Stalker and Chernobyl
Author: Gtown Monkey
Tarkovsky's film Stalker is an excellent work which I
highly recommend. It does require patience and time to
experience the whole vibe. Besides being a good film,
it's also a stunning suggestion / prediction of a
Chernobyl-like event, that creates the Zone.
Here is a website by this wacky Russian woman
who rides her motorcycle into a real Zone,
with radiation monitor and camera in hand.
Like the film, it's worth the time to crusie through this site.
I'm sort of digging on the idea of ZONE INSPIRED art and music.
Kidd of Speed
props to CB for recommending I repost this
crazy yo. i dont understand tho: hiroshima and nagaskai...those spots were bombed and heads can walk around and live there now. but not in chernobyl? anyone have ideas about why that is?
it must be a higher dose of radiation than a nuclear bomb from 1944. i think with a bomb it blows up and disperses, where something like this it soaks in more. but what do i know.
shit is amazing. reminds me of an abandoned coal mine/processing plant i snuck into years back. in the office it looked like life just stopped. i love that creepy feeling. i wonder if there are any ghost towns in the u.s. somewhere. i doubt it.
Back in '04, when the "Kidd of Speed" / Elena in Chernobyl story hit the intarwub, there was a lot of criticism suggesting that the story was, in whole or part, a hoax.
Neil Gaiman mentioned it on his website and quoted this particular item from a "Mary Mycio":
Chornobyl "Ghost Town" story is a fabrication...
I am based in Kyiv and writing a book about Chornobyl for the Joseph Henry Press. Several sources have sent me links to the "Ghost Town" photo essay included in the last e-POSHTA mailing. Though it was full of factual errors, I did find the notion of lone young woman riding her motorcycle through the evacuated Zone of Alienation to be intriguing and asked about it when I visited there two days ago.
I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.
She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.
Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.
I would not normally bother to correct someone's silly Chornobyl fantasy. Indeed, correcting all the factual errors and falsehoods in "Ghost Town" would consume as much space as the Web site itself. But the motorcycle story was such an outrageous fiction that I thought the readers of e-Poshta should know.
Mary Mycio, J.D.
Gaiman comments, "This one left me blinking. Not so much because it was a fraud, as why anyone would bother to create such a fraud... "
meh. it's good to know it was fabrication, but it doesnt change the impact of the photos one bit
I'm surprised because of Gaiman's other great work...
this wouldn't become the subject a graphic novel or feature script. I can see the cover of the comic now,
some sort of radioactive motorcycle diaries.
Whether truth or fiction, certainly the stuff to feed imaginations.
dissapointing. she does have pictures of her motorcycle throughout, however. if she went by car, how did she bring the motorcycle? on a trailer?
I think if you look closely, the last real shot with her motorcycle in frame is at the checkpoint. (I think the other author is contending that she would have had to have taken the tour by official car.) Very odd, in any case, that she would be lugging around her helmet in the "Shoei" bag as she's seen doing throughout. (If she's getting on and off her bike, why would she be bagging it?)
And just wanted to point out that the site addresses the controversy...
Regardless of what is true, this site has certainly made people think more about Chernobyl and this tragic disaster.
However, this story has been there for years and has been primarily forgotten and neglected.
After "Elena" brought this story to light, everyone that claims to be an expert has come forward identifying it as a hoax or a fraud.
How ironic that although they would label her a hoax and a fraud, she was able to achieve what they could not even dream of achieving. Bringing this issue the world wide attention it deserves.
As the only email contact, I have seen each of the moving emails that were directed to "Elena."
Her words have definitely made the world think about this piece of forgotten history. I have seen every request from news agencies from around the world, each of the big names, begging for interviews.
"Elena" wanted nothing to do with these interviews.
I offered to setup a paypal donate account to create a fund for the project and local charities.
"Elena" Wanted nothing to do with it.
Did she do it for fame or notoriety or even money?
Or did she do it in order to bring attention to a forgotten region.
Read her words and decide for yourself.