This is an interesting and valuable discussion and I thank you for it. If I may, I'd like to highlight a few things. First, your perspective:

I look at it as something that sparked a long moment of entertainment and fascination. I read the entirety of the wikipedia link on Chernobyland Roentgens while reading her story. That's one of the key features of the internet that I love: instant delivery of education about random topics I wouldn't otherwise learn about. So for me this delivered exactly what I wanted.

And when I first read it, it was fucking awesome. It does spark research and pursuit of other aspects of the story and you're right - that's one of the best things about the Internet. People talk about the gravitational field of TVTropes and how accidentally clicking a link can suck down five hours. I have a friend who once missed a dinner date because Wikipedia. The Hitchhiker's Guide is real and it is marvelous. But let's look at your perception of my perception:

To you, the story didn't deliver or the extending circumstances diminished heavily from the story because you care and know about a lot more than me.

That's just close enough to the truth to be dangerous, and just far enough away to miss the point.

To me, the story is a lost opportunity because, at my level of understanding, the jumping-off points are false.

If something is real, it's a value to everyone: if you know a little you're exposed to the broad links it provides. If you know a lot, it likely gives you a different perspective, raises things you haven't considered before, may give you somewhere to look that you haven't peered into. But if something is fake, it will snow the people who only know a little while calling those who know a lot liars. There aren't a lot of jumping off points for me with kidofspeed because it reflects a layman's understanding of Pripyat. I already have a layman's understanding of Pripyat. If I want to go look up something else, I'm not going to find it here - I may even get sent down a wild goose chase where the only links I can find are self-referential.

It's a false signpost in a forest.

And that's the thing about true stories: they keep on giving. They can be told from many perspectives. We can revisit them with new information and gain new understanding. A work of fiction is, necessarily, one author's perspective and that in and of itself is marvelous. Paint me a picture, by all means and give me your artistry.

But when that painting is presented as a window… well, it's like a Hollywood set. It looks great from six feet away, but it reflect's a set decorator's notion of the Old West, not the environment Butch Cassidy actually lived in.

Thinking about it now, that is the value of fiction for fiction's sake and fact for fact's sake. With fiction, we value the perspective of the narrator and know that it is our only entry into their world. With fact, we value the perspective of the narrator and know that they are providing one particular insight about an event that touched many. There's applicability to the lives of others in the tale of Burt Munro. Yeah, he'll be Anthony Hopkins for the rest of time but he was also a genuine, crotchety old Kiwi. The perspective World's Fastest Indian gives me on Burt Munro is but one facet, one presentation of a real person - and if I want to dig deeper, I can find others. I can learn more. I can become an expert.

Elena whatsername? Well, as fictional characters go, she's awfully thin and one-dimensional.

I think, more than anything, it's the missed opportunity that bugs me the most. If there had been an actual person writing about sneaking into Chernobyl, we might have learned something real from them. Instead, we learn what some bored gearhead thinks about Chernobyl. Nothing wrong with that, but by presenting conjecture as fact he casts aspersions over all other facts.

On a related note, I have a recommendation for you. The chapter on Chernobyl is almost, but not quite, as interesting as the chapter on Cyprus.