to do this and this and this and this a lot of us are going to die doing it maybe only a handful of people or scientists or designers messed up thousands or hundreds of thousands of people came to say i just wish they got the recognition that like they deserve is it a church huh is that a specific name of it up there like what does that word say pre-ps that's town was prepaid cafe was creepy oh i see they're very proud of their name yeah and then chernobyl took it over yeah and then the most famous yeah that's kind of ironic actually is that a naked lady up there whoa it feels like so peaceful and paradise-y and then you look down at your counter and you feel uh oh wait i'm kind of dying right now we're dying in paradise this town right here they didn't tell them for 36 hours so everyone was dying in paradise dang this is dope this is the pre-ps sign yet so apparently in some random language that says previous language it's probably ukrainian oh my god what are we at three three it bounced up to three really well because we're right next to the red forest started building the town 1970. but only finished it 1979 i mean it was such a nice rich town yeah because they were all rich because they were working out the plant so isn't it like a weird coincidence that the thing that made them rich was ultimately the demise of the town and it's not just the thing that made them rich i mean it was the thing that was going to propel humanity into the next level seeing pre-pet today and like ending our day two at the sign i was like wow like this city of 50 000 people and then all the surrounding cities of more than hundreds of thousands of people got affected it's like we live we die love your friends and do your job live it up while you can make it count 25 by 25 let's go oh my god radiated puppy this is so cute day three it's off to a good start this has to be mom and dad because she's like watching after him dude mama dog's coming on to me oh my god are you radiated just a little oh my god you can feel his heartbeat that is so cute we are here at this place called chernobyl 2. they made a second version of chernobyl for the military military families and more specifically the duga station which we're at right now not only does it have like very little exposure on youtube after the fact but back in the day you couldn't even find it on a map sorry there are signs on our way in that show that no regular like civilian could come in here you had to have special clearance to even come in this town let alone the station this is where the soviets had their radar station that would detect any missiles or any like threat from other countries specifically the united states says it was like a secret radar location and nobody really knew about it it would actually disrupt other radio signals and make this sort of tapping sound which was later named the russian woodpecker around the world people would hear that like ticking sound in radio stations disrupt it's part of where the soviet union got the stereotype of being like spies oh no oh my god a lot of conspiracy theories say that inside these walls they were doing experiments like mind control behavior control sometimes even like weather control a lot of people think that actually chernobyl as a power station was created to fuel and energize this location although it did give power to pre-pratt and the surrounding areas a lot of people think the main power source was used here for the military all that is like 100 conspiracy theory i thought one of the most interesting ones was that chernobyl was intentionally melted down in order to cover up what was actually going on in dugout you're saying that people actually think the explosion of chernobyl was just to cover up because this place was so secretive and they saw some really weird it's not necessarily clear what happened inside here because most of the documents were either archived in moscow russia or completely destroyed whether or not it actually happened no one will ever actually find out until now let's go this is the only long sleeve t-shirt i brought here so i look like a [ __ ] highlighter look at his colorful freaking shirt i feel like i can only skip in this outfit come on guys let's go speaking of outfits look at this [ __ ] dude enjoy chernobyl die later die later oh my god what misha just said was this is the marching square the military side we're over here next to the barracks where a lot of people stayed and slept and this entire area is lined with soviet propaganda so propaganda is basically what the soviet union was using to indoctrinate isn't the right word but create like a military and socialist culture to normalize make it cool to go to the army basically like peer pressuring you into wanting to fight for and be a part of the soviet union movement that is what was disrupting other radio stations around the world they probably thought it was morse code yeah i bet they thought there was a code going on dude it's crazy to think that's actually what they used to see around the curve of the planet like to see if rockets were going off pretty much oh yeah because wasn't it supposed to detect missiles as well it detected any threat any missile any bomb specifically us again like one of the conspiracies was a lot of people thought that if you had a certain frequency you could control the mind so the more concerts you go to the more the government controls who you are on the map of the soviet union this territory was marked at the place of unfinished kid's summer camp that's how soviet authorities were hiding their top secret military objects so they literally were trying to hide this from everybody wow that's why i told you that it was a top secret military object and that's why you saw that sign don't go there dude it's so similar to area 51 in the states and google maps doesn't even show it on the map and aliens are here in real yeah they're definitely real dude wow that is super cool oh my god let's get an aerial perspective for this [ __ ] damn i wish we could climb this oh man that would be a scary climb though dude maybe like 500 feet tall on this one and the other one is probably about like 350 feet tall