Biking through Chernobyl

[Sarmatian]

I've just ran into this site. Site is some kind of a diary of an Ukranian girl who is riding her motorcycle through the area of Chernobyl. Limitless supply of interesting pictures and videos with insightful comments. Her father is a nuclear technician, so she knows a lot about that stuff. Extremely interesting (if you haven't seen it before, of course )

[LittleGrizzly]

I don't count those couple of times when "experts" tried to invent an excuse to give me a shower, because those had a lot more to do with physical biology than biological physics

LOL!!

This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness.

Got to feel for the guy, even though he lives at home surely he's lonely

Work on the roof was the shortest job of all, and lasted only two minutes. Many soldiers were offered a choice of how to fulfill the tour of duty requirement that was necessary for their retirement from Army. One lasted two years in a hellish rain of bullets, rockets and bombs in Afghanistan, and the other lasted two minutes in a tranquil, silent and invisible rain of gamma rays on the roof of Unit # 3.

It would almost seem better just to suck it up (the radiation) if i didn't know better, i would still be tempted...

It was quite boring to participate in an election with one candidate from one party, so the turnout was very low. That is, until the local officials hit upon the idea of offering free drinks in return for a vote. This inspired the electorate to become very interested in politics.

Maybe a good idea in the west ??

still reading through ill post this for the moment...

[Fragony]

Ah! Have been looking for that site it's amazing.

[Subedei]

Indeed, very interesting. I have seen a wild life doc once, about the animals living in this area...nature is taking it back big time. Well, as long as you don`t get 2-headed wild bigs...in the documentation was said, that animals were not living long enough in average to accumualate enough radiation to cause mutation....but nobody knows for sure.

[Whacker]

I'll toss in a few links I've found in the past related to this.

http://insp.pnl.gov/-library-uk_ch_1-1.htm

http://www.spaceman.ca/gallery/chernobyl?page=1

[Fragony]

Not really related, but you guys should be able to apreciate these as well, it fascinates me to no end. Nothing is as atmospheric as ' dead' buildings.

http://images.google.nl/imgres?imgur...%3Dnl%26sa%3DG

[Sarmatian]

What I found specially interesting is how soviet era was "preserved" in that place. Those slogans "ideas of Lenin will lead us in the future". Nature is reclaiming it but in a way feels that time stopped there in 1986.

[Pannonian]

Snopes.

[Fragony]

What I found specially interesting is how soviet era was "preserved" in that place. Those slogans "ideas of Lenin will lead us in the future". Nature is reclaiming it but in a way feels that time stopped there in 1986.

That's what makes it so incredibly eerie, all the signs of life are there except life itselve. I love the classrooms with all these old posters and photographs, the abandoned attraction park, it must be a haunting experience to take a stroll there, the silence screams in your face.

[Sarmatian]

Snopes.

If it's a fake, it's a pretty good one. I mean you can see the same bike on several pictures in several different areas, you could even see the back of a girl in leather jacket in one or two.

It's a free site, it's not advertising anything, it looks like an amateur website... I doesn't make much sense to fake everything and not gain anything.

[Pannonian]

If it's a fake, it's a pretty good one. I mean you can see the same bike on several pictures in several different areas, you could even see the back of a girl in leather jacket in one or two.

It's a free site, it's not advertising anything, it looks like an amateur website... I doesn't make much sense to fake everything and not gain anything.

LA Times - Account of Chernobyl Trip Takes Web Surfers for a Ride

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Account of Chernobyl Trip Takes Web Surfers for a Ride

By Mary Mycio
July 06, 2004

Kate Brown began thinking about visiting this high-rise ghost town in the mid-1990s, when she was researching a book about the region before it was evacuated after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Then she saw a website about a young woman’s lone motorcycle rides through Chernobyl’s exclusion zone. The site, www.kiddofspeed.com, attracted tens of millions of viewers and became the most-visited site on Angelfire.com, a Web page hosting service.

“I was intrigued,” said Brown, an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland-Baltimore. She spoke while strolling along the vegetation-choked sidewalks and cracked roadways of Pripyat, about a mile from the nuclear power plant where the 1986 accident took place.

“Elena,” whom several Internet sources identified as Lena Filatova of Kiev, has been described as “fearless,” “heroic” and “seriously whacked” in the virtual chatter the website generated.

When asked by e-mail why the story of a raven-haired beauty roaring through a radioactive wasteland attracted so much attention, cyberpunk author and futurist Bruce Sterling responded: “It’s a post-apocalyptic adventure story. Very ‘Mad Max.’ ”

And it is, evidently, equally fictional.

“That story is not true! She did not ride a motorcycle alone in the zone! She came with her husband and a friend on a regular tour,” insisted Rimma Kyselytsia, who was the group’s official guide. She identified the woman in the images on the website as Filatova and has the documents to show that Filatova’s tour was organized by a Kiev travel agency and that her party traveled in a car provided by Chernobylinterinform, the agency that ushers all visitors to the exclusion zone.

The visit took place March 16, about two weeks after the website appeared. Since then, the curious have made their way to Chernobyl inquiring about Elena’s adventure – among them two Norwegian biology teachers who arrived on bicycle hoping to retrace the journey. A guard turned them away.

“Whoever put this together was never actually here,” said Kyselytsia, leafing through a printout of the images on the website. Although it has been updated several times, the site’s original contents survive in duplicates elsewhere on the Internet, and on the computers of people who downloaded them.

The updated site does not appear to contain any authentic images of “Elena” or a motorcycle in any Chernobyl location. Four pictures on the updated site can be traced to a Ukrainian coffee table book published in 2000, some are aerial shots, and many are anachronisms. One photo is of chemical showers that have not existed for years. In another, the tall ventilation stack of the ruined reactor looms above some saplings. But those trees have since grown so high that only the tip of the stack is visible today.

