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Latest Chernobyl Motorcycle Photos

Posted by michael on from the post-post-apocalyptic dept.

wrx writes "Elena has taken another motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area, and has updated her site with a whole lot of new photos and text. The pictures now show several surrounding towns, the radiation level of the magic wood, and many more details inside buildings. After the dust had settled from the original slashdot story, Elena wrote 'who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.'"

54 of 951 comments (clear)

  1. Soaking up the gamma by NatlLabGeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can't even imagine the dose she's soaking up. I look at the reading she's showing in pictures and she's taken up my YEARLY dose in HOURS. Is it really exciting enough to give away years of your life for a helluva ride?

    Then again, I chase storms.

    Go with God, girl.

    1. Re:Soaking up the gamma by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      At least she's documenting her journeys. IMHO, the most interesting thing about her picture is not the radiation, but that the whole place is preserved from the Soviet era. Sort of like a depopulated Pompeii, without all the digging.

    2. Re:Soaking up the gamma by Forgotten · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually it is all about cumulative damage, so in a sense you are soaking something up. DNA can be repaired, but the more damage there is, the more likely something really catastrophic will happen. A very high flash dose virtually guarantees enough cells have scrambled machinery that you will die, but the same sort of thing can happen with a small dose over time.

      It comes down to how fast and how completely the exposed tissue is replaced or repaired. In this case she's not spending all her time in the hot zone - her visits are sporadic, unlike say the old guy with the horse-drawn cart (who lives there all the time). So she's probably ok, because she has time to heal in between exposures.

      Also, there is a way you can take it out with you - by inhaling radioactive particulate (fallout). This is part of the reason smoking is dangerous - all organic matter has a small percentage of radioactive isotopes, and small particles get lodged in the lungs where they just keep on giving. It's also the only real danger in handling stuff like depleted uranium rounds, if there's an opportunity for them to produce dust. Radiation that can't penetrate the skin can hurt you from within your body. She's specifically staying in the centre of the asphalt and away from the irradiated dirt and dust that's washed off to the side of the road, so again she should be ok.

    3. Re:Soaking up the gamma by PhraudulentOne · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, did you notice her license plate said KIA? :0

      --
      You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
    4. Re:Soaking up the gamma by shadowbearer · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Ditto here.

      Man, riding thru the Chernobyl fallout areas...

      But, hey, I have to say this; riding on icy roads on a bike... now that's friccin courage, skill, and an insane kind of chutzpah I can *really* admire :) Holy fucking shit! Lady, I salute you... you have more balls than 90% of the male population... and you're a helluva lot better looking *grin*

      SB

      --
      It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
    5. Re:Soaking up the gamma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Actually, the movie that this photo exhibit would probably remind her of would undoubtably be Andrei Tarkovsky's "Stalker".

    6. Re:Soaking up the gamma by MCZapf · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know what the shining at Chernobyl was, but maybe it was something like the Cerenkov Radiation "blue glow".

    7. Re:Soaking up the gamma by dj245 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So, should the place be preserved as-is for historical significance, or should the dead zone be shrunk as the radiation decreases in the outlying radiuses? Belarus in particular was devastated by the contamination the accident caused; many thousands of square miles of farmland made completely useless. Now Belarus is a leading producer of farm tractors. Maybe the dead zone should decrease in size every year as a function of the decay rate of the primary radioactive materials contaminating the area?

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    8. Re:Soaking up the gamma by True+Grit · · Score: 5, Interesting
      1. So much for safe, clean, and efficient nuclear power


      Nuclear power has 3 problems: 1) it generates waste that is toxic for a long period of time, 2) it was over-sold and over-hyped when it was first introduced in the US, which led us to jump into this technology before we were competent with it, and 3) in the minds of average people its hopelessly linked to nuclear weapons, and the fear of mass destruction, even though the technology and goals are completely different between the 2 disciplines.

      If you want to bash it on those reasons, especially the waste problem, fine, I can understand that, but I'm tired of hearing people use Chernobyl as the example of why nuclear power is "too dangerous".

      There was *never* any such thing as a safe, clean, and efficient *anything* in the old Soviet Union. They routinely built nuclear reactors (and a hell of a lot of other buildings for that matter) that would never have been built in the West because of their atrocious design and lack of safety. Chernobyl isn't proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, its just proof that a communistic system of government is a greater threat to its own people than any outside "enemy".

