[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

Cool phototour of modern-day Chernobyl. Makes me feel like I just ran over from Megaton.

This post has been edited by Raymond Luxury Yacht: 24 March 2010 - 08:29 PM

[Garak]

I reminds me of CoD4 (gee, I wonder why - that was a fun level). Gods that city is creepy.

This post has been edited by Garak: 24 March 2010 - 07:35 PM

[Jusentantaka]

"There's a rusted out van on that bridge!" was my first thought. Guess they moved it.

[Illuyankas]

GET OUT OF HERE STALKER

[Salt-Man Z]

That's pretty cool. And a little creepy.

[knight of shadows]

wow that shit is nuts

[Raymond Luxury Yacht]

I didn't know about the COD4 level. I just saw some of the pictures of it and it looks like they did a good job recreating this. How much freedom is there to go into the different buildings?

[Aptorian]

In the single player campaign there's not much time to go sight seeing, you're basically following Soaps lead the whole way. I can hardly remember the events but basically you sneak through some fields, let an entire russian platoon walk right over you, and then you head into Pripyat, you aim for one of the tallest buildings from where you can snipe at some evil russian dude, then you run like fuck down to the amusement park area and hold a crazy 20 minute last stand against a million russian soldiers. I only completed that part by running away from the target area, hiding behind the bumper cars and blowing the heads off what ever Russian soldier was stupid enough to come near me.

In the multiplayer game there a stage set up around two apartment complexes, one section of it has that empty swimming pool area off to one side. Generally the apartments are shown to still be furnished and in disrepair, but it's not like IW wasted a lot of ressources detailing the apartments.

I think you'd get more fun out of player STALKER: Pripyat. They supposedly did a ton of research on that game.

[Aptorian]

Something weird about that article that I noticed.

There's a part when they are at the Chernobyl complex and one of the tourists gets cussed at for being so stupid as to laying his hat on the ground. Apparently all things that touch the ground become radioactive and dangerous. If this is true... then why the fuck does he keep putting his geiger counter down on the ground and on top of that killer moss? Dudes going to get finger cancer.

[Jusentantaka]

 Aptorian, on 24 March 2010 - 08:53 PM, said:

I think you'd get more fun out of player STALKER: Pripyat. They supposedly did a ton of research on that game.

All three of the stalker games are actually really good with the whole 'making it like the real place', like the bridge they're on in the photos, and a lot of the rest too. Bridge jumped out at me cause its one of the few bits common to all three games. But at the same time, a lot of other buildings are the fuck-ugly Soviet concrete block style of building, so you don't notice it so much.

 Aptorian, on 24 March 2010 - 08:56 PM, said:

Something weird about that article that I noticed.

There's a part when they are at the Chernobyl complex and one of the tourists gets cussed at for being so stupid as to laying his hat on the ground. Apparently all things that touch the ground become radioactive and dangerous. If this is true... then why the fuck does he keep putting his geiger counter down on the ground and on top of that killer moss? Dudes going to get finger cancer.

Better safe than sorry, and since they're angry russians, they have to yell about something, and its not like anyone is stupid enough to run up to the sarcophagus and kiss it. Like he says in the one caption, a few Roentgens won't do much. Still, yell for the dumb shit that doesn't really matter and you don't have to yell for the ambulance while fending off a rad-zombie with a stick.

This post has been edited by Jusentantaka: 24 March 2010 - 09:15 PM

[LadyMTL]

Man but those photos are creepy, especially the ones in the school (2nd place going to the abandoned slippers in the hotel). I'd be having nightmares after a visit there, never mind if I was stupid enough to put anything on the ground.
Mind you, what do they do with their footwear afterwards? I mean, they've been walking all over the place...do they disinfect / decontaminate their shoes?

[Tiste Simeon]

I imagine they disinfect or provide some kind of footwear protection... That was pretty eerie!

EDIT: Found some Rules about going there...

This post has been edited by Tiste Simeon: 24 March 2010 - 11:32 PM

[Ain't_It_Just_]

Those pictures were so foreboding...I kept expecting to see mutant zombies snarling in the next one. And the next, and the next...

[HoosierDaddy]

WOW. I thought I had an idea, but I didn't. That is some frightening photography.

[Lisheo]

I always love photographs of Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion, I plan on visiting there some day. Nice find, Ray, cheers.

[Aptorian]

I personally plan on never going within a hundred mile of Chernobyl. Any place where even the grass will kill you is a place I don't need to expose myself to.

[Anomander]

I've wanted to go to Chernobyl for ages now. Danger aside it would be a very humbling experience.

[Lisheo]

I can't imagine it's going to kill you that fast, unless you're an idiot and leave your hat on the ground for a week, then eat out of it. From what I remember, don't some people still live illegally inside the Exclusion Zone? And a great deal of animals have come back into the region. It's dangerous, yes, but clearly not fatal if you're careful.

[Jusentantaka]

Yeah, there have been a few thousand people living in there since the accident, scattered all over, and there have been lots of looters and scavengers slipping into the town to steal shit left behind, so it really isn't all that dangerous. And there's loads of unmutated animals living in the area too, so there has to be safe forage and such.

Basically, the linear no threshold model they based all of the exclusion-zone stuff on is coming to be seen as wrong. (even though there was evidence it was shit for a long long time - Ramsar, Iran, where the radiation levels are around 250mSv/year, with no genetic issues in the populace) In the non-reactor areas, the dose is like 25-30mSv/year for Chernobyl and thats plenty safe to be around.

[Aptorian]

Oh yeah, the scavengers and squatters aren't dying or mutating on the spot, but I'd like to see a physical on the people living in the area over the next couple of decades. The effect is not immediately clear, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get problems with their organs, birth defects, etc.

Funny thing about Chernobyl, unofficially it is not the worst accident that has happened in Russia. A worse ecological disaster happened on another site where the water from the reactor escaped/or was led out into the local lake. I can't remember the name of the place any longer but me and some schoolmates did a project on it in primary school. When the lake and surrounding are was contaminated they filled the lake with concrete and buried everything. Only problem is that this did not stop the real danger, the burial pushed the radiation further into the ground and the radiation continues to leak into the water reserves and it is suspected of travelling with the water ways out into the northern seas above Russia. The effect at the time was not certain but the radiation measured in the fish population north of russia had a scary amount of radiation in them.

EDIT: A quick search leads me to believe the project we did was probably about Mayak:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayak

Quote

Mayak (Russian: Маяк, "lighthouse") is one of the biggest nuclear facilities in Russian Federation located 150 km south-east of Ekaterinburg between the towns of Kasli and 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk. The closest city to the nuclear complex is plant is Ozyorsk is the central administrative territorial district. As part of the Russian nuclear weapon Mayak was formerly known as Chelyabinsk-40, later as Chelyabinsk-65.

Mayak is also known as a source for a serious contamination of a huge territory in the Ural area which happened in 1957 and was kept as a secret by the soviet regime for about 30 years. Working conditions at Mayak and an undeveloped environment responsibility in the past lead to additional contamination of surrounding lake district. It resulted in severe health hazards and accidents. Some areas are still under restricted access regime because of radiation. In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing some of them to more than 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl disaster victims.^[1]

Mayak was the goal of Gary Powers' surveillance flight in May 1960.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 28 March 2010 - 08:41 PM