UPDATE: Apparently, Miss Elena wasn’t completely honest… however, I still think it’s a fabulous story.
In April of 1986, I was eight years old, and I have no recollection of the Chernobyl disaster. Yet, it’s hard to imagine any single event more devastating than what happened on April 25–26, 1986. Hundreds of thousands died, and many more were forced out of their homes in an instant, never to return. Radiation flooded the air, land, and water around the site, forming a ‘dead zone’.
Albany Dan pointed out a link on Fark to a first-person account of someone who has ventured back into this ‘dead-zone’. Her name is Elena, and her stories of motorcycle rides to Chernobyl are fascinating.
As I pass through the check point, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell something at me.…something that I strain to hear.…something that attracts and repels me both at the same time. It is divinely eerie — like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks.
…
The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 ‑3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour — which is 300,000 times normal. If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight.
Her photos are incredible. I can’t imagine having the courage to do what she’s done, but I’m glad to have learned more about what happened in those days back in April, 1986.
