Tour The Post Apocalypse. Bring The Kids!

I like imag­in­ing what life in a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic land­scape would be like as much as the next guy who got his first taste of pre-pu­bes­cent bon­er from an X-Men com­ic book but I’m not nec­es­sar­i­ly in­ter­est­ed in, you know, see­ing what it looks like up close and per­son­al.  Wait, that didn’t sound right. Ah, fuck it, you know what I mean. Any­way, I’d rather ob­serve from a safe dis­tance called re­al­i­ty, and see what peo­ple think it might be like on film and in books. Plus I just don’t re­al­ly look good in dusty brown trench coats or foot­ball pads with spikes on them, but I’ve got a lot of weird fash­ion rules I lim­it my­self to, so that could just be my thing.

Good news though, nerds, it looks like you may have the chance to fi­nal­ly make your dream come true. Not the one about catch­ing a waft of Sasha Grey’s taint, al­though keep hope alive, it could to­tal­ly hap­pen. I mean you can tele­port your meat suit in­to the scene of a post-nu­clear night­mare. They’re get­ting ready to open what’s sure to be the sketchi­est theme park in his­to­ry in the Ukraine next year at a lit­tle place called Cher­nobyl, io9 re­port­ed to­day, from a re­port of an­oth­er re­port, which I am re­port­ing here be­cause that’s how the in­ter­net works.

Live­Science writes the pro­logue for those of you who were born yes­ter­day. (I de­fine yes­ter­day as be­ing any­time with­in the past 25 years).

A nu­clear re­ac­tor ex­plod­ed at Cher­nobyl in Ukraine in 1986. The blast knocked the 2,000-ton lid off the re­ac­tor and spewed out 400 times more ra­dioac­tive fall­out than the Hi­roshi­ma bomb, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing more than 77,000 square miles (200,000 square kilo­me­ters) of Eu­rope. Rough­ly 600,000 peo­ple were ex­posed to high dos­es of ra­di­a­tion. [Top 10 Great­est Ex­plo­sions Ever]

Ha­ha, the ti­tle of that link at the end of the graph there made me RB­MY­CW+LOL (rub my chin whiskers and laugh out loud).  

Where was I? Oh right, but it’s been just about long enough now that they can start think­ing about let­ting peo­ple back in­to the area, which is a tech­nique I’m fa­mil­iar with from keep­ing my girl­friend ap­prised of the ra­di­a­tion lev­els in my bath­room every morn­ing.

The site of the worst nu­clear ac­ci­dent in his­to­ry will be a new tourist at­trac­tion, the Ukran­ian gov­ern­ment an­nounced Mon­day (Dec. 13). The area around Cher­nobyl is sched­uled to open to vis­i­tors next year. 
Where tourists are al­lowed to go, how long they may stay, and what they eat will be care­ful­ly con­trolled, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials say, so the ra­di­a­tion risks are “neg­li­gi­ble.” 
“They will be prop­er­ly chan­neled at all times,” said Vadim Chu­mak at the Re­search Cen­ter for Ra­di­a­tion Med­i­cine of Ukraine…

…A lim­it­ed amount of tourism to Cher­nobyl is al­ready be­ing tol­er­at­ed, and giv­en the new Ukrain­ian ad­min­is­tra­tion’s in­creased em­pha­sis on eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, open­ing Cher­nobyl for tourism could pay off. For in­stance, Chu­mak said, soc­cer fans at­tend­ing the Eu­ro­pean Cup in 2012, to be held in Ukraine and Poland, might be in­ter­est­ed in mak­ing side trips to Cher­nobyl.

So ap­par­ent­ly it’s safe, but not that safe, say peo­ple who have a vest­ed eco­nom­ic and so­cio-po­lit­i­cal in­ter­est in stim­u­lat­ing the tourism busi­ness. Meh, what could go wrong?

That said, it does seem like a pret­ty unique op­por­tu­ni­ty to see what the world would be like with­out hu­mans. The an­i­mal pop­u­la­tions here have thrived, part­ly be­cause an­i­mals can’t read, which is one of the rea­sons why I al­ways talk shit about them in my mem­oir-writ­ing work­shop.
I’ve al­ways been drawn to pic­tures of the dis­as­ter area ghost towns, like this old pho­to blog from a girl who toured the area on her mo­tor­cy­cle a few years back. It’s pret­ty old, but worth an­oth­er look if you haven’t seen it in a while, like your wife’s vagi­na, say.

(These peo­ple are all dead lol)

LUKE O’NEIL IS OVER AT ON THE LIST.