      NP can be safely used now, now that we've had 30+ years of experience. Look at France and Japan. Heck, did you read about the experimental mini-reactor being used by a village in Alaska? Totally self-contained and safe, its interior is sealed at the factory and isn't opened again until its decommissioned 15-20 years later when its fuel is exhausted. It can't melt-down or have a run-away reaction because there literally isn't enough fuel in the system to reach critical mass. The thing is about the size of a trailer, transportable, and thus removeable after its core is depleted. The company that makes it just comes back once its core is gone, takes it back to the factory for dismantling and salvaging/reprocessing. The irony may be that NP really is an answer to some of our problems, our mistake was spending 30 years thinking "big", when we should have been thinking *small*.

      I can understand the criticism of the 1st and 2nd generation nuclear power plants (NPP), but while the US has virtually stopped development of NPPs, the rest of the world is working on the 4th and 5th generations of NPP design, just when they are starting to get *really* good.

      As for NP technology *today*, as opposed to 30 years ago? When the founder of Greenpeace changes his mind and becomes pro-NP after his initial fanatical opposition to it, that should make a lot of people stop and reevaluate it, I think, at least those people still rational and open-minded enough to consider changing their minds on this subject.
    9. Re:Soaking up the gamma by sxpert · · Score: 3, Interesting

      no, that one is categorized as "intentionnal crime by application of weapons of mass destruction"

    10. Re:Soaking up the gamma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You probably do not know much about history, so I may enlighten you. Believe if or not, but Japan attacked up in a place called Pearl Harbor. Read about it (don't see the movie). They were fighting a war of expansion. At that point, we were facing a choice; end the war by nuke or invade the mainland. Frankly more people would have died if we invaded the mainland. Your comparison to New York is utterly irrelevant.

      I find it so interesting that people talk about Hiroshima, yet in WWII, more people have died in the firebombings of Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo for that matter. People just do not know history nowadays.

    11. Re:Soaking up the gamma by juhaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Basically, on the whole we need not fear natural radioactivity, as our bodies evolved to cope with it (cellular repair). What we need to fear/respect is man-made radioactivity and its waste products, because when human error/greed/fallibility get involved, that is when man-made radioactivity bites us in the ass...

      Correction: We need not fear radioactivity, be it natural or man-made, as long as it's within sane limits.

      Getting 1300 "extra" millirems by working in nuclear plant is in no way different than those you would get from smoking.

      Getting 3000 "extra" millirems by scouring Chernobyl area in motorcycle will not bite you in the ass any more than living in Kerala, India.

      Numbers are probably off, but you get the idea.

      I guess you were trying to say tha man-made radiation can sometimes be much more intense than natural (unless you're in deep space or something), and THEN we need to fear it.

  2. Good location for a movie by ericspinder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Come to think about it, it would be a great location for a disaster flick. Getting people over their fear of going there might be a problem. You'd have to pay a little more than scale.

    --
    The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
  3. Soviet calendar? by klui · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks like they only show 6 days/week. Why is this?? http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/imag e21.3.JPG

    1. Re:Soviet calendar? by dead_penguin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Look at the numbers. Every seventh one is missing. They were probably printed in a different colour which has now faded away -- maybe red for Sundays?

      It's interesting though how the weeks run top to bottom instead of left to right like they do on "our" calendars.

      --

      It's only software!
    2. Re:Soviet calendar? by Bombcar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You are right. Notice that under 18 in the first month there is a circle around a date that has faded away.

      If someone wants to run that through the Gimp, I think you'll find that there is a "1986" at the bottom of the Calendar, which was in red and has faded.

      --
      Fellowship 9/11
    3. Re:Soviet calendar? by Bytal · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The upper left month has an empty space circled. Since I doubt anyone would circle an empty space that's where the faded numbers used to be :)

  4. how ironic by boomka · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the last picture in chapter 9, there is this big slogan across the room. In Ukrainian, it reads:
    "Long live communism - the bright future for the whole mankind!"

    Truly, you may never know how the words you say today will be _seen_ tomorrow.

    --
    Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
    H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
    1. Re:how ironic by glesga_kiss · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You mean totalitarian? Socialism is an ecconomic system that is working quite nicely in many places. It's propaganda and totalitarianism that are our common enemy.

