A new breed of ghoulish thrill seekers are getting their kicks by visiting the abandoned and contaminated areas around the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.
“Nuclear tourists” have been flocking to the crumbling remains of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and its surrounding towns ever since the Ukrainian government officially designated the site a tourist attraction back in 2011.
National Geographic“I’m drawn to abandoned places that have fallen apart and decayed,” one female visitor
, which takes a look at the morbid phenomenon in a new article out today.
With radiation meters in hand, tourists are guided through the overgrown cities and forests of the “exclusion zone,” occasionally stopping to take pictures in front of the macabre remnants of what was once an industrious Soviet region.
Twenty-eight years after the power plant’s meltdown, radiation levels vary from trace amounts to high — but are still not enough to pose any immediate danger to visitors who stay only a short time.
National Geographic reporter George Johnson said the radiation levels around most of Chernobyl were only a fraction of what his meter had detected on his trans-Atlantic flight from Chicago to Ukraine.
