Ferris wheel in Chernobyl amusement park
Yesterday, the Metro newspaper ran a column by Julie Dimon, the resident ‘Travel Junkie,’ about the infamous Chernobyl nuclear site in Ukraine. It’s a pretty odd place to travel and reading the article reminded me about my first exposure to Chernobyl (forgive the pun) about a year ago, via the magic of moving pictures.
I was on a mad documentaries kick and my local video store, Big Daddy’s, has a killer supply. One that caught my eye was the “Vice Guide to Travel.” It’s a simple DVD with a relatively short running time, but man, is it ever INSANE. In the Metro column, Julie is pictured holding a Geiger counter, a device to measure radioactivity. In the Vice video, the editor Shane Smith walks about and shows how extreme the counts are: held aloft the counts are dangerous, but when the meter is placed at ground level, even with snow cover, the numbers go ballistic! — thousands of times the recommended ‘safe’ or ‘acceptable’ level of exposure. Shane and company protect themselves with a heavy dose of vodka and later get outfitted with AK-47s to ‘hunt’ the wild mutated boars that roam the abandoned town.
The DVD follows the editors, and ‘special guests’ such as video jock Spike Jonze and ”Jackass” actor Johnny Knoxville, as they venture to exotic-extreme places most of us will never visit, nor have any desire to get anywhere near, including: Chernobyl, Pakistan’s Khyber Pass, Bulgaria, Palestine, Paraguay, and the Congo.
The subject matter of the Ukraine chapter is timely and relevant, since we live in a day and age where Germany, a leading industrial nation is moving toward a completely nuclear power-free society, and the age of ‘peak oil’ is approaching, which will push us toward increased debate about nuclear energy and the alternatives. If you are familiar with Vice magazine then I do not need to caution that the content can at times be a little juvenile and offensive. The DVD is highly worthy of a download or rental.
Vice Chernobyl video
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1gin2_vice-travel-chernobyl-ukraine_shortfilms
Julia Dimon’s Metro article
www.metronews.ca/halifax/comment/article/163236
Photo slideshow of Chernobyl aftermath
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
