It featured a stealth mission titled “All Ghillied Up,” which was set in Pripyat, the abandoned workers’ city that stands alongside the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In the West, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was a blockbuster. In 2007, two games were released that imprinted Chernobyl into the minds of a whole generation of gamers. In reality, though, queues at the Chernobyl checkpoint had been growing at a consistent rate for a decade prior - and the touristification of Chernobyl owed at least as much to video games as it did to television. The real Chernobyl Zone saw a record number of 124,000 visitors that year, and many commentators suggested the HBO show had caused a sudden Chernobyl tourism boom. In May 2019, HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl became an unprecedented hit. By the time I finish my drink I’m listening to Doris Day croon: “Again… this couldn’t happen again / This is that once in a lifetime / This is the thrill divine.”
As I join the other tourists and queue for a coffee, speakers play “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” by The Ink Spots, a track lifted straight from the soundtrack of Fallout 3. There’s “Chernobyl ice cream,” advertised by colorful signs reminiscent of the Raygun Gothic style of atomic-era Americana. At the entrance to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, 35 years on from the worst nuclear disaster in history, a yellow souvenir van sells T-shirts, key rings, and glow-in-the-dark “Chernobyl condoms,” all branded with gas mask symbols or stylized radiation warning signs.
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