One of the top creepiest places in the world! - Russian Ukrainian Belarus Travel Music Woman Dating News

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One of the top creepiest places in the world!
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Posted by: royalpalace774

I found this browsing on the internet today.

http://www.concierge.com/ideas/part...id=1563&page=13

Posted by: Raspberry

Frankly, I am amazed at how tall the trees have grown, despite the radiation.

Posted by: azamuner

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raspberry

Frankly, I am amazed at how tall the trees have grown, despite the radiation.

Or do you mean..."beacuse of" ?

Posted by: disculmawsu

If you want to read an excellent on the history of area between the World Wars, you might like Kate Brown's Biography of No Place.

Posted by: GoingToRussia

You wouldn't catch me taking a tour. If the bears and wolves don't get you ... the radiation will!

Sounds like a place where a giant 2 headed beast would propagate! Might make a good movie!

Posted by: royalpalace774

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoingToRussia

You wouldn't catch me taking a tour. If the bears and wolves don't get you ... the radiation will!

Sounds like a place where a giant 2 headed beast would propagate! Might make a good movie!

I think I would feel a little uncomfortable walking around there also with all the radiation that was there. There must be some little bits of it left somewhere. Or does radiation just vanish after a certain amount of time?

Posted by: Chrismc

Theres still loads of it there.

Posted by: Chrismc

It contains some of the most contaminated land in the world, yet it has become a haven for wildlife - a nature reserve in all but name.

Przewalski's horses are breeding in the zone (Picture: Sergey Gaschak)

The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life.

As humans were evacuated from the area 20 years ago, animals moved in. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return.

There are even tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this part of Ukraine for centuries.

"Animals don't seem to sense radiation and will occupy an area regardless of the radiation condition," says radioecologist Sergey Gaschak.

"A lot of birds are nesting inside the sarcophagus," he adds, referring to the steel and concrete shield erected over the reactor that exploded in 1986.

"Starlings, pigeons, swallows, redstart - I saw nests, and I found eggs."

There may be plutonium in the zone, but there is no herbicide or pesticide, no industry, no traffic, and marshlands are no longer being drained.

There is nothing to disturb the wild boar - said to have multiplied eightfold between 1986 and 1988 - except its similarly resurgent predator, the wolf.

The picture was not quite so rosy in the first weeks and months after of the disaster, when radiation levels were much, much higher.

Four square kilometres of pine forest in the immediate vicinity of the reactor went ginger brown and died, earning the name of the Red Forest.

Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Mice embryos simply dissolved, while horses left on an island 6km from the power plant died when their thyroid glands disintegrated.

Cattle on the same island were stunted due to thyroid damage, but the next generation were found to be surprisingly normal.

Now it's typical for animals to be radioactive - too radioactive for humans to eat safely - but otherwise healthy.

Adaptation

There is a distinction to be made between animals which stay in one place, such as mice, and larger animals - elks, say - which move in and out of contaminated land as they range over large areas.

The animals that wander widely end up with a lower dose of radiation than animals stuck in a radiation hotspot.

The elk population has boomed in the absence of human interference

But there are signs that these unfortunate creatures can adapt to their circumstances.

Sergey Gaschak has experimented on mice in the Red Forest, parts of which are slowly growing back, albeit with stunted and misshapen trees.

"We marked animals then recaptured them again much later," he says.

"And we found they lived as long as animals in relatively clean areas."

The next step was to take these other mice and put them in an enclosure in the Red Forest.

"They felt not very well," Sergey says.

"The distinction between the local and newcomer animals was very evident."

A large part of the Chernobyl zone within Belarus has already officially been turned into a nature reserve.

Sergey Gaschak wants Ukraine to follow suit and to turn its 2,500 sq km of evacuated land into a reserve or national park.

Unlike the Ukrainian Green Party, he is not bothered if the government goes ahead with plans to build a deep deposit in the zone for nuclear waste from all over the country.

He says the eagle owl will not care two hoots.

Posted by: GoingToRussia

The dilution of radiation is measured in a half-life. In other words, it never goes away. Eventually the levels are safe but that takes 1000s of years. I don't know what the half-life is for the type of radiation in Chernobyl but let's say it's 1000 years. After 1000 years, half of the radiation is gone, 50% left. After another 1000 years another half is gone, 25% left. After another 1000 years another have is gone, 12.5% left. You keep cutting the radiation by half but it is never zero.

Posted by: EasyTarget

More likely 3 eyed fish.

Without predators and disturbance from humans the animals should thrive in the area. As long as the radiation levels are low enough in the ground vegetation. You just can't eat any of the animals, because of the danger of radiation poisoning.

I wonder how many years before people start living in the area again?

Posted by: disculmawsu

What is really interesting is that some of residents of area have moved back into the region and the Ukrainian government has been forced to restore electricity and other services to the area.
This is a very interesting area in terms of cultural identity. The majority of the inhabitants in the first half of 20th century were Poles followed by Germans and Jews. Ukrainians actually were in minority until the 1930s when Soviets deported the Poles and Germans (for security reasons) to Central Asia.
The area was relatively poor during the Tsarist and early Soviet times.
It was also the scene of a good many battles during WWI and Polish-Soviet war in the late teens and early 20s.
The area was also the scene a fierce rebellion against Soviet rule in the 1920s.

Posted by: deccie

Quote:

Originally Posted by GoingToRussia

The dilution of radiation is measured in a half-life. In other words, it never goes away. Eventually the levels are safe but that takes 1000s of years. I don't know what the half-life is for the type of radiation in Chernobyl but let's say it's 1000 years. After 1000 years, half of the radiation is gone, 50% left. After another 1000 years another half is gone, 25% left. After another 1000 years another have is gone, 12.5% left. You keep cutting the radiation by half but it is never zero.

GTR, what you say is true but does not take account the reduction in the concentration of the pollution by spreading of the material over time.

This is why the wrecks at Bikini Atoll are now safe for diving. The nuclear contaminants have been spread across a wide area of the sea.

After all, water molecules are not static things. Nor was the sediment caused by the blasts.

SOME nuclear material is extremely toxic however and only takes very small quantities to cause serious health issues or death.

I would like to see Chernobyl but I think I'll wait until I'm 60 and my reproductive years are long past.

Also, has any one else noticed from the photos of Pripyat and the power station itself how stripped the place is. My question is given how quickly people evacuated who took all the material from their homes and workplaces and where is it all now? I think the answer is (a) stolen and (b) in the general community.

Posted by: Legal

Photo Gallery
Chernobyl nuclear disaster in pictures

http://www.chernobyl.com.ua/

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inm...ssay_chernobyl/

Facts About Chernobyl Disaster

http://www.belarusguide.com/chernobyl1/chfacts.htm

http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php...navID=158&lID=2

The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/chernoby...obyl_index.html

The memorial (Mitinskoye cemetery, Moscow)

Olga (Legal's wife)

Posted by: GoingToRussia

Very distrubing photos and words.

Posted by: deccie

I think what happened at the Mayak plant over several decades is far scarier than Chernobyl.