We're so swept up in the idea of big blockbuster post-apocalyptic stories like The Hunger Games and Divergent that it is easy to forget that massive disasters caused by humanity have already happened. Although it isn't talked about that often, the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine occurred nearly thirty years ago. The 20 mile-wide radius around the area is still so filled with radiation that it is uninhabitable. Recently, 60 Minutes sent a team out with a drone to capture images of the post-disaster city of Chernobyl—and the results are creepy and fantastic.
The footage is haunting: abandoned carnival rides, empty cars, and buildings that are barely standing on their foundation. The floor of one building is littered with pages of ripped apart books; another floor is covered in a sea of gas masks. The 1986 incident in Chernobyl is known as the worst nuclear disaster in history—it took more than a half-million workers to put out its massive fire, clear the debris, and evacuate residents. And although it happened nearly thirty years ago, the work to make the area safe is still ongoing. The video captured by the drone shows just how dangerous the city still is, filled with poison from the radiation and hardened pools of nuclear fuel.
In the area dubbed the Zone, in order to stop the leaking of more hazardous materials, workers are constructing an arch so enormous that it will shadow the Statue of Liberty, to cover the nuclear reactor where the explosion occurred. For the safety of the workers, the construction has to take place a thousand feet away, and at completion they will have to painstakingly slide it into place, making it the largest movable structure on Earth.
Only using the drone can we have true insight of the eerie remains of the abandoned city, and the arch that workers have been struggling to build for years:
Image: Vimeo
