The Most Unsettling Historical Photos Taken Moments Before Disaster

Inside the Control Room of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 1986

This photograph provides a rare glimpse inside the complex control room of one of the RBMK reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant sometime before the 1986 disaster. It shows the sprawling consoles, dials, and blinking lights that represented a delicate system of power generation. This very room, possibly Reactor 4’s, was where operators were conducting a flawed safety test on April 26, 1986, that led to a catastrophic steam explosion and the worst nuclear accident in history.