through chernobyl w/biker woman

In Ukrainian language Chernobyl is a name for a grass, wormwood (absinth) This word scares holly bejesus out of people here.

Not only have you thought of a brilliant band name, DV; you have also named their first album.

Yeah, I seem to remember that this was something that did the rounds in the eighties as proof that we were Living in the Last Days, because wormwood is mentioned in the Book of the Apocalypse (I don't remember the details).

Chernobyl Biker Woman will soon be a film, I predict. It will be like Run Lola Run. Someone will kidnap her boyfriend and she will have to go into the dead zone and collect a mysterious package before time runs out. Super eerie.

This is a brilliant website. The photos are excellent, both in subject matter and quality, and it is a very brave (if slightly mental) thing to do.

Revelations 8, here we go... "and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter."

I was sitting in a maths lecture and talked about this to someone, and two months later he tranferred to do theology, and I still feel guilty.

it bounced back, undelivered to one friend with an AOL account, with the following automated explanation:

<The URL contained in your email to AOL members has generated a high volume of complaints. Per our Unsolicited BuCODE=DL0>

I am based in Kyiv and writing a book about Chornobyl for the Joseph Henry Press. Several sources have sent me links to the "Ghost Town" photo essay included in the last e-POSHTA mailing. Though it was full of factual errors, I did find the notion of lone young woman riding her motorcycle through the evacuated Zone of Alienation to be intriguing and asked about it when I visited there two days ago.

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.

Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading.

I would not normally bother to correct someone's silly Chornobyl fantasy. Indeed, correcting all the factual errors and falsehoods in "Ghost Town" would consume as much space as the Web site itself. But the motorcycle story was such an outrageous fiction that I thought the readers of e-Poshta should know.

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

Oh yes.

she's been updating since 2007 and refuting the quasi-fictitiousness, though she's now mostly posting pictures taken by other explorers

not waking this for any form of direct comparison but of course it's on all our minds and the pictures are still incredible

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/spring2007.html