Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter

by Josh Gates

  In the immediate aftermath, officials refused to evacuate Pripyat at all, dragging their heels for a full twenty-four hours. But eventually they clumsily emptied the city, advising residents to leave their possessions behind, since it would be “safe” to come back in a matter of days. Nearly a quarter century has passed, and the city of Pripyat remains deserted, population: zero. The residents were never allowed to return. Five hundred years from now, this will still be an urban dead zone, unsafe for human occupation.

  As for many abandoned places, there are long-standing rumors that Pripyat is haunted. Guards and the occasional visitor have recounted strange apparitions moving in the windows of the defunct hospital, sounds of children playing on the emptied streets, and phantom shadows climbing apartment building stairwells. Intriguing, to be sure. But was it possible to film there? Could one travel to the flashpoint of this atomic fiasco, walk into the heart of the city of Pripyat, and withstand the effects of the radiation for an entire night?

  Our new team member, Jael, dove into research and placed a number of phone calls to Ukrainian contacts, and the officials at Chernobyl seemed more than willing to tell us that it could be done. But then again, the Ukrainian track record for atomic prudence isn’t exactly unblemished. For their part, the executives at the Channel were appropriately freaked out by the idea, but we carefully explained that all of this was going to be completely safe. Which it would be, right?

  The flight is brutally long, and I can’t seem to sleep for more than seconds at a time. In the midnight hour we land in a daze and drive wearily into Kiev, a city that benefits from a veil of darkness. Our hotel is either built into the side of a whorehouse, or a whorehouse has been built into the side of our hotel. It’s hard to say. I trundle past three of the most scantily clad women on the planet without even raising my head. I’m so exhausted I barely notice them.

  Even though my room is about as cozy as a prison cell and I can hear pounding music from the bar downstairs, I still feel utterly at home. This is what it’s like to work on Destination Truth. Adapt or be miserable. Wherever you are at the end of a long day, you just pretend it’s right where you want to be. I hear a gunshot outside, close my eyes, and peacefully drift off to sleep.

  The gray light of morning finds us driving around the concrete capital shooting B-roll and interviewing former workers from Pripyat. These are hearty people. Stoic. They mostly talk about the accident with a detached air, running through the events as though everything has already been said. Then their eyes float past me and out into the endless apartment blocks of Kiev, a reserved sadness permeating their gaze. Once enough questions have been asked and enough remembrances forced to the surface, though, emotion begins to bubble up, and color comes to their faces. They recall their lives before the accident gradually, like a dream barely remembered after a long, deep sleep. Due to time constraints, few of these interviews will make it to air, which is a shame. These are the real ghosts of Chernobyl. The citizens betrayed by the very atomic power they tried hopelessly to harness and then swept under the rug by the government who commissioned them to do it.

  We leave Kiev and drive sixty miles north. The landscape is low and dull. For the most part, I hate it here. A large sign by the side of the road—which I cannot read—advertises the approach to what is known as the Zone of Alienation. Sounds charming, doesn’t it? The Zone is made up of three concentric rings of increasing restriction (and radioactivity) around the site of the disaster. The outermost zone is a full thirty kilometers from the plant. Inside, a ten-kilometer ring contains the reactor itself. The bull’s-eye is Pripyat, guarded by a five-kilometer enclosure. In other words, the accident forced the surrender of an area sixty kilometers across. Within this ecliptic no-man’s-land, human civilization has been forfeited; we’ve lost.

  By midday we reach the first checkpoint, show our papers, and meet a military escort deputed to accompany us on our journey. The proceedings are tense, and at various points our translator and the guards with machine guns seem to be screaming at one another. Although in Russian, who can tell?

  It all sounds like Klingon to me. In the end, however, nobody shoots us, and we’re allowed to continue. A metal gate creaks out a warning as it rises up, and we pass through the membrane of the outermost security ring.

  Our escort, Yuri, is robust and camo-clad, with an awesome mullet and a sparkle in his eye. He speaks with a thick accent and seems like he’s probably a funny guy, if only I could understand more than half the words coming out of his mouth. I spend much of the drive just nodding and smiling.

