Last year, more than 120,000 tourists visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, and in 2020 that number is expected to double. Mass tourism has forever become a part of the Exclusion Zone, mostly because of the successful HBO series “Chernobyl.”
Over the last few years, there have been some infamous incidents of airports being shut down and flights grounded because a camera drone was spotted nearby. But these accidents have given a group of climate activists an idea: in two weeks, they plan to fly drones inside London Heathrow's no-fly zone as a "symbolic action," possibly shutting down the world's 7th largest airport.
After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was devastated by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the nuclear disaster caused a major evacuation and the creation of an exclusion zone around the old plant. Five years later, a photographer has ventured into the zone to deliver photos to the outside world.
While working with CBS News to capture footage for a 60 Minutes segment about the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, filmmaker Danny Cooke got to explore the haunted landscape there in a way most people haven't yet: by drone.
The resulting video, released just 4 days ago, is called Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl, and it's every bit as eerie as you would imagine.