Fun facts about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone:
1) Most of it is pretty safe, even for long periods of time. In fact about 200 native people still live there, but no new settlement is allowed, so that number has declined from about 1200 after the zone was created in 1986.
2)The zone has become an unintentional animal reserve. Its ~1000 square miles of uninhabited forest. Poaching happens, but not to the degree one might expect due to the fear of radiation. Also as a consequence there are lots of human friendly animals like this fox. Most of the humans they do see are tourists that regularly feed them.
3) Its one big science experiment on post human occupation, environmental contamination, and radioactive degradation. Weve actually learned a hell of a lot about what would happen to a city after everyone leaves and how nature takes back over thanks to the city of Pripyat. And how the environment adapts to sudden changes and evolves. A fungus was desvovered in and around the Chernobyl Disaster Site that creates chemical energy out gamma radiation emitted from the melted down core. Something biologists had only theorized as even possible a few years ago, and heres this fungus feeding on it. Its crazy man!