  He assigns us three dosimeters, which are handheld devices that serve two functions. They calculate the sum total of the ionizing radiation with which we come into contact and, more importantly, sound a piercing alarm if we pass into an area of lethal exposure. Why he has only three of these, I have no idea. I strap one to my arm and look over as our cameraman Evan tapes one to the front of his crotch. “Yo, screw this, man,” he says. “I’m not going to have my dick drop off.” Fair point.

  The first thing I’m struck by as we drive on into the Zone is how similar it looks to the rest of Ukraine. That probably isn’t a good thing. The sky here has the same allergy to sunlight as the rest of the country, but other than the monochromatic landscape and complete absence of people, there aren’t many indicators that we’re careening into a nuclear wasteland.

  To say that the outlying fringes of the Zone of Alienation are entirely empty, though, would be inaccurate. There are a few residents, mostly elderly, who have returned and reclaimed their former homes. They live within the outer Zone, far from Pripyat, amidst otherwise discarded villages. Underneath a light drizzle, we stop in one of these rural enclaves to interview a husband and wife. Their cottage, like so many others here, is slumped, its timbers exhausted after years of neglect. We walk up the steps into what feels like the opening frames of a horror film, and I’m shocked when the door bursts open to reveal two beaming, kind faces. They welcome us with kisses and firm handshakes, pulling us indoors and out of the rain. The interior of the house is also surprisingly cheerful. After leading us into the living room and seating us around a simple wooden table, they parade out various plates of food and a large, unmarked bottle of moonshine. To my abject dismay, I learn that the food has been grown in their garden. As I politely munch on carrots and beets, I imagine my thyroid gland and major organs silently failing. “This is delicious,” I muster, wondering if my testicles will ever work again.

  The liquor is harder to decline. The man insists that we have a shot with them. I want to explain that we can’t. That we’re on the clock here and that it’s three in the afternoon. At the same time, you don’t turn down booze in former Soviet states. It’s just not done. So we have a drink. It tastes like ninety-three-octane gas and slides down my throat like a sanding belt. He refills the glasses. We drink again. He refills the glasses. I protest. He insists. I explain that we really need to start the interview. He insists. We drink again. He refills the glasses. This goes on and on.

  Once we’re all well lubricated, their story unfolds. The husband was a teacher who loved to teach. The wife was a nurse who loved to nurse. When the evacuation orders came, they took nothing with them. Their entire material life just vanished in an instant. It wasn’t like moving to a new place, he explains, solemnly. It was a brutal interruption of their lives from which they never recovered. And so, after twenty years, and in the twilight of life, they wanted to heal that wound the only way they could. By coming home. He refills the glasses.

  Once the interview is over, we merrily walk out into the street, slightly tipsy. Even the Zone of Alienation is looking good. The rain continues to come down, and before long we come to a collection of large buildings on either side of the road. A frozen statue of Lenin commands a barren park. “What is this place?” I ask.

  “Administrative center. For workers,” Yuri says.

  I had almost forgotten that people still work here. A skeleton crew of employe
es maintain and protect the reactor, ensuring that it doesn’t fall into further decay and, you know, destroy the world.

  Yuri leads us across the street to the Chernobyl cafeteria for dinner. On a list of fine dining destinations, this has to be somewhere near the bottom. We’re forced to step into a scanner surely stolen from the set of Forbidden Planet. It buzzes and beeps next to my head, which supposedly indicates that I’m free of deadly radiation, but for all I know this machine is more dangerous than the reactor. Inside the cafeteria, workers mill around the kitchen; almost nobody is speaking. I take my tray and walk down the buffet line, staring at irradiated pudding cups and atomic tater tots. I meekly reach out and choose a plate of bright purple cabbage. Bon appétit. We wash down our meals with a liquid dose of something called ThyroShield, which is supposed to protect our organs from radiation exposure. The label indicates that it is to be taken “in a radiation emergency only.” It is also blueberry flavored, as though the flavor matters once you’re in a radiation emergency.