    2. Re:how ironic by JoeBaldwin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not exactly socialist. America is moving in the opposite direction (i.e fascism, marrying of corporation and state).

      The propaganda is Soviet; the politics is not.

      --
      I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
  5. I wonder if her mailbox will get flooded too. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Ukraine 03187 Kiev-187 Zabolotnogo 20/A Post Box 25 Elena

    Go on, send a post card.

  6. An idea by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Has anyone thought of an idea to do P2P website hosting? I think it would be an interesting idea to have a slashdot client running on your computer. That way, ever website you visit gets cached to the client. And because it's cached, you also end up hosting the website for other slashdotters happen to have the same client program, yet arn't able to gain access to the original URL.

    --
    Life is not for the lazy.
  7. Irony? by OverlordQ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The licence plate on her bike is KIA.

    --
    Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
  8. OT: Re:Soaking up the gamma by angst_ridden_hipster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey, as a potter, you're probably getting a few handfuls more radiation than the general populace just by virtue of your glaze materials.

    But then, if you do exclusively anagama, that's not a problem.

    I had a high school physics prof bring in some happy yellow Fiestaware bowls that she bought in New Mexico when she was working on the bomb. That yellow was from the Uranium Oxide in the glaze. Those things got the Geiger counter screaming, I can tell you. "How'd you like to eat your Wheaties from that?" she'd ask.

    I often wonder what isotopes my cobalt carbonate or manganese have in 'em...

    --
    Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
    www.fogbound.net
  9. More poetry by SYFer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This haunting bit of unintentional free verse is directly from her site:

    She is native here and literate in issues of atom.
    There are bad places where no one goes.

    --
    "...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
    1. Re:More poetry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting


      I like the way she talks too.. so much so that I created a poll to pick "your favorite sentence"...

      Favorite Sentence from Elena's Chernobyl Journal?
      I like the way she talks... Not making fun of her.. it just sounds "neat". Anyway, in her honor, I created this poll. Pick your favorite sentence below. (If you are worried about this doing something nasty to your browser, you can right-click and save it as html and view-the-source.)

      1. "Beginning of a story about town where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog."

      2. "This motorbike has matured 147 horse powers, some serious bark, it is that fast like a bullet and comfortable for a long trips."

      3. "Time do not ruin roads."

      4. "Radiation sit on earth, on the grass, in apples and mushrooms."

      5. "They are on check points and if they will find radiation on you vehicle, they give a chemical shower and this eat ya bike"

      6. "This word [Chernobyl] scares holly bejesus out of people here."

      7. "As we passing 86th kilometer we'll see this big egg."

      8. "They eat food from own gardens, drink milk of their caws and claim that they are healthy, but we can't get away from facts, only 400 of them left out of 3.500."

      9. "Evil wind brought here 70% of Chernobyl radiation."

      10. "We don't need to run out of fuel on the middle of some nuclear desert."

  10. Re:Not yet. by Aglassis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You said: " You do realize that Three Mile Island was the single lamest nuclear "disaster" in history, right? Standing with my hand on the reactor, I would get the same amount of radiation from said reactor in one second as I get from the rest of the environment in one second. Compare to smoking, which (on average) quadrouples your radiation dose."

    No. This is not true.

    You could not do that for a small plant, and TMI-2 (anniversary is on the 28th btw), was a big plant (~3GW thermal). The Atomic Energy Act pretty much makes it impossible for me to give you any real numbers for the radiation levels outside the reactor pressure vessel shutdown or critical (though they may be published somewhere), I can tell you that it is not background. Civil nuclear plants typically start up, operate for 18 months at full power, shutdown to refuel and perform maintenance, and then repeat. Since TMI-2 was in the operating stage when its accident occured, there was a significant amount of fission products in the reactor core at the time of the accident. If you are standing next to the reactor core you do not have the full amount of radiation shielding that the general public has, so the radiation dose will be much higher. Also considering that some fission products escaped from the fuel and circulated through the coolant (of which some was released into the containment structure due to the pressure relief which set of the radiation alarms during the casuality), there will be alot of radiation in the general area not coming from the reactor vessel (which again will be significantly higher than background).

