--- title: Postcards from Pripyat Chernobyl drone footage description: Haunting drone footage of Pripyat a city evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 canonical: https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-01T18:07:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:14:54.862Z og:title: Watch eerily beautiful drone footage of a town evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster og:description: Haunting drone footage of Pripyat a city evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 og:url: https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Watch eerily beautiful drone footage of a town evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster twitter:description: Haunting drone footage of Pripyat a city evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Watch Eerily Beautiful Drone Footage of a Town Evacuated After the Chernobyl Disaster  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2014 6:07 PM UTC  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 1, 2014 6:07 PM UTC After the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, a plume of radioactive fallout forced 350,000 people to evacuate their homes in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and resettle elsewhere. Residents of Pripyat, the city closest to the plant, left their homes and never returned. A recent [episode of _60 Minutes_](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chernobyl-the-catastrophe-that-never-ended/) revisited the site of the disaster to address lingering questions about how to reduce the impact of radioactive material still present at the plant. While on location, cinematographer [Danny Cooke](http://www.dannycooke.co.uk/) used a drone to capture overhead footage of Pripyat. The result is the stuff of zombie movies — abandoned fairgrounds, neglected baby dolls, rusted everything — only the images are all too real. In one shot, hundreds of gas masks lay strewn across the floor of an empty building. The video is accompanied by “Promise Land,” a haunting song by Hannah Miller. Of his time in Pripyat, Cooke wrote, “There was something serene, yet highly disturbing about this place. Time has stood still, and there are memories of past happenings floating around us.” The footage beautifully captures the aftermath of nuclear disaster — an aftermath that many [still live with](http://www.who.int/ionizing%5Fradiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/) today. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/"},"headline":"Watch Eerily Beautiful Drone Footage of a Town Evacuated After the Chernobyl Disaster","datePublished":"2014-12-01T18:07:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:14:54.862Z","description":"Cinematographer captured the footage while shooting an episode of \"60 Minutes\"","url":"https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/","keywords":["Newsfeed","World","video","Chernobyl"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Berman","jobTitle":"Berman is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3611917/drone-footage-chernobyl/","name":"Watch Eerily Beautiful Drone Footage of a Town Evacuated After the Chernobyl Disaster"}}]}] ```