Not for the faint-hearted or paranoid – there’s now tours to be booked around the Chernobyl radioactive zone. Tourists, or rather, ‘visitors’ as they are being curiously referred to according to a Times article are being thrown into the deep end of where the Geiger Counter would no doubt have a field day. Sight-seers are warned not to set their bags down on the ground and that probably goes doubly so for sitting down and having a cup of tea during break, since you will be disrobed of any possessions if they register highlevels of radiation on your exit from the exclusion zone.
When news of the terrible event first broke the locals were forced to run meaning that they up and left without any real preparations. Therefore Chernobyl is practically a town frozen in time. Although mother nature is making a great comeback and tearing through buildings and homes, reclaiming them as her own once again, the present state of classrooms and offices reveal an eerie presence of life in the 80′s. It’s almost as if everyone headed off for lunch and may come back at any moment.
Timm Suess in his web site illustrates some of these spooky characteristics through his ‘decaying’ photos. There are also some videos on the site quite iGuidez-like with information popping up about the buildings and places in the footage.
Chernobyl would no doubt make a great place for plenty of video guides before the real damage becomes apparent and buildings start falling down. The historic value locked within this ghost-town could be archived for future generations. So, if there’s a free return ticket (naturally! hanging around is hardly the healthy option) in it for iGuidez, we just might find the spare time todrop in.