  A few interviews follow. In the cafeteria we meet a guard who claims to have seen strange lights just the night before. We also meet several former residents who describe ghostly figures of friends and family members who died either in the accident or from poisoning in the years that followed. Several eyewitnesses report bright orbs of energy and the sensation of being followed through the decaying public buildings. They seem rattled about their experiences, and we jot down the locations of their sightings for further investigation.

  Across the street we enter a nondescript lodge that’s kept open for visiting officials, scientists, and idiots like us. You know that feeling when you check into a motel room, and you’re instantly certain that a porno turned murder suicide happened there? You look down at that crusty duvet cover, convinced that it’s thoroughly caked in blood and semen. This is like a radioactive version of that—times a million. My unassailable adaptability is at a breaking point. There isn’t a single surface in the room that I want to touch, and once I take my shoes off, I’m almost immobilized by the idea of having to walk across the carpet. I feel like Howard Hughes in a porta-potty. I stare at the showerhead for nearly two minutes before deciding that bathing here is completely out of the question. If I had a roll of Saran Wrap, I’d go Dexter on this place. Since I don’t, I lie down on top of the bed and try not to breathe. If there’s one consolation to this night, it’s that tomorrow will be much, much worse.

  In the morning, we drive on under the perennially gray sky. At the ten-kilometer checkpoint we undergo more scrutiny and suspicious stares before eventually being permitted to pass. More lonely roads. Weeds writhing up through cracked veins in the asphalt. Nature is slowly disassembling this world. Along the way we pull over and walk through a former soccer field, which now serves as a permanent parking lot for trucks and tanks that were used to fight the fire at Chernobyl. Passing the bleachers, Yuri uses a Geiger counter to sweep the air in front of us. Simply approaching the vehicles, the needle begins to quiver and whine. As he waves the sensor near the tank treads, the readings go off the charts. The dosimeter on my arm suddenly screams out, and we retreat. Back on the road, the rest of the crew seems depressed at the treadmill of gloom that keeps rolling by, but Yuri is simply beaming.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” he blurts out.

  “What is?” I ask.

  “This! You’re an American. Twenty-five years ago you would not be here. You understand. We shoot you!” he laughs out.

  I laugh too. Not sure how else to react.

  “But now, here we are. Ukraine and America. Together!” he says, shaking his own hand.

  He’s right, of course. It is amazing. I had nearly overlooked the symbolic significance of our presence here. Though Moscow’s iron rule has dissolved, the culture of isolation and institutionalized silence is taking time to rewrite itself. The tense checkpoints and sideways glances are merely the icy remnants of our still-thawing Cold War. The workers who spent their lives keeping this place a secret must look upon my group with deeply mixed emotions. Yuri smiles and pats me on the shoulder. It’s just a little moment. A gesture not captured on camera. But warm enough to soften an entire wasteland outside the window.

  The scenery soon turns apocalyptic. We pass by gutted buildings and a lethal river choked with listing, half-sunken ships. The rows of barren trees thin out, and in the distance looms the iconic reactor number four. The fortified ventilation stack that rises up from the nondescript-looking building is immediately familiar to me from news footage, file photos, and the occasional nightmare. The sight of it sends a shiver down my spine, and I glance over at the dosimeter on my arm, watching the digital readout for signs of elevated radiation. The plant grows larger through the windshield, as does my level of disbelief. We park no more than 1,500 feet from the reactor. I step down from the car and hear the dosimeter on my arm react quietly. “Don’t be alarmed,” Yuri says with a grin. “Radiation levels slightly higher here but safe for short periods.” Crazy bastard.

  My crew and I are informed that we’re not allowed to film the reactor from certain angles, which means one of two things: either these folks are insane enough to believe that someone might want to steal their top-notch nuclear technology, or the reactor is falling apart and they don’t want anyone to notice. Guards quickly usher us into the annex building.

