Virtual walks about Chernobyl give the user the opportunity to assess the scale of a long-standing tragedy, see everything in detail and see what is happening now in a place that is infamous to the whole world.

Catastrophe of the 20th century

This event, which took place on April 26, 1986 in the city of Chernobyl, Kyiv region, is still remembered by mankind. It entailed global changes in the global ecology. Now Chernobyl and Pripyat are called cities without a settlement, but there are still residents here. These are employees of enterprises serving the Exclusion Zone, as well as self-settlers.

Despite the spoiled ecology, some returned to empty houses. Basically, these are elderly people who found it difficult to change their lives.

Features of the virtual walk

Employees of such well-known Internet resources as Yandex and Google made an excursion to the Exclusion Zone and prepared a report. Thanks to him, each user of the network can go on a virtual tour of the places of a man-made disaster. Participants will see all objects of the closed territory. Here is their list:

• The city of Chernobyl and the stele "Chernobyl region",
• Exclusion Zone,
• The village of Kopachi
• Zalesye village,
• Sarcophagus.

Participants of the virtual tour of Chernobyl can walk along the interactive streets, see abandoned houses, kindergartens, and an amusement park. The thought that life was in full swing here thirty years ago evokes a poignant feeling.

Now individual excursions are organized to Chernobyl, but they are expensive. A virtual walk is an opportunity to touch the history and see the place of the world tragedy with your own eyes.

Panoramas of Chernobyl on Yandex Maps

For a long time, Yandex advertised their panoramas, but accessing them required installing their web browser, which turned many users off. Not so long ago, these panoramas became available to everyone without any "additional conditions". Chernobyl is a small city, but still not all views are interesting there. We tried to select the most notable ones.

The first panorama is a panorama of Chernobyl. Recall that Chernobyl and Pripyat are not the same thing.

The city is uninhabited, because it is captured by the forces of nature.

Central square of the city.

Virtual walks around Chernobyl is an opportunity to touch the mystery that you have heard about from films, programs and computer games. The Exclusion Zone, Pripyat, the legendary Polesye Hotel, Energetik Palace of Culture, a dilapidated kindergarten and abandoned residential buildings - you can see all this without leaving your home. Virtual walks in the Chernobyl zone - this is a safe way to see the abandoned places with your own eyes, called the most unusual and extreme location in the world.

Why is it worth looking at the virtual Chernobyl?

Of course, a trip to these unusual places is the best way to have an original pastime. But if you can’t go on such a trip yet, an online walk through Chernobyl will be a great alternative.

The catastrophe in nuclear energy and the inexorable time left a deep imprint on this area. Here you can see abandoned dolls mutilated over the years, dilapidated houses, abandoned personal belongings, the “remains” of once one of the most promising cities in Ukraine. Virtual walk through the Chernobyl zone will give you the opportunity to see all the consequences of the disaster with your own eyes.

This area has long been overgrown with myths and legends. What is behind the barbed wire today? Are all those stories that we heard in childhood, and even in adulthood, true? For a long period of time, this area was under lock and key. But today you can visit it even online.

Ghostly Pripyat

Virtual walks in Pripyat- a great chance to see the abandoned dead city with your own eyes. If in Chernobyl you can meet lonely residents and some station workers, then there is no one in Pripyat. Here, the emptiness and abandoned houses evoke the spirit of real horror.

This is a real city from the past. Time here stood still on a sad date known to all of us. After her, the world became different. Pripyat is the youngest city in what was then Ukraine. It was he who took the brunt after the disaster. Today it is one big, and too realistic, frame from a horror movie. In Pripyat you can see:

• dilapidated houses;
• a medical unit with broken windows, peeling walls and abandoned medicines on the floor;
• school with scattered toys, textbooks and notebooks;
• an amusement park with carousels and attractions that frighten with their appearance alone.

By the way, it was the Ferris wheel, which never made a single turn, that became a kind of symbol of the dead city. Here you can see wild animals that settled the city instead of people who left. The ghost town is overgrown with greenery, trees and bushes.

Walks around Chernobyl and Pripyat online amaze the imagination no less than real travel. Once beautiful avenues and streets have turned into thickets, and in abandoned houses only winds walk here. This industrial city leaves a lasting impression at first sight.

Virtual tour of Chernobyl- this is your chance to spend time in an unusual and original way, without leaving your home.

