“It was the eeriest journey I have ever taken. We drove by abandoned bus shelters. We sped a long the road at quite a rate but I began to notice, through the trees, that there were abandoned homes, with trees growing through their windows and roofs. With the thick snow all around, it felt like we had entered a sinister fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm.”
–From a stunning series of photo essays by Peter Zarko-Flynn, a London-based photographer

It’s hard to believe I was still in high school when the Chernobyl disaster happened on April 26, 1986, days after Earth Day. Not surprisingly, the disaster has resulted in a sanctuary for wildlife within the exclusion zone, though the animals continue to be radioactive due to a contaminated food supply.

American filmmaker Philip Grossman recently documented the abandoned city of Pripyat with footage captured by a drone. “Haunting” barely begins to describe it, especially when you compare the decay with old images of thriving Pripyat before the tragedy.