Mushrooms

Food in the zone is toxic, people working or visiting are told not to eat anything found there. The few restaurants that have been set up to cater for the people working near Chernobyl must get food delivered to them from far outside the zone and even then there are still risks of contamination.

One of the main killers linked to the incident is Thyroid cancer, this is because the thyroid glands found in your neck absorb radiation like a sponge, and young people are especially at risk. Normally iodine tablets are given to people to help prevent/reduce radiation building up in the thyroids but during the incident no one was given this basic treatment at least not until much later on.

The reason from mentioning this is because its the first subject for my work, much like thyroids, mushrooms absorb radiation, from both the fallout and the soil, and even in places like Kiev people are warned against eating such foods. So much so that at local markets, sellers must prove that their stocks are free of radiation or at least below safe levels at near by testing centres. 

Present Day

Today Prypiat and Chernobyl are visited by thousands of tourists each year, eager to witness the ghostly remains of a once properous town and get up close to the now infamous Reactor number 4 sarcophagus, the concrete housing which encases the power plant. 

The current sarcophagus is starting to collapse since its creation was rushed, there are now plans to build a newer structure to completely cover the plant, this will allow workers to dismantle the sarcophagus and deal debris left inside more easily. 

Day trippers from Kiev can pay to get into the zone of alienation, visit returning villages who have resumed living a normal life inside the zone and many other sights such as graveyard full of trucks, helicopters and armoured vehicles. Another type of tourists are the hunters, people paying for the privilege to stalk and kill animals in the wilderness created by the abandoned landscape, weather it be on foot or from a helicopter.

Even though hunting and fishing is prohibited in the zone, some people are still willing to pay the right money to get their chance. 

Scientists were amazed at the increase and return of wildlife to the zone, many believe that the radiation doesn’t pose as big a threat to the animals as is does to humans, although research has shown that the animals are suffering from depressed fertility. 

Even now people are living relatively normal lives in the zone, eating and growing food in the toxic soil, some claim to have returned soon after the incident and believe to be in good health despite the radiation.

Prypiat

The Chernobyl Power Plant is named after the city Chernobyl, located 9 miles south south-east of the plant. To help the new workers at the plant a sister city was built, called Prypiat. 

Built as a testament to the New Soviet way of life, and the Power plant as a shining example of soviet engineering, Life in Prypiat was the dream of any good communist.

Boasting one of the finest hotels, swimming pools, and up to date apartments, many people moved to the city looking for a better life. There was even a fair ground constructed to celebrate May Day, which never had chance to open.

The population of the city at the time of the disaster was around 50,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prypiat%2C_Ukraine

Modern References

Today Chernobyl is used as a backdrop for a few different games, the most recent being Activisions Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which uses Prypiat as a setting for missions and the disaster itself as part of the plot.

Terrorists break into the Chernobyl power plant and steal nuclear material to sell on the black market, as part of a two man sniper team, you must stop the man in charge of this operation.

Another game is STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, which is based on the story of a second disaster at the nuclear plant which drastically changes the people and wild life in the surrounding area.

The game also makes references to terminology, and ideas from the science fiction book Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky and the 1979 film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. Originally scientists working around the Chernobyl disaster also used some of the same terminology.

Chernobyl Disaster

On 26th april 1986, the number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded creating one of the worlds worst nuclear plant disasters in history.  The Chernobyl Forum published a report in 2005, led by the International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization , attributed as few as 56 deaths, 47 of them being accident workers, directly to the incident. Although many more deaths have been linked to exposure to radiation from the reactor and fall out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

http://chernobyl.undp.org/english/

http://www.iaea.or.at/NewsCenter/Features/Chernobyl-15/cherno-faq.shtml