Pripyat

Today, I decided to visit an unusual place. So, I picked Pripyat.

Pripyat is an abandoned city in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in northern Ukraine. It was founded in 1970 to house workers at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and their families. It was officially proclaimed a city in 1979. Unfortunately in 1986, when Pripyat was the Soviet Union’s ninth nuclear city with a population of about 50,000, it was abandoned in two days due to the Chernobyl disaster.

From the Wikimedia Commons

Before the disaster, Pripyat housed about 50,000 people in 13,414 apartments and 26 residence halls. It had 15 primary schools, 5 secondary schools and 1 professional school. It also had 25 stores and malls; 27 cafeterias and restaurants; 10 gymnasiums; a cultural palace; a cinema hall and a school of arts. Because of the haste in which the city was abandoned, visitors to the ghost town can still find objects like kitchen utensils, toys and clothes left exactly where their owners had been using them or put them down.

From the Wikimedia Commons

Google Maps pulled up satellite images of Pripyat, showing it plainly in its sad, abandoned state.

It even had a few “Street View” photographs shared by people on the Internet.

Fotopedia had photographs of Pripyat among the ones on its page for the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Flickr pulled up a slideshow of photographs of Pripyat shared on its network.

Wikipedia was a good source of information on Pripyat.

Earlier this year, a horror movie titled Chernobyl Diaries hit theaters. The movie was partly filmed at Pripyat. While I personally feel it didn’t live up to its potential, it was fascinating to see the locations they filmed at in Pripyat. Here is the trailer (trailer rated for “Appropriate Audiences”):

What I find fascinating about Pripyat is that it is an entire, modern city that is completely abandoned. Buildings, playgrounds and facilities fall to ruin, perhaps showing us a glimpse into what a post-apocalyptic world would look like.