on the end there's two of these like giant down the middle of nowhere what is that yo nate we need you to get in this hole we need you to get in the hole dude i don't think get in the hole now get in the [ __ ] holidays appeared here maybe like a few months ago i think that local authorities in the future they will put a fence over here to prevent people from getting close to the antenna so that's only five feet i think you should jump down there get in the [ __ ] hole no no no don't do that i can't get in the hole my god look how giant this is they one tried to hide it on the maps two they destroyed all the documents that had this and three we didn't even tell you about this when people ask about the dugo radar station the soviet union denied that it ever existed they started coming out about it now obviously but during the time of chernobyl they were like no it doesn't exist i wonder why kgb was behind it kgb or the secret soviet police yeah i mean if this is a secret military camp i bet they at least knew about it and helped facilitate it a little bit so misha was telling us just a few minutes ago that they've got this whole place cammed out now because a couple years ago like three stalkers were here and uh one of them fell off and died it just goes to show you got to be really careful with these banded structures sad as if you look into that so the guy he fell but not from like a lethal distance he just like broke a lot of his bones but because they were stalkers which are people that are legal in here the friends actually left because they were afraid of getting caught and going to jail probably could have been survived if they would have immediately called the police and got him to the hospital but he died because the friends left jesus would you guys leave me if i fell no no absolutely not you just don't leave your homies behind either yeah like that's [ __ ] lame yeah don't be [ __ ] lame dude all right guys here's the control headquarters basically dude yeah look at all the equipment someone's just torn out of here and throwing them at the office one day so behind these doors was some weird secret military stuff going on so like we said earlier this place was known as chair normal 2.0 it was another town this right here actually was a fire department and all these posts right here are a gate that basically blocked and separated the military from the residents because over here they're schools apartment buildings this is like a normal town and then just past this fence right there home all the military secret stuff so they allowed residents to live this close to like a secret base yeah so it was only the military family so no just random joe could come live here no kindergartens and stuff too though like playgrounds yeah so kids were able to run around this that's oh yeah but they wouldn't be able to see anything because look at how tall that is so imagine being like a little kid and just knowing there's a mysterious offense you just always have that curiosity of like what's on the other side yeah bro also imagine being like a person leading your life behind an antenna the size of this guy no one ever being able to tell you what it is this is one of the apartment buildings right here it looks pretty kept up to be honest yeah look all these windows are not broken unlike the other chernobyl oh look dude there's a kid's playground kids playground little hoodies dude this is little hoodie little being there doing a tick tock dance right now what's up bro dude that's actually kind of dope that is you wanna go inside exploring little huddy's hole this is the only place we're allowed inside spider webs everywhere snakes probably underneath me what they do in here is coming [ __ ] sick i just feel like we're gonna i feel like the eel fudge elves are going to come out and like start beating our shins out of our chocolate factory yeah what about the snow white dwarfs i would chill with dopey they called him dope because he's tired dope because he oh no i'm pretty sure dopey drank cough syrup dude i would love to be a little kid and have like a little secret hut you know what i'm saying dude we could probably just make you a secret hut dude can you not make huts i made forts out of pillows not out of sticks my dad and i built a freaking awesome wood hut really we don't want to end up going to so these were the little kids that were playing in the hoods wow what is this kid having his hand up here it's a selfie stick you can see the ring light in front of him oh he's doing tic tocs this is an airplane and look at all these these are called mask bugs because it looks like little tiki masks oh those are so cool oh [ __ ] a gas mask hanging right there like a little ass kid's gas mask but look at that you can see the nest in the gymnasium it's like balls gone up there or something gymnastics bars that's cool oh this is sick we're leaving chernobyl 2.0 this military town i found this place to be like super eerie comparatively why was it so important to hide this place now we're gonna go off and interview some of the grandmas in the outer villages the babushka self settlers they came back into chernobyl like basically illegally and said no screw off government we're gonna stay here this is my house some say that these people are some of the most happy people since they did come back and they lived out their lives here i'm excited to see some grandmas goodbye radio puppies oh my god that is the most adorable thing i've ever seen in my entire life go and see the babushka after an hour drive on roads that had potholes literally in the middle of the forest we have made it to the babushka's house and we brought them some babushka food i'm so excited to go hug a grandma is that a weird thing to say yeah it's a little weird but it's all so sweet oh my god it's so tiny yeah i plan to take you first to her cousin and then like to come to her she's asking where are you from oh yeah america california i mean it's a little heavier it's not too bad wow oh that's the first time doing a well i just can't believe that they don't know anything about like the western american world you know what i mean like they're just in this land