[/quote] i wanna go to chernobyl one day, its on the list of places to visit, very strange and magical place.[/QUOTE]
More sad than magical but the zone today is a beautful place from a nature standpoint.You can take one of the normal 4 hour tours offered these days. They're safe but you can't wander around like I do because you'll need a permit you can't get unless you work there. Remember, the entire 30km Exclusion Zone is surrounded by barb wire and patrolled by guys with AK-47s. Plus there are hot spots so wandering around can be dangerous. For example, I carry the best dosimeter money can buy and it alarms all the time.
There are no locals. 135,000 people were evacuated from the zone. Pripyat alone had a populationof 50,000. The average age was 28 with 16,000 of them children under the age of 16. It was the newest city in the USSR at the time and one of the best places to live. Pripyat's residents were evacuated in a mere 3 hours by a convoy of buses that was 13 miles long. They were told they'd be gone 3 days and to take only what they were wearing and their identity documents. No one ever came back.
They left behind everything, including 10,000 domestic pets who a few weeks became crazed with hunger and began feeding on each other. The Soviet army was sent in to shoot them all. Today Pripyat remains a nuclear ghost city quickly being reclaimed by nature. It's quite an experience to walk through it's streets, apartments, shops ,ect. It's even more strange to be there at night when the wild boar, elk, and other animals come out.
In other parts of the zone entire villages are buried. The only sign of them is huge mounds of earth with the name of the village posted on radiation warning signs. Others stand empty. The trucks, fire engines, helicopters, and other gear used to fight the accident lie abandoned in the forest, a section of which was completely destroyed by the cloud that passed over it. The catfish in the cooling ponds at the station are over 6 feet long. Yeah, it's a strange place. It'll be 20 years this April since it all happened and I'll be going back at that time.