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 | The Exclusion Zone
entry by archvillain
11/6/2011 11:28 AM
| I haven't done a lot of UE, but the most compelling experience I've had was the Exclusion Zone surrounding Chernobyl. On another discussion site I wrote a little bit about it, but I figure I should also include it here:
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As I mentioned, I've been to the exclusion zone. It was an intense experience (arguably literally). I could talk about it for hours, so I'll try to keep it to just things that really stood out to me. Firstly, about the disaster itself:
One of things I learned is that it's a much bigger deal than I assumed, and while we think of it as something that happened, it didn't - it is something that is happening. Largely out of sight, out of mind.
Chernobyl was a disaster so massive that it collapsed a global superpower and changed the world. (Here in the USA, we prefer to credit Reagan and ourselves with that.)
When the reactor exploded, people initially didn't realize there was any radiation leak, because their geiger counters were so overloaded that they didn't function. When they figured out that there was a radiation leak - that it was big enough to saturate their geiger counters, they figured they should rapidly do some essentials and get out within a few hours. They didn't realize that the radiation was not merely beyond the saturation point of their instruments, but orders of magnitude beyond that point. They died.
When trying to contain areas of contamination (not clean it up - merely to slow it spreading further), a small mountain of super-contaminated debris needed to be moved off the roof. The area was so radioactive that robots couldn't operate there - the circuitry would succumb to the radiation and fail. So they had to use people. Thousands and thousands of people.
Think about that. It touches on a recurring theme in Chernobyl - problems so huge and intractable that there is nothing that can be done, yet the stakes are so high that doing nothing is absolutely not an option, so... something has to be done, and the cost is unthinkable. (The official deathtoll is low, but is a political number. The actual deathtoll is vastly larger)
The exclusion zone is an area the size of Massachusetts, too contaminated for human settlement, sealed off from the world for quarter of a century.
It's about two hours drive north of Kiev. Some of the guides who take visitors to the exclusion zone show them this documentary during the trip. Take a look.
http://topdocument...ttle-of-chernobyl/
The trip itself... too much to talk about.
The perimeter of the Exclusion Zone is serious and sobering. It's guarded by soldiers with machine guns. Part of their job is to stop people entering. Part of their job is to make sure nothing leaves. In many areas you will need to be accompanied by a military escort.
Inside is a land without people, a city slowly being consumed by the earth.
Stay on the concrete. The concrete is constantly washed down by the rain, so it's safer, cleaner. The soil and plants in contrast, absorb and store the fallout. My meters easily confirm this.
Don't put your camera down. If it (or anything else) gets contaminated and can't be sufficiently cleaned, it won't be allowed out of the Zone. They don't want a scene if they have to take your expensive toys. (And you don't want to give them a reason to take your expensive toys.)
The contamination is not uniform. It could be quite safe to stand over here, and only 100 yards away, decidedly unsafe! This means that with a guide and/or geiger counter, you can move about and see things without the kind of risk you might expect, while at the same time, it's still a very bad place for almost any kind of human activity.
Contaminated vehicles. As cars, trucks, tanks, and aircraft are used in the zone, they become contaminated and must be abandoned there. I approach a military tank/APC, and my geiger counter starts buzzing. This thing has been washed countless times - hundreds perhaps. It has stood in the rain and the sun and the wind, scoured clean by the elements for decades, until even the paint is stripped from the steel, yet nothing can clean it of the contamination. With each step closer that I take, the radiation reading on my scintillator doubles the reading from my previous step. (I decide that three steps is enough of that, I'll keep my distance!)
Speaking of geiger counters - I can't find a good example, but the clicking sound is eerie. The associations are of cold-war measurement of horror. I am travelling with some others. We have counters, so I am surrounded by a 3D space of eriee clicks emanating from all around me. As we drive, the clicking intensifies. Suddenly all around me the clicks are going frantic. Then an alarm goes off, then another, within two seconds, every geiger counter is sounding alarms. The feeling is almost primal: Get out! Get out of this place!
I am walking in a modern city with no people. It seems familiar, I realize that what I see is reminding me of a scene from "I am Legend" - the overgrown prairies of New York City, overgrown grasslands amidst the crumbling office towers. (Outside the city, there is no shortage of Mad Max either. Giant rusting ruins of a lost people litter the land.)
I look at a tree growing through a cracked tile - the tree and I are six stories above ground, in a hotel. Wind-blown seeds are carried through long-gone windows, and trees take root and grow. Their roots enlarge cracks in the concrete, which will allow water to seep in. The water will further crack and break down the concrete, exposing the steel, allowing it to rust. Piece by piece, the structure will fall apart, until it collapses, becoming rocks in the soil of a forest where once there stood a city.
Already, some areas of the city are so overgrown that it looks like a forest. But walk a dozen yards that way, and hidden just beyond the greenery you'll discover... a city apartment block!
I am in a time machine. The USSR disappeared from our world over 20 years ago, yet here I stand - in the USSR. Shelves of books, film reels, newspapers (dated 1986), artifacts and appliances of the era. All still here, gathering dust. Mostly untouched. (Some areas anyway. Other areas are heavily looted. Of the hundreds or thousands of vehicles so contaminated they had to be abandoned, I'm told almost all have the hood open - the engine missing. Smugglers come into the zone, to find things of value to sneak out and sell to unsuspecting buyers. The similarities to Roadside Picnic and STALKER are striking)
Walking through classrooms. Little models made of paper by children are still here. As is everything else, desks to homework. Child-sized gasmasks too. Feeling like a schoolboy breaking the rules, I sneak into the teacher-only room behind the classroom. Masses of teaching supplies. Models, keepsakes, books, hand-written notes. Most of the building, items have fallen or are strewn around. With every step, a dozen fascinating artifacts of another time just crunch underfoot.
All of it has been here for over 20 years. But as the plants invade the structure, the roof will eventually crack and leak, and then all these things will be destroyed and turned into soil within months of the arrival of water. Everything is still here because the structure has kept it dry all these years.
It is spring. New luscious green growing everywhere. With nature reclaiming the land, wild and fresh and clean, the Zone is beautiful.
All you see is beauty, it's all you can smell, your senses are delighted. What a wonderful place! But your instrument is beeping and buzzing a different story.
That's the conflict - only your instruments say "Danger!" - your instincts say otherwise.
In this place your every sense is false, your most trusted feelings lead you astray. It's a deeply creepy experience.
[last edit 11/6/2011 11:49 AM by archvillain - edited 2 times]
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