March 29, 2004

Biking in Chernobyl. A Russian woman goes on a motorbike trip through Chernobyl and the surrounding area. She takes some truly amazing pictures, demonstrating the unimaginable impact to the Russian way of life, both on a huge and a human scale. Definitely worth bearing with the broken English.
posted by Blaise Bailey Finnegan 20 years ago
  • This is one of the reasons why the internet is the greatest thing ever. And I want some of those abandoned Soviet Helicopters. I live about 10 miles from a nuclear reactor. I wonder what my town would look like if it was abandoned for 20 years.
  • Dad is nuclear physicist and he also says that of all dangerous things in my life, he can only think about one, which is riding my bike on fifth or sixth gear. Fathers are the same everywhere. Nice find, BBF.
  • Great stuff! She's updated with more pics since last time I checked it... that egg photo is haunting. The "silence which is hard to stand in empty town" phrase stuck with me ever since first reading it. I'm somewhat apprehensive about her doing all that riding around. Would any monkey present risk such an 'extreme tourism' trip?
  • Maybe if you're biking fast enough the radiation won't catch you.
  • She carries a dosimeter, sticks to the low-rads asphalt, rides alone (or maybe with a friend riding pillion) so she isn't breathing the dust kicked up by other bikes, and limits her time in the hot zone by riding at speed. Sounds like she's taking all sensible measures.
  • Oddly enough, I *just* finished playing through the classic video game, Fallout. Fun game. Lots of similarities. Ghost towns... like bizarro Twilight Zone. The Geiger counter becomes a lifeline, and looting is okay. Not sure if I could do what this lady did, though. I get nervous just having my teeth x-rayed.
  • Yeah, I'd love to do this, but I don't think I'm brave enough (certainly not brave enough to ride a bike like she does, anyway).
  • Previously discussed on Slashdot here and more recently here and another discussion of the reactor here.
  • >>Usually, when I go to explore buildings I pick up a girl, who live in Chernobyl and make her living with leading people through dead zone. yikes. now there's a job.
  • the picture of the horses made me all teary.
  • Thanks for the Slashdot threads. Some good stuff in there among all the dung, including this description of Cerenkov radiation as seen from within one's own eyeballs. I will admit that along with every other geek on /. I'm madly in love with this hot, hot biker chick *looks abashed*
  • this is amazing. the pictures are wonderful and her broken english reads like poetry in spots. the picture of dirty stuffed animals on an abandoned playground started me crying and i still feel weepy.
  • What she chronicles is eerie and beautiful and tragic. Her site got me thinking, among other things, about the long-term (health) effects of catastrophic nuclear radiation, which led me to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and rerf.
  • When I got to the picture with the broken vinyl record, I had Moonlight Sonata going through my head when viewing the kindergarten pictures. It's all so terribly forlorn, and sad. And what I wouldn't give to be a biker babe...
  • Hella good post.
  • Awesome, I'm really enjoying this. I think it was posted on Mefi and /. yet somehow I still managed to miss it until now. Thanks. Chernobyl is the Pompeii of our time.
  • Goetter -- Yea, it's always a struggle to weed through all the garbage to find the shiny bits. The picture of the old woman who had come back to her home to die depressed me the most. :(
  • Thanks, tracicle. I thought this had already been posted here, but it was at Metafilter that I read this. Definitely a great find. The pictures are eerie and sad. Her writing gives me such a strong impression of the place.
  • This is also at a new address now. It was killed off before by all the interest slashdot generated.
  • The Mice of Chernobyl Alan Sullivan The sap runs sweet in the willows and catkins festoon every bough. On fallowed farmland the swallows that once followed hayrake or plow swoop through the blossoming hollows or dive-bomb a wandering sow. As plovers nest in the stubble and clutches of speckled eggs hatch, the field mice pair at Chernobyl to bear in their cradles of thatch offspring no isotopes trouble, no lingering gamma rays catch. Why should a man-made disaster prove too great a challenge for mice? Their fierce little hearts beat faster as broken chomosomes splice. Better a poisonous pasture than deserts of Pleistocene ice. White squatters in coveralls squabble, debating whose backside to scratch, the mutant mice of Chernobyl, too wily for foxes to snatch, swarm through the dogwoods and gobble some Communist's raspberry patch.