Chernobyl and the rise of Dark Tourism

Life in the time of COVID-19 is strange for tourism. But when you add dark tourism in the form of a day trip to Chernobyl into the mix, it’s a little stranger. As we near Halloween, and people online are talking about haunted sites and dark tourism sites, it made me think about how absolutely unnerving my recent day trip to Chernobyl was. But before I get into it, a little intro as to why I was in Ukraine.

Given the current situation in Ukraine, I cannot recommend making any travel plans to this country. Please refer to your government’s travel safety guidelines ahead of making any travel plans.

1. The How and Why of me being in Ukraine

By now, you’ll notice from all my recent posts, that I was in Scotland for the majority of covid lockdown. Unfortunately for me, that dream could always only last for 6 months at a time due to visa issues. As an American, you are currently allowed to stay in the UK for a maximum of 6 months. Not knowing how long I would remain evacuated from my mission in Afghanistan was a constant source of stress. By month 4, something needed to happen.

Don’t ask how this “divert to Ukraine” plan came into place, or why it was even considered. By August, I was diverted to Kyiv, where I spent 6 weeks. And the day that I hit my 6 month anniversary of being out of Afghanistan, I was back home in Kabul. So really, my 6 weeks in Kyiv were pointless at best.

But being in a new place in the time of covid is really very strange. You never know how a new country responds to social distancing or mask wearing. Let me just say that my experience in a new country during the time of covid was not pleasant. The only thing I insisted on doing before I left Ukraine was a day trip to Chernobyl.

2. Planning a Day Trip to Chernobyl

I was staying in Kyiv, which is about 85 miles (135 km) away, or two hours by road. There are a few operators that do day trips to Chernobyl. My blogging friends, Stromfield Adventures, had “just” gone to Ukraine in pre-covid times, and they recommended Solo East, which has a day trip to Chernobyl at $88 USD per person. Solo East also offers 2 or 3 day trips to Chernobyl, but for me, one day was plenty.

While you are given a personal radiation dosimeter (“PRD”) for the trip (which is mandatory and included in the cost), a Geiger counter costs $8 USD extra. According to Solo East’s website, “PRD are provided by authorities to measure the radiation exposed to an individual during the tour.” On the other hand, the Geiger counter measures actual levels of radiation, in micro sieverts.

So of course, an extra $8 later, I had my Geiger counter. Payment was really easy, and done through PayPal. You can also pay in person in their office or by credit card online. Super easy.

For the full itinerary for the day, please click here!

3. Why visit Chernobyl?

So, I like visiting unique places. This much you must already know. But other than that, I have never shied away from visiting dark tourism sites. For those who don’t know, dark tourism is defined as:

Tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy.

Source: Wikipedia

While the popularity of dark tourism has risen in recent years, it has always been a source of learning for me. And I say learning because, tourism is not always about gorgeous scenery or instagrammable spots. Some tourism sheds light on a dark period or history. Some tourism moves you, as you see how far humanity has come.

I have visited a variety of dark tourism places in the past, specifically to learn about a place and its history and to pay homage to its victims and survivors. Just to name a few:

• The Killing Fields in Cambodia;
• Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (the S-21 prison site), outside Phnom Penh;
• The Culloden Battlefield, outside Inverness;
• Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco;
• Dachau concentration camp, outside Munich;
• Ground Zero in New York City;
• The Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial.

While I had always known about Chernobyl, the large nuclear incident, I really became more interested in the stories behind it after watching the HBO Series. If you haven’t seen it, it comes highly recommended. It was extremely well done and portrayed very realistically. And sad. It’s really very sad. But that’s how it really was – sad.

One thing that is portrayed in the Chernobyl series is this push of misinformation and propaganda at the time of the incident. And while I won’t say anything to ruffle anyone’s feathers, I’ll just say that government or political-led misinformation and propaganda are still a thing in this day and age.

4. Preparing for a day trip to Chernobyl – Logistical and other considerations

On the day of the tour, you meet your tour guide and representative from Solo East in front of a hotel in Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) at 8 am. It is next to the McDonald’s in the square. Convenient for a morning coffee or quick bathroom stop before you set off on your day trip to Chernobyl. The drive to the Exclusion Zone takes about 2 hours.

It’ll be a full day tour, and you’ll arrive back in Kyiv around 8 pm.

4.1 Do not forget your passport!

First thing’s first. You have to make your reservations to visit Chernobyl at least 72 hours in advance. You’ll need to submit your passport information in advance. Why? Because the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is still a restricted area. Solo East warns you that if your passport information is incorrect or does not match what the police review at the checkpoint, you may be denied entry.

4.2 Dark tourism that requires a dress code

Because the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is still highly radioactive, you’re required to wear long sleeve, long pants (or trousers for my British friends) and closed toe shoes. While there are parts where the radition level is high, most of the places you are allowed to visit, have a lower level of radiation. The coverage from your clothes should provide adequate protection during your visit.

