Elena takes her motorcycle the only place she can run it at top speed without worrying about getting pulled over by the police.
Chernobyl.
Incredible pictures. It's a full on ghost town nightmare, like something out of a horror novel.
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Elena takes her motorcycle the only place she can run it at top speed without worrying about getting pulled over by the police.
Chernobyl.
Incredible pictures. It's a full on ghost town nightmare, like something out of a horror novel.
Wow, amazing pictures straight out of the world's largest time capsule. Scary.
Whoa. That is the best read i've had in awhile. Just damn cool.
But I still don't understand how radiation works? It seems like even low level doses would cause some effect.
Radiation is a super complex topic, which I'm not qualified to talk about really, but from what I understand the doses she's getting are nothing to worry about at all. About the same as you would get while flying in an airplane. Apparently if she didn't have that dosimeter. however, she'd be in real trouble.
what do you need to know about radiation, I work with radioactive isotopes for a living in a hospital.
Sublime, you are right, small doses of radiation are really not all that good for you, nor is any kind of ionizing radiation. Different isotopes have different radiation levels and different biological half-lifes and physical half-lifes. The kind of contamination that happened at Chernobyl is super deadly, long lived isotopes and long biological half-lifes, like isotopes of Iodine and Strontium and others in that category are not too friendly.
Scary shit in that ghost town when you think also of how many reactors we have here in the U.S., proabably even scarier to think about the area around Three Mile Island with a higher population. Too bad they had to put the reactor from TMI at INEEL in Idaho though or anywhere for that fact:mad:
That's incredibly spooky.
I have a recurring nightmare where I wake up and I'm in the middle of a totally empty town-- a lot like that page. Great find.
Dream interpretation can be difficult, but you live in Cleveland. I think I understand your dream.Quote:
Originally posted by Cornholio
I have a recurring nightmare where I wake up and I'm in the middle of a totally empty town
Incredible.
And you wouldn't find me there.
Amazing. Defiantly the worlds largest time capsule.
So she needs to stay on the black-top to stay alive, but how are these horses, boars, and wolves able to live there?
scary, but interesting stuff. It's amazing how high the levels of radiation still are. I wonder what will ever become of that place.
This pic totally threw me off:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../image23.2.JPG
Man, if her story ends with a broken hyperlink on page 11, I'll be pissed.
Pretty cool. I don't think I could take it. Not just because of worrying about the radiation, but also the dead silence.
How do animals survive there? They probably don't if they get too close to where the reactor is. I would guess that many more have very short lives. Radiation doesn't necessarily kill you right away. Some animals probably live long enough to reproduce, but I'm sure most live short lives due to the cumulative effects of the radiation.
What an incredible tragedy. The part about the people standing on top of the building watching the "beautiful glow" from the reactor is damn chilling.
Wow. That place has a beauty about it still. I would love to go there and take photos. Great story.
I was just driving home on some dark back roads (no street lights) and it made me think how scary it must be there at night. I wonder why no one's ever made a horror movie about that place.
Really creepy.
In fire academy we are taught how to treat radiation situations. That sucks that no one was clued in. The animals will eventually die from their cells deforming and turning into cancer, etc.
Worth the read, even on dialup.
Ok, this is what I was fishing for and leads me to the second part of my question.Quote:
Originally posted by The AD
How do animals survive there? They probably don't if they get too close to where the reactor is. I would guess that many more have very short lives. Radiation doesn't necessarily kill you right away. Some animals probably live long enough to reproduce, but I'm sure most live short lives due to the cumulative effects of the radiation.
Does something like this jumpstart evolution? Granted, were talking about an evolutionary trait benefiting a small amount of animals to a small geographic location. However, do we see the animals that live long enough to reproduce passing on radiation hardened evolved genes or simply lucky animals that didn't stray to close to the glow sticks?
Man, even though she's a russian her grammar is still better than DINMS.
Too bad the US government is so much better at hiding their nuclear debacles. The National Plutonium Processing Plant in Hanford released massive amounts of plutonium, cesium and other radioactive elements into the air over Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana for forty years. And yes, people died and suffered as a result. Yet, few people are aware of it. And, as always, denial and suppression of evidence is the governments method of choice in dealing with what they did.
Kudos to this chick for putting up that site.
I would think it would be a little more then odds. The horses would be some trait that would allow the animals to survive. Since horses can roam 15 - 20 miles in a day. There is a gene that is weading out the weak animals. But what trait would they be posesing? Would it be a 6th sense to not wander towards anything with major radiation?Quote:
Originally posted by Ski Monkey
Ok, this is what I was fishing for and leads me to the second part of my question.
Does something like this jumpstart evolution? Granted, were talking about an evolutionary trait benefiting a small amount of animals to a small geographic location. However, do we see the animals that live long enough to reproduce passing on radiation hardened evolved genes or simply lucky animals that didn't stray to close to the glow sticks?
wow, very interesting story and pics. Kind of gives me the creeps at the same time.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../image25.1.jpg
Tiny abandoned shoes and gas masks. Eerie.
Unbelievable, totally worthy of a National Geo special.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../image26.1.JPG
Awful, beautiful, horrific and disturbing. I had to go give my son a big hug after I saw these pictures.
