DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Here’s a bleak link for a dreary Monday: motorcycle tour of Chernobyl.

The tone is somber yet matter-of-fact.

Usually, on this leg of the journey, a beeping Dosimeter inspires me 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 Dosimeter readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroengens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, Dosimeter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roengens 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 a dark magic with the power to turn biker leather into shining armor.

The accompanying photos seem random and somewhat uninteresting, but I guess this is appropriate: radiation is invisible.

Thanks to Bim for the link. (Bim’s motorcycle trip to Turkey was much less bleak!)