Chernobyl, Have some pretty neat info on it Options

[ThePerson98]

I bet a good number of you know about Chernobyl. The 1986 reactor explosion. But this is for those of you interested in it, or the ones who dont know about it.

There was one girl who decided she wanted to go to Chernobyl. And she got a government permit from her father.
Kid of speed
She's lucky, in my opinion. I would love to go to Chernobyl. I have HUGE interest in it, and plan to go when I am older. And dont say you can't. Because there is Tourism in Chernobyl
Before we know it, that place is gonna go from a zone of death to being completely reopened.

Even though the place is completely evacuated of humanity, wildlife still is there.
BBC Chernobyl wildlife
Its pretty suprising that the sarcophagus is home to birds! I expected wildlife to be there but taking THAT much radiation is incredible.

Here's the part most of you will have fun with. Google Earth has moderate quality Chernobyl pictures now.
Find the city of Kiev in Ukraine and there is a river that runs through it heading north. Follow the river. It starts to split into many small rivers but there are two major ones, one heading north and one heading northwest. Follow the one going northwest.
You quickly run into a quality change in pictures, the quality change is the picture of Chernobyl.
If you are having trouble finding it refer to this picture
Chernobyl Google earth instructions


BBC news had a 20th year anniversary of chernobyl, getting stories of people who were evacuated or things planned for it. They also have many pictures of places around chernobyl, that are in the forbidden zone. Its neat to see what people said about it.
BBC Chernobyl 20th Anniversary

I also want to see what you all think of chernobyl. And those of you who were alive during the time, what was the news like about it, if you remember.

EDIT: Title has typo! Oops, and there is a gallery with neat pictures of chernobyl
LINK to pictures

This post has been edited by ThePerson98: May 14 2006, 07:27 AM

[stargelman]

I also want to see what you all think of chernobyl. And those of you who were alive during the time, what was the news like about it, if you remember.

It was pretty bad. News trickled in very slowely, as the sovjet gov refused to acknowledge anything had happened at all. Very slowely, the full scale of the desaster was made known. It took everyone here in western europe a while to realize what that meant, and that even though it was so very far away, it still effected us. All that radioactive crap from Chernobyl would rain down on us, and it would embed itself in the ground, contaminating it. 1000s of hectoliters of milk and other foodstuffs had to be destroyed because of radioactive contamination, and we couldn't eat mushrooms for many years because mushrooms seem to have a tendendcy to store all kinds of minerals and also radioactive particles or something.

Anyway, your OP reads as if Chernobyl was some kind of amusement park. Please don't forget that it was the worst desaster in the history of civilly used nuclear power, and not only did many people lose their lifes, people still do. Also know ye that the effects of this desaster have been allegedly downplayed not only by the USSR but also by several international treaty organizations of the west. Read this for more information on the controvery over how many people really died.

Even from official estimates which are quite low compared to other estimates, 4000 people died, plus 5000 additional victims in the future, dieing of cancer.

I can understand the fascination for it, of course. I too have seen the pictures of that biker woman, and they're really quite interesting. This whole area has a very Fallout-like character to it, with it's ruined and abandoned buildings. Everything looks as if people left from one minute to the other, and as if the whole area was stuck in a different period of time.

That whole year is really forever stuck in my memory. Not only because of the Chernobyl desaster, but also because, in the same year, the Challenger accident happened. Despite the fact that I was rather young at the time, I remember how irritating all of this was. Up until that point many people had believed in technology without question, and now, all of a sudden, that believe was questioned massively. Technology seemed to have failed massively and catastrophically twice in a very short span of time. I think that forever changed many people, who became more critical towards things like nuclear power plants.