By SARAH CLARK
News Editor
The HBO series “Chernobyl” made its release on May 6, and I am pleased that people seem to be as intrigued with the events as I have been for seven years. However, as more tourism is being brought to Ukraine and the site of the disaster, I believe some may have forgotten the true damage that occurred, or maybe those who are treating Chernobyl as a photoshoot location do not realize the impact of their actions.
Once the series came out, influencers with large follower counts began to go to the site of Chernobyl. Naturally, the immediate response is to document their visit through pictures and videos, which okay to an extent. However, some influencers are photographing themselves as if it is appropriate to have a photoshoot at the site of a place that people tragically fled from. These were homes to many who could not take most of their belongings, were forced to abandon their pets, and ultimately had to restart their lives, if they even survived.
On April 25, 1986, maintenance was scheduled to happen as a safety test for the fourth reactor at Chernobyl at the V.I Lenin Nuclear Power Station. The workers who were performing the test did not follow the protocols implemented for safety, which caused a power surge within the plant. Before they could shut the reactor down, the power surged again which caused an explosion. This is what caused the radiation to be released from the plant.
The Soviet Union government did not want the accident to gain publicity. They attempted to cover up the explosion, and the government did not formally start to evacuate people until 36 hours after the incident. Soviet scientists were pushing for evacuation procedures soon after the accident, however, no measures were taken until deputy head of the Soviet government and chairman of the high commission Boris Shcherbina came to Pripyat, the city in which the reactor was located.
While government officials were trying to figure out a way to contain the radiation, another three explosions occurred. This is something that experts predicted would happen. The Soviet government only gave people 50 minutes notice to evacuate, and told them to bring only the essential items they needed. Civilians were also ordered to leave their animals behind, which later increased the animal population within the town.
Buses were filled with people and ready to leave Pripyat by 1:30 a.m. on April 27, however, people and their belongings were already contaminated with radiation, and their health was already jeopardized.
A few dozen people died and more than 100 people were injured from the accident, but the damage did not stop there. Thousands of people developed cancer, in most cases thyroid, and many children born after the disaster had birth defects. In addition to this, nuclear waste from the plant was detected in countries as far as Sweden. Not only did this cost people their health, but there was at least $235 billion in damages.
The city of Pripyat is still not habitable, people affected still face the health consequences, and now influencers are treating the Chernobyl site as a random abandoned house that creates a rustic aesthetic for their thousands of followers. The most common picture that is currently circulating the internet since the influx of tourism is a girl in a black sports bra and white underwear that exposes her butt.
The fact that there are some people who would disrespect a place where people died and had to leave their lives behind baffles me. Many people are comparing Chernobyl to concentration camps in the sense that a normal person would not model at a place where tragedy took place. I am not sure if I would go that far as to compare the two considering they are drastically different—the Chernobyl disaster occurred because of ignorance and concentration camps were created out of hatred. However, I see what people are saying: It is ignorant to model at a place where thousands of hearts are still healing and processing the events that occurred.
If I were a survivor who lived in Chernobyl, I would not want people treating the site as such. Visit and thoroughly educate themselves on the events that occurred? Of course. I would want the history of what had happened to be preserved, but doing so does not entail just visiting “for the likes” or the “aesthetic.”
