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Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Postcards from Pripyat
It's been almost 30-years since the Chernobyl reactor catastrophe transformed the nearby city of Pripyat, Ukraine into a ghost town. British cinematographer, Danny Cooke, captured what remains of the city with a drone camera:
In spite of the emptiness and ruin, there is hope to be seen in the video. Witness all the green life that has grown about the ghost town, reclaiming the developed land. One could imagine in another fifty years there to be half as much ruin, covered and hidden by twice as much green.
The estimates I've read are that the Chernobyl area will be uninhabitable for up to 20,000 years. Yet wolves and such have remained. I can't imagine there'll be anything left of Pripyat by the time it's safe for habitation (if our species is still around by then.)
Mind you, apparently those wolves have a lot of birth defects and stillbirths. As a friend of mine put it, it turns out radiation is very bad for wildlife--but not as bad for them as people are.
In spite of the emptiness and ruin, there is hope to be seen in the video. Witness all the green life that has grown about the ghost town, reclaiming the developed land. One could imagine in another fifty years there to be half as much ruin, covered and hidden by twice as much green.
ReplyDeleteThe estimates I've read are that the Chernobyl area will be uninhabitable for up to 20,000 years. Yet wolves and such have remained. I can't imagine there'll be anything left of Pripyat by the time it's safe for habitation (if our species is still around by then.)
ReplyDeleteMind you, apparently those wolves have a lot of birth defects and stillbirths. As a friend of mine put it, it turns out radiation is very bad for wildlife--but not as bad for them as people are.
ReplyDelete