“If we live like there is no tomorrow, there won't be.”

I consider myself to be fairly anti-nuclear power. I understand that it is becoming a more popular option with our ever-growing population needing more and more energy, but the tradeoff just really isn’t worth it to me.

I wrote on my Yahoo blog about my experience as a child with Three Mile Island. I’ve moved those posts to Blogger. You can read them in order here.

Recently, a Fed that I’m friends with at work told me about a website about a woman who has gone through parts of the ‘Dead Zone’ surrounding Chernobyl. Her name is Elena, she is the daughter of a nuclear physicist. She travels on her motorcycle and takes all the food, water, and fuel she might need as well as a bike repair kit, etc, because you do not want to get stranded out there. She takes her Geiger counter. She takes her camera. Her photos are surreal. She has biked all over the area.

The only catch? You pretty much have to stay on the roads, preferably in the middle of the roads. She talks about why, it is very interesting stuff.

Her page can be found here. I would really recommend starting with the link below her Motorcycle page and then just working your way through all the sections. At the bottom of each page is a link to go to the next, like turning pages of a book. It is an incredible journey. Look through the ‘Serpent’s Wall’ bit, too. It is about the wall defending Kiev from everyone, Mongols up through the Nazis. She and her friends dig there to find history.

Be sure to read her description of the accident at Chernobyl. Keep in mind that the ONLY real thing that kept this from happening in Harrisburg was that the steam didn’t blow the reactor chamber apart. They vented it out instead. That’s it. We had the steam bubble, we had the melted control rods. It was so close. I was so close to be living what she’s describing. So. Close.

What really got me wasn’t the pictures. I've seen pictures of ghost towns before. Her descriptions, though, are thought provoking, frightening, and touching. Sometimes she makes funny comments, too. It is obvious that her life has been changed by what happened here…

All the following pictures and words are from Elena’s sites, as well as the title of the post, above:

The roads are blocked for cars, but not for motorcycles. Good girls go to heaven. Bad ones go to hell. And girls on fast bikes go anywhere they want.

In Ukrainian language ( where we don't like to say "the") Chernobyl is the name of a grass, wormwood (absinth). This word scares the holy bejesus out of people here. Maybe part of the reason for that among religious people is because the Bible mentions Wormwood in the book of the revelatons - which fortells the end of the world....

The sarcophagus will remain radioactive for at least 100.000 years. The age for the pyramids of Egypt is 5,000 to 6,000 years. Each cultural epoch left something to humanity, something immortal, like Judaic epoch left us Bible, Greek culture- philosophy, Romans contributed law and we are leaving Sarcophagus, the construction that going to outlive all other signs of our epoch and may last longer then pyramids.

There are many places that not structurally safe, or have collected pockets of intense radiation. There are places where no one dares to go. One such place is the Red Wood forest and another is the Ghost Town Cemetary. The relatives of the people who are buried there can not visit, because in addition to people, much of the radioctive graphite nuclear core is buried there. It is one of the most toxic places on earth.

All of this happy horseshit was for the May 1st Labor Day parade.

Ghost Town is a modern Pompeii. The Soviet era is preserved here - in the radiation for all this years.

…Or we can stand looking at the Chernobyl equivalent of Niagara Falls. Radiation level here is same as in Kiev. Standing on this bridge is as safe as standing on bridges in Venice. But never forget this is Chernie, where you can walk a few hundred meters away and be in a dangerously radioactive place. There are several hundred unmarked burial sites of radioactive waste materials in the Chernobyl area and no one knows where all of them are. The people who buried them are now buried themselves- may they rest in peace, for we the living can not. For safety, Geiger counter must always be turned on.

The only buildings in area that is not ruined are churches. Traveling through the whole of Chernobyl region I have yet to see any ruined church.

Reading of geiger counters tell us more than reading official reports, but it tells us less than reading from the book of nature. In Chernobyl reading from the book of nature is easy, here facts themselves speak eloquently of the truth... wherever I turn, I stumble upon a fact that humans are outlawed and banned from life. I strain to hear, in hope to receive an answer, but all I can hear is the voice of Nature strongly saying to the human race, -I DON'T NEED YOU!