Living 88 Years in a Radioactive Zone

[Music] look i don't like abandoned places they remind me too much of death and tragedy and destruction and for the longest time i didn't want to come to chernobyl that is until i found out that there's people who still live in the chernobyl exclusion zone today and today we're going to meet one of [Music] them is the year 1986 the height of the cold war between the united states of america and the soviet union both giants are ruthlessly competing to become the global leader in nuclear power technology and politics but something is about to go very wrong [Music] it's the middle of the night on april 26 1986 at the chernobyl nuclear plant in the ussr inexperienced workers take over the night shift during a nuclear safety test but due to the reactor's already unstable condition instead of shutting it down the operators accidentally trigger a nuclear chain reaction the reactor explodes spewing nuclear waste onto the whole of the surrounding area including the town of pripyat home to 50 000 nuclear plant workers and their families massive amounts of contaminated nuclear waste make it as far as western europe over 30 people die immediately following the explosions but thousands are exposed to radiation poisoning the area is deemed as contaminated and unsuitable for human life everyone living in the chernobyl exclusion zone is evacuated but some have since returned check this out there used to be roads flowers cars and now just trees [Music] do today this place is completely overgrown there's basically a forest all around me plus some abandoned buildings but of course 35 years ago this was not the case this was a bustling town with workers families kids living here not anymore we're about to go and see a place inside one of these buildings that's possibly like the starkest reminder of the reality that was once here a kindergarten [Music] how does it feel mike a little spooky honestly yeah right over there we were walking through the forest and it looks just like this but it feels a bit different because it's actually asphalt really and so it looks like a forest but it actually used to be a parking lot all right let's go inside oh my god this place is already giving me the grapes and i have barely everyone inside all right let me show you here is the doorway that i came through there's a window here and here are lockers kids lockers that used to you know there used to be things in here you can probably imagine that on an average day on an average tuesday morning the kids living in this area would come in through that door they would enter the hallway they would drop off their stuff in the same locker every day and each kid would have his or her own and then they would continue through here this is where they would learn this is the classroom can you imagine how different it would have been 35 years ago 40 years ago when there was actually life here and now there's only the sound of rain and birds singing in the forest i think that's what makes this place so creepy the memory of the laughter and the singing and now the silence [Music] there was once a kid in this classroom in 1985 just before the disaster that would that would have been learning from this book the strange feeling i mean it feels like i've entered someone else's world oh my god look what i found here in one of the cupboards it's a pair of shoes [Music] this place is huge once you start going down the corridors you realize that they just keep going and going and going i don't know how many kids would come here every day but but i guess it would have been in the hundreds it's massive here is a map of the former soviet union oh grand this is today's russia and here we've got ukraine we are somewhere here right now and this is today's belarus oh freedom again oh honestly i'm a bit relieved that place definitely gave me the creeps not the biggest turn of abandoned places in all honesty it feels overwhelming to visit the town of pripyat with all of its empty apartment blocks and abandoned infrastructure but there's a lot more to the chernobyl exclusion zone than pripyat itself and few people ever talk about this other side that's what i want to show you today there's a lot of people who used to live in this area and in these forests before the chernobyl disaster but of course all of them had to be evacuated after the blast now a lot of them came back to their homes to their lands and they are called self settlers people who decided to settle here by themselves and most of them are actually elderly people who really had nowhere else to go no other home no chance to rebuild any other home many of them have since passed away this is one such home which used to belong to babalia [Music] it's really amazing to see how quickly nature takes over in places like this i mean i would estimate that this house has been abandoned for maybe 10 years maybe a little bit less and it's all just bushes nettles trees grass plants and it will forever stay like this because nobody knew can move into the chernobyl exclusion zone since a lot of the self-settlers who had come back here have since passed away many of their houses are completely you know destroyed rotting they have pretty much crumbled and most of them are barricaded up or you simply cannot go inside but there's one right here that i'd like to check out inside just for a quick minute let's see what's inside is there someone's coats you know they don't look that old houses like this in eastern europe are called hatas i remember my great-grandmother used to live in a pretty similar house and you know hatta's are very simple village homes that consist of one living room plus kitchen and then maybe one bedroom and the toilet is usually outside you know what these houses are disappearing all over eastern europe crumbling rotting falling down maybe our kids will not live to see them we're making one more quick pit stop before heading over to babagana's home and that is the convenience store the magazine that you see behind me we're gonna get some