    --
    Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
  11. Only 400 of them left out of 3,500 by craXORjack · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This old man lives in Chernobyl area, he is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after 1986. I admire those people, each of them is a philosopher in own way. When you ask if they not afraid to die, they telling that at home they may die with radiation and in some other place they would definately die with home-sickness. They eat food from own gardens, drink milk of their caws and claim that they are healthy, but we can't get away from facts, only 400 of them left out of 3.500. It appears that stubborn people, those of fortitude- are first victims

    I wonder how old they were on average when they went back. After 18 years I wouldn't be too surprised that many had died if they were generally seniors in the first place so how much effect does the pollution actually have? Someone must be keeping track of them if she can say how many are still alive and how many went back in. I think this is a good thing because we can study the effects of radiation exposure over long periods on willing subjects. I hope someone is checking on each resident and recording radiation levels where they live and at different times of the year.

    --
    Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
    1. Re:Only 400 of them left out of 3,500 by Radical+Rad · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The 5x and 2.2x numbers do give some answers, but they seem to only be looking at those who were exposed to high levels of radiation right after the meltdown and who then moved out of the poisoned area. I am curious about those who were never exposed to the highest levels and have been living with moderate levels of radiation for years now.

      There was an article in Scientific American magazine several months ago which talked about a theory that exposure to higher than normal (but not excessive) radiation and trace chemicals might actually make people live longer due to the body having to repair itself and triage its cells more diligently. This seems like a good opportunity to test that theory.

      Also, the area may be a good approximation of the populated areas after a nuclear war. Even though the cold war is over between the US and USSR, we may be closer to seeing millions die from nuclear weapons for example between India and Pakistan or from terrorist bombings in London or New York.

  12. Re:Exposure levels - negligible harm from gamma by Faeton · · Score: 5, Interesting
    800 millirem per hour might sound like a lot, but I don't think she's going to hang around there long. What I would be worried about is the radioactive particulate that still might be around. Once it gets into your lungs, that's bad news because both beta and alpha radiation can wreck havoc on your insides. Gamma isn't as big as a deal (since it just usually goes through stuff anyways).

    I work at a nuclear power plant, and there are fields in certain places that go upwards to 25 REM/h. So, what do you do? Don't stand near it and get your buddy to (unknowingly) shield you!

  13. Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article by Siniset · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My friend from high school grew up in kiev, and talked about the summer where there were no kids in Kiev, because of concerns over nuclear fallout. Just really blew me away when she talked about it. Imagine a major american city, where all the kids have been sent away to live with relatives or friends in the country.

  14. Re:Safer? That's far from obvious.... by shadowbearer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Elena's biggest safety risk may very well be "the unexpected".

    On a bike (hell, anywhere in life, really) that is nearly always the demon factor that gets you... damned near got me once, twelve years ago, going into a series of S-turns that I'd been thru many times, and some dickhead had spilled pea gravel all over the low side of the bank - apparently spillover from shoulder maintenance.

    Trashed the bike, but I more or less walked away. I was goddamned fucking lucky, tho.

    SB

    --
    It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
  15. Worried about surface contamination by snStarter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I found myself worrying about surface contamination as she walked through the buildings and on the tires of her motorcycle. She wasn't wearing gloves as she walked through the buildings nor booties.

    She was very concerned about monitoring the direct radiation but what she might have stirred up is another issue. I hope she checked.

  16. Here's a neat picture by squarooticus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...of the Elephant's Foot below reactor number four.

    --
    [ home ]
  17. Re:I for one.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Favorite Sentence from Elena's Chernobyl Journal?
    I like the way she talks... Not making fun of her.. it just sounds "neat". Anyway, in her honor, I created this poll. Pick your favorite sentence below. (If you are worried about this doing something nasty to your browser, you can right-click and save it as html and view-the-source.)

    1. "Beginning of a story about town where one can ride with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog."

    2. "This motorbike has matured 147 horse powers, some serious bark, it is that fast like a bullet and comfortable for a long trips."

    3. "Time do not ruin roads."

    4. "Radiation sit on earth, on the grass, in apples and mushrooms."

    5. "They are on check points and if they will find radiation on you vehicle, they give a chemical shower and this eat ya bike"

    6. "This word [Chernobyl] scares holly bejesus out of people here."

    7. "As we passing 86th kilometer we'll see this big egg."

    8. "They eat food from own gardens, drink milk of their caws and claim that they are healthy, but we can't get away from facts, only 400 of them left out of 3.500."

