A Motorcycle Ride through Chernobyl's Dead Zone

Impearls, a blog with footnotes and appendixes, reminds me to link to a photo essay in which:

A motorcyclist named Elena, her 147-horsepower Kawasaki “Ninja,” and scientist's access pass provide us with a troubling and unparalleled tour of the ruined landscape about the city of Chernobyl in the Ukraine with its doomed nuclear power plant which, in 1986, devastated the area with radiation, destroying surrounding cities and towns as living communities and leaving the whole region uninhabitable for, it's claimed, six hundred years. Elena's pictorial diary of her visit is eerily reminiscent of films like The Omega Man and post-apocalypse science fiction wherein one navigates through a radioactive landscape as one would through a minefield, armed like a lifeline with geiger counter and dosimeter. The heavily radioactive “magic woods” that Elena regards -- from a distance -- are horrifying. Much of the rest has the melancholy of a recent Pompeii. Don't miss it. (Thanks to Armed Liberal at Winds of Change.)

Fast internet connection recommended.