ShortHand: The World's Forbidden Places

**SPEAKER_1** (0:12)
From the depths of the ocean to the tip of Mount Everest, we humans might like to think that we've conquered every inch of this planet we call home. But no matter who you are or how much money you have, there are some places that remain strictly off limits. And usually, that's for a very good reason.
Whether that is to protect mankind from harm or guard what's there from us.
But does a well-placed no-entry sign ever quell our curiosity? Nope, it makes it worse. It makes us want to go there even more. So since you will never get a tourist visa approved for these deadly destinations, we're taking you on an audio tour of Earth's most forbidden places. Enter at your own risk. This is the shorthand.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
First up on our grim adventure itinerary, the site of the most catastrophic nuclear accident in history, Chernobyl. After the reactor meltdown in April 1986 that killed 30 people in the immediate aftermath, and was later linked to thousands of radiation-related illnesses and cancers, the Soviet authorities initially designated an area of 30 kilometres around the plant as the so-called exclusion zone. This was later extended to a radius of about a thousand square miles, with all residents forced to abandon their homes and settle elsewhere.
Now, you might imagine this as basically the governmental equivalent of building a massive fuck-offence around Chernobyl with a skull and crossbone sign that says do not enter unless you want to die. But it's a bit more complicated than that.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:48)
Because they had to leave their dogs behind.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:51)
That was, I had to fast-forward through those bits of Chernobyl. But watching all the people just melt, I was fine.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:00)
Hey man, dogs never hurt me.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:03)
So yes, it's a bit more complicated than that because there are layers to the exclusion zone in terms of danger. You won't immediately melt into radioactive dust the second you step over the boundary. But the further you go in, the deadlier it gets.
Areas incredibly close to the original meltdown site are, unsurprisingly, no-go zones. The Red Forest, nicknamed after absorbing intense radioactive fallout after the blast, all of its pine trees turned reddish brown and died. And that's not exactly a place that we'd recommend stopping off for a picnic. Radiation levels in the most hazardous pockets of the exclusion zone are thought to exceed 10 milliseverets an hour, thousands of times higher than normal background radiation. Even 40 years after the disaster.
And the thing about radiation is that it's a bit of a silent killer. You can't see, smell, or taste it. But prolonged exposure can damage your DNA at a cellular level, drastically increasing your chances of cancer down the line. So a cheeky trip down to the exclusion zone might not feel at all dangerous at the time, but you'd be taking a chance with your life that most would argue probably isn't worth it.

**SPEAKER_1** (3:15)
But if you think that nobody in their right mind would ever dream of stepping foot in this radioactive wasteland, you would be dead wrong. There's a reason we have those pictures of that Ferris wheel. While years have passed since the accident, Chernobyl and its surrounding areas have remained frozen in time as a spooky snapshot of Soviet life, with history buffs and lovers of the macabre practically chomping at the bit to get a peek at this creepy time capsule.
And before the Russian-Ukraine war kicked off in 2022, you could. It wasn't quite a case of just walking right on in there, though. In 2011, the Ukrainian government formally opened up the exclusion zone to visitors, but only through licensed guided tour operations.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:57)
Yeah, there's a River Monsters episode where he goes and fishes in the cooling lakes, the cooling ponds of the reactors, and he finds a load of weird black catfish in there, but they're not giant.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:09)
I know, you forced me to watch it, like, three times.

**SPEAKER_2** (4:11)
It's so good. You want them to be monsters, but they're obviously not. They're just stunted because of all the radiation.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:17)
So tourists could take a supervised stroll through the abandoned ghost city of Pripyat with its iconic rusted ferris wheel, and you could also visit eerie attractions like the Dugar radar towers, as well as the viewpoints overlooking the ill-fated reactor 4
In those spots, it was judged that the radiation exposure would actually be relatively low, the equivalent of taking a long-haul flight. And it turned out to be quite the tourist trap. Around 72,000 people visited in 2018 They're all dead now. I'm kidding. And after HBO's terrifying drama series Chernobyl that aired in 2019, god was it that long ago, that number skyrocketed to around 125,000.