Chernobyl (Ukrainian Chornobyl, derived from the plant "Chernobyl", wormwood) - the city of Ivankovsky district of the Kyiv region of Ukraine. Chernobyl is located on the Pripyat River, not far from its confluence with the Kiev reservoir. Notorious for the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Before the accident, about 13 thousand people lived in the city. According to the All-Ukrainian census of 2001, Chernobyl (like Pripyat) is classified as a city "without a population". Currently, only employees of institutions and enterprises of the Exclusion Zone and Unconditional Guaranteed Resettlement of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, working on a rotational basis, and self-settlers live in the city. Distance to Kyiv in a straight line - 83 km, by road - 115 km. Located 18 km southeast of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The first mention of Chernobyl refers to the events of 1193. Listed in the chronicle "List of Russian cities near and far" (end of the XIV century). In the middle of the 15th century, when these lands were controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a castle was built next to Chernobyl, separated from the settlement by a deep moat that has survived to this day. At the beginning of the 16th century, the castle was reconstructed, turned into a well-fortified and hard-to-reach fortress, and the city of Chernobyl became the county center. In 1793 he became part of the Russian Empire. In 1898, the population of Chernobyl was 10,800 people, of which 7,200 were Jews. Jews were resettled in Chernobyl by Filon Kmita as part of the Polish colonization. After joining the Kingdom of Poland in 1596, the traditional Orthodox peasantry was forced to convert to Catholicism. Orthodoxy was restored only after the conquest by the Russian kingdom. In the second half of the 18th century, Chernobyl became one of the main centers of Hasidism. The Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty was formed by Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Tver. The Jewish population suffered greatly from the pogroms in October 1905 and March-April 1919, when many Jews were robbed and killed by the Black Hundreds. In 1920, the Tversky dynasty left the city and Chernobyl ceased to be an important center of Hasidism. During the First World War it was occupied, then it was the site of battles in the Civil War. During the Soviet-Polish war, it was first occupied by the Polish army, and then repulsed by the Red Army cavalry. In 1921 it was included in the Ukrainian SSR. The Polish community of Chernobyl was deported to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936. The small Jewish community that remained in the city after 1919 was completely destroyed during the Reichskommissariat Ukraine 1941-1944. Liberation Day - November 17, 1943. In the 1970s, the first nuclear power plant in Ukraine was built 10 km from Chernobyl. In 1985, the over-the-horizon radar "Duga" was put into operation - the object "Chernobyl-2". On April 26, 1986, an accident occurred at the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which became the largest disaster in the history of nuclear energy. All residents of the city were then evacuated, but some subsequently ...

Everyone knows about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986. This terrible explosion crippled thousands of destinies. Someone died immediately, and someone only after a while, suffering from radiation.

More than 30 years have passed, and people are still interested in the nuclear power plant tragedy.

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The following victims are known:

• 2 people died during the disaster;
• 31 people died in the next few months;
• 134 suffered from radiation sickness;
• more than 60,000 people received high doses of radioactive exposure.

Virtual walk through the exclusion zone

Despite the fact that the Chernobyl accident occurred more than 30 years ago, people are still interested in this city. Travel offers to Pripyat are becoming more and more popular: excursions around Chernobyl are being organized, agencies are being created that offer not quite ordinary tourist services. People are rushing to the exclusion zone with all their might, not paying attention to the consequences of this event.

Thankfully, technology doesn't stand still. If you can’t come to the site of the Chernobyl accident, then you can travel virtually. You can see the panoramas of Pripyat without exposing yourself to dangerous radioactive radiation. Perhaps this idea will seem boring to you, because a virtual walk cannot be compared with a real one. But there is no doubt that with access to online maps, you can see everything you want. Panoramas of Chernobyl, the 4th power unit, old buildings, eerie scenery left over from ancient times - all this will be revealed to the gaze of a virtual traveler through the screen of his computer.

You can get acquainted with the surroundings of Pripyat without leaving your home using:

1. Google maps.
2. panoramic videos.
3. Photos posted on social networks and on historical portals.

Causes of the Chernobyl disaster

Since we are talking about panoramic views of the devastated city, it is worth saying why Chernobyl hastily left its entire population. Everyone knows that an accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant associated with the fourth power unit. The course of events of that fateful night is known down to every second. However, it is still impossible to say exactly what exactly led to the explosion of the reactor. At the moment, there are several versions: some of them are both truthful and absolutely delusional. Over the many years that have passed since the accident, Pripyat has become overgrown with legends and speculations of the people that have nothing to do with reality.