While I don’t know if this is true or not, we were told that during our day trip to Chernobyl, we would only be exposed to the same level of radiation as a 6 hour flight. Unknown if this is true or not, but here is my Geiger counter as we were leaving Kyiv. 0.17 µSv (micro Sieverts). Keep this number in mind. According to our guide, Constantine, safe is up to 0.30 µSv.

4.3 Lunch and snacks when you visit Chernobyl

On this particular tour, lunch is included. You’ll get the option of pork and chicken, which you’ll eat at the canteen & hotel inside the Exclusion Zone. Don’t worry, all food is shipped in from the outside, and is guaranteed to be clean.

Additionally, if you bring snacks on your trip, the guides will ask you only to eat it inside the van. Sometimes there is still high levels of radiation in the air. While your clothes protect much of the radiation from being absorbed into your body, ingesting a snack in that same air is a different story.

I honestly can’t remember if there was that same rule for water, i.e. only drink it inside the bus. But let’s just err on the side of caution when you visit Chernobyl, and say that all eating and drinking should be done inside a contained area.

4.4 COVID-19 and my day trip to Chernobyl – paranoia central

I think under normal circumstances, a day trip to Chernobyl would be interesting, but filled with mild paranoia. But covid-19 plus a visit to Chernobyl… First of all, you are in a (large) van full of people. While there is social distancing (the tour was not full), you’re still in an enclosed space. BUT, that enclosed space is protecting you from some radiation. I wore my face mask the whole day, with only a break for lunch. But not everyone did. And that’s kind of just life under covid now, right?

Second of all, when you actually go outside into the air, it’s not like you feel like you can breathe in a sigh of relief. No no, the air your breathing is a little tainted. How tainted? You really don’t know. But your trusty Geiger counter averages around 0.26 µSv. Creeping up to the safe 0.30 µSv, but still safe.

Basically, the moral of this section is… you’re thinking about 8 million things that affect your health. Covid, face mask, radiation. You have your camera, your phone, your hand sanitizer, your Geiger counter (with the constant, yet nervewracking beeping). I swear, I’ve never dropped my phone OR my camera so many times in my life as I had during the 12 hours of my day trip to Chernobyl. It was seriously, so exhausting thinking of and considering all of this. And a 12 hour tour in itself was exhausting. Combining all of the above, I was just beat at the end of the day.

Now that I’ve warned you about everything, onwards to Chernobyl!

5. A little background on Chernobyl

On April 26, 1986, at 1:23:40 am local time, during a safety test, an accident occurred in which Reactor No. 4 in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (also known as the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant) exploded. A fatal flaw in the design of the Soviet RBMK-type nuclear reactor, coupled with serious breaches of protocol during the safety test, resulted in a massive explosion and fire.

The blast killed two people immediately.

134 plant staff and firement were hospitalized for acute radiation syndrome, and of those 28 died in the days and months afterward. Officially, less than 100 deaths were directly attributed to Chernobyl and the aftermath.

Unofficially, thousands suffered radiation-induced cancer (mostly thyroid cancer) in the years to follow.

Part of the issue with Chernobyl is the immediate denial of the magnitude of the accident following the explosion. The HBO series does a good job in highlighting this, as plant management did not believe that the core was exposed or that the explosion blew threw the roof of the power plant either. In a video shown on the drive to Chernobyl, Mikhail Gorbachev (the Soviet leader at the time) stated that he was told that the reactor was absolutely safe – it was only a fire and a small accident. He said he was given false information and genuinely did not know it was an explosion.

A large challenge that the USSR faced was how to contain the accident. The roof was gone. The nuclear core was exposed. By the first evening, radiation was spewing into the air at a level 600,000 times above normal. The efforts to contain the spread of radition was hindered by the absolute high and lethal amount of radiation surrounding the area.

The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated. It was only 30 hours after the explosion when 1,000 buses drove into Pripyat. The city of 43,000 people were given 2 hours to gather their belongings and leave.

Quite possibly, the only reason the USSR had to take this accident seriously, was that the radioactive cloud had traveled to Sweden. And Sweden alerts the USSR of the grave danger involved. According to Gorbachev, following this revelation and realizing he has been lied to, he orders the KGB to follow scientists and report their conversations back to him. Gorbachev also later described Chernobyl as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union and their people suffered tremendous hardships in their efforts to contain and clean up this accident. This is a central theme of the HBO series.

6. The “New Safe Confinement”

Don’t worry – all safe now

24 days after the disaster, the design on the sarcophagus to cover up the exposed core began. Construction lasted 206 days between June and November of 1986. However, it would degrade within 20-30 years due to the heavy doses of radiation the structure continued to endure.

