In 1986 a nuclear meltdown in the Chernobyl power plant that was infamous in present-day Ukraine left miles of land in radioactive ruins. Residents living in areas most contaminated by the disaster relocated and were evacuated by government order, as well as a no-man's land of our own making was left to its own apparatus. In the ensuing 25 years, fields, marshes, woods and rivers recovered the land, overruling the effects of hundreds of years of human development. And surprisingly, this exclusion zone, or "dead zone," has turned into a sort of post-atomic Eden, populated by beaver and bison, horses and birds, fish and falcons - and ruled by wolves.