Initially, it was believed that employees of the nuclear power plant were to blame for the explosion. But later, all charges were dropped from the workers - they acted according to the rules of exploitation. In connection with this fact, low safety requirements are considered one of the reasons for the terrible catastrophe at the fourth power unit of the nuclear power plant.

Chronicle of events at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The explosion happened at once, which is why all the events of that night can be retold down to every second. The power unit remained fully operational until the accident itself. Firefighters arrived on the scene at the same time and quickly extinguished the fire. However, people received large doses of radiation, which led to inevitable death. Within an hour after fighting the fire, the first symptoms appeared. 28 firefighters died from radiation sickness at nuclear power plants. Both the reactor and the power unit itself were destroyed.

Nuclear explosion

Disputes about the explosion do not stop to this day: scientists say that it was similar to a nuclear one. In simple terms, a chain reaction occurred in the device of an atomic reactor, which is similar to the explosion of nuclear bombs. The reaction itself occurred in less than a second, before it could turn into a full-fledged nuclear explosion. The substance contained in the nuclear reactor was thrown out, and the fuel dissipated.

But the Chernobyl accident contributed to the steam explosion. It is generally accepted that the pressure inside the device increased by about 70 times, due to which the multi-ton plate that covered the reactor fell off.

Consequences of the accident in Chernobyl and our days

The disaster in Pripyat is considered one of the most serious man-made explosions in the world. Its consequences are so detrimental to the environment and people that even now, after three decades, the problem is still relevant.

About 180 tons of nuclear fuel was in the reactor at the time of the accident. A third of it was thrown out, polluting the territory of Chernobyl.

At the moment, a restricted area has been created around Pripyat, also called "exclusion zone". And even now, after so many years, there is an excessive amount of radioactive isotopes in the contaminated soil, in connection with which any agricultural activity is prohibited in the region.

Chernobyl will be abandoned for at least another few decades: the decay of some substances varies from ninety years. Generally speaking, the situation is improving slightly, but radiation manifests itself in different ways. For example, it is known that some of the decaying radioactive elements acquire a new form - sometimes even more active. There is an opinion that by 2086 americium will reach even more than after the explosion thirty years ago. We can only reassure ourselves that this threatens us with increased alpha radiation, which is relatively easy to protect against.

Online walks at the Pripyat nuclear power plant

The fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant The place is very interesting, albeit unsafe. Panoramas of Chernobyl attract people of all ages, including the younger generation. You can understand the craving of people who dream of visiting the territory of the famous nuclear power plant, because they want to know the history that is relevant in modern times. But it should be understood that the panoramas of Chernobyl 4 power units are a dangerous pleasure.

However, at the moment there are tours, the organizers of which promise travelers complete safety. They are not cheap, but there are daredevils who are ready to shell out considerable sums just to get into the mysterious ghost town and see the place where the inhabitants of Chernobyl lived peacefully before the accident at the nuclear power plant.

And recently, the guys from Chernobyl found out about my adventures and asked - "Maxim, why don't you make a virtual tour of the entire Chernobyl zone for those who cannot get there themselves?" I started to explore the archive on Depositphotos and saw that the guys have collected really great photographic materials on the topic - to be honest, many of the shots are much better than my own.

So, in this post, together we will walk around the main attractions of the Chernobyl zone, look at cool photographs, see what is interesting there - and most importantly, all this will happen without the slightest increased radiation :) Although, just in case, move away from monitors (just kidding).

02. So let's go. Or rather, they have already arrived (we will omit 150 kilometers of the road from Kyiv). Excursion to the Chernobyl exclusion zone begins with the entrance to the so-called Thirty-kilometer zone, or "Thirty" for short. There is a checkpoint "Dityatki" on the border of the ChEZ, here they check the documents of everyone who enters the Zone - you must have an officially issued excursion and escort, otherwise they will simply not let you in - Chernobyl is not a place for walking.

