This is the most dangerous zone of all, this red zone, right now we are very safe, we are at 0.4 microsiverts. We walk slowly here. I'm going to start to go down.
Look at it
Did you see how long did it take? 5, 7.42, 6.63 And the alarm that really bothers you... [Music] [Music] We've all heard stories about Chernobyl, the place that in 1986 would show the entire planet, with much evidence, how dangerous radiation can be. The most destructive nuclear accident of the history to date has consequences, thousands of lives claimed, genetics of entire families modified, altered ecosystems and a home for tens of thousands snatched.
The negligence combined with lack of knowledge, caused that communities up-and-coming on the economic upswing, become scenes from a horror movie. The risk of contaminating, the radiation not only to its surroundings but to an entire continent became a possibility.
Decades past and the worst has been avoided. Media, books and movies have caused us to form an idea about the actual appearance of Pripiat Chernobil and other communities of the area that was completely evacuated, known as the exclusion zone, which covers an area of about 2,600 square kilometers.
Makes us curious to know what it's really like.
Can you even enter, it is safe to do so? I did some research and the answer is yes, you can get a special permit granted by the authorities in charge of taking care of the area.
You are taken to radiation level tests before, during and after your visit. Of course they make sure you have more than clear that you're coming in under your own risk.
Anything that should happen is entirely your responsibility.
I process my permit, got a couple of local experts to guide me safely in there, and I prepared for one more adventure.
This is my experience.. [Music] Friends, how are you? let's start with this. Today we are going to be exploring the area of Chernobyl's exclusion.
Chernobyl or Chornobyl as it should be said correctly in Ukrainian. This is the most emblematic sign of all. The exclusion zone as such, refers to everything that was evacuated at the time of the nuclear accident, more than 30 years ago. To enter the exclusion zone as such, you have to pass security points, to pass these security points you must always have in your hand your ticket pass. By same way you have to have your permission. It's not like as soon as you arrive you get in. Everything is pretty well controlled. Look, this one here is the permit, it has your name, has your identification number, it has this qr code which is the one that the military police officers scann for, to be monitoring you, it has several rules and specifications.
Between the most important rules is that no you can't smoke, because it could cause something very dangerous.
they also make it very clear that you do not sit on the floor, do not touch the floor, and do not take anything with you, nothing, for the love of God, nothing. This for two reasons, one out of respect because all this is already historical heritage.
Suddenly you can find a newspaper, a very old bottle, that's why you can't take, and also because it might have some radiation which could put you at risk to long term.
Also another instruction that they give you, very, very formal, they repeat it many times, if you get to see a policeman or a military man or a point of security do not take a picture of them, do not record them. I don't know what this is about, I guess because security reasons.
We're going to have always with us this radiation counter. The radiation level that we are going to be employing are micro sieverts per hour.
We can see that at this moment we are at 0.19 microsieverts per hour, this is an extremely low level, really does not represent any risk.
For it to begin to to be a little bit dangerous is from 1.00, but to be really dangerous from 3.0 and on. This thinking you would remain at that site for hours, in fact days. You can be at sites up to seven micro sieverts per hour and nothing is going to happen to you, the thing is that you can't live here, of course, living at this levels of radiation is very dangerous, but you can stay a certain time. Those who are active followers of the channel will remember when we went to Kushima, in Fukushima.
It was a similar situation, that there was a part where we were at 5, at 7, but being there a few minutes, even a few hours, shouldn't represent a health risk. Well, let's go for it.
I'm pretty much excited to be doing this. The truth is that getting here was complicated, is something that means quite a lot for me.
I hope I can document the experience in the best way to be able to share it with all of you. That we can learn to do it with a lot, a lot of respect, also because of quite curiosity. Who is not curious about a place like Chernobyl.
Come on with me, this will surely be super interesting. Lets go for it! [Music] I invite you to tune in to what really means to be here, of course can be a frightening and high adrenaline experience, but in reality it is a shock of emotions knowing that the people who inhabited these lands had to change their lives forever. Perhaps losing someone they loved, or part of their health. That beats any other feeling. When you go through the security checkpoints they have to check what levels of radiation you have in your body.
They use a really interestung level of technology. Look, here's the machine, you put your feet here and then you put your hands here. There it is.
And look. This light mean that I don't have radiation. That's it, this door opens.
