The settlement of Pripyat is five kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Its population numbered 50,000 until 1986. Today, Pripyat is a heavily guarded and highly contaminated ghost town in the center of the radioactive zone, which extends from Ukraine deep into Belarus. Those who penetrate the barbed-wire fence surrounding the zone need special permits, and those who wish to leave are checked for radioactive contamination. Still, jobs at the power plant and at the numerous research facilities are in demand, and approximately 15,000 people live here-residents who were resettled but who returned illegally and are now tolerated; and others who have found refuge in the many empty houses in this basically unregulated zone. Pripyat tells of survival in an improvised microcosm in which nothing should be eaten or drunk, where the dust should not be inhaled when stirred by the wind, and where virtually no one pays attention to these recommendations. They are "too much in love with their homeland to care." (Chicago Reader)