Chernobyl, Ukraine, is the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history. On April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Nearly 60,000 square miles became contaminated with life-threatening radiation. About 200,000 people were forced to evacuate.
The residential area of Pripyat remains a ghost town. A 1,000-square-mile area over the epicenter is the Exclusion Zone. Nobody lives there, and people need special permission to visit. In 2011, the site supervisor said it would take “at least 20,000 years” for the area to become inhabitable.
Forty years later, the area is worth studying, because Bible prophecy says that nuclear war will soon embroil mankind. Unprecedented destruction will strip Earth of plant and animal life (Habakkuk 3:17). “This is a new and unparalleled kind of terror!” Gerald Flurry writes about this verse. “The fields yield no crops. Total failure. Why? Nuclear fallout causing nuclear winter is the only explanation!” (Habakkuk).
However, the Bible provides a vision of magnificent natural beauty to appear soon after the Kingdom of God is established: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing …” (Isaiah 35:1-2). What causes this miraculous blooming of life after something so destructive as global nuclear war?
Jesus Christ will rule with the power necessary to supernaturally clean up the world. But even on a physical level, Chernobyl gives us a sense of how quickly land can recover from nuclear disaster.
It is still too dangerous for humans to live around Chernobyl, but against all expectations, nature has thrived. Dead trees were replaced by new plant growth. Animals quickly recolonized the area.
“Within only 20 years,” David Attenborough said, “science has recorded populations of animals similar to that in the wilder parts of Europe” (Our Planet). Moose, bison and even predators such as wolves inhabit the area. “Hunters like these would only return if their prey and the surrounding forest is also thriving,” he said. “Now, studies have shown that there are seven times more wolves inside the Exclusion Zone than outside it.”
The Exclusion Zone is so tranquil that the Ukrainian government introduced herds of Przewalski’s horses, an endangered species. The site of a devastating nuclear disaster is now a safe haven for one of Earth’s rarest large mammals.
Radiation levels are still abnormally high. Animals have been recorded with radiation-induced illnesses like stunted growth. But in general, Chernobyl today is an amazing example of how irradiated land can recover.
The nuclear disaster of the Great Tribulation will be far worse than Chernobyl: “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time” (Matthew 24:21). It will take the power of God to undo the damage of nuclear World War III. But Chernobyl today shows that unprecedented disasters can be undone.