Guess the Park, its a tough one...

Ok-I was browsing about, and I dont have a picture of a coaster...but I do have this picture of the Ferris Wheel that was there...see if you can guess this one...

shnoogins*

http://openshoebox.com/?location=viewimage&imageid=214222&albumid=9643

Marco Polo Park in Fl?

It's the park right outside of the Chernobyl meltdown site.

The rest of the pics that are in the series are freaking amazing. This girl on a motorcycle just goes around taking pictures of the stillness that remains of the empty area. You can feel the silence.

Are you a member of the SA forums? Thats where I saw the photos. I'll try and find the link for the whole story.

That paratrooper looks pretty creepy. It doesn't look as if it could hold much weight. At least it looks like a paratrooper. A paratrooper with chairlift cars. *** Edited 3/7/2004 6:15:46 PM UTC by coasterpunk***

Is there any more pics of this park, othre than the one?

Here is a site with more pics of the abandoned park and city. McEaten Alive is right, you can feel the overwhelming silence of the place just by looking at the pictures. Very Humbling.

Here is the site:

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/prypiat/prypiat-amuse-1.html

Sorry for digging this one up again, but I found the link McEaten Alive was talking about.

Its a photo-report by a young (quite attractive) russian woman who travels through the vast Dead Zone surrounding the power plant.

I recommend to take some time to read the whole report (27 pages). Sometimes you´ll smile about her dry, laconic humour and some of her english mistakes are charming, but towards the end of the article I had a hard time fighting back the tears!

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Speaking of digging up...

What an amazing story. Today is the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

Yeah, I had actually seen that earlier today. How odd that we were bringing this up in the first place.

We really are geeks, you know.....

I guess they had a great price on electric bills.

And tomorrow (the 28th) will be the anniversary of the date when the Soviets admitted something happened.

Veering off topic here, but sometime around the early 90s, I met a group of children at a summer camp here in PA who had been evacuated from a Ukrainian village near the reactor. They had been brought over by a charitable organization.

We noticed that except for one boy around 13-14 years old, their chaperones only let them in the swimming pool for around 10 or 15 minutes. We asked why, and they told us they were afraid that long exposure to the sun's UV rays could trigger something-- there's an extremely high incidence of thyroid cancer among people who lived in the area. We then asked why the one boy didn't have to leave the pool with the others. They told us that in his case it wasn't going to matter, so they were letting him enjoy himself as much as was possible.

Now THAT would make you cry.

^ Ouch.

TrickTrack i just went to that site and read the 'journey' story.
My god, that girl's got guts! That is one helluva story.

Wow ... great pictures, great story.

Seeing Elenas Chernobyl pictures it's really quite chilling that Andre Tarkovsky shot his film "Stalker" (1979) around Tchernobyl as well.. in one scene, the actual Tchernobyl power plant (still functioning at the time) is seen.

The film is about an abandoned zone where no one lives or is allowed to enter - it is filled with abandoned houses, deserted buildings and vegetation growing over remnants of civilisation. In the film, something happened but no one really knows what - probably something extraterrestial.

Looking at those pictures, it is almost as if that zone has become a reality - at least the atmosphere of the Elena's pictures bear a striking resemblance to the movie in which lots of deserted places and houses are shown.

(Besides there's a video game out called "Stalker- Oblivion Lost" or something that exploits this setting as well) *** Edited 4/27/2005 9:28:31 PM UTC by superman***

Wow! The report brought tears to my eyes. Some of us take so many things for granted. Can you imagine the chaos that ensued when the evacuation occourred? I'm speechless.

Seeing the people's old family photos left behind... the kids' stuffed animals... that's harsh.

The pictures are interesting; no doubt about that, but the story itself has been debunked a few times now as a fraud.

See here:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp

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McEatenAlive said:
Are you a member of the SA forums? Thats where I saw the photos.

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Excuse me, the what?

Oh...those forums? Yeah. Kinda.

-Josh