The town of Pripyat was founded in 1970 as a top-of-the-line modern community for the 49,900 workers of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families. The city enjoyed a golden period with its privileged status as a model nuclear city with particularly favourable living conditions within the Soviet Union. But it all was suddenly interrupted at 1:23am on Saturday, April 26, 1986, with the explosion of reactor number 4. Located only four kilometres from the plant, the town was exposed to heavy radiation and had to be quickly evacuated. Today, it is a ghost town overtaken by nature… and the growing atomic tourism industry.
Some of Pripyat's sites have become famous landmarks, such as the long-abandoned Ferris wheel or the elephant slide, which today allow visits, but always dependent on a Geiger counter. Frozen in time and in accelerated decay, these objects are testimonies of a glorious past time that can never be taken back — at least not for the next 20.000 years.
