After the Chernobyl disaster destroyed a nuclear reactor it caused significant and catastrophic changes to the area around it.
While people are generally not supposed to go near the place, what with it having a 1,000 square mile exclusion zone, some visitors to the radioactive site have made the journey.
They've noted the impact a lack of human presence has had on Chernobyl, with nature retaking much of the area and the local wildlife seemingly developing certain resistances to the radiation.
Advert
Of course, that didn't stop Russian troops from marching in there in the early days of their invasion of Ukraine, before withdrawing and some of them suffering from radiation sickness.
Anyhow, with no plans to repopulate the area, Chernobyl has become a ghost town filled with eerie reminders of the place it used to be before the disaster, and some sobering examples of what happened.
Among the most striking of the latter category is the 'Elephant's Foot', a large and unpleasant looking mass which is among the most dangerous things in the world.
First off, the science-y bit, the foot is the visible part of remnants of melted radioactive fuel.
Advert
When the Chernobyl disaster occurred in April 1986, parts of the molten core, the reactor and pieces of the building's structure melted together and burned through reinforced concrete - which you can see in the footage taken by technician Alexander Kupny and Segei Koshelev sometime in the mid-2000s.
It's a mixture of uranium, titanium, zirconium, magnesium, graphite and silicon dioxide, and together they form something called corium which refers to a lava-like substance which contains nuclear fuel.
All in all it's very radioactive, and being in a room with it for just a few minutes can be a death sentence.
Being next to it for about five minutes will kill you, and after just 30 seconds you're likely to begin experiencing dizziness and fatigue.
Advert
Two minutes in and your cells will start to be damaged, while after four minutes you'll be squirting from both ends and having a fever.
And five minutes worth of exposure is enough to meant that you'll be dead in a couple of days.
The Elephant's Foot has lost much of its radioactivity over the years, but that's not to say it's not dangerous, indeed staying too long next to it will still kill you, and it'll remain a deadly thing for thousands of years.
Breaking off chunks of the foot for study required shooting it with an AK-47 loaded with armour piercing rounds, though in later years the mass began to break down structurally.
Advert
All in all, the Elephant's Foot is something you wouldn't want to ever touch - let alone get close to.
Joe Harker