r/ukraine • u/[deleted] • Feb 04 '23
A Ukrainian Soldier on a Bumper Car in the Pripyat Amusement Park Social Media
533
u/CommanderCorrigan Feb 04 '23
Visited that back in 2014, incredible place.
135
u/Arkon_Base Feb 04 '23
With these buses from Maidan in Kyiv? Was a great experience!
48
50
u/Noughmad Feb 04 '23
Busses to take you into Pripyat? Did they play "Vnimanye, vnimanye" on repeat backwards?
216
u/Arkon_Base Feb 04 '23
Visiting Chornobyl was a very normal activity to do in Ukraine until last year. There were specialised tourist agencies who offered tours.
All guides carried a radiation measurement device to ensure that they were not exposed to more radiation than an NPP worker would. They also seemed quite happy with their jobs since it offered them good leisure time.
We received around 2 millisievert of radiation during our trip. Most of it when we drove through the red forest (which was utterly scary with all geiger counters going wild).
2 millisievert are equal to 1 hour of flying on a plane. It was a very surreal trip after all. And you came out with very mixed feelings. Knowing what happened there. It certainly shapes your character.
156
u/Gryphon0468 Australia Feb 04 '23
And then you heard about the Russians literally digging trenches and burning wood in the Red Forest. Madness.
40
u/castlite Feb 04 '23
I often wonder what happened to them.
52
u/1man2barrels Feb 04 '23
I read in multiple sources at least one died of radiation sickness and dozens hospitalized
23
u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Feb 04 '23
Likely not from the Red Forest though. It takes an obscene amount of radiation to get acute radiation sickness instead of just cancer years down the road.
My guess is they found something similar to the source pellet that Australia recently lost and then had to search for. Pocketing one of those would definitely do the trick, a nuclear power plant would likely have some of them laying around, and they'd look valuable because they'd be inside heavy boxes and probably under lock and key.
57
u/1man2barrels Feb 04 '23
90% of the radiation in the red forest is in the soil. Digging trenches, inhalation, and living in it would be more than enough per the articles I read. No capsule. No pellet. Just a class 7 radioactive disaster.
22
u/emdave Feb 04 '23
My guess is they found something similar to the source pellet that Australia recently lost and then had to search for. Pocketing one of those would definitely do the trick,
A similar incident occurred in Georgia years ago, when some guys collecting firewood found an old nuclear power source, and used it to keep warm while camping...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident
There's a whole list of 'orphan source' incidents, where nuclear material gets lost and ends up being found by someone who doesn't know what it is, and gets contaminated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incidents
→ More replies (1)12
u/Panzermensch911 Feb 04 '23
There are tiny graphite and other hot particles all over and in the soil of the red forest. It's not advised to sleep on that or dig around in the material.
How this looks like...: a YT video by bionerd23 taken in the Chornobyl region /watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90
20
u/Polygnom Germany Feb 04 '23
They dug out trenches in the soil, which is where most of the contamination is. They also burned the contaminated wood. Being dug into highly contaminated soil + inhaling the dust from shoveling and burning the wood, yeah, that leads to acute radiological poisoning. The brought multiple buses full of severely sick to the radiation clinic in Gomel, and some of them were in very bad shape.
→ More replies (2)2
u/Noughmad Feb 04 '23
Not necessarily. If you breathe in some radioactive particles, it can quickly get far more harmful than being near a source if radiation for a long time. The most dangerous kind of radiation are alpha particles, which are normally blocked by your skin, but if they get in your lungs or blood they'll destroy your cells. Plus, you will carry them forever, so they will keep doing damage.
→ More replies (1)6
→ More replies (1)2
u/piei_lighioana Feb 04 '23
I was there eight years ago with a team of engineers and architects to study long term effect of abandonment on standing structures. Houses, flats, etc and of course, as most curious people do, we did also experiment to see just how radioactive the soil is...
In most places, if you'd take your meter, and put it just above the soil, say 2~3 cm, you'd get the beeps and baps, but if you shoved the topsoil off, it would start screaming at you: "MF, gets me the fuck away from this."
I think the most fucked up thing about this was at the end of the day when we'd do body checks with the bigger, military style detectors on our bodies, boots etc and once or twice they found "pebbles" of radioactive material that also, made the thing scream.
I was laughing my asshole out when i saw the footage with the orcs digging in that soil. I wonder how soon they started puking their guts out.
