The thing she's holding is a ratemeter. It reads 763 millirems per hour. Exposure of 2 rems or more in 2h is fatal

Chernobyl Plant lies behind.

from here

I'd like to go there one day. Buy my own motorbike/bicycle, ride out and look for one last time at Man's perpetual monument on Earth. The topless towers of the world's great cities may crumble and fail, but the festering wound of Chernobyl will remain, silently pouring its poisons into the world.

There is a 'Zone of Exclusion' of radius 80km around the plant, within which no sane people live. Entrance is technically forbidden, but they don't place guards at the boundaries for obvious reasons. Inside, hovels and communist palaces decay, overrun by the wolves, the grass, and the silence.

They say that if you step off the road the dose of radiation received triples instantaeneously. Asphalt and concrete do not retain radioactive dust. Grass, trees, wildflowers do. The wolves, the boars do not forget the indignity of Man's intrusion. Nature takes its revenge in myriad ways.

They say that there is a town called Pripyat that lies just four kilometres from the plant. It formerly housed the workers in the plant. Now there is only silence, the silence that comes of being forgotten, the silence of death. They organised tourist visits here, but they all ran away after the first fifteen minutes. They couldn't stand how quiet it was. Canned food is as fresh as the day it was made, while Stalin's poster still hangs from the town hall. His right hand, arrogantly uplifted, used to point at the space station Mir in the skies above. His left eye has has been replaced by a tattered hole staring blankly at Chernobyl.

They say that a statue of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods used to lie at Pripyat's town centre. It has since been moved, and now stands proudly in front of the sarcophagus of Reactor No. 4. The heavens have a sense of humour, I guess.

I got drenched in the rain today walking to the bus stop. To think that the dust might have blown all the way here to rain down on me... *shudders*

Somebody said that at 8:50 PM

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