That was the last day of life. The last day many children played on the parks . That was the last day, because on 26th April 1986 —tomorrow it will be exactly 20 years ago— the time stopped around Chernobyl area. No more children playing, no more birds chirping. Many lives ended physically but also metaphorically. The places with their houses and everything inside them remained there. The toys and photographs were covered with dust and death and the layers kept growing till today. I’ve not see the scenery but through some pictures I can figure it out. However, my mind builds some darker scenery, inhabited by even more ghostly shapes...millions of ghostly shapes behind every single thing that stands up and under every single thing that went down and remained so for 2 decades. And what is worse, these images I build in my mind might not be worse than reality, since, although it might sound topic, reality is too often worse than we can imagine.
Time stopped and the only thing that seems to move are the quantities of radiations, varying from one place to another, and some lost animals. Also vegetation seems to keep growing, invading all kind of places, replacing people. And maybe, from time to time, some radiated fruits from some trees fall down. It feels strange to be conscious about the presence of gravity in such an area. It seems that it could have disappeared with the people that left the area, and the absence of life. Time stopped somewhere as history kept following its path, as communism approached its fall. I guess there are really many places that are somehow like this, in the sense that the time flows differently.
And lately we hear that nuclear power, together with less dangerous types of sources of energy, will definitely be important to keep our world working. What world? This world with many shades of modernity, boasting about its so-called progress. I write so-called because it’s a very partial progress that affects just some aspects of lives and affects/benefits only a proportion of the inhabitants of the Earth. A generalised use of nuclear power scares me, personally, and I guess I’m not the only one with such feelings. Now people remember the disaster in Chernobyl 20 years ago and at the same time talk about the role of nuclear power in the future, but also about nuclear weapons in several countries. I wonder why the powerful ones, and many of us, didn’t act and live in a more responsible way towards the environment all these 20 years to preserve our natural resources and sources of energy? Instead, on the run toward progress, we took a rather destructive path, a rather suicidal path because progress and self satisfaction and a pretended-to-be-happier world and benefits, of course, were more important. Consummerism, production, spend-spend-spend. And yet spend and then lose. If the world’s dynamic had been more responsible for these 20 years, just to say a period of time, we might not be talking of the urgency of the seek of alternative sources of energy. And we might see the catastrophe in Chernobyl as something really distant in time, unlike what happens. It’s 20 years ago and it doesn’t seem to be that long ago since many ghosts of nuclear power keep alive. I was just 4 years old in 1986, so I remember nothing, but I think of all people born that time, all those who were children at that time, that day. Some are still alive and the generation following theirs might suffer the consequences of radiation too. The time is still stopped. How many generations will be needed? How many centuries to get the clocks back into working there? How long do we have to wait until the presence of radiation begins to fade away? Maybe, by the time that takes place, we’ve already destroyed the world and other kinds of deadly radiations pollute our bodies and souls. With the kind of people in powerful positions we have, it’s wouldn’t be that strange to see that happening.
I recommend you a couple of websites by Elena Filatova, with pictures (don’t expect “yellow” pictures...for such contents there’s nowadays tv. Pictures here depict sceneries and measurements of radioactivity) Worth seeing and reading:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/journal/articles.html
http://www.elenafilatova.com/
Time stopped and the only thing that seems to move are the quantities of radiations, varying from one place to another, and some lost animals. Also vegetation seems to keep growing, invading all kind of places, replacing people. And maybe, from time to time, some radiated fruits from some trees fall down. It feels strange to be conscious about the presence of gravity in such an area. It seems that it could have disappeared with the people that left the area, and the absence of life. Time stopped somewhere as history kept following its path, as communism approached its fall. I guess there are really many places that are somehow like this, in the sense that the time flows differently.
And lately we hear that nuclear power, together with less dangerous types of sources of energy, will definitely be important to keep our world working. What world? This world with many shades of modernity, boasting about its so-called progress. I write so-called because it’s a very partial progress that affects just some aspects of lives and affects/benefits only a proportion of the inhabitants of the Earth. A generalised use of nuclear power scares me, personally, and I guess I’m not the only one with such feelings. Now people remember the disaster in Chernobyl 20 years ago and at the same time talk about the role of nuclear power in the future, but also about nuclear weapons in several countries. I wonder why the powerful ones, and many of us, didn’t act and live in a more responsible way towards the environment all these 20 years to preserve our natural resources and sources of energy? Instead, on the run toward progress, we took a rather destructive path, a rather suicidal path because progress and self satisfaction and a pretended-to-be-happier world and benefits, of course, were more important. Consummerism, production, spend-spend-spend. And yet spend and then lose. If the world’s dynamic had been more responsible for these 20 years, just to say a period of time, we might not be talking of the urgency of the seek of alternative sources of energy. And we might see the catastrophe in Chernobyl as something really distant in time, unlike what happens. It’s 20 years ago and it doesn’t seem to be that long ago since many ghosts of nuclear power keep alive. I was just 4 years old in 1986, so I remember nothing, but I think of all people born that time, all those who were children at that time, that day. Some are still alive and the generation following theirs might suffer the consequences of radiation too. The time is still stopped. How many generations will be needed? How many centuries to get the clocks back into working there? How long do we have to wait until the presence of radiation begins to fade away? Maybe, by the time that takes place, we’ve already destroyed the world and other kinds of deadly radiations pollute our bodies and souls. With the kind of people in powerful positions we have, it’s wouldn’t be that strange to see that happening.
I recommend you a couple of websites by Elena Filatova, with pictures (don’t expect “yellow” pictures...for such contents there’s nowadays tv. Pictures here depict sceneries and measurements of radioactivity) Worth seeing and reading:
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/journal/articles.html
http://www.elenafilatova.com/
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