Urban explorer goes hunting for Pokemon inside Chernobyl's exclusion area

A DARING Pokemon Go player took the game to a whole new level by hunting for Pokemon in the Chernobyl exclusion zone

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Darmon finds a Pokestop pinned to a Soviet T-10 tank in Kiev, Ukraine

Travel writer, Darmon Richter, travelled to Ukraine and Bulgaria in September 2016 to see if he could find any Pokemon in the radioactive zone.

The urban explorer was particularly curious about locations that had a difficult history attached to them and was surprised to find Pokémon almost everywhere he went, including some inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

Darmon was surprised to find that a memorial complex in Chernobyl now features a Pokestop

Darmon, 32, said: “I found the game had the affect of stripping away politics from, what included, some highly contested sites. Ukraine even has recently passed a law that makes the production of communist symbols illegal – but they still feature in Pokémon Go.”

A sign outside the Holodomor Museum in Kiev reminds visitors that games are prohibited

When Darmon read about people catching Pokemon in controversial places such as the DC Holocaust Museum, it made him curious about where else they might be playing.

He said: “I was already booked to lead a photography tour into Chernobyl in September, so I downloaded the app and decided to go and investigate.”

The ‘Fraternal Barrow’ monument in Plovdiv, Bulgaria features a pokéstop

On 26 April 1986, the nuclear disaster forced over 50,000 residents to flee the city, leaving belongings behind.

The Ukrainian city of Pripyat was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters of all time, killing dozens of people in the immediate aftermath and leaving many more to die of illness in the years that followed.

The urban explorer finds two gyms and two pokéstops at the Buzludzha Monument in Varna, Bulgaria

Darmon said: “Mostly I was interested in finding out whether the game’s map included places with a troubled past.

“But while I was doing that, I had to be careful that my own behaviour wasn’t likely to cause offence. In some places, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable playing at all – such as the Holodomor Genocide Memorial in Kiev, which now features as a gym in Pokémon Go.”

The Motherland Monument in Kiev is pictured as Darmon finds a Pokemon training gym

The gamer took an overnight trip to the Chernobyl exclusion zone with the help of a tour guide and whilst there spotted several Pokestops along the way.

Darmon, 32, said: “We entered the Chernobyl Zone with one of my local contacts, an official tour guide for the place.

A tour bus passes the sign to Pripyat inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone

“The radiation levels are high enough that you wouldn’t want to live there – but for an overnight trip it’s safe enough. We just had to keep an eye on the radiation meter and avoid any hotspots.”

Darmon’s photos show him playing Pokemon Go as he travelled from Varna, Bulgaria to the ruins of communist Utopia and Kiev Ukraine.

Workers arrive to start their day at Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

He said: “The game broke taboos, and valued objects of communist heritage with equal weight to more conventional attractions.

“If this is the start of a new trend in gaming – if future generations are going to grow up experiencing the world through similar platforms – then it hints at a growing cultural shift towards the depoliticisation of 20th century ideological architecture, even in countries where that history is still now a subject of division.”