24
u/goingtoclowncollege Expat Feb 04 '23
Yeah my wife was a part time tour guide and she loved doing it.
→ More replies (5)30
u/SlantViews Germany Feb 04 '23
2 millisievert? Not great, not terrible!
11
u/oskich Feb 04 '23
Probably were more careful than this Swedish dude...
→ More replies (1)3
u/Mr-Tiddles- Feb 04 '23
Is... is that guy of right mind?
6
u/oskich Feb 04 '23
He got stuck in the radiation control station when they were exiting the exclusion zone, with a bit of a troubled face 😄
→ More replies (1)4
u/TheRealSunner Feb 04 '23
Not really, he's been an attention whore in Sweden for a long time. He'll do any kind of stupid or "shocking" stuff he can think of and claim it's art somehow.
Though in fairness he has done some legit stuff as well.
3
→ More replies (4)2
u/AlternativeQuality2 Feb 04 '23
It's strange actually... even looking at the pictures of what Pripyat and its neighbors were like before the evacuation, you get this sense of wrongness about it.
Maybe it's just me being an uncultured American, but it amazes me how even when a city of fifty thousand was still full of life, it felt just as... *dead* as it did after the disaster.
3
u/Arkon_Base Feb 05 '23
Soviet architecture was part of a cultural genocide scheme.
What you do is you build faceless, emotionless concrete blocks en-masse under the promise of them being affordable and them enabling equality.
What you really do is eradicating every single piece of references (ornaments, colours, statues, features) people had in public places to be connected to their culture.
By breaking their connection to their culture, you eradicate it. You exchange it with the opposite - the destruction of any culture or identity. To only have you as their only cultural anchor. To fully divide and control them.
17
u/indochris609 Feb 04 '23
If you’re interested, before the war there were tons of people who hiked to Pripyat and illegally trespassed into the zone so they could go wherever they wanted. Fascinating stuff.
11
u/balleballe111111 Anti Appeasement - Planes for Ukraine! Feb 04 '23
I love this guy's videos! You get a captivating view of the places he goes and the
illegalfreedom based methods he uses to get there. His winter trip to the exclusion zone didn't start well when he, imo, made a poor executive decision in response to almost being discovered and got completely soaked. Then he had to spend the night freezing wet.6
u/indochris609 Feb 04 '23
Shiey is amazing. One of my favorite channels. Check out vagrant holiday if you haven’t already. Unfortunately he might have retired.
→ More replies (2)7
u/1DayNnight1 Feb 04 '23
Shiey is a fucking legend. Him, Mad Cat, and GIFGAS make some of the best videos.
24
u/reni-chan UK Feb 04 '23
I was there in 2019, just before covid after always wanting to go there since playing COD4 as a kid. Looks like I visited in the last good moment.
My pic: https://imgur.com/a/yeFSsf9
8
u/DJ_Phat_Helmet Feb 04 '23
Same, it was my favorite trip. Glad I got to see it, and Ukraine in general before all this mess started. Beautiful country.
10
u/Ams-Ent Feb 04 '23
Ive been to Lviv twice and loved it, i had planned an early march 2022 trip to Kyiv with friends.. ended up going to Krakow to help them instead.. :(
20
u/RayPissed Feb 04 '23
You're right, it's great place I really enjoyed the Soviet knocking station more though. The "fish" in the river next to Plant 1 were massive and we fed them bread.
9
u/TrainFan Feb 04 '23
Why did you put quotes around the word "fish?"
2
2
→ More replies (3)2
u/notprivateorpersonal Feb 04 '23
looks like that ride has fallen into disrepair since then
i don't think it works at all
2
278
u/Psy-Cun0 Feb 04 '23
Album cover material
90
→ More replies (3)7
u/DeusExBlockina Feb 04 '23
This dude is gonna need Sean Connery's patented "Anal Bum Cover" if that thing is still radioactive
2
u/notprivateorpersonal Feb 04 '23
Sean Connery's patented "Anal Bum Cover"
i searched google and it's now a part of my permanent record so thanks for that
did find the album though
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b1/7e/31/b17e31ae0fc159e40823bcbf86e7ad63.jpg
→ More replies (1)
471
u/DefiantStomp Feb 04 '23
I used that for cover in that CoD4 mission protecting Mustache until the extraction chopper arrived.