03. Immediately after the checkpoint, the Zone begins. Yes, yes, the same one) I remember that the strongest first impression after entering the territory of the Zone for the very first time was trees and nature in general - it looks a little different here than in "ordinary" places, no one takes care of the forest, and right along roads you can see thick thickets and impenetrable windbreak.

The first village located on the left along the road towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is Zalesye. 30 years after the evacuation, it is already difficult to understand what and how was located here - on the site of the once wide roads, you can now find dense thickets of young aspens and shrubs, and the once-domestic apple and cherry trees in the fertile Polissya climate have grown to gigantic sizes. Now Zalesye is a real wild forest jungle. It seems that you have come to a place where no human has ever set foot, and only in some places preserved houses say that people once lived right here...

04. The next village is Kopachi. It is located just a few kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and in 1986 the so-called Northern radioactive trace passed right through the village. The pollution of the village was so high that all its houses were destroyed - they literally "shone" from radiation. Now only a small MTS station remains from the village of Kopachi:

05. And also the building of the old kindergarten. By some miracle, radioactive air currents bypassed him, and the building remained practically clean. Kindergarten in Kopachi is an old, very "Polesye" building in style. There are high four-meter ceilings and beautiful paneled doors - those on the right lead to a spacious games room combined with a library, and the doors on the left lead to the bedroom.

06. The bedroom now looks like this. There were bunk beds with touching nets on the second tier - the net was made so that it was safe to sleep on the beds.

07. We go further. Our next stop is the famous ZGRLS "Duga", which is also called "Chernobyl-2". Duga was once a top-secret facility - a giant radar designed for over-the-horizon monitoring of enemy missile launches. The following five-pointed gates lead to the territory of the "Duga":

08. And here's what you can see when you get inside the perimeter. The construction is truly gigantic - the height of the antennas is from 130 to 150 meters, and the length of the entire antenna complex is more than half a kilometer. You won't see anything like it anywhere else.

09. By the way, "Duga" remained a top-secret object until the early nineties. In those days, the Chernobyl zone was sometimes visited by foreign correspondents, who, of course, had a question - "what is it that rises above the forest?" To which the KGB officer in civilian clothes, who usually accompanied the group, calmly replied: "and this is an unfinished hotel there")

In windy weather, the antennas of the "unfinished hotel" are buzzing with a unique hum, and the general atmosphere around is reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic film of the early nineties.

10. In addition to the antennas themselves, Chernobyl-2 also has many utility rooms - barracks, residential buildings, hardware rooms, where calculation computers once stood. They are not always allowed there, but with a good guide and a personal tour you can get inside the premises.

11. I walked around the buildings and structures of the "Duga" for about two hours and managed to see far from everything - there was a feeling that these corridors and rooms hide many more secrets and mysteries.

12. Meanwhile, we are moving on. Our next stop is the city of Chernobyl. Despite such an eerie name (which many decipher as "black story"), Chernobyl is a completely peaceful and quiet Polesye town, known since the end of the 12th century, and the name of the city was given not by some "black story", but by the most common wormwood , which is also called Chernobyl.

However, one cannot but agree that the associative array is very suitable - both the name of the city and the bitter smell of wormwood since 1986 have been strongly associated with a nuclear catastrophe. At the entrance to Chernobyl there is such a stele:

13. You will be surprised, but the city of Chernobyl is alive today - workers of the Chernobyl zone live there on a rotational basis, only a few thousand people. There are a couple of grocery stores and canteens in the city, and the workers themselves live in relatively new quarters built in the 60-70s - Chernobyl gray brick Khrushchevs have now been turned into dormitories for workers.

There are also older quarters in the city, in many of these houses large Jewish families lived in pre-war times. The old part of the city is now almost completely abandoned. It’s a pity, of course, there were very good houses:

14. There is an active fire station in the city, near which there is a very interesting exhibition of robots - robots took part in the work to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Such large-scale work in the highest radiation fields was something new, and therefore robots were made literally from improvised means - one of the European countries sent a police sapper robot to Chernobyl, and another device was assembled on the chassis of a lunar rover - this recognizable robot in the photo on the right .

15. There is also such a monument near the fire station in Chernobyl - it was created by the liquidators themselves at their own expense. On the monuments, the figures of firefighters, dosimetrists and workers are, as it were, wrapped in a canvas of a raging nuclear element, and one of them is sitting, struck by the symptoms of incipient radiation sickness. The inscription on the monument reads - "Tim, who vryatuvav svit" - or, in Russian, "Those who saved the world."