  Most of us, at one time or another, have had terrible, terrible jobs. For me it was a stint as a waiter at a doomed Japanese supper club in Beverly Hills where I peddled cutrate sushi to a seemingly endless parade of aging Hollywood harpies. Toiling away at these sorts of ignominious gigs, we tend to ask ourselves the question: Who has the crappiest job in the world? Well, my friends, I’ve now met him. Rat exterminator? Sewage worker? Tollbooth operator in North Dakota? No. Those would be child’s play compared to this. Inside the operations building I’m introduced to a guy who holds the title of “Official Chernobyl Reactor Photographer.”

  Let me explain this. Once a month this poor son-of-a-bitch has to don some sort of Andromeda Strain suit and walk into the Chernobyl reactor. Once inside, he videotapes the structure to document the failing integrity of the building. It’s so radioactive in this joint that when he’s done, he has to eject the tape and just leave the video camera on a table (adding it to a pile). After he exits the building, his clothes are destroyed, and he’s scrubbed down with harsh chemicals. While he’s describing all of this to me, I can’t help but notice a whole host of kooky tics and weird mannerisms that appear to be completely out of his control. At any rate, he goes on to explain the state of the reactor, and I do my best to listen while thinking about whether I’m going to have to shake his hand at the end of this (I am, and I do).

  In the wake of the accident, a hastily conceived concrete sarcophagus was erected around the nuclear reactor. It restrains the more than two hundred tons of uranium and plutonium remaining inside the building (only about 3 percent of the deadly radiation escaped in the accident). This superstructure began to fail within five years of its installation, and today it is cracked, leaking, and expelling radiation into the atmosphere. It has been estimated that an earthquake of six or more on the Richter scale could collapse the sarcophagus altogether, leading to an outright global emergency. With the USSR dismantled and Ukraine flat broke, it falls to the neighboring nations to address the issue. An ambitious new engineering plan calls for the construction of the largest movable structure on the planet: a twenty-thousand-ton steel shell that would slide over the current sarcophagus. But for now that’s all it is. Just a plan. If it’s left undone, we may, in time, be doomed to an encore performance here. A prominent Russian scientist was quoted as saying that “the next Chernobyl will be Chernobyl itself.”

  We leave the well-irradiated staff behind for the final leg of our journey, the road to Pripyat. The final checkpoint involves inspection of our vehicles and passports, although the whole thing feels surprisingly cursory. I can’t understand what the guards are saying, but I imagine that
it’s along the lines of “What the hell. You made it this far. You’re obviously crazy. Come on in.”

  The road into the center of Pripyat is long and straight. On either side, apartment buildings stand like silent sentinels. Most of the windows are blown out, and inside of the individual rooms, my attention is kidnapped by the sight of furniture, paintings, and tattered drapes. It’s like a hundred dioramas of destruction. We stop at the end of the road and step out into the city center. My mouth falls slightly open. In front of me, City Hall. To my right, a department store, the Hotel Polissya, and a long street beyond. To my left, rows of buildings. It looks endless. “Josh,” someone in the group calls, “the radiation suits.”

  Right. We open the back of the van and unbox eight full radiation suits. They’re baggy and heavy and smell like talcum powder. The plexiglass hood is hot and uncomfortable. I feel a bit like Marty McFly in this thing, but who cares? This is no time for vanity. Every little bit of protection helps. The dosimeter is now ringing steadily and has to be recalibrated to a higher setting. We’re now absorbing radiation all the time; it’s up to the meter to let us know when we’ve had enough. Once we’re suited up, we get to work. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can touch the ground here. Anything set down gets left behind. Every camera is wrapped in plastic and fortified against the unusual elements.

  We start by exploring the old hospital. We know that many first responders died here and that several guards have claimed to see phantom patients in the building. We enter the hospital through broken windows on the ground floor. Once inside, I’m gob-smacked. The halls and rooms are filled with furniture, gurneys, papers, and medical artifacts, giving the place a terrifying character. We make our way room by room and floor by floor, being careful not to touch anything and to avoid the dripping water seeping from the floors above. The dosimeters ping occasionally, reminding us that our time here is finite.