This Is A Tourist Attraction?
PRIPYAT, UKRAINE - APRIL 09: (EDITOR'S NOTE: Image was created as an Equirectangular Panorama. Import image into a panoramic player to create an interactive 360 degree view.) A sign warning of radiation contamination stands near former apartment buildings on April 9, 2016 in Pripyat, Ukraine. Pripyat, built in the 1970s as a model Soviet city to house the workers and families of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, now stands abandoned inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a restricted zone contaminated by radiation from the 1986 meltdown of reactor number four at the nearby Chernobyl plant in the world's worst civilian nuclear accident that spewed radiaoactive fallout across the globe. Authorities evacuated approximately 43,000 people from Pripyat in the days following the disaster and the city, with its high-rise apartment buildings, hospital, shops, schools, restaurants, cultural center and sports facilities, has remained a ghost-town ever since. The world will soon commemorate the 30th anniversary of the April 26, 1986 Chernobyl disaster. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
So just the other day I was recommending the Showtime limited series, “The Loudest Voice” (it is SOOOO good) to a friend and he asked if I’d watched “Chernobyl” on HBO.I had not and seriously had not even thought about it as I consider that nuclear disaster similar to how I consider the “hole in the ground” at Hiroshima.
A LOT of lives were lost there. I don’t need to gaze upon a mass grave. This is a policy I adopted when I felt very uneasy at Pearl Harbor and then again at Ground Zero in NYC.
I’m just a little too sensative (about some things), I guess.
Anyway, ever since the HBO series, Chernobyl aired more tourists have flocked to the nuclear site to get a glimpse of the place. Because of that the president of Ukraine has announced he intends to turn the area around Chernobyl into a tourist hub.
“Chernobyl has been a negative part of Ukraine’s brand,” said former entertainer now President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The time has come to change this.”
According to Zelensky, the government will make green corridors, waterways, and checkpoints throughout the area. Filming restrictions will also be lifted in Chernobyl.
Would YOU like to visit? I’m out.
Charlie Nance is the Afternoon Drive co-host (along with his wife) of "The Charlie and Debbie Show" at WSOC, Country 1037 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The couple have been with the radio station since 2006. Charlie has won the prestigious CMA (Country Music Association) Award for Radio Personality of the Year and has been a finalist for the Country Radio Hall of Fame four times. Prior to his time in Charlotte, Charlie (along with Debbie) spent more than a decade hosting successful morning radio shows in Greenville, SC; Augusta, Ga; and Birmingham, Al. As a content creator for Country 1037, Charlie writes about dream lottery windfalls, sports, restaurants and bars, and travel experiences in North and South Carolina.