A very good memorial.

16. And we are already moving on, and our next stop is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Despite the existing stereotypes, walking around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is quite safe, because during the tour they only take you to a fairly “clean” observation deck near the station. By the way, most of the photos of the Fourth power unit were taken from this very observation deck, it looks like the one in the photo below.

By the way, you can shoot the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exclusively from this angle - I don’t know what it is connected with. From memory I can tell you what is in the places not included in the frame - to the left of the shooting point there are countless rows of wires on large glass insulators, behind a large parking area, and to the right - the unfinished Fifth and Sixth power units, as well as a cooling tower.

17. On the other hand, I also found such a rare picture, which shows how the work shift goes from the parking lot towards the nuclear power plant. Currently, the workers are mainly engaged in the construction of a new "Shelter Object", which will cover the old sarcophagus, built by the liquidators in 1986.

18. The new "Shelter Object", colloquially called simply "Arch", looks like this. It has already been completed - literally the other day the "Arch" was completed and moved along the rails towards the Fourth power unit, closing the old sarcophagus.

19. At the Chernobyl nuclear power plant there is also such an interesting bridge across the cooling pond, the water from which was once used as cooling for reactors. I am often asked - is it true that giant catfish live in the cooling pond? Yes true. I personally took pictures of them and saw how they are fed with a loaf.

20. And now let's go to Pripyat) The city is only two kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, and earlier, in good weather, many station workers went to work on foot. At the entrance to the city there is such a stele, indicating the year of birth of Pripyat - 1970. The city existed for only 16 years, and nevertheless, managed to leave very warm memories in the hearts of its former residents.

21. This is what the central square of the city looks like from the window of the Polesye hotel - you can imagine how good it was once on a sunny spring day - when the sun was not yet covered by clouds of nuclear fires and the sky was cloudless.

22. And this is the famous Pripyat amusement park. The Ferris wheel was launched only a few times, in test mode, and it was supposed to fully work on May 1, 1986 ...

23. Cars "Autodrom" to the left of the wheel. If you are in the park - do not go to the cars, they are very "dirty" - helicopters landed on the site near the Autodrom, which in April 1986 tried to put out a nuclear fire in the collapse of the Fourth power unit, and all the radioactive dirt flew from the blades towards the Autodrom ".

24. Pripyat House of Culture called "Enegretik". It is also located on the central square of the city.

25. And this is the Azure pool. There was a good pool, with towers. "Azure", by the way, worked right up to 1998 - workers from the Chernobyl zone went to swim here. Only at the very end of the nineties the pool was closed and it began to gradually fall into disrepair.

26. A lot of purely Soviet artifacts remained in Pripyat - in the last days of the "double" life, the city was just getting ready for May Day, and many examples of visual agitation have been preserved here - for example, these are the portraits of party leaders in the propaganda center, which is located in the Energetik Palace of Culture ". If you are interested in Soviet history, be sure to ask the conductor where this propaganda center is, they will show it to you)

27. In Pripyat schools, there were open notebooks on the tables with the date diligently displayed - "April 26", and a lot of old textbooks.

28. And in kindergartens you can meet dolls with children's gas masks on. It looks creepy, but these are all journalistic productions - during the evacuation from the city, gas masks did not even get out, they are useless from radiation. Already in the nineties, someone opened boxes with gas masks and began to make such staged still lifes:

29. Why is Chernobyl so attractive, why do tourists go to the Zone? Older people come to Pripyat to once again remember their youth, which fell on the 70-80s; younger people come to touch the history. And someone comes to the Zone in order to see what could become of all of us as a result of the arms race and nuclear war.

30. And personally, I just like Pripyat - even in an abandoned state, the city has retained the very atmosphere of the city of youth, spring and hope that was in Pripyat from the very beginning and will be here until the day the last building of the city collapses, surrendering to the forces of nature and time.

31. We got such a walk)

All photos in the material are provided by the photobank. By the way, the guys now have a very good plan that will give you unlimited access to over 50 million (!) cool stock photos, any photo can be bought for only $1.

So look for photos of some more interesting and unique places, on Depositphotos there is a very cool selection.

Or maybe you yourself decide to go to Chernobyl - you will tell later if everything is really there)