Woman rides through Chernobyl 18 years later, documents it
 

Some of you might have already seen this twice on Slashdot. I'm surprised nobody reposted it here, as I think it is a totally amazing documentary.

If anyone doesn't know, Chernobyl (of the former Soviet Union) is the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history. The result of the 1986 disaster is that civilization was razed within a 30 kilometer (18 mile) radius around the nuclear power plant. The Soviet Union hid it from the rest of the world for some time, but Swedish scientists spotted a radioactive cloud from the plant. Google has more, it's a very interesting story.

Basically a woman named Elena rode her bike through Chernobyl twice in the last month or so, partly because she likes bikes, and partly because she likes to travel to see it.

It's about 25 pages or so, I wouldn't dare paste the contents here, especially since the images are truly worth a thousand words apiece:

http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/benoc/mirro...4/kiddofspeed/
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/
(1st link is a mirror, 2nd original site)

Am I the only one who gapes for a while at these images? They're surrealistic. The place is, as she says, like Pompeii, completely preserved from 1986. I don't know what to make of it, only that such a terrible mistake must never happen again.

That's pretty moving stuff. Thanks for the link, I enjoyed it.

I was given the link earlier this evening and had spent nearly an hour reading the entire site.

Being a photographer on the side, I like to take my time and appreciate both the pictures as well as the comments. I try to take what the photographer had said to heart when viewing the pictures.

Was I moved? Yes. So much so that I started a thread in this very forum. I didn't even bother to check if it had been posted before. Oh well, it got removed, per my request.

Nevertheless, it is a very powerful work. It's amazing, but at the same time, it never should have happened. There is a great deal to be learned from this. I hope that everyone appreciates this as much as I did.

-SF

Very moving and beyond words.

I'm reminded of one of my favorite cult films, "Quiet Earth" accept that this isn't a movie, it's real.

I wonder if someday the badgers and wolves won't have a chance to roam through all cities after we've destroyed ourselves.

these images...
the figures...

i just can't find the words.

what a remarkable documentary this is.
thanks for bringing this up.

Incredible.. Thanks for sharing the link.

Just read every single comment on that link, excellent documentery!

I never really knew how deserted Chernoble was AND I never even knew of that "Ghost Town".

Awesome.

Whoa, I've got major goosebumps. Thanks for the link. I really enjoyed reading that. She had quite a sense of humor also.

Surreal ... :(

Scary to think my dad was almost dispatched to clean that mess up.

Those pictures are amazing..

Saw it on another forum, adamazing stuff.

That is incredible! Thanks for the post.

Wow, that was amazing. I didnt know it was that bad there still.. I always thought the power plant was outside of any city.. I didnt know there was a "ghost town" there..

thank you very much for the link...

That was a very interesting article and some of the most powerful photography I've seen.

That was surreal. Look at all the fire trucks and military vehicles that were abandoned. To think that they were dispatched and had no idea what they were getting into, just that they needed to help. It's also facinating to take a look at people's lives that have went untouched for decades.

Thank you for the link!

That's really amazing. I had no idea people refused to leave and chose to stay.

very very cool... would have been an amazing resource for the history project i did in highschool...

D'oh! I was just about to link to that site! ;)

Yeah, its very great. Very moving to see images of places like that.

"...lost in time, like tears in rain."

Wow, both haunting and beautiful. The last pictures of the kindergarten hurts to look at, there's just this desolate feeling of abandonement in everything. A very good look at how dangerous radiation is!
I'd love to see for myself sometime, if at all possible.

very interesting....thanks very much...reminds me a bit of Pompeii

Fascinating reading, thanks!

Its amazing how much was hidden from us about this disaster - 400,000 dead! And the stories about the magic wood and the cemetary being the most dangerous, and the houses whose windows faced the reactor...it really sends goose bumps up your spine.

Kind of reminds me of that scene in Terminator 2 where the kids are playing in the park...

My dad sent this link to me this morning and i was gonna post it here, but you already beat me to it. thanks for sharing!!

MOving, scary, frightening, sad...all wrapped into one emotion. This is one event americans and probably most of the world have forgotten about. 400000 people dead and more to die over the next 30 years....that is insane.

thanks,
mr b

Very thought provoking. Thanks

Great post. Interesting stuff.

I remember my Aunt in Sweden telling me that they couldn't drink milk for quite some time.

wow those pictures are awesome... i read every single sentence and got major goosebumps... thanks for the link!

Very disheartening, but an interesting article, thanks for posting this.

One Person's Journey Through Chernobyl
 

oops, looks like it was posted before:) still an amazing site with some very moving pictures (the one with all the abandoned freight ships is one of the more creepy to me for some reason)

I read this a few days ago, it was a very intense read. That area is a frightening place and I still get a chill thinking about the pictures. From my understanding Chernobyl isn't the only nuclear accident that Russia has had and some of the others were pretty nasty also. On nuclearfiles.org they have a listing of nuclear accidents going back to 1990, it's an interesting read.

That exact link was posted as another start of a thread about a week ago. I looked for it, but couldn't find it. It's around here somewhere though....

Good read.

Excellent post. Thanks.

That was amazing! the part about the trees was scary.

I see I'm not the only one who rec'd this link and was going to post it here. It really was very moving. Thank you for posting it.

I have cousins by marriage, who go there 6 times a year from Denmark - to aid the orphanages there. They have successfully gotten 98 young orphans placed in safe homes in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. It's a story that is far from over. The lack of safe water and food there is still a huge problem. The farmers cannot grow any food to sustain their families or the local populus. The amount of birth defects with a 65 mile radius is an unnervingly high number & it does make me think that we as a nation need to "walk softer and put down our big stick." The amount of young kids with cancer there is 100 times higher than our worst neighborhoods here in the USA, where the groundwater has PCE and VOC present at even a small percentage rate. These areas in the US are listed in private government EIR reports conducted by the DOD.

- The use of nuclear energy and/or weapons on our planet is no longer acceptable.

Remember "Silkwood and "The China Syndrom?" Interesting and intense movies, likely not seen by my friends who are under the age of 45.

This is some seriously powerful stuff.

I have this morbid curiosity about me, whenever I see places, buildings that have been abandoned in haste, I am tempted to go in and have a look, see people's homes as they were... But I never imagined there was a whole city like that out there...deserted.

Like from some John Carpenter movie. Except that this is real.

this is an amazing documentation of pictures. she tells a great story with her photos.