Touring the Dead Zone

March 8, 2004 12:50 PM

"People had to leave everything, from photos of their grandparents to cars." One brave (or foolish, depending on your view) girl, and her Kawasaki motorcycle take a tour through the Chernobyl "dead zone". An astounding an eyewitness photo-essay of chernobyl today. (Note that the first link is a google cache, but subsequent pages are available from the site when you click the "next page" link...Angelfire, go figure.)
posted by dejah420 (15 comments total)

This post is webradioactive.
posted by thomcatspike at 12:54 PM on March 8, 2004

dejah, what a find. Thanks so much for posting this. This is quite possibly the most interesting post I've seen on Mefi in months....
posted by anastasiav at 12:57 PM on March 8, 2004

It's also a double post.
posted by agregoli at 12:58 PM on March 8, 2004

It's also a double post.

Damn, it sure is. I dunno how I missed it, but I'm officially chagrined.
posted by dejah420 at 1:19 PM on March 8, 2004

And it's been posted to slashdot. And every other blog in the world.
posted by SpecialK at 2:08 PM on March 8, 2004

I hiked for an entire day in a gentle rain, got completely soaked through, then later found out it was the Chernobyl radiation cloud falling over Ireland.
posted by meehawl at 2:09 PM on March 8, 2004

Actually, some people coming back to their homes and settle down, those mostly old people who do not care if they die today or tomorrow. important is to die at home.

A Russian grandmother sits on a pile of rubble in the photo with this caption. She looks dead already. It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen... DP or no, thanks Dejah420, I hadn't seen this before.
posted by JollyWanker at 2:31 PM on March 8, 2004

These pictures don't get old.
posted by chicobangs at 2:31 PM on March 8, 2004

Triple, akshually ...
posted by carter at 2:33 PM on March 8, 2004

Weird - I tried to post it three days ago, and was told by the posting page that it was a duplicate URL, and was I sure I wanted to post, etc... wonder why that didn't happen to the other two dupes.
posted by jonson at 3:46 PM on March 8, 2004

wonder why that didn't happen to the other two dupes.

My double is my fault...I forgot that I was using a google cache for the first page, since it's 404'd...and a cache url wouldn't register as a duplicate link...I just never saw the other one...and in this case, because I thought I'd scanned the last month's worth of content, I got lazy and didn't do a manual search first. Totally my fault.
posted by dejah420 at 4:03 PM on March 8, 2004

Never mind. I missed the other posts, so thanks.
posted by squealy at 4:18 PM on March 8, 2004

double or not that's still the first time i've seen it and it is a really interesting read and pretty stunning how an area so inhospitable can also be so green. thanks for the link
posted by NGnerd at 9:45 PM on March 8, 2004

this is moving.
posted by ruelle at 3:50 AM on March 9, 2004

The full site in a .zip file, courtesy of slashdot's "sahrs".
posted by ultradian at 8:23 AM on March 9, 2004