THE ICE PICK

Ghost Town: My Ride Through Chernobyl Area, http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

This website is a motorbike photo tour of the devastated region around Chernobyl by a young Ukrainian woman named Elena, who is the daughter of a scientist working there.

The tour is a haunting trip that shows what has happened to the land in the eighteen years since the No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl exploded and caught fire, spewing radiation across much of northern Europe.

The nuclear disaster contaminated an area half the size of Colorado, destroying about 50,000 square miles of Europe’s most fertile farmland, forcing the rushed evacuation and resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people, killing at least 4,400, disabling at least 40,000 more, and causing at least seven million physical and/or psychological injuries among the survivors--many of whom are dying of cancer now.

But the numbers cannot begin to tell the story. If an ordinary picture is worth one thousand words, then the photos on this website and Elena’s accompanying captions are truly priceless.

The acres of rusting trucks and helicopters used in trying to put out the fire; the wild animals, vines, and trees reclaiming abandoned villages and vandalized homes and stores; the lesson of radioactive loot being resold across the old Soviet Union; the empty city of enormous apartment buildings where people once lived and laughed; wedding photos on a table; a child’s doll left behind. . . .

It made me wonder if this city will be our Pompeii for future generations and what kinds of distorted images from the Communist culture they may project for our whole society.

I wish everyone could view this website, but if you are working on a post-apocalyptic world or are looking for ideas for any kind of story involving lost and abandoned places, you definitely should take the time to look at "Ghost Town."

And you will need time. Set aside an hour at least, more if you plan on taking notes. You can think of it as if you were going to the movies--but expect to be moved, disturbed, even haunted, by what you see, for it is a profoundly surreal landscape, and you will almost certainly be affected these images. There is nothing gory or violent here. In fact, some of the scenes are really beautiful. But that does not make it any the less terrifying.

Very highly recommended.

{Published in SF and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, June 2004.}

NOTE: A great deal has been added to this site since 2004. I can only recommend it even more highly now for its honest window into a world few of us know and for its contribution to understanding that world. I wish Elena the very best in her efforts. ~~DCI