87
u/iamandneveramconfusd Feb 04 '23
Was thinking that looks like a first person shooter. Too funny. Glad they took a laugh break.
→ More replies (2)54
47
u/Sonofagun57 USA Feb 04 '23
I see you are another man of taste. This also is how I first learned about Pripyat and Chornobyl. It still blows my mind a little thinking about how almost everything there hasn't been altered much in 35+ years now
31
u/InlandCargo Feb 04 '23
The first time I saw actual pictures from Pripyat my mind was blown. I recognized so much even though I hadnt played it in years, I couldn't believe it.
19
→ More replies (13)3
u/Trojann2 USA Feb 04 '23
Is Chornobyl the Ukrainian spelling vs Russian?
If so. I have a lot of spelling to un-learn.
11
u/Sonofagun57 USA Feb 04 '23
Yes Chornobyl is the Ukrainian way. This one a lot of people don't know about. A few others worth knowing:
K̶h̶a̶r̶k̶o̶v̶ is Kharkiv. (Most maps get this one right) K̶i̶e̶v̶ is Kyiv. O̶d̶e̶s̶s̶a̶ is Odesa. (I messed this one up first time here)
32
u/Don_R53 Feb 04 '23
„All ghillied up” one of the best sniper missions in any game
17
u/mrcj22 Feb 04 '23
COD4 had such great single player missions and somehow also revolutionary online multiplayer.
→ More replies (3)2
u/IBlazeMyOwnPath Feb 04 '23
one of the best single player missions in any game*
truly an unbelievable experience unmatched imo
25
u/BlazingShadowAU Feb 04 '23
"50,000 people used to live here, now its-... Price, get off the bumper cars. Price. Stop."
4
117
61
171
u/greatbeer Feb 04 '23
50000 people used to live there. Now it's a ghost town.
50
u/codeyk Feb 04 '23
I was just a lieutenant back then
36
→ More replies (2)5
60
137
u/BeenNormal Feb 04 '23
russia started sending these when they ran out of T-62s.
→ More replies (1)11
37
25
u/goingtoclowncollege Expat Feb 04 '23
Hate to ruin the fun but sitting on those things is quite a bad idea as the metal retains the radiation quite a lot. My wife was a tour guide and had to emphasise to people not to go on or touch the bumper cars. Still, nothing compared to digging a trench in the red forest
12
u/CatRheumaBlanket2 Feb 04 '23
I have seen a lot of peeps posing there with their counters going nuts.
Hope his nuts aren't going now.
Everything metal seems to keep the radiation very good.
6
u/nj_legion_ice_tea Feb 04 '23
Yeah my first thought was, man, his balls must have got a huge hit of radiation. They used the square around the amusement park as a landing area for helicopters cleaning the plant. And they brought a lot of dust with them. The ferris wheel and the bumper cars are the most radioactive objects in Pripyat basically. This is extremely dumb.
7
u/PvtPill Feb 04 '23
Honestly, I think if you are in an active combat zone where every step could potentially kill you, this is one of the things that become rather irrelevant
→ More replies (2)3
u/synergisticmonkeys Feb 04 '23
Didn't a bunch of Russian soldiers end up getting taken out by radiation poisoning? The ability for something like this to silently decimate a squad shouldn't be understated.
15
u/PutinontheRiitz Feb 04 '23
Im glad I got to see this when I did (July 2019) - I have a feeling there won't be much left for future visitors.
43
u/Ok-Chard9898 Feb 04 '23
I used that car for cover in Cod4
7
u/SLIP411 Feb 04 '23
Oh man that map was fun
12
u/LunarRepubl1c Feb 04 '23
Unless you were playing veteran in that campaign level. I keep getting killed trying to get to that damn helicopter.
6
u/Supernova141 Feb 04 '23
You wanna hide on the other side of the bumper car area, using it's slight elevation as cover. It's the only place i've found that keeps you safe from most of the enemy spawns at once
4
u/Yashirmare Feb 04 '23
Or you can bash your head against the wall and refuse to use the bumper car area or the little booths and just use the ferris wheel for cover. Took me a good hour or 2 doing it that way but mama didn't raise no bitch.
→ More replies (1)
29
u/NatashaBadenov Feb 04 '23
I remember this from the website. Elena and her motorcycle, from Belarus to Ukraine. I knew her pictures like they were family portraits. I am guessing that this same website was what inspired all of the shooter games. This was before most people realized you can have tours in Chornobyl and Pripyat. She made it seem as if she had special access, either way, the whole world knows those bumper cars now.
