Category: Post of the year
Member: Kapitan
Post & link: General Topics. My journey into the dead zone Chernobyl 2017 (pic heavy)
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=229390
Quote:
It all started on the morning of 26 April 1986, at 01:23 when reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantities of radioactive isotopes (Iodine 131, Thorium 157 and caesium 137 among others) into the atmosphere.
Nobody knew outside the plant what had happened most of the 49,000-people living in Pripyat we fast asleep when the event took place and little did they know that in a few days’ time they were to leave their homes forever.
We travel for nearly an hour and a half on board our tour bus, nothing fancy yet adequate in fact it had 16 seats and the group of just six of us, not including tour guide Natalia and Driver Igor.
We set off for the dead zone at 0745 stopping briefly at a gas station to buy snacks and water for the onward trip, don’t forget there are no stores in Chernobyl, well that are open and have items to sell anyway.
We head back onto the motorway and then sometime later we start hitting the back roads, for those who have false teeth I highly recommend super glue ! like a lot of roads in Ukraine and indeed Kiev they are not very well maintained and in our case winter tyres are a must!
After being shaken up like a martini for the best part of twenty minutes we come to the first checkpoint, now this is the entrance to the first exclusion zone the 30km one (there is two in Chernobyl a 30km and 10km depending on how radioactive each zone is) the guard is pleasant and can take a joke which was good news for my friend when I told the guard that his passport wasn’t his (yes he did excrete a brick).
The barrier represents all that was wrong with the world we are entering one of the most contaminated places on earth, no one lives here full time and no one has done since 1986 and its very likely no one will do at least not for another 140 years.
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Reason: A very detailed insight to a true-life event. An event most if not all of this community are aware of and accompanied with a well thought out narrative and an abundance of eye-opening photographs.