There you go! Lets see Fede, you have radiation? That's it, we dont have radiation. We can continue to the next stop. That's the way it is in every checkpoint. Every time you go through a stage, because you are first in green zone, then in yellow zone, then in red zone... you return to yellow. There are checkpoints that check you, and the police also check you. We can't record them but the police, the military, also check the car with gauges, its kind of crazy. I like that it makes you feel like they have it under control. A lot of people when you tell them that you are going to Chernobyl they say that you get return with radiation. You can be very sure that you don't, you did the master test, that thing told you .... which means you have no radiation. Come on, let's keep exploring. As soon as we pass the checkpoint towards the inside of the zone of exclusion, I saw only kilometers and miles of forest full of trees. My guides let me know that the cities have already begun, only that with the passage of time nature has devoured them.
We go in to appreciate this phenomenon in detail. This is impressive! Now we are going into this one here that used to be a clinic, it is crazy! In there we found a stretcher from the delivery room, we found a very old newspaper in which supposedly it was published the truth of what was happening. All the objects are completely real from that time. Look, this was a real store, here what it says in ukraine "продукти", it means "products".
We are here at a very secure level, .11
Really entering these buildings can be something dangerous because they are falling down. The truth is that engineers are not coming, nor the architects are coming, so at any time this could collapse.
Oh boy! it could collapse! There will be no more Luisillo!
This small community is called ..., which I am told is something very ironic because it means "The village behind the forest", and so, well, ironically after all that has happened, actually it is behind the forest.
This is very interesting, check this out. This used to be military equipment, this used to be gas mask filters. And check this out, that is a part of a gas mask.
You can clearly see that , that was the eye part of the gas mask, and these will be the filters. Wow, how interesting to have found this! Hundreds of objects and homes furnishings left behind clearly shows the speed with which people had to leave the city.
The growyh of the ecosystem has also made an impact on me. as a result of human abandonment. In so much chaos I cannot avoid reflecting on the power of the nature and how easily it regenerates itself if we just stop exploiting it.
Maybe that is the final battle on this planet. Who will last longer, the man or the nature?
The exclusion zone is divided by colors, the green section means that it has very low levels of radiation, could even be inhabited by humans. The yellow section has radiation levels that present a long-term risk, and the red zone is completely uninhabitable. This does not mean that nowadays you can't breathe that air for a few minutes, means that you could not really live there today. Decades after the events most of the sites do not represent a health risk if exposure is momentary. Here is something that possibly you don't imagined, we usually think that Chernobyl is a ghost town full of mysteries, that no one dares to go. But the reality is that it is not, hundreds of people are coming in and out every day to work and there are even people who partially inhabit the exclusion zone. Ironically the city of Chernobyl today is the one of the cities who has the lowest radiation levels, and in fact it is inhabited. You should know that the completely phantom zone is called Pripiat.
Chernóbil is a little bit of a city farther away from the plant that had the accident, which makes their levels of radiation so low that it can be inhabited. That myth that all our lives have been telling us about that this is an entirely ghost town that will intoxicate you by just breathing its air for a few seconds, turned out to be a complete fallacy.
Look, for example here a person walks past me, he maybe works here. And the people who lives here, of course they have a supermarket in which they do their shopping.
My guides told me that this is a very interesting, because it is the closest thing that at the present time can be had to a soviet supermarket. That here is all rationed, one brand of each product. Let's go to the supermarket, how interesting this is, the ukrainian beer, the sign of what they sell here. And look, this is where they come for their portions. This is where they come to buy everything. If you want a rake or if you want a cutter, a lighter, razor cream.
Anything you want. The brands look very funny, like from old times. You can buy your shampoo, your soap, and curiously enough, the most varied brand is beer, there's a lot of beer, they even seel it in pastic bottles. 3-liter plastic bottle.
Wow!
Is this plastic? Yes! OMG! But before seven o'clock you can't buy alcohol.
Yes, before 7pm you cant buy alcohol. Its funny, the store is very sovietic, but yes, in beers like 8 brands, variety. In chernobyl there is no coke, here you buy Smart cola.
The alka seltzer...
And look at the calculator the lady uses, that's what she charges you with. We are now entering a nursery. This is a nursery where they used to bring the children while the parents were working at the nuclear plant. Or to be taken care of. Supposedly there are very high levels of radiation here.
We have real dolls from those times.
The all-metal toy trolley, will it have a lot of radiation? Yes, a bit.
We are not really at ground level here. And yes, we are at 1.4.
Yes, a little bit high, 1.5.
Look, 2.8, wow! A very radioactive nursery. And they tell me that right here at this point, are the highest levels of radiation in this building.
We're going to see, well we're at two here 2 3 10
Wow!
11 I cant believe it, 12! The theory is that this roof, has its corner here, in the rains here the water was irrigated, it rained. the wind brought radiation, it fell here and concentrated here.
That's why it has these levels of radiation, just that point there. We are now inside the nursery, toys here.