Good read this is
This one gets me - poor firefighters never even got back to the station.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki...d/image7.2.JPG
I keep thinking "Blair Witch" as I read this thing.
Really weird.
Thank you for posting this amazing read!
The section below really got to me. My parents went through a similar type of uprooting when they left to escape communist Cuba suddenly in 1962...however they had at least some time to prepare. And one thing they made sure to bring pver was the family photo albums. These are far more important than the jewels and silver.
I feel for the people who had to start again with nothing. Although no doubt they were grateful for their lives it does not negate how difficult this must have been for them.
Sprite
Most people had to leave everything, from photos of their grandparents to cars. Their clothes, cash and documents has been changed by state authorities. This is incredible, people lived, had homes, country houses, garages, motorcyles, cars, money, friends and relatives, people had their life, each in own niche and then in a matter of hours this world fall in pieces and everything goes to dogs and after few hours trip with some army vehicle one stands under some shower, washing away radiation and then step in a new life, naked with no home, no friends, no money, no past and with very doubtful future.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../image15.3.JPG
Fuckin A! That is pretty powerful stuff. This is something that more people should see.
She's pretty hot too..... ;)
Interesting timing for this thread with the 25th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accident yesterday. Luckily, TMI fell short of being a disaster, but it certainly could have been. If you're curious what happened, read this:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-co...mile-isle.html
A "partial meltdown" of a nuclear reactor is some scary shit. Despite the risks, nuclear power definitely has some appeal. The ability of a nuke to generate power is amazing. Unfortunately, even when everything is working properly the reactor generates high level radioactive waste that is dangerous for a long, long time.
My Dad, who works for DoE, was one of the Physicists that went to TMI after the accident to monitor the clean-up and figure out what happened. He was also one of the guys sent to Chernobyl by the IAEA.
After the accident at Chernobyl I asked him what went wrong there, and why that couldn't happen here (or in Western Europe.) He said the problem was (is) this:
The power plants designed and built by the former Soviet Union are called Graphite reactors, and are much more prone to accident than the designs used in the West. They are also much cheaper to build and have a huge output. The problem facing the world of nuclear power are that there are Graphite Reactors all over the former Soviet Bloc. The ones in E. Germany have already been taken off-line and are being upgraded to the Western Standard (forgot the names, there are two types.) Many others remain, and it's too expensive and/or unfeasible to turn them off, since in many places like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan they supply almost all the electrical grid.
It's really unfair to lump our reactors in with Chernobyl. The safety record in the US and (Western) Europe is beyond exemplary. More people have died from Solar Power accidents than nuclear. We're not even going to touch the health issues of fossil fuel pollution (remember all that acid rain?) or burst dams...
Solar power accidents? What, they got tanned to death?
My Dad has some friends that work out at INEEL in Idaho. I once heard a story about how they were building a nuclear (pronounced nook-u-lar) powered airplane. They figured it could fly around the earth a couple thousand times. Sounded like a good idea until one of the engineers had a moment of clarity and asked "what if it crashes?". Needless to say, they scrapped the project.
Solar power fatalities: So hot right now.Quote:
Originally posted by iceman
Solar power accidents? What, they got tanned to death?
Believe it or not, but DoE was building a solar power generator in the AZ desert that consisted of a field of mirrors that reflected and focused the sun on what could be called a watertower. The thing was painted black and would get hot enough to turn the water in it to steam, driving a couple of turbines. The damn thing expolded, killing like 3 people. That's 3 more deaths than US nuclear generators have killed.Quote:
Originally posted by iceman
Solar power accidents? What, they got tanned to death?
I bet those guys were steamed.
edit: Okay, bad joke. But you're telling me that in the history of the U.S. nuclear industry not a single person has been killed? No steamfitter, construction worker, nobody? I find that hard to believe. Perhaps no one has died as a direct provable result of radiation, I could buy that, I suppose.
:rolleyes: :p :D
It's also possible that those horses that did survive came from a very small population that harbored a mutation confering resistance to radfiation-induced genetic damage.Quote:
Originally posted by Sublime
I would think it would be a little more then odds. The horses would be some trait that would allow the animals to survive. Since horses can roam 15 - 20 miles in a day. There is a gene that is weading out the weak animals. But what trait would they be posesing? Would it be a 6th sense to not wander towards anything with major radiation?
Lot's of possibilities here, maybe those horsies wandered into the area only recently and no one's allowed to go in and retrieve them?
How long do they live? How many foals survive long after birth or are stillborn?
The two types in use in the US are PWR (pressurized water reactor) and BWR (boiling water reactor). Canada also has the CANDU heavy-water reactor.Quote:
Originally posted by Tippster
The ones in E. Germany have already been taken off-line and are being upgraded to the Western Standard (forgot the names, there are two types.)
I read this post and visited Elena's site on Saturday afternoon and I've been thinking about it ever since. Maybe I missed her explanation as I read her story, but does Elena go to Chernobyl strictly for entertainment puposes? Not that I need an excuse to take the motorcycle for a ride, but Chernobyl??? Yikes.
Some of those photos are haunting.