Found via this link: Fungus found in Chernobyl reactor that thrives on gamma radiation

One of the more poignant passages (in case the photos weren't enough):

    Being non religious, I am not a very concerned about my sins, because price for the sins we'll pay in the world thereafter, but I am really concerned about mistakes, where price we got to pay already in this world... I am not optimist who sees the glass half full and not a pessimist who sees the same glass half empty. I am a realist who always sees the glass exactly as it is and here in Chernie I see through a glass, darkly, that authors of the Bible had somehow foreseen the Chernobyl disaster.

    In Greek, that the New Testament was originally written in, the verse where it say- "..and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp.." the word "fell" means "to hover or to settle," and the word "star" translates to "as scattered across the sky." It in turn is derived from another Greek word which meant "to spread like a carpet" - an appropriate description of the radiation cloud that spread across the area. Most interesting that the word for "lamp" comes from a Greek verb meaning "to radiate." When you make that into a noun, you have "radiation."

    In verse 11 the name of the star is even capitalized, as a proper name of a place.. As for the third part of the world, it was popular in the first centuries Greek to use the term "one-third" to describe a large quantity. Chernobyl may be as well a group name for all Chernobyls to come, wherever a "great star" will fall again, the future of this land will be the same, radiation and wormwood- the grass of oblivion.

    Another interesting detail, the alternate meaning of "wormwood" for the word "Chernobyl" has now mysteriously disappeared from our dictionaries. Such is the policy of our government. In order to suppress apocalyptic moods and to build more reactors, they have removed this word from dictionaries. I doubt, they will succeed in erasing this episode from our memory, word is still in everyday use and we all know that not all governments of the world, not even their rich patrons from almighty atomic industry, can remove verses from Bible.

-page 30

kleinbl00:

The Chernobyl Biker That Wasn't

    I thought this biker chick, barreling around the radioactive no-man’s lands, alone, on her Kawasaki would be a great character for my book. But when I asked Rimma Kyselytsia, a zone guide, about her, she said it was all a lie. Elena had never ridden a motorcycle in the zone. “Elena’s” name was, in fact, Lena Filatova and she visited the zone for the first time – in a car and not a motorcycle – two weeks after the original website appeared.

    And everyone in the zone was pissed off about it. Officials demanded to know who let Elena ride around on a motorcycle, which isn’t allowed. Producers wanting to make movies about Elena’s “heroism” pestered Rimma with phone calls. Confused checkpoint guards had to turn back Norwegian biology teachers on bicycles who wanted unlimited passes like Elena’s. But it was all fiction – and a fun story I ended up doing for the Los Angeles Times.

Now you're making me nostalgic for bonsai kitten.


posted 3742 days ago