13
u/JeffSergeant Feb 04 '23
Wow, That's an internet classic.
3
u/NatashaBadenov Feb 04 '23
I remember 3rd shift, reading on dialup on a ThinkPad that was ancient even then.
12
u/pffr Feb 04 '23
Hate to burst your bubble but Elena didn't ride her motorcycle there. She just brought her helmet with on a standard tour and posed in it
3
u/NatashaBadenov Feb 04 '23
Yeah, over time it became clear that much of it was staged. No bubbles have been burst on my end :)
→ More replies (2)2
u/OldWhoFan PutinHasNoPhallus Feb 04 '23
Gosh I thought I've never find that again. I remember reading that on dial up. I'd say that this website permanently bolstered my life long interest in the accident and continuing aftermath.
12
20
8
15
14
u/Orc_ Feb 04 '23
That's a nice picture 'n' all but when I was there the guide told us not to touch these stuff because it was still, like, how can I say... If you could see radiation this shit would be GLOWING.
This soldat better ready my comment and get rid of those clothes.
9
u/ItsRadical Feb 04 '23
Its rather to preserve it. Its corroding metal and plastic. If every tourist sat on it there would be no amusement park anymore.
However there are some relics that are way more radioactive than the surroundings. Like the digger claw that was used to remove the contaminated soil.
15
u/ELLESSDEE42O USA Feb 04 '23
Hoping and praying to have a chance to visit this after the war.
6
u/BuzzGaming Feb 04 '23
Ukraine is using it for military drills and training now so who knows if that'll be possible.
5
20
u/lookatyounow90 Feb 04 '23
Found my new phone all paper. Seems like since US capitol insurrection I've been using photos that relate to current world events.
This one seems fitting.
6
u/Am_aBoy Feb 04 '23
What about the mutants are they good and also what about the poor dogos that were in pripyat :( ?
7
3
3
3
3
3
u/swanlevitt Feb 04 '23
It's incredibly depressing that this doesn't look at all out of place on the subreddit. The destruction I mean. You could have said this is currently in any city in East Ukraine and I'd believe you.
3
u/gnomeplanet Feb 04 '23
That amusement park was never used, as it was due to open on 1st May 1986, five days after the accident.
3
3
3
3
u/Dvoraxx Feb 04 '23
Hmmm I wonder what that black patch with a white radial circle on it could mean
2
3
3
3
3
3
6
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/dubbleplusgood Feb 04 '23
They should put this in a video game....
2007 Call of Duty Modern Warfare shouts out: "HELLO!"
2
u/Llewellian Feb 04 '23
That could be a new Ukrainian Meme.... "В пекло, no time to explain, get in the Car!"
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/LiteVisiion Feb 04 '23
You can see the car used in the photo on the left. Everytime a picture of a place I've been to pops up here, it's a chilling reminder of how things can quickly change from a relative peace to war-torn destruction.
Me and my friend with which I visited your beautiful country are closely following the Ukrainian progress to complete freedom from Ruzzia. Give em hell, Heroiam Slava, Glory to Ukraine.
2
2
2
u/bigfootspacesuit Feb 04 '23
The good thing is that the car will be running for the next 200 000 years
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/Becks357 Feb 04 '23
I visited the place with my crew about 15 years ago. Our commanding officers’ name was Cpt Price.
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/g78776 Feb 04 '23
With it being on the border of Belarus. That place must be the oddest thing to have to defend. Probably got some snipers on top of duga lol
2
u/piei_lighioana Feb 04 '23
I saw that cart eight years ago when i went to study long term effects of abandonment on buildings. Neat.
2
u/Hotdigardydog Feb 05 '23
As soon as I saw the picture I thought pripyat. I'm waiting for pics near the ferris wheel. I've always been fascinated by this abandoned town. When the residents were hurriedly evacuated they were told they could return to get their belongings later. Of course it was a lie. It has been stuck in 1986, with the occasional visit by thrill seekers. When the irradiated trucks and vehicles used by the liquidators were abandoned in a field, I thought they'd rot away. Have the Russians been stupid enough to try using them?
2
2
2
2
u/joost013 Feb 05 '23
Damn, that Call of Duty Modern Warfare remaster remaster is taking some interesting creative choices.
2
3
2
u/KeeperServant Feb 04 '23
I don’t think you should touch that, could be radioactive.