After the March 16 trip, the website was updated with new pictures, including one of a motorcycle near a sign that reads “Chernobyl district” in Ukrainian. But that sign is several miles south of the barbed-wire fence and checkpoints surrounding the exclusion zone, which stretches almost 19 miles in all directions from the disaster site.

According to Kyselytsia and Mykola Slobodianiuk, who drove the group that day, Filatova’s husband, Igor Filatov, told them that he had ridden his motorcycle to the Chernobyl checkpoint but was refused entry.

“The idea is absurd,” Slobodianiuk said. “I have worked in the zone since 1986, and I have never seen anyone on a motorcycle.”

Closed motor vehicles are the rule in the zone, where radiation levels are thousands of times normal in places. A moving vehicle stays ahead of the dust it raises. When it stops, it is enveloped in its own – often radioactive – wake.

After bumping for hours over the zone’s crumbled, potholed and, in many places, barely existent roads, it is difficult to believe that anyone could ride a motorcycle on them.

The updated website depicts the lone rider in various zone locations, often with a motorcycle helmet in a bag slung across her shoulders.

“When I asked about the helmet, she just said her husband had some ideas,” Kyselytsia recalled as she led Brown and a reporter into the Pripyat high-rise that the group had visited. “He took most of the pictures. He also staged some of them.”

Kyselytsia pointed out the mailbox that the website claimed contained a hunting and fishing publication. It was empty, and Kyselytsia maintains that it was empty when she and the Filatovs entered the building.

“This one left me blinking,” science fiction writer Neil Gaiman posted on his website after reading that “Elena’s” story was not entirely true. “Not so much because it was a fraud, as why anyone would bother to create such a fraud.”

Neither Lena nor Igor Filatov were available for comment. A woman who answered the door at their apartment said they had left town and could not be reached.

The Internet “Elena,” however, is unapologetic. “I just wanted to show people Chernobyl,” she wrote in an author’s note after doubts about the story began to surface. “I did this for free, for no fame and I did this with love for my country.”

[Husar]

Snopes.

I think snopes is fake!

[FactionHeir]

I haven't been to the site, but reading Sarmatian's quotes, it already sounded a bit far fetched.
Its good to have accounts from both sides though, thanks for the contribution Pannonian

[Sarmatian]

Supposedly, she had made several more trips after her 2004 report was called a fake. I don't see anyone questioning those trips. And she said on her site that she made some trips alone and some with someone, but never more than two people.

I just don't understand why would someone create such an elaborate fraud for no gain. You don't see her face, according to the article her name is not same (Elena/Lena) so she can't use it to achieve "celebrity" status, no money involved, no advertisements on the site...

I'd be extremely disappointed if it were a fraud , it made such interesting reading...

[Caius]

Incredible.

[Caius]

This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness.

Stange. I saw a comment that contradicts that.

[Kekvit Irae]

Zoologists also brought two American Bisons to the area, but the idea to breed them didn't work out. The male bison run away. I don't know if he run away from Radiation or from his bride, but he was last seen in Belorussia, heading west. He may have decided to return to America.

[FactionHeir]

Supposedly, she had made several more trips after her 2004 report was called a fake. I don't see anyone questioning those trips. And she said on her site that she made some trips alone and some with someone, but never more than two people.

I just don't understand why would someone create such an elaborate fraud for no gain. You don't see her face, according to the article her name is not same (Elena/Lena) so she can't use it to achieve "celebrity" status, no money involved, no advertisements on the site...

I'd be extremely disappointed if it were a fraud , it made such interesting reading...

Its kind of like people broadcasting themselves on Youtube as someone else and their character (not them directly) attains celebrity status among those who go to that site.

Or if you will, levelling and item hunting with a fictional character on an online server.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Intersiting Indeed Me Thinks!

[Sarmatian]

Its kind of like people broadcasting themselves on Youtube as someone else and their character (not them directly) attains celebrity status among those who go to that site.

Or if you will, levelling and item hunting with a fictional character on an online server.

Yeah, you're right. There are all kinds of people. But this is immensely bigger than simple uploading videos to Youtube. She had to organize everything, go there on a tour, stage photos with helmet and motorcycle, plant old letters that she supposedly taken picture of, write fiction text, take hundreds of fake photos, familiarize herself with a lot of stuff about Chernobyl, about radiation and nuclear energy in general and who knows what else. I can imagine someone doing all this but when there is profit or some other gain. It seems to much work just to have your cyber character achieve cyber celebrity status.

If it's a fraud, it's a very good one. I'll try to see and find are there more texts on the net about her supposed further trips...

EDIT: Not much to be found, it's same stuff everywhere. It's still a controversy. But I found a nice comment on the issue on one site: "Nevertheless, the value of Elena's story is not her degree of personal involvement, nor her narrative, but her photos. While some of them could have been staged to a degree (one of the points of criticism - it is noticeable that there are no photographs of her motorcycle inside the abandoned town of Pripyat), she obviously could not have staged the whole ghost town. While there are numerous accounts of the consequences of the catastrophe, Elena presented it to the world in a way never done before."

Even if she was lying about her trip, the photos are real. Some of them may have been taken by other people, or when she was on a tour there, but they are not fake and that is not being disputed by anyone. So the question that remains is whether she actually went there, but that is of much less importance compared to the fact that pictures are real. So, at least that part can be enjoyed without thinking are the photos real.

[Geoffrey S]

Couldn't care less if it's fake. I don't think that was the point of the site - rather, to write a story and create an atmospheric setting. Did that well.

[edyzmedieval]

As long as the pictures are true, I dont care. The pictures were absolutely amazing.