Chernobyl is now an Instagram hot spot thanks to the HBO show
Leave it to Instagrammers to make a literal nuclear disaster a popular spot for photo shoots.
Thanks to HBO's riveting historical drama Chernobyl, the real Chernobyl -- the Ukrainian nuclear power plant that was the site of the April 1986 disaster which remains the worst of its kind -- is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination.
And where there are tourists, there are Instagram poses.
Search Instagram for photos from the area around Pripyat, Ukraine, near the remains of the Chernobyl plant, and you'll see a number of similar posts of visitors making Instagram poses in front of the long-abandoned ruins. There are even some slightly NSFW "model shots," including one in which a young woman is seen disrobing from what looks like a protective suit.
One disaster tour company told Reuters that it has seen a 40 percent increase in bookings since the Chernobyl miniseries debuted in May. Other companies reported similar spikes in reservations. English-language tours will reportedly set you back about $100.
It's a morbid uptick that goes beyond the usual disaster tourism like, say, the tour buses through New Orleans' Ninth Ward after Katrina. What makes Chernobyl so unusual is that the site is still classified as an exclusion zone, due to the ongoing radiation and toxicity of the area as a result of the explosion.
The death toll of the disaster also makes the trip a "morally queasy experience," as the Irish Times put it. Thirty-one people reportedly died in the first few months following the explosion. But as many as 9,000 more people are suspected to have died since then due to diseases caused by radiation exposure -- though some estimates set that number much higher.
One tour guide insisted to Reuters that anyone visiting the area is safe from lingering radiation now, 33 years after the disaster.
“Many people come here, they ask a lot of questions about the TV show, about all the events. People are getting more and more curious,” said tour guide Viktoria Brozhko, who insists the area is safe for visitors.
“During the entire visit to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, you get around two microsieverts, which is equal to the amount of radiation you’d get staying at home for 24 hours”,” she said.
Indeed, plenty of people are willing to tromp around the site with absolutely no protection, as their Instagram posts indicate.
The number of people visiting Pripyat and Chernobyl is only likely to grow in the coming months as more viewers check out the HBO series. There's also apparently a plan for a similar series from Russian network NTV that will tell what it claims to be the "true" version of the disaster, including U.S. spies that the country suggests were responsible for the explosion.
So if you had both "Instagram disaster porn" and "the Cold War being re-litigated through premium cable" on your 2019 bingo card, congrats, you're in the money.
Topics HBO
Marcus Gilmer is Mashable's Assistant Real-Times News Editor on the West Coast, reporting on breaking news from his location in San Francisco. An Alabama native, Marcus earned his BA from Birmingham-Southern College and his MFA in Communications from the University of New Orleans. Marcus has previously worked for Chicagoist, The A.V. Club, the Chicago Sun-Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