by themselves it's a completely different world imagine all the technologies she hasn't seen i doubt she looks like a tv you know what i would love i would love to bring a vr headset and show her vr she would probably oh my god she's basically stuck in time back in the 1970s she can leave but that road is long and treacherous like she probably just stays here well do you think she even has a car no there's no way near that age travel is not as easy as it is when you're like all right dude she's like like he said this morning man teacher yeah seriously but that's what keeps them alive all the work they work that's what keeps them alive yeah that they need to be wild so we're here meeting the first abuser name is babushka marusa here she is she just finished with homemade french fries for us tiny little little ladies full of joy you're too attractive she says you look like a girl that's so funny i'll just go and help her with food and i'll be back immediately arrested by the grandma like this kid looks like a girl thanks grandma damn the village of the grandmas this is like probably one of my favorite parts here dude i think for me it's being with someone who is totally outside of a western paradigm that for me is so powerful man she just doesn't see the world from the same angles as we do she's not a capitalist she's not like a westerner she's not a youtuber bro like she is content to live here off the land on her own and i'm glad that they're not like actually alone like there's like i think he said 12 people living here if they wanted to go talk to people they can literally right off the bat she's feeding us some homemade french fries and i guess some moonshine is that moonshine oh dude uh-oh take a whiff oh that is gonna be strong whoa that's gonna be intense we are gonna be [ __ ] getting [ __ ] up with the grandma dude our new chernobyl grandma getting us [ __ ] up and giving us some american french fries that is a hologram [Music] take sour cream oh yeah that's gonna be good he's like all of these grandma's grandson dude it's like having 12 grandmas yeah man i think some days he gets lunch like four times probably he probably tells him all of that so we can have this potatoes four times a day so we're getting [ __ ] up with some grandmas moonshine is way higher alcohol content than normal stuff that you would get in the stores but it's more pure so it's not like white club this is going to be like 12 wet claws in one shot usually we say that means cheers [Applause] [Music] you don't want it all right [Music] bro dude so that moonshine that we just drank was made from potatoes and other fruits that babushka marusa grew on her property oh no way i think everything on this besides i guess the sour cream dude this is a blessing man uh-oh misha wants to go for round two already i just told him i was already feeling it on the way back from this car ride we're back [Music] again right now why he is what he poured him up come on second one usually the second shot in ukraine would drink for french the long ships and short ships and ships that sail to sea the best ships your friends ship so here's to you and me [Music] in ukraine you have like such tradition when you enter the house for the first time you're obliged to drink at least three shots dude i'm gonna black out how are we gonna film the rest of this video three shots will definitely black me out i'm gonna pass out all the other grandma [Laughter] misha's like you guys are wimps what's funny about this is babushkas are about to drink us under the table no they're not they're not worth a shot they're watching us get blacked out right now that's what they want love and ladies to loving ladies it's really dudes [Music] this is this is all right let's go [Music] dude you're not gonna take all of it and you just made me do it i didn't make you do anything that was your own choice that's a [ __ ] move like and subscribe if you think i'm a [ __ ] watch you guys get like 100k more subscribers 300k likes if you think sam's a [ __ ] for not taking the wrong you know what y'all do you think sam's a [ __ ] just hit the subscribe button right now do it guys all right if you can hit the cl if you can hit the subscribe button before i finish my shot then i will give you a dollar nice nice have you done it yet she goes i'm so sorry if it wasn't good enough like tasty and we're like no it's absolutely amazing one of the best meals we've had since we've so good and the fact that it was all grown from like the garden and the things around us is awesome we ate at beauty and essex earlier this year super top-notch but this food has soul dogs yeah that's part of what makes it good yo these pancakes and whatever the raspberry jam that is like the best desserts i've ever had so good so good i have like seven we need the carbs and the bread hopefully when's the next time we're gonna have babushka cakes exactly exactly you have some of the booster case tonight now oh my god dude i'm just waiting for sanders [Music] [Music] yeah young beautiful kids she says oh i love you [Music] i told you in the morning just watching water so my name is like 88 years old how was life before the accident she said that in the past like they had those like collective forms that was their life pretty much it was as every job but okay it was the job and you needed to do that half of the summer they spent in the garden oh really what's going on wow like every day like she goes to the garden she picks like cucumbers tomatoes like all the things that we ate on the table you can imagine how much like what a word to do especially for her at the age of 80. for us few buckets of water okay two minutes for her it's like maybe one hour so it's almost like they're doing it out of habit now it's not a complete necessity but they're that that's how yeah that's just what they do it's just their job it's just almost like yeah yeah they do it because they do it that's the culture here it's cool during major holidays that they had back in the days they were gathering all together drinking eating and singing songs oh that's so so crazy i was gonna say that's what we did [Applause] long time ago could you ask her