Chernobyl
About Chernobyl
Chernobyl, also known as Chornobyl, is a partially abandoned city in Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. It is located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, 90 kilometres (60 mi) to the north of Kyiv and 160 kilometres (100 mi) to the southwest of Gomel in neighbouring Belarus. Prior to being evacuated in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, it was home to approximately 14,000 residents—considerably less than adjacent Pripyat, which was completely abandoned following the incident. Since then, although living anywhere within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is technically illegal, Ukrainian authorities have tolerated those who have taken up living in some of the city's less irradiated areas; Chernobyl's 2020 population estimate was 150 people.
On the show — 61 mentions total
At Chernobyl, when it happened, they flew over in helicopters, they dropped 5,000 tons of sand and lead and clay on top of the fire to snuff it out. Because only a small amount of the radioactive material in Chernobyl actually was in this explosion. If the rest of it had gone up, Europe might have become uninhabitable, basically.
from No Such Thing as Pyramids in Johannesburg, 2025-03-13 at 00:32:48 · read transcript
Other times Chernobyl came up
Right. It's pretty amazing all the stuff that happened just after Chernobyl had the moment where everyone in the government was trying to downplay it within the Soviet Union, trying to say, oh, it's not as bad as it seems. I read this amazing article by a lady called Natalia Cherukova, who spoke about being there and what it was like and all the things that were being done.
No Such Thing as Pyramids in Johannesburg, 2025-03-13 · listen
Wow. Do you know what the Russian for wormwood is? It's Chernobyl. What? Really? Chernobyl was named after the wormwood fields. The, the town and the nuclear plant were named after the wormwood fields around it. That is the Russian word for wormwood. Yeah. Oh, so if you were to do this podcast in Russia and say wormwood doesn't do you any harm, that would not be true. You'd have to be very careful with the translation.
346: No Such Thing As An Unsexy Astronaut, 2020-11-06 · listen
The variety out there that we have of them is it's not that much actually I mean there's specific ones that you can wipe on your fingers for when they're blackened by a typewriter there are ones that you should use called Radiac Wash to wipe away when you're radioactively contaminated Wow! If I'd been contaminated by radiation I'd hope for a little more attention from the authorities than a moist towelette That's very much the final thing we do after the big shower There was just an ass to a desk walking through Chernobyl A moist towel, anyone?
416: No Such Thing As The Turin Towelette, 2022-03-04 · listen
More places from this episode
No Such Thing as Pyramids in Johannesburg put 6 places on the map.
- Auckland City Hospital · New Zealand
- University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine · United States
- Nagasaki · Japan
- Hiroshima · Japan
- Blue Ridge Mountains · United States
Coordinates: 51.2763, 30.2219