- Attention, attention ! - Attention, attention ! - Dear comrades - The Council of Deputies - Informs you that following an accident - At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant - In the city of Prypiat - It is necessary - To temporarily evacuate the inhabitants of the city - To the evacuation areas of the suburbs of Kiev - Please stay calm, organized and follow orders during this temporary evacuation. In the most radioactive areas of Chernobyl Ukraine Chernobyl's exclusion area. Here, 33 years ago, the most important nuclear disaster of history happened. After the explosion of the 4th reactor of Chernobyl nuclear powerplant Tons of radioactive matter Escaped in the air 36 hours after the accident. The city of Prypiat and its 50 000 inhabitants were evacuated. Between the Cold War, soviet propaganda and the nuclear disaster François, Florian and Julien have 4 days to uncover Chernobyl's mysteries. So now we're in the city center Prypiat, the ghost town - Day 1 Hello everyone and welcome to a new night exploration At the moment, I'm in the ghost town of Prypiat A few kilometers away from the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant Where, 33 years ago, the most important nuclear disaster in the history of mankind happened I'm going through an artery surrounded by buildings. 33 years ago, the 50 000 inhabitants of Prypiat lived here. Today, it's one of the largest ghost towns in the world During 4 days, we'll be able to go into all of these, explore the buildings and most importantly, to go into secret and forbidden places of Prypiat and Chernobyl. Places which few have explored until this day Look at the height of this building. Gigantic ! 0.45 in average. For now, the radioactivity levels are barely above the average That we could encounter in France or in Belgium That's it, we're in the first building of Prypiat.There are numerous appartments We're used to exploring abandoned buildings, rooms that were completely dilapidated and worn out But here, it has a special meaning because we're at Chernobyl We really have to imagine that there were hundreds, thousands of family living here. And we're in their former appartments Before the disaster happened. It smells like mold here ! This building looks like it's in a slightly better state than the others There are many windows that are not yet broke. Look ! We even have newspapers written in cyrillic. We can really see that these were still during the time of the USSR Look at the flags Some type of military propaganda Look, there's a living room here More books A book, a moldy one. Look, my friends, we still can find some remnants A vest with the soviet union's symbols We really have relics from the past everywhere around us That's really impressing ! A new discovery, my friends : a piano which still has its keys Look ! It's snowing outside ! We have the whole town in front of us ! Look at all these buildings ! Which are surrounding us We have tens of them aound us And to imagine that all of this is abandoned That would take weeks of months to explore every appartment Yep, old books ! Well, friends, we're in one of the many appartments of this building. We can find a lot of things. Here's a newspaper from 1984 2 years before the Chernobyl disaster There are a lot of objects lying around Boots, tools, cans of food The time really has stopped here It feels weird to walk around here To imagine that, everything was abandoned, overnight so friends, we keep on exploring Pripyat, we are going to see a lot of buildings Here, there is the whole school part, with the kindergarden, the old high school, the swimmingpool We're arriving at the kindergarden apparently the dose is a little higher than earlier you have to know that Chernobyl was evacuated overnight and there are things that have remained there, on the ground, for almost 30 years and which have gone though the radioactive rains Metal as here makes the radioactivity rise. Here we are a little more than 2.5 times the average. For now, everything is okay! We have photographs of the kindergarden and here a gas mask or what used to be one That's really the symbol of the whole Chernobyl disaster That's the life before it happened with the young and carefree children and tragedy of the nuclear disaster First gas mask that we found a Soviet gas mask here, in the kindergarden Friends, we have just found a gas mask for the children in case of a nuclear war, actually It wasn't linked with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at all, but with the Cold War the world and the USSR was going through We're here, next to a nuclear powerplant, it was an area at risk : they were afraid of being bombarded by the Americans That's why the kindergarden was equiped with gas masks to protect the children in case of a nuclear war We're really feeling the context of the Cold War which is materialized by these physical pieces of evidence It wasn't of fiction at all, it was the reality They were considering a total war, a nuclear war between the two sides of the world. We're thinking about the Chernobyl disaster when we're looking at them But they have no link whatsoever Apparently, Julien found a place which is a little more radioactive than average It's just gone a little down. It's at 3.2 3,2 Microsv/hour
