The Chernobyl Tourism Industry Is Blowing Up Thanks To The HBO Miniseries "Chernobyl"
NBC News- The success of a U.S. television miniseries examining the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl has driven up the number of tourists wanting to see the plant and the ghostly abandoned town that neighbors it for themselves. One Chernobyl tour agency reported a 40% rise in trip bookings since the critically acclaimed series, made by HBO, began in May. English-language tours usually cost around $100 per person.
Sergiy Ivanchuk, director of SoloEast tours, told Reuters the company saw a 30% increase in tourists going to the area in May 2019 compared with the same month last year. Bookings for June, July and August have risen by approximately 40% since HBO aired the show, he said. Yaroslav Yemelianenko, director of Chernobyl Tour, said he expected a similar increase of 30-40% because of the show.
His company offers a special tour of locations depicted in the series, including the bunker where the initial decision by local officials not to evacuate after the explosion was made. Day-trippers board buses in the center of Kiev and are driven 75 miles to the area, where they can see monuments to the victims and abandoned villages and have lunch in the only restaurant in the town of Chernobyl.
As if the creating countless hit shows and making the sound of TV static invoke excitement in the stomachs of millions of viewers wasn’t enough, this story hammers home HBO being the most dominant channel in the history of mankind. People willingly choosing to go on vacation to a literal nuclear wasteland that they saw on TV instead of the beaches or mountains is true GOAT shit. I can understand traveling to one of the beautiful locations that Game of Thrones filmed at because they were majestic while also being a place that Stannis Baratheon rested his fictional head or venturing to the Jersey burbs to see Tony Soprano’s house or the Bada Bing (did you know it’s actually a strip club called Satin Dolls?) while checking out all New York City has to offer. I can even appreciate people that visit the hoods of Baltimore to see where the real life Omar blasted people with shotguns and Bubbles chased the dragon before/after they check out a true sports gem in Camden Yards.
However, going all the way to Ukraine to see the real life places where those scientists and firemen puked up blood as their skin melted from their bodies before they died horrific death seems a bit extreme. I mean, look at the description of the tour:
The area around the plant retains the feel of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, where stray dogs roam and vegetation encroaches into windowless, abandoned buildings strewn with rubble.
Come for the post-apocalyptic wasteland, stay for the stray dogs in abandoned buildings! And don’t worry about packing your radiation detector to see how unhealthy the area around you is because the tour supplies one for you.
If that’s not worth of a 5 star review on Trip Advisor, I don’t know what is. And if I haven’t sold you on booking that plane ticket yet, here are a few more highlights of the tour from Intrepid Travel, including a ferris wheel for the kids!
The only time you are going to see scenery like that on the Jersey Shore is if you watch the bums fuck under the boardwalk.
To be honest, I don’t know much more about the show since I stopped watching after the first disturbing episode. I already tune into the Mets on a nightly basis, so I figured I don’t need to watch even more depressing shit. But based on what all I know about Chernobyl from history class and the occasional tweet about the show, I think you are a fucking nutbag if you fly all the way to the Ukraine to visit a nuclear wasteland because you saw it on a TV show. And that’s coming from someone that flew 12 hours to Latvia because his favorite basketball team drafted a player that grew up there.
P.S. If you want to read up more on the show that is so good, people are using their vacation days to visit a nuclear power plant responsible for a catastrophic manmade disaster, check out RA’s fantastic blog reviewing “Chernobyl”.