Fuel Chernobyl: A Stalkers$650 Guide Richter Darmon

This photography-led book reveals the story of Chernobyl today, with unprecedented access to the Zone, it takes the reader into previously undocumented areas. Since the first atomic bomb was dropped, humankind has been haunted by the idea of nuclear apocalypse. That nightmare almost became reality in 1986, when an accident at the USSR$640s Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant triggered the world$641s worst radiological crisis. The events of that night are well documented $642 but history didn$643t stop there. Chernobyl, as a place, remains very much alive today.

In Chernobyl: A Stalkers$644 Guide, researcher Darmon Richter journeys into the contemporary Exclusion Zone, venturing deeper than any previously published account. While thousands of foreign visitors congregate around a handful of curated sites, beyond the tourist hotspots lies a wild and mysterious land the size of a small country. In the forests of Chernobyl, historic village settlements and Soviet-era utopianism have lain abandoned since the time of the disaster $645 overshadowed by vast, unearthly mega-structures designed to win the Cold War. Richter combines photographs of discoveries made during his numerous visits to the Zone with the voices of those who witnessed history $646 engineers, scientists, police and evacuees.

He explores evacuated regions in both Ukraine and Belarus, finding forgotten ghost towns and Soviet monuments lost deep in irradiated forests. He gains exclusive access inside the most secure areas of the power plant itself, and joins the $647stalkers$648 of Chernobyl as he sets out on a high-stakes illegal hike to the heart of the Exclusion Zone.