    9. "Evil wind brought here 70% of Chernobyl radiation."

    10. "We don't need to run out of fuel on the middle of some nuclear desert."

  18. Re:still impresive by Tackhead · · Score: 3, Interesting
    > Nope, they really turned red. They were mostly Scotch pine and they died more or less instantly when the cloud blew over (the aspen and birch trees are more resistant). It's the subject of some research - search for Chernobyl and "Red Forest" to find some. Not just how they turned red, but what happens now with tons of radioactive wood buried and decomposing into the groundwater.

    Pictures of the Red Forest - trees vs. 60 Grays. Holy shit.

  19. Re:Watch the hit counter spin by Bombcar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Note that if you look at some of the Images, it seems pretty obvious that she's in the process of registering and moving her site to another location

    --
    Fellowship 9/11
  20. She didn't take THIS picture. by RayBender · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I will admit that along with every other geek on /. I'm madly in love with this hot, hot biker chick. I guess I'm glad she didn't take this picture. Yes, that's a chunk of the reactor fuel itself.

    --
    Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
  21. Re:They are still chalking up deaths to WWII nukes by tftp · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I recently read in my local paper how survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still dying from the effects of the bombs.

    I do not want to discount the bombs, but those people probably die from old age far more than from radiation. The nuclear attack occurred almost 60 years ago.

  22. Re:Exposure levels by t14m4t · · Score: 2, Interesting

    REM = Roenkgen Equivelant in Man

    a Rem is the measure of damage caused by a Roenkgen (R) to the marrow of the thigh bone.

    1 R is the amount of energy deposited by 100 ergs/cc radiation in dry air.

    and, of course, 1 erg is the amount of radiation caused by 3 billion uranium-238 atoms fissioning.

    or some shit like that....

    the equation is REM = R*factor. for humans, the factors are:

    beta/gamma: 1
    neutron: 2
    alpha: 10

    of course, alphas get absorbed by your clothing before they ever reach you, and betas get absorbed by the dead skin in your epidermal layer, and radiation is rarely neutron, so for most cases:

    1 R = 1 REM

    kinda nice that they set it up that way, huh?

    weylin

    --
    67.5% Slashdot Pure I guess I need to work on that.... :)
  23. Re:No cell phone coverage either by qoa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not as alone as you would imagine. They give regular tours of the exclusion areas. The devlopers of the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R have travelled there twice taking pictures. They explain a lot about the processes of getting there and what is safe to go to. Pictures are here. I find how close they go to actual power plant to be a little unsettling.

    --
    Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
  24. Re:I for one.... by The+Bullroarer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A motion has been made and seconded. Request the chair to call for a vote?

    As for contact info, the young lady does include a postal address on the last page of her photojournal.

    Moreover, with a little sleuthing, I uncovered an e-mail address! You'll notice that some of the pictures bear the legend "kidofspeed.com"? Well, the URL has a "coming soon" page, which I found only mildly surprising. However a Whois lookup revealed that it was just registered on March 11th, so that explains a lack of content. Moreover, the lookup gave contact information that is very similar to Elena's postal address. It also gave an e-mail address, which I post here for the benefit of the Slashdot editors:

    <crocodile@bk.ru>

    I only gave this info up because I'm too shy to use it myself, but I really want to see a Slashdot interview! Honestly, I don't have anything to offer her but US citizenship, but I still wish I had the guts to write to her!

    Seriously, if she gets a thousand e-mails from horny Slashotters, how do you think she would respond? My guess is that after reading the first few with growing disgust, she would delete the rest without opening them (like Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle), unless for some reason one of them manages to forcefully hijack her attention. (Actually, it would be more likely that her e-mail server would be slashdotted, and she couldn't read any.)

    So, a word from the wise to any would-be Romeos: Unless you honestly think you can impress this woman, don't bother her. Let Cowboy Neal, or one of the other editors, represent Slashdot in the interview. I'm sure then we'd find out if she's at all interested in meeting American men....

    One last thought: OTOH, if she is so interested, her chances of success are much better than those girls you see on the "Russian Mail-Order Brides" websites. Even if that is her eventual object, (which I highly doubt), she still deserves kudos for her intelligence in concocting such a scheme. I, for one, would still want to see if I could make an American lady out of her!