chocolate some sweets just some little bits and pieces to say thank you for hospitality but in the meantime that you're curious about the inside of a convenience store in chernobyl me too let's go inside [Music] is this your second job the igor what should we get for papagaya today some goodies i guess bread of course maybe milk might be sausages butter porridge of course biscuits cigarettes green cigarettes cake vodka you know i was a little bit surprised to find out that there are grocery stores in chernobyl itself that's just not something that i ever thought about but it turns out there's actually a lot of people who live here in this town people who still take care of the nuclear plant even though it has been decommissioned but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done around it and all these people they live here and they shop here this is their place this is just an ordinary grocery store so how many people live in and around chernobyl in the exclusion around the exclusion zone these days permanently around 100 people live just permanently babushka's self-servers but around 4 000 workers stay here during the worksheet right so that is why we have such a big grocery store actually quite a big number 4 000 people who temporarily live here who come here just for work but that's a huge number and i definitely didn't expect so many people would be living here in chernobyl i mean from what i previously knew about this place that's definitely a surprise so now that we've got everything we need we can finally get going and how long is the drive it's around 40 minutes 40 20 minutes a good road 20 minutes very bad road very bad worlds in ukraine means it's very body roads very bad roads so we better get going [Music] so here we are this is babagana's home behind a big fence in the middle of nowhere in the chernobyl exclusion zone this is it wow it's so quiet in here thanks it was quiet in here road signs underneath all this grass there was once three roads this was a crossroad four three four that's crazy all completely overgrown with time you know if i didn't know that i was in the chernobyl exclusion zone i would have thought that this is just a pretty idyllic village somewhere in ukraine look at there's a little vegetable patch there's a beautiful traditional home there's a barn there's wood for the winter just amazing this doesn't feel like chernobyl that you're noble that we know anyway david [Music] she asked me to help you to bring some food for your potato chicken chicken ear for you especially for you chicken ear yes poor pork ear i thought we were getting some very special kind of chicken straight from chernobyl although there here we've got some beautiful eastern european pickles i know these very well from home and these cucumbers come straight from the garden that you see behind us i don't know how to feel about that but pickled by irrigation you see these two little glasses these are shot glasses and you know what shot glasses mean in ukraine oh yeah not only do we have chernobyl cucumbers we also have chernobyl moonshine samogon samogonka [Music] thank you [Music] um which you made four huge barrels or not barrels like a big bottles of wine and twenty hypospheres numbers households desires besides you can try 10 30 am why not [Music] beautiful homemade pickles the best absolutely delicious there's no comparison between store-bought pickles and homemade pickles you know they're made from the garden without yeah there is no taking no for an answer here chick i'll take more this is my third plate of potatoes and pork fat for health right for health that's right to survive the long cold times is so sweet she is constantly telling us to eat more drink more for health oh my gosh we are being spoiled out here if you have two legs you have to have two more shots i definitely do have two legs so cheers oh yeah down the rabbit hole we go oh oh man you're worse than my college roommates this moonshine is actually made from potatoes and sugar and that's pretty much it full fully fully fully homemade right here in chernobyl wow it's really good familia anna alexia washington can you tell us do [Music] [Music] how does she get her food [Music] my [Music] this is which is a local ukrainian moonshine which babagana makes herself this is summer first tastes a little bit like champagne it's a little bit sparkling and quite sweet i came here to meet babagana because i wanted to find out why people came back to chernobyl to live here despite the fact that the radioactive waste posed a real threat and danger to their lives and the lives of their families after having spoken to her i am still not completely sure whether the people who did come back here made the right decision i don't know i guess i can't be the judge of that but what i do know is that babaganya's ties to her family home into her family village are stronger than what most of us can imagine as she said herself this is where she was born baptized and this is where she will die and i don't know if that's something that many of us will understand daraganya really reminds me of my own great grandmothers and honestly i think because of that i kind of get it i understand it because i remember just how self-determined they were and how stubborn they were to be self-sufficient and self-reliant and living on the soil that they called theirs and i think that's quite rare these days and quite beautiful i'm not trying to glamorize this life definitely not all i'm saying is that i think i kind of understand why but pagania still lives [Music]

Channel: Eva zu Beck

Views: 191,249

Keywords: chernobyl, chernobyl travel, chernobyl vlog, chernobyl nuclear disaster, chernobyl indigo traveller, chernobyl bald and bankrupt, nuclear disasters, radioactive waste, people in chernobyl, chernobyl explosion, chernobyl footage, ussr, ukraine, ukraine travel, kiev, kiev travel, urbex ukraine, abandoned places ukraine, prypyat

Id: yDWH_dtxkb8

Length: 21min 53sec (1313 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021