Therefore, plans began for the New Safe Confinement (“NSC”) Structure, which is what you see in the photo above. The NSC was built in two halfs, on a set of tracks, and would be pushed along the existing tracks to cover the old sarcophagus. It currently stands as the largest object that people have ever moved.

The NSC, completed only in July 2019, covers the old sarcophagus completely. From a video we watched on the bus, it said that there are actually robotic machines inside the NSC, clearing debris and radioactive waste from the old sarcophagus.

For a more detailed article on the NSC, click here!

7. My Day Trip to Chernobyl

So, I’m not going to go through full itinerary with you. There are a few things I want to say and then I’ll leave it to the pictures. For the full, detailed itinerary, please click here!

Like most dark tourism sites, treat this place with respect. Remember that thousands had to abandon their home. Thousands more perished due to radiation sickness or radiation-related cancers in the years to come. There is a level of respect that I think is not only inherent, but required.

There was one couple on my tour from Spain. At every stop, they did a photoshoot, elaborately posing with the decomposed remnants of peoples’ homes. At some stops, they were recording videos saying hi to their friends and families, with an abandoned building behind it. They seemed like they were genuinely having a fun-loving time and judging from their enthusiasm, they really wanted to show their trip to their friends back home. But is this the way to honor the tragedy that is Chernobyl? Not for me. Each person’s experience will no doubt differ from each other. However, was their behavior any different or worse than kids taking selfies at Auschwitz?

Anyway, to each his own. And as long as you have a clear conscience as to how you visit and experience a place, all good.

Last comment. At time, this felt like a “hop on hop off” type of tour. In normal circumstances, these are the type of tours that I avoid. However, given that access into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone must be granted… also that there is radiation hot spots still within the Exclusion Zone. Because of all that, you’d prefer having a “hop on hop off” tour with expert guides. But still, the motions of getting on and off the van, were just something

Without further ado… my day trip to Chernobyl and Pripyat in pictures.

8. The Duga Radar

So, besides a functioning nuclear power plant and civilian population to run said power plant, hidden away in this area is the Duga Radar. As part of the Chernobyl-2 secret military facility within the Exclusion Zone, the Duga Radar or Russian Woodpecker, was a Soviet “over-the-horizon” radar. It remained hidden and operational between 1976 to 1989. While I can’t give you all the specifics or technical specs on the Duga Radar, feel free to read more about it here.

Just for fun – Why was the secret facility called Chernobyl-2?

So people working in the secret part could just say they were stationed in “Chernobyl” and your average person would assume they meant the nuclear power plant.

For movie fans, maybe you’ll recognize the Duga Radar immediately. Any guesses?

The Duga Radar featured in the Divergent movie series as the fence between the city and the outside world. Pretty cool, no?

9. Parting thoughts on my day trip to Chernobyl

All in all, I was really glad I visited Chernobyl. I feel that I understand the human aspects of the devastation and abandonment a lot better. My heart goes out to the Chernobyl power plant workers, the first responders, and those living in and around the exclusion zone for the devastation that they suffered through. The Chernobyl disaster is still considered the worst nuclear disaster in history, in terms of casualties and costs incurred.

Visiting during the time of COVID, had an extra layer of paranoia and complexities involved. After a full day in Chernobyl, I returned back to Kiev absolutely exhausted. I mean, one should assume that dark tourism takes an emotional toll on people. But besides the emotions, there is of course radiation to consider. The first thing I did, obviously, was to shower and wash my hair, and wash all my clothes. Over the next 2-3 weeks, I noticed that my hair fell out with more frequency than normal. Before you freak out, I have lots of long, black hair. Hair falling out is the norm for me. All I’m saying is that my hair fell out at a rate above average. After a few weeks, it returned to normal.

I think generally, I’m glad that I visited. But like I said, it is an emotional and somber trip, so this Chernobyl tour may not be for everyone. And just try to be respectful of all the history and devastation around Chernobyl and Pripyat, so that you’re not making your trip into a media sideshow.

And just to end on a freaky note, the below video is from when we drove through the Red Forest in Chernobyl. This area received the highest dose of radiation after the accident, and it remains one of the most contaminated places in the world.

TURN VOLUME ON for the full effect. just waaaaait for it.

10. Information to visit Chernobyl

I went with SoloEast on their 1-day tour of Chernobyl. It was approximately $88 USD per person, with an extra $8 for my personal Geiger counter.

I highly recommend going with SoloEast, as they were super professional. My guide, Constantine, was really knowledgeable and informative about Chernobyl as well.

I was not sponsored or paid for this post, and all opinions contained within are my own.

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Lannie

Lannie is a perpetual wanderer and loves to share her travel adventures and the food she eats along the way with everyone.  She works during the day while bouncing around the world and dreams about new places and faces at night!  She has a home on the magical Isle of Islay in Scotland, where the whisky flows freely and happily.

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