10 times the average radioactivity I don't know why, there's a specific place here where there's way more radioactivity I was speeking about a nuclear war a few moments ago Look ! Here, we have the instructions with drawings on how to use the gas masks during a nuclear attack We really have the instructions plastered at the school's center It really was at the heart of the concerns of the USSR to inform the pupils everywhere about what to do in case of nuclear bombings That's incredible ! Today, in our schools, we have : what to do in case of a fire, evacuation plans and they knew how to go into an anti-nuclear bunker how to put on a gas masks to survive a nuclear attack. We don't realise that it was barely 30 years ago. We are really looking into the past here. Friends, you must have figured that we're in a classroom In one of the many classrooms of that school There were several schools in Prypiat We're in what I think is an elementary school Seing how small the benches are. I think it was an elementary school. We've looked through the school books we can feel the Soviet propaganda in each book We're told about the success and the greatness of the Soviet union We're really feeling the weight of the Cold War on the inhabitants of this town That's really striking, aside from the fact that, of course, this school is abandoned, and a large part of the element still remains here. A second aside here : we're in the middle of the neighborhood in the middle of the road It's been 3 years on this channel of exploring abandoned historic places, going into buildings, going back in time in the course of these explorations And to explore Chernobyl and Prypiat it's a little like the culmination of these 3 years We've been preparing this excavation for months and months It's taken us a lot of preparation and a lot of work and we're really happy to be here To finally be able to see it with our own eyes In the life of an explorator, I think, that he has to go there And we're lucky enough to be able to explore every buildings and wander about I just wanted to say that it's a kind of culmination for us and we're so happy to be able to share that with you. It's the video to celebrate our 1 million of subscribers Thank you for still being as faithful and for following us on the channel If you're not subscribed to the channel, don't hesitate ! We're going to keep on doing crazy explorations around the world, there are others planned ! Prypiat
In the highest building of the city I'm feeling as if I were in a zombie movie where everything is abandoned Going through these long corridors and not knowing what I'm going to bump into We're going into appartment number 22 That's really striking ! Friends, that's it ! We're at the top of one of the highest building of this town ! There, we can have a incredible view of Prypiat. That's crazy ! That's really out of this world ! Wow, oh my god ! The whole city and in the backgound : the 4th reactor and its enormous shelter. That really is incredible ! - It's crazy ! [Statement from an inhabitant] : Prypiat, the 26th of April 1986 I'm seeing everything with my own eyes again : A raspberry-colored, flamboyant light, The reactor seemed to be illuminated from the inside It wasn't an ordinary fire, but a luminescence It was ... very beautiful ! I've never seen anything like it ! Even at the movies. At night, everyone came at their balcony The ones who didn't have one, came to their neighbors' We took the children into our arms to tell them : "Look at that ! Some memories for you !" They were standing there, in the black dust They were talking, they were admiring, They were breathing. Some cycled or drove tens of kilometers to see it. Nobody knew, that death could be so beautiful... Friends, we're at the top of the highest building of Prypiat, the abandoned town and behind me : the shelter of the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant The incident of the 4th reactor, is probably the most serious nuclear disaster of mankind Everything happened on April, 26th 1986 The powerplant's engineers have to perform a test on this reactor to prove that it could restart, even in case of a global power failure It was 1:23 am, when the technicians decided to start the test but due to many human mistakes they decided, a few seconds after, to activate the emergency stop at the powerplant But it's too late, the reaction got out of control At 1:23.44 am, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant. The concrete