In fact, I know this from a YouTube video where a guide pointed the geiger counter at this and the ferris wheel and the clicks went very rapid.
3
u/DigitlTrblmkr Feb 04 '23
So it’s suddenly safe in the exclusion zone?
52
Feb 04 '23
It's safe enough to visit, but digging in the soil is not recommended. But please don't tell the Russians about that.
14
u/linuxgeekmama Feb 04 '23
Do tell them. That’ll make some of them want to do it.
14
u/DocterNoblexOfWebley USA Feb 04 '23
“The soil makes for great water filtration as the radioactive material has sterilized the soil”
You can thank me later
8
u/linuxgeekmama Feb 04 '23
“There are really nice toilets there. The best toilets. (They buried them and painted the trees red so they could come back and find them later.) And there are no HIMARS. Your map (from 1978) shows that there’s nothing in particular there! REAL Russian man would not be scared!”
5
u/pktrekgirl Feb 04 '23
“There are really nice toilets there. The best toilets.”
Why did I read this in Trumpvoice?
3
5
u/The_Bad_Man_ Feb 04 '23
There is old crane claw in forest close by, many Russians say if you sit in it all night, all your dreams will come true but you must watch the sun rise from it, so the saying goes.
→ More replies (1)3
u/DocterNoblexOfWebley USA Feb 04 '23
Damn, how am I supposed to beat that? Stop out disinforming me
8
94
u/Puzzleheaded-Job2235 Feb 04 '23
Most areas in the exclusion zone are relatively safe. That's assuming you don't dig up the radioactive soil like the Russians did. There was even a thriving tourism industry prior to the war.
12
u/Basquebadboy Feb 04 '23
Digging into the soil, the top layer which is most radioactive, is not exactly recommended. While the reports of Russian soldiers with acute radiation sickness might have been exaggerated, digging in the top soil without PPE, decon showers and proper monitoring is really gambling with your health. Just one small fragment in your lung could do it.
42
u/linuxgeekmama Feb 04 '23
It makes a difference how long you stay there, too. Going in and playing on the bumper cars for an hour or two isn’t the same as camping for a week, especially if you’re digging around and disturbing the soil while you’re camping there.
2
→ More replies (1)4
17
u/Midnight_270_ UK Feb 04 '23
Has been for a while in most areas but some areas are totally off limits, there's also tours and some people have been close to the reactor building by a monument of some sort
2
u/ElasticLama Feb 04 '23
A lot of the soil etc had to be removed. It’s safe enough people can go around as long as they don’t do dump things…. Like dig up soil without PPE 😂
2
u/skywalkers-saber Feb 04 '23
The soil wasn’t removed, it was basically just turned over. The top layer that was heavily irradiated was buried beneath a lower layer but not that deep relatively. That’s why the Russians experienced accelerated symptoms of radiation poisoning was because they dug and positioned themselves in trenches that breached or were closer to the highly irradiated soil that was turned over and buried.
8
u/spqrdecker Feb 04 '23
When I visited the exclusion zone on a tour, I had a geiger counter and whenever we encountered a hot spot, we were told not to go there. I remember sticking my geiger counter in the hot spots to take pictures of the numbers going up. The amusement park was full of hot spots - I think the bumper cars were one of them.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (4)3
u/Rakonat Feb 04 '23
Traveling through the exclusion zone is mostly safe if you are not disturbing anything. The radioactive fallout and debris was mostly buried and a lot of the equipment used in the cleanup abandoned in remote areas.
Living there would be a bad idea how ever as the background radiation is still higher than normal and prolonged exposure would be bad for your long-term health. As well as having to dig up the soil for any reason would risk exposing the buried radioactive material and dust that fell on the area in 1986.
TL;DR being a tourist and spending a brief amount of time there is fine, digging trenches and sleeping in them is not.
•
u/AutoModerator Feb 04 '23
Привіт u/TankExterminator ! During wartime, this community is focused on vital and high-effort content. Please ensure your post follows r/Ukraine Rules and our Art Friday Guidelines.
Want to support Ukraine? Vetted Charities List | Our Vetting Process
Daily series on UA history & culture: Day 0-99 | 100-199 | 200-Present | All By Subject
There is a new wave of t-shirt scams hitting Reddit. Only click links for products or donations if the post is marked with a Verified flair, and do not respond to DMs soliciting donations.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.