13. Some People Stayed In The Exclusion Zone – By Choice
While the town is a ghost town today, it wasn’t always this way, not even after the forced evacuation of the city’s residents. Some residents refused to leave their home while others left for a while but then went back. The people who returned said that they either didn’t believe the effects were that bad or they felt no one else wanted them around because they were tainted with radioactivity and a hazard to everyone else. They felt more at home in a place that would eventually kill them due to radiation poisoning.
Those who stayed said they refused to leave their home, no matter what the risks were and others cited the previous residents by believing conditions were fine. Of course, radiation poisoning is a life-threatening event, and many people died because of it. While estimates vary on the number of deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster, people speculate it was over 9,000 deaths. However, many other numbers range from 900,000 to 1 million people died of radiation poisoning.