UPDATE: Apparently, Miss Elena "wasn't completely honest":http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/chernobyl_trip... however, I still think it's a fabulous story. In April of 1986, I was eight years old, and I have no recollection of the "Chernobyl disaster":http://www.chernobyl.info/. Yet, it's hard to imagine any single event more devastating than what happened on April 25-26, 1986. Hundreds of thousands died, and many more were forced out of their homes in an instant, never to return. Radiation flooded the air, land, and water around the site, forming a 'dead zone'. "Albany Dan":http://albanydan.suckahs.org pointed out a link on "Fark":http://fark.com to a first-person account of someone who has ventured back into this 'dead-zone'. Her name is Elena, and her "stories":http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html of motorcycle rides to Chernobyl are fascinating.

As I pass through the check point, I feel that I have entered an unreal world. In the dead zone, the silence of the villages, roads, and woods seem to tell something at me....something that I strain to hear....something that attracts and repels me both at the same time. It is divinely eerie - like stepping into that Salvador Dali painting with the dripping clocks.

... The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal. If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight.

Her photos are incredible. I can't imagine having the courage to do what she's done, but I'm glad to have learned more about what happened in those days back in April, 1986.