In this episode we go to a radioactive zone.
Everybody knows Chernobyl, where a nuclear disaster took place on april 26th 1986.
Chernobyl&Pripyat are popular destinations  for dark tourists and urban explorers.
We have been here some years ago, but because literally everything is photographed, we want to see something more exclusive.
What almost nobody knows, (And there's not much information to find aswell)
is that there's an exclusion zone in Belarus.
70%of the nuclear particles landed here.
It's closed for public in contrast to the zone in Ukraine.
Our journey starts up north, close to Minsk, where another radioactive cloud has landed.
We are in a big forest, 1,5 hour drive from Minsk.
Completely desolated. Nobody around, half an hour ago we saw a few houses and that's it.
We're at an old sanatorium now, built in the early 80's
and closed afer the disaster of Chernobyl. This is a contaminated area.
I wonder how many years it has been in use. Very short and now completely abandoned.
It's completely empty.
Nice surrounding. Who comes up with putting this building here.
Here's the roof, no access.
What would be the function of this?
-No clue, can you go inside those tubes?
Perhaps it's just decoration.
It was a nice one to start with, time to go to the real exclusion zone.
We travel south and visit some other abandoned locations. We also shoot with some big guns.
I have a beep in my ears.
We drove for hours, still on our way to the exclusion zone.
And everywhere you see these signs.
The radioactive particles landed in a lot of places through the country.
We met the guys from the website meridian28, we will explore the exclusion zone with them.
We have the papers to visit the exclusion zone.
A lot of work has been done already, thanks to our Belarus friends.
They drive in front of us now.
They did a lot of work to get us all in.
Normally you can't visit the zone as a tourist. -A lot of paper work.
We're at the border zone.
We will switch from car here.
We're in the exclusion zone now.
The further we drive into the zone, the higher the radiation becomes. The roads become worse.
The first houses appear.
Nice, an entry gate.
We drive to one of the biggest villages in the zone and wonder what we will find here.
meanwhile Sergej tells us more about the reserve and the animals.
Cool with all the artefacts.
Special.
-Quite some stuff is left.
An old postcard from '86
feb 25th '86.
-Just before the misery.
The roads are completely overgrown.
-You can't imagine there are big buildings there. No because the decent road is back there.
Our first stop is the palace of culture,  a building which was the meeting place in the village and where festivities took place.
I can see the building already Bob.
At least there are some artefacts left.
I see some chairs on the left.
Is there anything on the stage?
-It's gutted.
Nice.
I would like to have something like this.
We have to rush like crazy, we only have 1 hour in this huge village.
Awesome.
It's huge. You wouldn't see that on a picture.
And in a good condition.
Here's a map of the village.
Not all floors are stable.
Safety instructions.
Persons and...
1983.
It's like a military operation how it goes.
A cash desk right?
At pripyat & Fukushima they removed the top soil layer in most places. It never happened here.
We are like 25km away from the Chernobyl nuclear power station.
That's crazy, so close.
Here's a school. Barely visible.
This is the gym. The murals are still present.
The complete ceiling fell down.
So cool, especially when you know almost nobody has been here since ages.
Heroes of the WWII.
Bob almost fell through the floor.
No time anymore, it went so fast.
That's it for today, it were 4 impressing hours.
Tomorrow we come back for another 4 hours.
All restaurants are occupied or closed. So it's gonna be super market food tonight !
The dinner for tonight.
We go back inside the exclusion zone.
Today we will visit some other villages where we hope to find something nice.
A decomposing deer, the smell is terrible.
Fresh wolf tracks.
Pretty big.
Day number 2, we are in Aravichy, also one of the biggest villages in the exclusion zone.
We're at an abandoned school.
I can already see some stuff inside so that's a good sign.
The temperature is 10 degrees lower.
-It's much colder today.
Lots of stuff.
-Nice !
That's Gagarin.
There's the gym buck again, a disabled one.
It still has 4 legs.
It's nice that there are people who can translate everything. I don't understand it at all.
-Mathematics class.
8x7=
-56.
It's been a while since I saw that.
Seems this classroom was for little childeren.
Like toys.
-Perhaps all ages went to school here.
-Indeed.
Toys.
Lenin in his early days.
Where are you?
-Here, pretty cool.
This one is nice.
Most of the tiles came down.
We stopped with the bus in a village. You can see a lot of houses between the trees.
Totally overgrown. We visit a few just for the atmosphere.
Some are messy, but what do you think to find after all those years.
We running out of time aswell, we can only visit a few houses unfortunately.
Old furniture.
The mess can be made by animals aswell, like in Fukushima.
Maybe an animal has bitten in that matress overthere.
Now you see why those schools are so big.
All kids in the area have to go to 1 school.
Not a small one, but like a big high school.
-For all ages.
And many villages have 500-1000 inhabitants.
And you see all kind of classrooms.
I think they tried to remove the furniture, but it didn't fit.
-Exactly.
Nice furniture.
We go to an area where was a fire some years ago.
Fires are the biggest thread in the Polesie state radioecological reserve.
Because of fire, radioactive particles move again and could land on inhabitable urban area's.
I gonna climb inside, we don't see a door.
-We're in the middle of nowhere after a 30 minute drive.
Totally gutted.
Fck this.
I'm covered with ants and wasps are buzzing me.
A shame.
Completely burned.
That's it.
-2 days in the zone.
