Chernobyl Before the Craze
Here is a set of eerie photos from my recent trip to Chernobyl to welcome the arrival of HF21 and #NewSteem.
I was lucky to visit the Chernobyl site before it became massively popular following HBO's TV series. Still, there were over 1000 tourists on that day in April, which took away from the feeling of desolation.
The radiation levels rarely exceeded 4-5 times the normal background radiation that can be measured in most cities. In other words, it was pretty safe to spend time in Pripyat and its surroundings
Flora is thriving in parts of the exclusion zone
Back to NewSteem - I powered up most of my Steem the other day, thus becoming a dolphin. Although this doesn't mean much in terms of voting power, I plan on testing the new set of blockchain rules in the coming weeks. Let's see how it goes.
Cheers!
Dan
have seen you around for a time. but seeing you have been to my dream location am always wanting to go there. hope more photos are coming :)
Good to see you, man! I have more photos but I don't see a point posting them since everything in Chernobyl has been photographed countless of times :)
I hope you manage to go there one day - it's a fairly cheap trip given your flight to Ukraine is from Europe.
Welcoming the NEW steem with pictures from Pripyat makes for an interesting contrast ; thanks @irreverent-dan!
I guess the time to take great empty pictures of Pripyat have passed; tourism seems to fill every niche.
How long are you allowed to stay there?
Glad that you noticed the contrast :D
I read somewhere that the tourist flow has increased by 40-50% after the HBO series. That said, you still might be able to avoid the crowds if you visit on a winter weekday.
I think you can stay up to several days and even sleep in the exclusion zone. The radiation levels are really not that high.
Good to see you back! You missed all the circus of the new tribes and tokens, though
Hey @nikv! Good to see you too :) I was overwhelmed by the number of tokens/tribes when I first logged on Steem Engine, and I am still not sure how it all functions. Do they have their own sites/interfaces?
Yes, the big ones do: palnet, creativecoin, photostreem, neoxian. You don't have to use the interfaces for posting but if you use use the tags when posting on steem and you have coins staked, you can give and get rewards in those coins. If you go to each frontend, find your steemit profile and log in with your posting key
Excuse the spying but your wallet is here https://steem-engine.com/?p=balances&a=irreverent-dan and I see you have PHOTO and PHOTOM which you really should stake, since that is your thing.
The PHOTOM is a miner token and will give you passive earnings. The PHOTO will give you VP when staked.
Thanks Nikv! I managed to stake the PHOTO & PHOTOM tokens, but then I got an error message from SteemConnect - a tool that I find frustrating.
This clears my confusion. I thought the dedicated interface must be used in order to utilize a token.
Happy, to help:)
Yes, steemconnect is a pain. Keychain works much better. Apparently the PHOTO coins just work with the #photography tag, there's no need to use #photostreem for that
It is just sad that Chernobyl had gotten a wasteland plus the people died because of toxicity of the radiation there @irreverent-dan
On the positive side - despite the radiation, nature has started to take over :)
How nice to see you post! It must be an incredible experience to visit Chernobil, I can't even imagine the sensations I would have when visiting such a place.
I share with you some !trdo 😊
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Congratulations @alequandro, you are successfuly trended the post that shared by @irreverent-dan!
@irreverent-dan got 6 TRDO & @alequandro got 4 TRDO!
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Hey man! I think the sensations would have been much stronger had I had the chance to explore at my own pace without any other people around. Imagine - just you and the beeping Geiger counter guiding your way :)
By the way, I have no idea what that trendotoken does :D
Hi, why the downvotes please?
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Hi, Dan! It's been awhile. What have you been up to? Any trips to Iceland recently? Not sure how I missed this one, but I've cut back on my online hours quite a bit.
Very cool photos, though. I didn't see the BBC documentary, but have read a little and seen some interesting short documentary-style videos about the area. There were some photos of the area from the 90's that were fascinating. The photographer must have gotten permission and gone in with a radiation suit to get them at that point.
I haven't visited Iceland since last time, pretty much a year ago, when things abruptly took a different turn :) I did travel to some other places though - twice to Miami, once to Cuba, then Ukraine and Chernobyl as well as several other places across Europe. Apart from Cuba, Ukraine and Greece, all other trips were work-related, so I didn't quite have the time and energy to take photos.
As for Chernobyl - maybe that photographer went there without any protection whatsoever? From what I heard, the security was not tight after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, and many people were entering the zone with the idea to break into the abandoned apartments, steal stuff (TVs, washing machines, etc.) and then sell it. That's rather disturbing.
What have you been up to? :)
Things have been pretty slow here, other than the photography. I finished my masters degree and have been unemployed since. I may have an interview for an HR job next week, some time. I'd rather be heading back to Spain.
Cuba would be fun to see, some day. It's mostly off limits to US citizens :-P Did you get some photos of those amazing old cars they have around?
I did and I am slowly making progress on a post about Cuba :)