pad above the 4th reactor was litterally lifted in the air It weighs more than 2000 tons. It fell back, causing fires and during that time, in the town behind me, everyone is sleeping, peacefuly The next morning, the town wakes up like nothing happened, the children go to school, people go to work and the authorities stay absolutely silent about the fire that happened in the 4th reactor It took nearly 30 hours for the military to end up deciding to evacuate the population, saying that they'll be back in 2 or 3 days, while it's been 33 years and the town is still deserted At the start, the Soviet authorities remained extremely silent regarding this incident, maybe because they didn't know the magnitude of the damages caused by this explosion. It took several days for the radioactive cloud caused by the fire in Chernobyl to be percieved by the international community It's in Sweden that the anormal levels of radioactivity were first detected Then in Norway and in Demark. Everything pointed to the USSR More than 3 days after the disaster, the authorities were forced to admit : Mistakes were made, there was a fire inside the powerplant Now is the time for decontamination That means that it was urgent to drop tons and tons and tons of lead, boron and sand in the hole, to close it and to countain the radiations. That's what we call the first shelter. To build this shelter, liquidators were needed They are workers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus ... sometimes coming with paltry protections against the radiation levels to recover the debris, to throw bags of sand in the holes These liquidators experience in a few seconds the equivalent of a few years of radioactivity It's an extremely hard work In the USSR, they're celebrated as heroes And then, after several months of intensive work, of drops and drops by helicopter The first shelter is sealed above the 4th reactor The shelter behind me was built in 2016 and should countain the radioactivity for over a 100 years but, at the heart of what is left of the 4th reactor, the nuclear reaction will go on for thousands of years Well, friends, the night has fallen, it's 7pm and we're still in the exclusion area of Chernobyl in radius of the forbidden 30 km surrounding the powerplant There are still people who live, work [here] even if it's that's an exclusion area That's where we'll spend the 4 days and nights Tonight we'll go eat here, at the hotel It's weird to know that we're in an off-limits exclusion area but there's still people living here and who own restaurants and hotels Welcome to our's ! There you go, here's a overview of the Soviet style ! The Cold War - Day 2 Friends, what stroke me when I arrived at Chernobyl and when I visited the abandoned town is that we're feeling the presence of the Cold War here in the USSR and I think that there's no better symbol than the Duga radar antenna to represent the Cold War This antenna was built in the 1980's Its goal : to pick up missile launches from several thousands of km away Let me remind you, the Eastern and Western blocs faced off and if the Americans were to bomb the USSR this antenna would pinpoint the attack only 2-3 minutes after the missile was launched It's a gigantic construction : 150 m of height. and the two antennas together are 700 m long By the way, we can hear the wind going through the structure and friends, I have an anecdote : Duga's construction here at Chernobyl cost more than the construction of the nuclear powerplant We're entering the antenna's control room That's where everything operated, so that's really a top secret HQ This way ! - Yes Beware the holes Wow, there's ice ! The ground is frozen Here, we're in the transformer room which supplied power to the antennas There are raws and raws of tranformers everywhere It's gigantic ! That's so crazy ! Let's go ! It's the alarm : 21 We can very easily find the hotspot with some particles of the reactor You can easily find it here 200, almost ! Ok, let's go ! - We've just stopped for a fews moments in the Ginger forest it's an extremely radioactive place It's normally forbidden to stop here This forest was contaminated right after the disaster and which died because of the radiations In fact, the liquidators have taken down every tree of this gigantic forest and they have buried them in trenches all around That's why there are enormouse doses of radioactivity That's really one of the most radioactive places in the world We've just had values which are 450 higher than the normal level So, we're spending barely 2 minutes here, we're going back in the car and we're out of here right now Friends, We're at the Prypiat supermarket Look : here are the different shelves We're right next to what they call the ministry of interior affairs, but really the police station of Prypiat That was a kind of office, sometimes interrogation rooms To interrogate