DISASTER!

No, no. I haven't managed to spill whiskey on my new laptop yet. I refer instead to the Chernobyl accident of this date in history, twenty years ago.

While I certainly remember how and when I heard about the Challenger disaster earlier that same year, I don't recall where I was when I heard about the Chernobyl disaster (no surprise, really (and for the record, I'm guessing it was from Newsweek magazine sometime during the first Bush administration)).

But I don't know of anybody who's managed to ride their motorcycle through the Challenger crash site, and I certainly do know of a website where someone has posted numerous pictures of their visits to the destroyed reactor and through the ghost town of Pripyat, Ukraine.

Here's the reactor from the non-blowed-up side, as it looks today:


For pictures of the deserted town itself and a narrative telling what it's like to visit Chernobyl nowadays, click here.

P.S. — Already linked, but deserving of reproduction here, is Wikipedia's telling of Pripyat:

Before the disaster, Pripyat was a closed city, absent from [S]oviet maps and unavailable as a destination for westerners.

Until recently, the site was practically a museum documenting the late Soviet era. With entirely abandoned buildings, including abandoned apartment buildings (four of which were yet to be used), swimming pools and hospitals, everything inside remained, from records to papers to children's toys and clothing. Residents were only allowed to take away documents, books and clothes that were not contaminated.

However, the apartment buildings were looted completely several years ago. No article of value was left behind, even toilet seats were taken away. Because the buildings are not serviced, the roofs leak, and in spring the rooms are swamped in water. It is not unusual to find trees growing on the roofs and even inside buildings. This hastens the natural processes of deterioration, and it may be expected that in several decades most of the city will lie in ruins.

Prypiat and the surrounding area will not be safe for human habitation for several centuries. ... The city is entirely accessible and is relatively safe on the road, although it is unsafe to go around the city without a radiation detector. The doors of all the buildings are open to reduce the risk to visitors, although many have accumulated too much radioactive material to be safe to visit.

Tanks, helicopters, and all terrain vehicles from the Soviet Union's Red Army were left in dumps due to their high levels of radiation.

Aside from the oppression, dehumanization, probable starvation and eventual horrifying irradiation, that's pretty fucking/fracking/effing cool.

P.P.S. — Speaking of odd locales, if you're like me you've wondered: What's up with the name of "Newport News," VA? The answer is a familiar one to scholars of the origin of the word "Oregon": Nobody knows, but everyone's got a theory.

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posted by WWB at 8:56 PM |