April 26, 1986, The fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, destroying the protection of the reactor, and within the next few days, an atomic fire was raging over the power plant. According to eyewitnesses, on the first night, a column of light almost a kilometer in height was seen above the reactor. All this was accompanied by gigantic emissions of contaminated dust, which the wind drove straight towards the forest. It must be said that the forest at the cost of its life here has very much helped people, detaining as a filter dozens of tons of radioactive dust - the crown of the pine is very dense and well retains dust.
As a result of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, tens of thousands of hectares of forest have experienced severe radioactive contamination.
The levels of radiation in the forest were simply monstrous - the pine is sensitively suffering from radiation already at a dose of 100 rad, and the doses received by the pines in this forest amounted to something in the range of 5000-10000 rad. In early May 1986, military helicopter pilots flew around the perimeter of the station and saw such a terrible picture - the entire forest was lost and became rusty-red, literally "burned" in cold radioactive fire.
The whole Red Forest in Chernobyl is the most terrible forest in the world. At night, in the first days after the Chernobyl accident, it seemed that ghosts were flying there, and the plants in Chernobyl were beginning to glow. Everyone was just shocked by such processes. Only later it became clear that the luminous forest near the nuclear power plant was the result of a reaction between the enzymes produced by the terrible forest and the particles of radiation that had settled on it.
During the liquidation of the aftermath of the accident, it was decided to destroy the Red Forest - it was a great danger because a dead fire could break out at any time, and all radionuclides would again be in the air. All the trees were buried in special trenches right on the spot. Trance, by the way, can be seen on Google maps.
Surprisingly, the people who participated in the liquidation of the forest did not have enough protective equipment. As a result, many of them received a high dose of radiation and serious diseases.