how often she sees the other people of the village uh very often they're just eating outside under the trees and they're just talking about a few times a week when you meet with your friends in the village what do you talk about so they remember early days when they were younger really how nice it was they reminisce yeah they reminisce all the memories here that they have i just imagine yourself i've been trying this whole trip dude look oh boy you're 80 years old oh boy is that yeah i think what did i do maybe i needed to do that maybe i needed to go there if i needed to travel there but no i was at work like i was doing that that like like i can't imagine that so does she regret like returning yeah no no no she just missing new kids yeah but but in general she doesn't regret it who will be the last inhabitant who will remain the last one in the village there are 12 of them yeah and sometimes she's like lying on the bed and thinking oh who would be like the remaining last one they all realized that sooner or later they were all fascinated that's life what's um her favorite thing about her life now she's just missing her kids very much and there is nothing much she can like and enjoy because she doesn't have livestock she does not have the thing that she could do like earlier and she had like mostly cats yeah but when kids come to visit her at the time when she insurance life that's it that's it right there when the kids come i want to ask about when the news first came that they were going to have to be evacuated how old was she and what were her emotions like hearing that news it's too emotional chicago all these cattle they were taken away first government told them that you need to give away all your kettles that's how they were making money and living pretty much yes but they were just planting potatoes and then the chairman of the village council came to the garden and said get ready to give away your pigs tomorrow morning you give away your cows and then you will be evacuated they had like special registers so they were saving money all their life nice that's how it's all gone oh when the soviet union collapsed their savings just yeah well i didn't know that i didn't know that either soviet union collapsed the state disappeared so the value of the currency is gone and all the money that they were saving they disappeared how long after that accident she returned uh bob marley 1987 in the fall they returned in october has it changed she said it's really bad if it never happened like if this disaster never happened it so she said that there are only a few people alive from their community who stayed outside dessert who decided not to return why didn't she decide to return [Music] these are the things that you can't like replace or change the place where you were born that's the most important place for your life and you need to always remember about that and she said and she says don't even look don't even try to look for another and better place in the planet but she's feeling very lonely here oh man because kids are far away probably if she had the same way of thinking as nowadays back in the days she would not return maybe whoa really so because she worries about her kids she wants to be closer to me yeah so she thinks she would be happier if she didn't she never returned and she stayed with her family it's very doubtful question to be honest like that's what she said she's like the way she is thinking nowadays is totally different from the way that she was thinking back in the days well let me let me ask this why stay i know this is your home the land's your home but why not go to be with your family now there is not enough space for everyone so she said that maybe in the future she will she will go broke her uh not now for the most part though is she happy with what she had lived this life since the accident yesterday she's very happy that that she has great kids great grandkids because in total she has like seven great grandkids already oh my god and they all take a good good care of her yeah she wishes you like happiness luck and strong health spa you are also like kids for her like me as well like it's going to make me cry man to have very strong families find your second half and live alone and happy [Music] guys i gotta say like just be quite honest i don't know i was looking forward to coming to chernobyl for years coming here is definitely surreal it's definitely very fulfilling to be like i did it finally it's kind of like a learning experience but it's really sad seeing all the people that were affected and how much loneliness it created it's unlike anything that's ever happened before it's really impactful and you can see from our interviews with these grandmas that it affected a lot of people and changed their lives completely it's just one of those things that you like learn about you realize it really affected a big amount of people can't make that mistake again it's all about living in the moment man that's it once something really bad like that happens you realize what really matters in life and that's all about health and happiness just like she said it's very simple health happiness being with family and doing your duty i think a lot of people out here like really showed up they saw the problem at hand realized that the world was at stake and stepped up to the line and like did what they needed to do but at the end of the day yeah health and happiness that's what it's about yeah man shared experience exactly we don't want to be doing this with anybody else man just remember that of course this is something we've been looking forward to for years dude 100 man six years now we did it we did it we did it man at least she has other people in the village you know i don't know it's really cool yeah she made the decision to live here and if she really really really wanted to leave she would leave she would find everything in her power to leave but obviously she's living a happy enough life that she stays she has her grandson misha come all the time and need visitors yeah it's just really interesting it's like all these other workers are so like scientific about it and like all right let's