With all the symbolism of man's hubris turned to dust, in 1986, the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl melted down. The scale of the devastation was vast. A whole town, abandoned, was left to the elements. And in the decades since, the Ukrainian city of Pripyat has become a strange, modern ghost town.
With a drone in hand, a 60 Minutes crew visited the site, capturing the ruins from the ground to the sky.
From above, the drone shows a world not unlike that of the Mayan ruins in the Yucatan peninsula: Towering monuments covered in symbols of formerly powerful rulers, left alone in the green overgrowth of vegetation that simply cannot abide a vacuum.
The 60 Minutes segment for which this drone footage was originally created also focuses on the human efforts to contain the radiation--efforts that are still ongoing after 28 years. These include a giant steel coffin, and a huge arch that will seal the reactor.
Containing nuclear mistakes could be a multi-generational task. Exploring the ruins, even nearly three decades after the disaster, is something best done remotely.