people - Yes It's the end of the day, we're in an abandoned part of Prypiat which looks like it has been way less explored And apparently, we've got intact boxes of gas masks which haven't been touched since 1986 Wow These are the cartridges you put on the edge of a gas mask Oh, but there are so many of these ! Apparently, some boxes have not yet been opened It's an extremely rare thing, friends. We've got a box here full of gas masks. They are intact and what's extremely rare here at Chernobyl Look at these ! It's all new, that's never been used ! It's never been touched Every mask is stored here It smells like new ! How many masks are in one box ? - I think 50 ! You really have to imagine The town has been abandoned for 33 years, a lot of people came to explore it It's been decontaminated So this kind of discoveries is extremely rare Night exploration The night has completely fallen here at Chernobyl We're in the middle of a night exploration of the ghost town There are a lot of abandoned houses around us Tonight, we're exploring Chernobyl and its thousands of abandoned houses at night The atmosphere has completely changed. It was already weird and a bit creepy during the day and that's completely the case here What's quite incredible is that we went in some houses, small ones abandoned a very long time ago We're seeing a lot of postcards from the early 1980's Of course, before the nuclear disaster There are shoes, ... bottles It looks like medicine, a remedy Entering in these houses like that, finding objects those people owned before they were forced to flee their houses in the space of a few hours to survive That's really sad We're into a new house Apparently, these people were much richer We can see that the house is more spacious has a higher ceiling, with pretty tapestries I've just found pretty interesting documents in this room : tens of newspapers, daily ones which are entangled and stored here I've noticed that they all date back to 1986 The year of the Chernobyl disaster If I'm being perceptive enough, these date back to February or March That's really striking because these newspapers really enable us to see That people lived here until the last day and that their lives were turned upside down in the span of 48 hours They had to leave their whole life behind, in fact, their house, their belongings and flee the area, excorted by the army I really think it's crazy to find these newspapers dating back to a few weeks before the Chernobyl disaster Look at this house, completely buried into the vegetation In every case, I can tell you that's one of the most scary night explorations I've done Even if I'm not alone Well, I don't know, the atmosphere really weighs down on us It's very sinister I don't know if that's because of the Chernobyl disaster knowing that people left it behind overnight and there are hundreds of houses like these But I must admit : that's ... that's frightening Look at all these abandoned houses .. 1 .... 2 .... 3 Damn, it's ... so scary ! Wow, it's depressing Damn ! I'm really freaking out, right now ! Wow, look at that ! This dude's photograph ! I lost the group. I don't know where they are I'm all alone in these houses and I'm really scared I swear I haven't felt these sensations for a long time Your attention ! Your attention ! Your attention ! Your attention ! Your attention ! Your attention ! The forbidden exploration : the 5th reactor, Chernobyl nuclear powerplant - Day 3 Today, we're exploring the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant Especially, the 5th reactor and its cooling tower As you can see its construction was stopped during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster We're a few hundreds of m away from the 4th reactor, where the nuclear disaster took place 33 years ago Therefore, we really have to be careful with the radiation doses to which we're going to be exposed Damn !! It's ok, the radioactive levels here are quite low. The real deal is about to start Here's the 5th reactor the 4th reactor's twin the one which exploded in 1986 We're unbelievably lucky to be going in and to visit the reactor's core As this building was 60-70% finished at the time of the disaster we'll have a great idea of what the building where the explosion occured looks like That's an exceptional moment of our visit and we'll be able to spend a few hours there, to explore every corner Here is the reactor room It's the reactor room ! It's here that the reactor should have been located, yeah ? We've got the structure that was built It's, well, the first time that I'm at the heart of a nuclear powerplant We're taking this time to tell you a story less known than the Chernobyl nuclear disaster but which could have resulted in a gigantic explosion, that could have been way more serious In fact, it's useful to know that, when the 4th reactor went into meltdown it created magma, which