Chernobyl - A Drone's Eye View

Photo sourced from Facebook

Devon based documentary maker Danny Cooke has released drone-captured footage of the decaying remains of Chernobyl, Pripyat, nearly 30 years after the worlds biggest nuclear disaster.

By Scott Edwards

In 1986, reactor 4 in Chernobyl's nuclear power plant went into meltdown. It consequently caused a radiation leak which quickly wiped out the majority of inhabitants of the small town in the then Soviet Russian Pripyat, Ukraine. For those few who did manage to escape, they were faced with a life full unimaginable disease and after effects.

In two years time we will be looking back on the 30th anniversary of the disaster area which is still consumed by radiation and remains uninhabitable today. But one man has been able to reveal brand-new footage of the decaying remnants of the spine-shivering catastrophe.

Devon based documentary maker, Danny Cooke, has released footage captured by his Canon 7D and GoPro3+, both loaded onto a DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter drone.

He managed to fly the drone right up to the famous ferris wheel, the one image that regularly documents any thoughts of the disaster, to show what the old playground looks like today, in 2014. Not only did he catch those images that are all familiar to those aware of the catastrophe, he managed to reveal to us previously unseen shots of a baron decaying swimming pool, a school and nursery, with rotting toys and yellowing pages of children's story books.

Reviewing his footage, Cooke told tabloids that his time in Pripyat surveying the site was 'serene yet disturbing',

'I can't begin to imagine how terrifying it was for the hundreds of thousands of locals who evacuated' said Cooke, 'Time has really stood still there.'

'There was something serene yet disturbing about this place (Chernobyl).'

Cooke was hired by American news company CBS to do a 60 minute segment documenting the 'Chernobyl Exclusion Zone' that surrounds the area, and created this video called 'Postcards from Chernobyl'.

'Postcards from Chernobyl' can be seen here on Vimeo; (Warning: Some of the footage could be distressing for some viewers).

http://vimeo.com/112681885

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