5. New Smyrna Beach, Volusia County, Florida
This Florida beach and county has been nicknamed the “shark attack capital of the world”. The state of Florida itself has had 663 recorded shark attacks, 11 of them fatal and the most recent being in 2010. Volusia county is where 210 of these occurred, and New Smyrna Beach in particular has had more incidents per square mile than any other beach worldwide. To put things in perspective, your odds of being struck by lightening are greater than being attacked by a great white, but if you don’t want to push those odds you’d best choose a different beach. FYI, a large tagged great white shark named Katherine is currently being tracked along the Volusia coast. Cue the Jaws music.
6. Chernobyl, Ukraine
The catastrophic nuclear explosion that devastated this northern Ukraine region back in 1986 is now a tourist attraction. Since 2011, tours of the Chernobyl Zone and the abandoned ghost town of Pripyat have offered visitors a first-hand glimpse into the area and the level 7 disaster that put it on the map. Tourism websites that promote these trips assure that radiation levels are “safe” for a short visit and that the probability of swallowing or breathing a radioactive particle during a trip to the Zone is “rather low”. There are strict guidelines about not straying from the designated route and not touching any plant or object, but you know some fools can’t resist the temptation to take a small souvenir. It’s not just radiation sickness and resulting cancers that is a concern, some of the structures themselves are unstable. In 2012 a floor collapsed and injured tourists who were exploring an abandoned building in Pripyat. Fascinating as it may be to glean some insight into this disaster, those that are profiting on it might not be the most impartial source of safety stats. Is it really worth the risk?
