Pripyat the Forgotten City View of Pripyat – Jan Smith 2011 Pripyat Jewel of Soviet Urban Planning At the time of the accident Chernobyl, was about 800 years old and had c.15,000 people. Today it has about 3,000 inhabitants. Down the road, the City of Pripyat was built in 1970 to house the plant workers. …
Read More “Chernobyl 25 Years Revisited – Chapter 6 A City in Numbers”
Pripyat 25 Years After Chernobyl There are discreet spaces in Pripyat where things are hardly touched since they were abandoned. This is a small sample of my most recent work and some of the stories from the buildings I entered.
Disaster Porn in Pripyat Stalker and Call of Duty in Pripyat and Chernobyl I saw first hand, and later heard my guide laugh at how many people actually ask if there are mutant monsters running around Pripyat. Perhaps this is due to the influence of games like Call of Duty and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that take place …
Read More “Chernobyl 25 Years Revisited – Chapter 4 Disaster Porn”
Video Games and Pripyat Computer Games in Pripyat and Chernobyl In the Ukraine, I was surprised at how nobody who was organizing the trips had actually been to Chernobyl. Perhaps this has to do with the high cost of visits in relation to local salaries. What most people were familiar with, and they kept on …
Read More “Chernobyl 25 Years Revisited – Chapter 3 Computer Games and Denial”
Chernobyl Accident – How It Happened Until I traveled to Chernobyl I never questioned the cause of the accident. I imagined some critical component malfunction, and I remember the bad jokes that quoted, “What’s this button for?”. Sadly, the latter is closer to the truth. An article written by Boris Gorbachev in 2003, reviewing causes …
Read More “Chernobyl 25 Years Revisited – Chapter 2 Accidents Happen”