For you motorcyclists ( and anyone else who is interested in the effects of radiation) check this out:
Click on chapters at the bottom of the page. There are a lot of pictures. Veeerrry Interesting.
as I understand it’s been largely discredited as being a hoax… there was no motorcycle, no lone trip through Chernobyl wastelands, rather an active imagination and some “artisitc license” based on a guided tour of the area near Chernobyl…
[quote][i]I am sorry to report that much of Elena’s story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.
She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site
Mary Mycio, J.D.
Legal Program Director
IREX U-Media
Shota Rustaveli St. 38b, No. 16
Kyiv 01023, Ukraine
Tel: (380-44) 220-6374, 228-6147
Fax: 227-7543
[/i].[/quote]
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp
I’m not so sure that it is a hoax. 
Then again, I could be wrong (don’t tell anybody) 
Thanks for the link Shin-Gua, interesting to see that the site has it’s own domain now (previously it was on Angelfire). Must be popular.
Interesting too that it seems to have been a hoax! Actually a relief in a way.
It sometimes seems there’s nothing new on Forumosa. I’m moving your thread into the existing one on the same topic.
Would one of the open forum mods move this whole thread into the Vroom, vroom forum please? Thanks.
[Edit:moved now. Thanks Bu Lai En.]
Funny that this showed up again today. I’d heard about the cries of “hoax” a couple of months ago, but the most solid information I could find said that the people who are calling it a hoax don’t have any real basis for saying it, just their own unsubstantiated claims. Her website had some additional photos from what were claimed to be other parts of the high-radiation zone.
I’m sure this has been posted here before, but I hadn’t been to it in ages. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a must-see. Hard to believe really. No people for a hundred miles in any direction. How do the animals survive? (Her writing is great too)
angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddo … links.html
Is it actually possible to go there?
[quote]In Ukrainian language ( where we don’t like to say “the”) Chernobyl is the name of a grass, wormwood (absinth). This word scares the holy bejesus out of people here. Maybe part of the reason for that among religious people is because the Bible mentions Wormwood in the book of the revelatons - which fortells the end of the world…
I have never had problems with the dosimeter guys, who man the checkpoints. They are experts, and if they find radiation on you vehicle, they gave it a chemical shower. I don’t count those couple of times when “experts” tried to invent an excuse to give me a shower, because those had a lot more to do with physical biology than biological physics.
Usually, on this leg of the journey, a beeping geiger counter inspires to shift into high gear and streak through the area with great haste. The patch of trees in front of me is called red - or 'magic" wood. In 1986, this wood glowed red with radiation. They cut them down and buried them under 1 meter of earth.
The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal. If I was to keep walking all the way to the reactor, I would glow in the dark tonight. Maybe this is why they call it magic wood. It is sort of magical when one walks in with biker’s leather and walks out like a knight in a shining armor.
If we travel through the area, where radiation level do not exceed 100 mR/hr, then in one hour we’ll receive the same dosage of gamma rays that receiving the passanger of plane Kiev-London duaring a few hours of their trip. I don’t fly to London, so I can afford trips to Vilcha.
Unfortunately, we can not count the alpha and beta particles that we inhale, it is the major risk. In a first years after disaster it would be a suicide to ride here on open vehicle, but as I said, things changed since 1986, now radiation went in soil and live in cucumbers and mushrooms.
These days, to have a Geiger counter at the greengrocery market is as useful as to have one here.
We return on the main road. Sometimes I go for rides here in Belorussia. The roads are better and gasoline is cheaper. This country is in good relationship with Russia and isolated from the rest of the world. For many years Belorussia lived under totalitarian regime of their president Lukashenko. He is like Fidel Castro, the perpetual president, just has no beard.
If we take a Geiger counter reading on the road, then one on the grass and compare the two readings, the grass is 8.5 times more than the asphalt, because radiation becomes concentrated in living organisms. The source of this Alpha radiation is Americium.
There will be no more lessons in this school classroom, either. The only lesson taught here now is that the half-life of Americium is 432.7 years.[/quote]
Ah, she also has a bike page. Titter, giggle. Very funny:
[quote]However, in my part of the world most mechanics are self-taught and work out of their basements. None of the locals would have any idea of how a turbo charger works. It is hard to find mechanic who does not drink. Sometimes, when they repair your engine they leave tools inside. Once while adjusting valve clearance on his car, my neighbour discovered a rotting cucumber under the valve cover. We were amazed. There is no other way for a vegetable to get inside an engine, unless it was bolted down in there by some drunken mechanic. Perhaps it was a misplaced snack - but better than leaving a beer bottle in compression chamber!
I lost two engines with our mechanics. First they forgot to fix balancer shaft on my 250cc Suzuki bike several years ago and then didn’t fill the other bike with sufficient amount of oil. There is no way our backyard mechanics could reliably turbocharge any bike - they can only cucumbercharge it.[/quote]
Oh well. :s
I didn’t read the whole story on her Chernobyl page (actually just a few lines at the beginning and mostly looking at the pics…), but don’t think it such a big matter whether it’s true or not.
Hey, I flew in from Switzerland, Zurich, before Swiss Air went bankrupt, and unpacked my bike in Kiev… I rode to Kaniv, south of town, worth a visit for the great beauty of the scenery over the mighty Dnieper River… So gorgeous… Then I went on by train to the Crimea and cycled from Svestapol to Yalta… What a gem… The botanical garden up the road from town is something to see! Then bussed to Odessa and was astounded by all the really solid old buildings… Managed to find one with Gogol’s profile, he lived there awhile… Lots of Russian pros on holiday… And then I went again by train a bit further north to reach the limits of Bukovina and road my bike along the Dniester, which borders Moldova – SO beautiful there along the river, you can’t imagine… Then on to Czernivitzi and it is so lovely and out of time. Nice cottages and gardens in the country… Most lovely yet most tragic place: Kamenets Podol’ski, a village that was situated beside a 400 year old fortress, on a river with vertical banks, old market homes and not much left of it since the second world war killed most everyone who had lived there… But though the Ukraine remains impoverished, and every second man is a terrible alcoholic, it is really a BEAUTIFUL country of indescribable fields of sunflowers stretching three or four miles in all directions… And beautiful big trees and green hills and wild-flowers on top… You cannot imagine it…
I rode three times to China, visiting Tibet twice… hey, and I am not a fraud… tibet by the short hairs
Did you guys know that they quarantined off that area for awhile…but left the people living there inside? I saw a documentary on it in England. I’ve never seen it play since which makes me think someone didn’t want people to see it. I remember seeing a market area where people were trying to buy ROTTEN BLACK tomatoes to eat. I’m guessing all those people are dead now…and they’ve opened the area back up for tourists. How nice.
Her English also switches back and forth from perfect to supposedly “Russian/Ukrainian” english…
How many Ukrainians raised in Ukraine their whole life would say, “scares the holy bejesus out of people here”?
Too bad though. It was a nice sad story.
She might have had an Irish English teacher…! 
Thought it might be time to bump this thread. 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4944898.stm
And a zillion other places in today’s news.