    --
    Frodo Lives!!
  25. Re:Reminds me of by Control-Z · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is one of the most interesting things I've seen in a long time. I don't think I would have gone there but the pictures are amazing.

    It also reminds me of a book called "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart. It's one of my favorite books. Most of the US population is wiped out by a disease, leaving only a small number of survivors. They raid grocery stores for canned food, drive whatever car they want on freeways littered with deserted cars, and live in whatever house they want. As time goes by, the electricity starts flickering and finally goes off, the water stops flowing, things gradually break down. Eventually they learn to raise food for themselves and seek out other survivors.

  26. Re:Don't forget your multipass by Mr.+Flibble · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well yeah - her father is a nuclear physicist, and she is familiar with how radiation works. She also carries the proper gear.

    That would all be required stuff to travel in the area. I am not so insane as to suggest that I would travel into said area without proper research, permission (because I don't want a bullet ruining my day), and of course a geiger counter and dosimeter.

    I think it would be an interesting place to see, and, as she mentions, it would be one hell of a place to ride a motorcycle too.

    --
    Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
  27. Guerrilla marketing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    OK, I'm probably just being paranoid, but...

    What if this is a piece of guerrilla marketing for Kawasaki, in the same vein as the "robot built from a Mini Cooper" thing that was posted on Slashdot a couple of weeks back? Elena mentions a couple of times how much she loves her 147-horsepower Kawasaki, and her story embodies everything that motorbike marketing seeks to convey -- adventure, discovery, going-it-alone-ness -- plus, hey, she's a cute chick.

    Please don't label me a cynic for this and hear me out. I myself am not at all sure this is a fake, on the contrary. There were a few points, though, that seemed kind of suspicious to me. Elena, if your story is real (and I want to believe it is), please forgive me...

    OK, here's the first point I found strange: Just how many young women in the Ukraine can afford to buy a 147-horsepower, top-of-the-line Kawasaki motorbike? The rest of her gear (including that Kawasaki jacket) is nice too... Now you might point out that her dad is a nuclear physicist... but AFAIA, nuclear scientists in the former USSR don't get paid quite as well as their Western counterparts. (Remember all those scare stories of Russian scientists helping unsavoury nations build the bomb because their salary at home won't pay the bills?)

    Next, the language. It's a tough call, but it sounds to me as if this is a native speaker trying to sound foreign. On one hand, Elena's English is full of elementary mistakes -- she gets her articles wrong all the time, mixes up singular and plural, uses the wrong tenses. On the other hand, though, she sometimes handles idiom very competently: "back in 1986", "they speak for themselves", "diary of a teacher is interesting read" (of course, the articles are wrong, but the use of "read" as a noun in this way is a typically English idiom). And check out this sentence: "Here is map that shows radiation level in different parts of dead zone and which I updated for our local biker club in March 16 of this year." What is the grammar rule that this sentence so ably demonstrates? A relative clause that is defining should use "that", whereas a relative clause that gives additional information must use "which". Want to tell me that Elena has the grammatical savvy to get this right (many native speakers don't) but doesn't know she should say "a map" and "the dead zone"?

    Let's turn to the pictures. There's one picture that I'm convinced is a fake, but I'll admit the real Elena could have done it herself, just to spice things up a bit. I'm talking about the "television picture":

    http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ch ap ter14.html

    To me, there's no way that the proportions in that picture are right. If that much of her really fits into the screen, that TV is BIG! (Think they had TVs that size in the Ukraine in 1986?) There's a reflection (presumably from the flash) on the TV -- why, then, no reflection on her sunglasses? Also, if you look at the shadow that the TV and part of the "reception desk" cast on the wall, it looks as if the desk is pretty much backed up against the wall -- not a lot of space for Elena to stand. All in all, this picture has "tourist guy" written all over it...

    There are no other pictures that are as obviously bogus, but my impression is that all of the pictures that show Elena before a background that is clearly in the "dead zone" could have been composited quite easily. As I say, nothing that's obviously fake, but I'd like to point out one more picture that my "realness instinct" is slightly uneasy about:

    http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ch ap ter6.html

    (the one where she's looking through the binoculars). Is it the reflections on her jacket, even though the sky is overcast (true, could be the flash)? Is it that she seems to be too big relative to the size of the road? Is it where her (and the photographer) seem to be standing? Seems she's just on the edge of the road or slightly on

  28. Re:Deserted town in the USA by LMCBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's another one in PA called Centralia. This town sits above a coal mine that caught fire 40 years ago. They couldn't put out the fire, so the town was evacuated.

