I stumbled across this site while looking for other things. It details a young woman’s motorcycle travels through “the dead zone” around Chernobyl. Incredible. Simply incredible. The images are so stark and her commentary is so matter-of-fact that it borders on surreal. It gave me the chills.
To quote Elena: “Perhaps future archeologists will compare this Ghost Town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here – in the deadly radiation that will last for many centuries.”
2 replies on “The Soviet Union’s Pompeii”
wow.
What a site. The woman is a hell of a good writer, with an eye for the telling detail and an ability to describe it in lean language that conveys the tragedy like a brickbat.
Like Pompeii, you glimpse the relics of lives stopped in an instant by tragedy, but unlike the volcanic eruption that extinguished the Roman town, Chernobyl’s tragedy was entirely man-made.
This makes it far more sinister. The creepiness factor is off the chart.
There’s romance in the worst natural disasters, because hurricanes and earthquakes and floods remind us of the blind natural order ruling over us all. Man-made tragedy carries no such lesson of cosmic order; it is about chaos, anarchy and the limitless destruction of which we humans are capable.
I’m bookmarking this site. Thanks, Bob.