do this and you get to talk to a real person that just like saw it and had nothing to do with it and kept on it's like these living really did have their whole lives changed from something that wasn't their fault at all living in paradise to that yeah yo this should be a big lesson to a lot of people hopefully everybody watching this will like realize that anything in life can happen and that's why you have to cherish every moment [Music] thank you very much for everything she wants to bring some more food that says [Music] we need that tall this come on [Music] thank you thank you [Music] right now we are in the village of abrikivka which is at the very edge of the exclusion zone but that's the village i'm originally from right here yeah right here i remember perfectly well the garden right behind the house there was a river a little bit further away there was a football peach like community football pitch together like at weekends especially all young guys from nearby it was a short way through the forest how we could get to the school when my father used to work yeah and you see now well that's almost all that's left just one small little structure right there so you just need to appreciate small things that you have in your life because one day you can disappear and it's really yeah you're not sad about it anymore right like i have memories so when i come back here yeah i'm getting sad life could be different yeah like totally different my parents always said that it was like a paradise place to live in they had forests they had river mushrooms berries like everything no internet back in the days you know so people were talking one to another gathering much more often than nowadays so that's what said you see of what it could have been yeah was the last time you were back here two or three years ago really [Music] i know you're really young but you have some pretty vivid memories yeah of the house of the garden that we had right behind of the yard where i played looking around running to my grandmom's place yes eating apples on the way and all the stuff yeah great memories when you're a child yeah you enjoy its adventure for you and parents allow you to to go alone to the grandmom's place it was safe huh yeah absolutely move on and appreciate it while you got it [Music] dang i mean dude things could be so much worse in our lives you know just makes me really grateful for our privileged lives all that heartbreak all that trauma he has to live with that trauma for the rest of his life i think he weathers that very well he's got a very like cool mentality about everything i mean obviously he said like when he's here he's of course sad but he's like it's life like i appreciate the stuff you got know that one day it's gonna be different i think the biggest thing i've learned coming to chernobyl you know sometimes when you want to seek meaning or some answer something that's going to fix it all some idea i think that's a lot of what at least i find myself searching for when asking these people these things you know the babushkas when we asked for their advice or misha when we asked you know like is it hard the answer is it is vladimir said i came back because it was my job you know and and misha says i live on because what else can you do you know and when we said dude i'm sorry your family had to go through this it's like that's life and that's the thing that for me is like so tough about this is there's no meaning it just is yeah that's a really good way of putting it it's isn't it kind of frustrating it's not fair that's what it feels like it's just not fair but but it's like the entire concept of fair and unfair is too small for what it actually is you don't realize what you have until it's gone it's a huge lesson for me personally to like live in the moment and cherish every moment that you have friends your family the place you live all that can change in an instant misha gives tours to people day in day out day in day out showing them the ghost of his city dude that's a strong thing to be able to do if you want to practice living in the moment more i think the best way you can do that is just pay more attention to the small details of life and take it slow and it's like don't do it to tell anyone about it there's a joy just in listening to the way the wind you know shimmers through the trees and i don't have to tell either you guys about it it's just me in the wind you know this is all we got [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] all right guys with that we did it we officially did our whole experience here at chernobyl this has been a sixth year in the making thing we've wanted to come here for so so long and you've always said this was one of your favorite places ever and we did it one of the first things we thought of for 25 by 25 we have to make it out to chernobyl now we were able to see it and tell the story and you know what it was really cool to do it at our age 24 25 because vlad was 24. i got to see chernobyl through his perspective our folks were all right around that age too bro my dad was literally 25 when this happened with that being said i know this is a very very different style of video than we're used to it was really fun to do something different so if you did like it leave a like that's the best way that we know if this gets 300 000 likes what are we gonna do i'm gonna go all the way to japan and visit another nuclear zone exclusion zone make sure to subscribe so you know when we do these videos if you wanna see all the extra stuff that we filmed here at chernobyl make sure to check out explore club and as well check out the new explore merch all right we got some cool stuff that we've been wearing throughout this trip as always check out nate all of his links will be description we'll see you next time with another video adios [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Sam and Colby

Views: 423,153

Rating: 4.9699187 out of 5

Keywords: sam and colby, exploring, abandoned, overnight, treasure hunting, sam&colby, sam & colby, sam golbach, colby brock

Id: VpBrWzfinpk

Length: 127min 10sec (7630 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021