went on burning ... and this magma was on the verge of piercing through the concrete pad under the 4th reactor And, in fact, during the hours following the disaster the army's and Soviet authorities' priority was to prevent this second explosion from happening because it would have been equivalent to an explosion of 3-5 megatonne that means 100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb That would have made a gigantic explosion that would have detroyed the whole surrounding area and that would have freed an even more important quantity of radiation We had a problem because the powerplant's basement was flooded, and they sent people in extremely dangerous missions they had water up to their knees, highly radioactive water and they had to open the valves to free the water therefore, if the magma were to touch the water, there wouldn't have been a collossal steam explosion And finally, underground, to prevent the groundwaters from being contaminated they had imagined a cooling system using liquid nitrogen They sent miners, hundreds and hundreds of them, from Ukraine, Russia, Siberia ... to dig huge gaps under the powerplant in absolutely atrocious conditions : more than 50°C, deadly radiations, they were bare shirtless, they were wearing dust masks which they had to remove very quickly, because of the heat and humidity They eventually managed to dig these tunnels which they filled with concrete to create an additional pad, to countain the radioactive magma A few years ago, Gorbatchev himself admitted in a documentary that this second explosion was the first priority, here at Chernobyl and, friends, we really came close to the cataclysm Be careful ! - Yes ! Ok, so this is safe, right ? Yeah Now, we can see the 4th reactor's shelter in place over the old one, which collapsed with the time Friends, we're looking for a high point with Harek to make overviews with Florian, down the reactor We're going through bridges, I can't stress how poor their state is, nothing is finished, everything is dilapidated, there are holes everywhere 27 m above the gound level Be careful ! - Yes ! Well, no need to tell you, that you shouldn't do this alone, we're with Harek who's a guide who knows Chernobyl and its exclusion area like the back of his hand - It's too risky to go. We shouldn't be there, yeah ? - Yes ! - We can go this way, or this way. But I'm not sure how good these metal plates are. It's too risky to go ! - Oh ! - Be careful ! If you're brave enough, you can go there I like this small passage, on the beam Above 30 m of emptiness There, you see ? There's the stair, and then there's a balcony I've never been here First time seeing the reactor, from such a high position Yes, well, we're going in the hospital's basement on Friday where the firefighters, who went to extinguish the fire at the powerplant, were taken care of They were treated in this hospital, some are dead They left clothes in bulk in the basement People say it's the most radioactive place of Chernobyl, beside the powerplant and the reactor You have to know, there's a natural terrestrial radiation we're all exposed to radiation In Belgium, the average radiation level is close to 4 milisieverts a year So here, you were telling me that this basement is up to 2 milisieverts an hour, right ? - Yes, that's right. - Of course, that's higher than normally But it's still quite low There's no reckless risks of cancer if you limit the time you're spending there Ok guys We're going to the most radioactive place of the entire exclusion zone So we have to prepare because it's very dangerous and contaminated there's one rule : don't touch anything and just follow me you have to be there only 5 minutes, maximum ! We're in front of the "Jupiter factory", one of the most radioactive places of the exclusion area In fact, it's a former VCR factory secretly used as a military factory In its basement : boxes full of radioactive matter, directly from the Chernobyl powerplant We don't really know why they're there, probably because they were used for experiments in the laboratory We're going in this same basement You're ready ?This is the entrance to the most radioactive place on the whole entire exclusion zone We're here, friends, let's go ! You can there's ice ! For now, we're far from the boxes We've got very normal radioactivity levels We're walking on ice ! I'm seeing things ! We're seeing the metal door, used to separate the radioactive matter from the rest of the factory Wow Wow ! There are holes, friends ! There are even gas masks ! Well, friends, that's complicated ! The entire basement is flooded It's so cold that there are ice patches That's really dangerous ! We have to be careful ! We can't fall on the ground Or else we'll be contaminated with radioactive matter ! We're going towards the laboratory Where the boxes are, with sand, from the 4th reactor apparently We don't