The children's lockers.
Radiation is fine here This was a classroom. Likewise, if it is a dangerous construction, it could fall on us at any moment.
It is not allowed to be entering the buildings because the roof it's falling down, in fact there's already some pretty big holes. The blackboard, the stuffed animal over there Wow, this is shocking!
A pair of little shoes that remain forgotten.
This kind of details makes you think that people really had to leave without taking much, just what they could fit in a suitcase.
Leaving everything behind. This is a little room where the children could sleep The dolls, and here the level is fine, pretty low point .18 [Music] We are now walking towards the cooling tower of the nuclear power plant, our guide tells us to be very careful not to bring our radiation meter to the areas where this meter is beeping a lot, it is making a lot of noise. this is something that is not I told them when you go into the exclusion they put this on you so that you always carry it with you and in this way when you leave the exclusion zone you will measure and see how much radiation I catch. if I pick up a lot of radiation levels they will most likely have to take you some place and check you out physically because what they don't want is for you to to carry radiation infecting the population with it interesting not like that I don't I had given her the importance in my field cntc is the neck and already and I well good luck we are doing the tests and bending us down and so the guide told me hey don't do that so much your little gadget because in the end they scare you and look you don't go out anymore inside the cooling tower we have this spectacular panorama truth this is massive and the most impressive thing here is the echo that's there let's see if the microphone will can pick it up what it sounds like in real life o [Applause] it's a scary movie this [Applause] hey this is super vip and i hadn't noticed and we were standing around the whole time next to bones I don't know what they are humans are clearly not of what they are as deer and the big surprise are full of radiation look at me just look at me I put here and if they spend almost 4 there is so much radiation we also have a mask of as of gas not so that it does not breathe certainly a helmet would get us to stopped here I honestly believe there is no someone there hello [Music] already in Pripyat at my back is the chernobil nuclear power plant name official nuclear power plant vladimir lenin of chernobil side that me drew my attention is because if the people where the plant is located is called prípiat and the neighboring village is called chernobyl le they put the plant chernobyl it turns out that the people actually did it after so that the workers could live closer to the plant but really the nearest town when it opened and the project was thought to be chernobil we can see here the reactors which are over there are reactor 1 and 2 here 3 and 4 the one that caught fire the one with the accident was reactor number 4 was a total chaos was what infected the cities neighboring cities and it is even said that levels of radiation reached other countries the most curious the craziest thing about all this is that after the fire after the accident a year later were opened and the new neighboring reactors 1 and 2 and 3 continued to operate in fact the 3 was the mere neighbor of the 4 which was the one that exploded the one that blew up and scattered radiation to many sides continued working until the year 2000 go it opened about a year after the accident around '87 about 13 years people were still working working just a few meters from where it was the very nucleus that spread the entire radiation supposedly by the direction of the wind was not dangerous but I don't know I don't quite believe it who knows these people agreed to work there supposedly paid them well but how crazy that after the accident and know what can happen with the nuclear energy work continued until the year 2000 very interesting just out of curiosity let's see how we are right now in 72 and if we paste it here it gives me curious how far we are going to go no look at everything well is that if it is well interesting how radiation works that the wind carries it to one side and here where in theory we are very close we are calculating 200 meters from the plant 700 as 700 meters from the plant we have to be and there is not so much radiation as in other places it blows my mind let's talk about life at chernobyl please look how many fish there are here one cookie for you has meditated is impressive are very very very very many these fishes of course I don't know they can eat that's a pimple no my little friend there are people who tell us that they come to fishing here but only for fun go recreationally you fish and then release them why eat one of these because it's the same and it's not mortal the same or it may be once two times but that's as far as and why take the risk is nothing our fish in water that is literally two hundred and three hundred meters from the plant that exploded [Music] It has been a day of learning, but above all a day of thinking.
This kind of destinations have a special magic that makes you find light in the midst of so much darkness, unlike what we read on the internet and see on television that constantly communicates sadness, negativity and melancholy about places like Chernobyl, walking and breathing them makes you see them in a completely different perspective.
It allows you to deal with people to whom it really means something.
Filled with hope to see their home reborn through memories. Fascinated to see someone take an interest in seeing for themselves what once was and may never be again. Hearing stories of struggle and frustration from one's own hand will always beat watching any series or movie. Empathizing and understanding the past knowing that it will be overcome is what creates hope, and the desire to continue moving forward with a collective effort. [Music] Dedicated to all those who have been forced to leave their homes. Chernobyl, part 1 I invite you to watch the next part of this documentary, where we go into the intrails of Pripiat, the city that was most affected by radiation in the accident. Link to the second part below in the description [Music]
