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.