This has to be one of the most tragic and interesting things ive ever come across.

Elana captures the eerie feeling of desolation and loss quite well in her photos and narrations.
Riding her crotch rocket throughout the Chernobyl area she has explored a great deal on the long term effects of nuclear devastation

One can only hope nothing like this every happens again near a major city anywhere in the world.

http://www.angelfire.com/...dofspeed/chapter1.html


...Usually, on this leg of the journey, a beeping geiger counter inspires to shift into high gear and streak through the area with great haste. The patch of trees in front of me is called red - or 'magic" wood. In 1986, this wood glowed red with radiation. They cut them down and buried them under 1 meter of earth.
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. Maybe this is why they call it magic wood. It is sort of magical when one walks in with biker's leather and walks out like a knight in a shining armor.

Very interesting,  wish i could go explore like that.

Wow... that is a lot to take in all at once.. i honisty did not know they built that huge building over the distroyed reactor to keep the radation in... and that ... it will take over 100,000 years to stop... and this is the one picture that says the most...



All that can not be lived in and every animal there is screwed .. if it even lives long enough...

here is a interesting higer rez picture of the "sarcophagus"

I just went through who knows how many pages of that article. Man, that is some creepy stuff, especially for me because i am only 16, and have only heard a few things about Chernobyl. It really puts it in perspective. Also, it is truly amazing how this catastrophe froze a massive area in time. Stunning.

nenad16

this story is so much more alive for those of us that played Stalker series.

Thats how I found her site.

I was googling for US sellers with "stalker Call of Pripyat" actually available for download versus purchasing from the egg or amazon and waiting 4 days.

Lol,never know what gems you can stumble across on da interwebz

Humm... that might be something to cinsider... if only a plane ticket wasnt so expensive... >:/

Yeah I read this a few years ago.  Her story is fake, but the pictures are real.  Like SovietKitsch said, she went on a paid tour for this, anyone can do it.  It would be very interesting to do if you happen to be in that part of the world.  I think she did a follow up to that artical call land of the wolves: www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-land-of-the-wolves/ Also very interesting.  Someone, a few years ago, actually got inside of the reactor and took a picture of the actual core, its called the "Elephant Foot" It has been said that it was so radioactive, they had to shoot it with a rifle to get a piece of it.

A few moar hi res pics here: http://villageofjoy.com/chernobyl-today-a-creepy-story-told-in-pictures/