Until 19th century, the Pripyat River basin on the border between Ukraine and Belarus was wetland and forest. As usual, humans kind of ruined it. They burned down forest for pasture land, or cut down trees to sell as timber—or for fuel to make glass and vodka. By the middle of the 20th century, most of that industry was gone, and human-driven reforestation efforts had remade the Pripyat region anew. And then, on April 26, 1986, a nuclear power plant called Chornobyl, on the Pripyat River about 70 miles north of Kyiv, blew up and caught fire, spewing radiation across the northern hemisphere.
Chornobyl
Wired: The Chornobyl disaster might have also built a paradise
A curious wild horse stands in the middle of a road in the Chornobyl exclusion zone on Feb. 5, 2018.