really know why they were storing this here We're in a room in the laboratory where every chemicals they used are still here to treat magnetic tapes or else We have to be careful because, of course, there is rusty metal everywhere and we're in drysuits So we can't in any case, tear our dysuits Or else, we'll risk contamination We're leaving the chemicals, to try to find the most contaminated room We're happy that we brought our boots !! I'll tell you that ! This is a graphite bloc from the reactor ! Uranium straws go inside this - Huh ?This is from reactor 4 ? This is not contaminated, this is safe It must be a sample they never used That's time, we're going into the most radioactive room We'll be able to stay there only for a few seconds The boxes are at the end of the room So if you reach that point you can stay there for only 3 minutes We can hear the device going crazy Ok, so these are radioactive substances Ok, so now friends, we're exposed to a radioactivity more than 500 times higher than the normal average We can stay there for only 3 minutes ! Oh s*** ! He's going in with his hands This sand probably comes from the 4th reactor of the Chernobyl powerplant.It's highly radioactive Friends, we're in front of the last building we're exploring in Chernobyl This is hospital number 126, sadly known, as it's where the first firefighters sent who went to extinguish the fire at the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant They didn't have any protection clothes against radiation Or respiratory systems Or even a dosimeter They were exposed the such a high radiation dose, that they began throwing up right away, being nauseous.They were urgently transported to this hospital Most of these firefighters died a few days, at hospital 6 in Moscow Some were exposed to such a high dosage of radiation that they had a black skin These were real heroes, who sacrificed themselves to save the population Why are we here, equiped with these ? Just because, in the basements of this hospital, are some of these firefighters' clothes In fact, the clothes were so radioactive, that the authorities didn't know what to do with them They simply threw them in the basement Historically, that's a very important place, because it's, in some way, the last remnants of these heroes who sacrificed themselves to save the population of Pripyat and to extinguish the fire at Chernobyl We have to be really careful and watch our steps Because, unlike outside, where the radioactive particules that fell, were covered by the time, earth and dirt Here, in the hospital's basement, the radioactive particules are still on the ground That way That's it, friends, we're inside the hospital Where the firefighters who sacrificed themselves to extinguish the fire at Chernobyl were taken care of We're going to the room, where their clothes were thrown. They're still very radioactive today We're going to get close and you'll see that the closer we get, the crazier the dosimeter will go 11, we're at more than 20 .. 30 times the normal radioactivity levels Here, we're at more than 500 times the normal radioactivity levels On the sole of this boot the firefighter who fought the fire wore Don't touch ! Ok, so if you want to go inside You can, 1 or 2 minutes The firefighters's clothes are in front of us Explosion ... In the main building, between the 3rd and the 4th reactors Are there people ? Yes ! Call the commandants ! Everyone ! Everyone ! Every officers, every one of them Leonid Alekseevich ? -Yes Go to the nuclear powerplant, the roof of the 3rd and 4th reactors is on fire 1 milisievert ! More than 2000 times the normal levels of radioactivity next to these firefighters' clothes You're crazy for going in there, friends ! It's been way more than a minute ! You have to get out ! They're crazy !! My heart is pounding ! It's really impressive ! The firefighters' clothes, at the heart of the disaster at the heart of the reactor 4's fire Pripyat this town where the time stopped where life came to a standstill, where the nature has already begun taking back its territory Pripyat the town of every oxymorons a symbol of a disaster which marked the 20th century's history a symbol of an empire's fall How many decades, centuries or milleniums will it take for the disaster's marks to disapear ? How many shelters will we need to pile up, just like old Russian dolls, to envelop the gutted reactor of its iron wall ? Chernobyl a territory of every sacrifices a patry for its hidden heroes who gave their lives to save the people Chernobyl a kingdom for the invisible evil an hostile territory where 600 000 liquidators went to fight, and sometimes never returned 600 000 Firefighters, Military, Miners, Scientists or Ordinary civilians History will not remember any names out of these 600 000 men but history will remember 600 000 braveries, and 600 000 sacrifices
English subtitles please!!!!