Would you visit Chernobyl on one of the tours being offered daily?
Asked by
msh (
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April 26th, 2016
from iPhone
Three checkpoints in zones for workers to register which encircle the radius of the ground zero meltdown in this dead-zone surrounding this radioactive town in Russia. The Anniversary of the occurance of the disaster is being experienced right now.
Some folks living in the more-rural areas have returned to their homes and farms within these zones, living much from the earth as they always have. Trading thyroid death-knells for living in their own homes- figuring the value is worth possibly losing their lives to do so.
Some workers designing, facilitating and creating an ‘arch’ type of structure which is eminently due to forever seal the accident, meltdown, fire, and poisons which will Never disperse, forever entombed. Ironically, a high number of workers moving towards this goal were not born or very young when this incredible disaster occurred.
The area is still rife with high levels of radio activity. ( workers on this sealing tomb project work shifts of 2 weeks on/ two weeks off duties to reduce their exposure to radiation.)
The newest trend and ‘cool’ getaway is to take a guided tour of the abandoned town, forest and fields of the deadly areas. Tourists, figuring low-doseage exposure is worth the travel, fill up the rosters to bus into the town to tour the village that dropped life into a foreign demention frozen in a moment’s time. Food on set tables. School lessons immediately abandoned, leaving books and paper as if momentarily dropped awaiting the return of life again. Apartments, an amusement park, toys in daycare utterly dropped as was ( is?)
News sources were mostly the only persons, up to this point, who gained clearance to venture into the city via strict entry permits and the usual roadblocks at all levels, so often a part of life in Russia.
Now, people roam at will for various time span allotments. Warned Not to touch, nor come into direct contact with materials closer to the ground zero. Most visitors climb into bumper cars in an amusement park located in-between the town and plant grounds. A “photo op.”- with the often misunderstood consequences for the momentary ‘selfies’ to pretend battles on the now dead rides. Full warnings are being given by guides concerning the visitor’s health and radioactive exposure effecting their physical and future well-being while on such antics. Many visitors do not listen.
( Odd photo anomalies appear on phones, cameras, what have you, spurring belief in an otherworldy experience for some groups on line of late.)
A most facinating blog is available from a young woman still in the age of believed invincibility, riding her fast motorbike in the dead zone- and the poisoned wild areas of and around the town, nightly. She has brought back beautiful photographs of still-life glimpses from the highly off limit areas and the lands surrounding.
So-Would YOU go on a guided tour of Chernobyl as a tourist in this area of Russia, if the opportunity arose?
Sorry- facinating subject- long on information…
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15 Answers
Only if I am allowed to wear a suit of T-60 Power Armour.
No. I don’t even get scanned at the airport. I refused dental X-rays every other year, sometimes I let it go for two years.
Maybe if I were 80 years old I would consider it, but definitely not at my age. I would have to know what the radiation levels are equivalent to to consider it and weigh the risks. My thyroid already doesn’t function well and I joke that a girlfriend of mine must have walked through a radioactive field, because she and I both were diagnosed within a couple if weeks of each other having been together a few weeks before.
Easy to ignore the danger when it’s invisible and doesn’t make you immediately sick. That’s the problem. It’s like me eating fatty, cholesterol filled foods. I’ll feel fine until the heart attack.
No. Life is risky enough just living it regularly. I also don’t see that there’s anything interesting enough at the Chernobyl site worth risking anything for that I’d feel a need to see it in person while taking the risk of catastrophic illness.
I was out bicycling all day in Scandia, southern Sweden, enveloped in the Chernobyl radioactive cloud the day after the accident. The Russians didn’t announce for two days, so we had no idea we were being radiated until the Swedes put out a bulletin that night. I have enough Cesium and Strontium 90 in my bones for many lifetimes, thank you very much. I don’t need to go back for more.
Yeah, I’d go, if it was free. I’m old enough not to worry too much about the radiation. It would be an adventure getting there and interesting to see not only the modern area, but a time capsule of hoe it was 30 years ago.
Would I book Chernobyl as a regular tourist trip? No, what they allowed us to see would be too boring for my money.
I’m not going to have kids and I’m over 60 so I’d do it if someone else was paying.
I’d make a SciFi movie of some kind. I’d also love to get samples of plants that had reseeded themselves. That would be interesting to study!
Let’s put the numbers in perspective.
Total long term radiation exposure is measured in milliSieverts
Source
Lowest annual dose at which any increase in cancer is clearly evident: 100.00
Exposure of Chernobyl residents who were relocated after the blast in 1986: 350.00
Accumulated dosage estimated to cause a fatal cancer many years later in 5% of people: 1,000.00
Single dosage which would cause radiation sickness, including nausea, lower white blood cell count. Not fatal.: 1,000.00
Typical dosage recorded in those Chernobyl workers who died within a month: 6,000.00
If you spent a year walking around without a suit you would be exposed to 200–400 mSv.
Stay there for a day and you would get 1 mSv = 2 mammograms, 10 chest x-rays
I’d do it, but I’d wear a suit.
I find “dead tech” fascinating.
Nah, be like attending a nascar event, mutated fuckers dead from the neck up
No. I like to avoid known radiation zones. Besides, there are plenty of good photos and films from people who have gone there.
I don’t care how “cool” it is currently, I wouldn’t go on a tour there if you paid me double.
There are so many other far more pleasant places I’d rather see, I wouldn’t waste my time there.
I’ve seen film footage and that’s enough for me, thanks.
Fuck yes I would. I’d love to actually.
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The photos are enough for me. I was bicycling in that poisonous, invisible cloud the day after the meltdown because the Soviets didn’t announce the tragedy and left the countries west and north of the Ukraine to figure out for themselves why their Geiger alarms were all going off. I’ve had enough of Chernobyl to last me a lifetime, which has been remarkably long and healthy considering the contemporaneous predictions.
The area has inadvertently become a “Kulturen”, a culture park, a museum of Soviet villages frozen in time. I saw enough of that during the Soviet era when it was populated by very sad people and it was ugly. I certainly don’t need to see it again.
Ooops. I see that I’ve already responded to this question a few months ago. Oh, well…
S’ok. It is something that will really never go away. Both literally and figuratively.
I have ever wondered what has happened in the Japaneese Nuclear Power Plant damage awhile back. Perhaps because of what is being carried around and over by the ocean currents to other countries, we are not being told too much. Some odd mutations have emerged from there. Which is sad.
Yet, if you think about it, the direct repercussions from Chernobyl -we really didn’t see too much until this many years later. So who knows, really?
Check back about it later- give it a year or so…things change.
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