    Now, when I say "they couldn't put out the fire", I mean it. It's still burning! Well, smoldering anyway. There are fissures all over the town with smoke coming out. I haven't been there, but I'd love to check it out sometime.

    --
    Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
  29. Somebody should make a movie with her by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Subject says it all, really. She would make a great subject for a short documentary movie, taking a ride through the dead zone and talking about it. I would pay to watch it. I might even invest in it. It wouldn't cost very much to make.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  30. Thank you, Elena. by Undefined+Parameter · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This deed that you have done is invaluable. As a human being and as a historian-in-training, I am humbled by what you have presented. The impact, emotionally and otherwise, that this gives... I don't think I have any words suitable to describe it.

    All I can say is that you are a beautiful person, both inside and out.

    Pax Vobiscum,

    Ted

    --
    Eat the Path.
  31. Elena also feeling harassed by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you read a bit further in the thread I linked to in my parent post, you'll also notice that Elena removed her facial portrait and email address (leaving only the postal address) from her original pages -- the body of her documentary work is still present, without some of the personal information. She originally deliberately took her site down for a short period after it first "hit the Web awareness". As folks have noticed, there has been a lot of online commenting on her sex appeal, etc, and a good guess is that she's been uncomfortable with the email that she's been getting since her original site was put up.

    Seriously -- appreciate the work for what it is -- a unique, honest set of images and insights into the most horrific nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. However, please try and avoid creeping the author out. I'd like to continue to see more of this material.

    Thanks.

    --
    May we never see th
  32. Hot Girl On Bike Requires Documentary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This woman's story is too fascinating to be denied a wider exposure. Where are the film crews? A girl on a motorcycle riding around irradiated wasteland warrants at least a documentary. Filmmakers take note.

  33. has any1 actually sent $/tried to help her bandwid by metoikos · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Pardon the horrid number slang, but the subject line is too damn short. Has anyone actually sent her $ to upgrade her bandwidth? There was talk of it with the last article, but I didn't I hear anything more. Maybe start a fund (pity PayPal isn't trustable). I mean, her page is a public service, I would give her money. If there was an easy way how. She posted a mailing address but I don't trust Russian post.

  34. Re:I for one.... by amper · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, I, for one, think she'd make a great candidate for a Pulitzer Prize, or a National Geographic Medal, or perhaps other honors.

  35. Re:You are a dumbass... by HarryCaul · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Call me crazy, but I bet she didn't put her email and full name on the website because she didn't want a million emails.

    So why post it here? To show you can lookup?

    Seriously, we should respect her wishes and NOT contact her except via snail mail.

    Repsect is not that difficult a concept.

  36. Re:3500? by Phronesis · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There are no credible sources for estimates of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Even Greenpeace estimates the death toll at about 2500.

    What's tough is that Chernobyl-induced cancer cases amount to an increase of between 0.004% and 0.01% above the baseline rate of cancers (the exact number is subject to dispute, but is commonly agreed to lie in this range). Thyroid cancer rates are the only ones observed to have increased after Chernobyl, with an increase of 0.9% for the adult population as a whole and 5% for children under 14. Thyroid cancer is very treatable and has a mortality rate of 0.7%, so 100,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer would cause only about 700 deaths.

    Some anti-nuclear activists assert that these numbers dramatically underestimate the number of deaths due to Chernobyl because they want to count as Chernobyl deaths the number of abortions (frequently estimated at 50,000-100,000) performed on frightened mothers throughout Europe in the wake Chernobyl. I hadn't seen the anti-nuke crowd join the pro-life movement before this.

    According to the UNSCEAR, the only long-term effect that's been seen is an increase in thyroid cancer. They were surprised to see no increase in leukemia, whose connection to exposure to radiation is well documented and well understood.

    The exact toll of the Chernobyl accident may never be known. Determining which cancers are caused by fallout and which by other causes is not possible and the numbers are so small as to be statistically uncertain. Perhaps the WHO number of 3500 deaths that I cited was low by a factor of two or three (another estimate, published in the anti-nuke Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, puts the toll at 6000 and rising as of 1996), but there's no credible estimate that puts Chernobyl't toll within a factor of five of Hiroshima.