I remember when Chernobyl happened. In the midst of all the nuclear bomb scares of the 80′s, it was frightening. I also remember the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. I lived only a couple hundred miles away. That made it extra scary. And when I think of the 2600 square kilometer radioactive exclusion zone around Chernobyl, I only think of death.

But that’s not the case. The zone is teeming with wildlife. Marsh land that was drained under Stalin is returning to marsh. Beavers, boars, bison and deer are returning in large numbers. So are wolves. And even wild horses. The zone is lush, wet, green and jam-packed with life. There are no humans around.

The scenes in this video are so natural and peaceful that they’ll be of interest not just to nature guys like me but also post-collapse folks. What does a city of 60,000 look like after being abandoned for 25 years? Find out in the above PBS video.

The area is, of course, also highly radioactive. How ironic and how tragic that we have to make a landscape radioactive before we can stop disfiguring it and allow wildlife to roam without the constant threat of hunting them to exinction.

Is this what Fukushima will be like? What’s your reaction to this short documentary?