Look son. This is back in ye olden days when I was just a wee lad. We didn’t have this “picture quality” concept you kids like to jerk over. We had a viewfinder, which was basically just a hole with a +.
We didn’t get to find out our bodies had been pummeled with a bombardment of billions of electrons until the strip mall kiosk got it back from the lab a few weeks later.
My mistake, then. BUT the Digicam was a kit that adapted an *existing* CCTV camera to an Amiga computer. So while that particular product didn't exist, the cameras themselves, definitely did.
I was confused too so googled it. Found an article, apparently a photographer and friends did indeed take photos on April 26th. [article](https://flashbak.com/the-first-photos-of-chernobyl-after-the-nuclear-disaster-april-26-1986-450986/)
Just read the article. They can’t inhabit Pripyat for another 24,000 years. Wild to think that this happened and within a lot of peoples lifetimes (not mine I’m too young) and no one can come back for thousands of years
I didn't say it happened on my date of birth genius, do some math and figure out how many people were born on that day...every year and then track me down..I'll be waiting
And rejection of said advice is seen as moronic in same said cultural ethos. As is insulting the bearer of said advice by antagonistic petty childish put downs.
I was living in Hawaii at the time, and within less than a week, I had new friends from Denmark, who immediately left when they heard the news. It was crazy, because radiation was really going off the dial, and nobody knew exactly what was happening.
There's a YouTube channel called "Ushanka Show", by a Ukranian-American who was living in Kiev, age 15, at the time. I highly recommend his videos on the subject of Chernobyl, Ukraine, growing up in the USSR, etc. One of the best YT channels for quasi-soviet *otaku* like me,
God you can see the 5 tonner dump truck sized pieces of graphite. Wild.
I still support nuclear. We just need more regulation. The vast majority of the scientific community supports nuclear, as it really is our best current option. Modern reactors are a far cry from this design, and with strict regulation; we as a planet can wean off fossil fuels.
There’s plenty of regulation already, people still NIMBY about it.
Chernobyl did it’s thing because of the same reasons anything high tech failed in the USSR.
Yeah. It was a very well designed reactor, which is why it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Natural disaster is one of the concerning aspects to designing these facilities. You never know what Gaia has next.
That and that it happened in Japan of all countries that I think vast majority people have this image of "technological paradise" and everything is made with "Japanese precision and quality".
Thank you for sharing. Here's an article on Artur Korneyev, the guy who kept visiting the elephants foot. When the elephants foot was first discovered it would kill anyone within 30 seconds, over the decades that has lowered to minutes. I'm guessing Artur would only spend brief moments in front of the foot.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl.amp
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I think this version of the image has been cleaned up, [this should be the original](https://atomicphotographers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/kostin-chernobyl1.jpg) as it looks more like it should if fogged due to radiation.
Also the entire film would have been getting irradiated the whole time while in the camera slowly fogging (this is also how dosimeter badges work, that contain a piece of enclosed photographic film that fogs when exposed to radiation).
If you're referring to the scene from Chernobyl it's because they hit a tower that was obstructed by smoke. They didn't see it because it was obstructed by smoke.
Thanks, Chernobyl, a cheap Soviet-era power plant with many cut corners, for permanently damaging people's view of nuclear power and giving them an inaccurate idea of how dangerous it actually is.
Could solve the reliance on fossil fuels within a few years if we went nuclear but nOooOOOo...
It wasn't as much they were trying to cut corners, but rather the Soviet system was so inefficient and rife with cronyism at that point, there was no effective way to correct glaring mistakes. The explosion was made possible by a design defect which they discovered years before the explosion. But nothing was done about it because an official classified the information to save face.
Umm.. must not forget the 3 Mile Island incident either. We also had a local incidence where the nearby nuclear plant had to be converted to coal because the contractor had massively cheated by not checking 90% of the welds but submitted manipulated pictures. I think nuclear as a power source can be feasible but safe waste disposal remains a problem.
I told a college professor this my freshman year and she laughed me out of the class room and asked the rest of the class “what else is wrong with nuclear power?”
Really is amazing how people will avoid solutions to keep complaining about problems.
The scary bit is that the bomb tests WEREN'T near their factory. The film was being irradiated by the cardboard packaging for their film, which was made in Indiana and Iowa. This was due to fallout from the Trinity test in New Mexico.
The crazy thing was the contractors they ‟persuaded” to clean and sweep nuclear material off the roof.
They were only allowed out for like 30 seconds at a time.
Only known* There are bound to be more in someone's home picture collection. A lot of people were in and out, I'd think there are better than average odds someone had a camera and snapped a photo
\>began to destroy the camera film the second it was exposed
Didn't it begin to destroy the film when they got near enough ragardless of the camera shutter position? Gamma rays are supposed to go through any materials.
Nowadays, when normal people talk about radiation, they mean ionising radiation, because people don't know that there is safe non-ionising radiation everywhere.
I remember seeing a picture of a fireman trying to cool down the reactor (or something ) and it looked like the radiation was literally tearing him apart.
Yes. I think that’s it. He’s holding a hose and spraying water at something.
[This one.](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl)
We definitely should build more nuclear power plants. Radiations aren't that dangerous. Very fee people died from those. Solar? Wind? Pff, those are for commoners.
Interesting is it not, lives lost not only human, animals and vegetation but hey who cares let’s go build a few thousand more of these fabulous power station. Seriously guys the buck stops where you spend your dollar you know!
I don't think you get it. The grain is due to the heavy radiation in the air instantly degrading the films surface, not that it is somehow visible in the air. Film not digital!
You can't see radiation, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to say radiation affected the film, since the film is so sensitive that it can record light (hence photography).
>3.6 roentgen for sure
**THEN WHY DID THE COMRADE DIRECTOR SEE GRAPHITE ON THE ROOF?**
There's no granite on the roof!!
graphite\*
Hmm not good but not bad…
Doesn't look that bad at all I'm sure they pulled through...
Heard there were only 31 confirmed deaths. I see no danger at all
Only 31? nothing to see here move it right along....
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But when has science ever been right? Lol
Sent from my iPhone...
Not great, not terrible.
'How's the picture quality?' 'Not great, not terrible'
Look son. This is back in ye olden days when I was just a wee lad. We didn’t have this “picture quality” concept you kids like to jerk over. We had a viewfinder, which was basically just a hole with a +. We didn’t get to find out our bodies had been pummeled with a bombardment of billions of electrons until the strip mall kiosk got it back from the lab a few weeks later.
TBF, "we" also had SLR cameras back then. We also had "picture quality" - and those slides mon and dad made at family vacations.
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Chernobyl 1986 Digicam 1989
Just dunking facts on this guy. Source?! Deez nuuuts.
My mistake, then. BUT the Digicam was a kit that adapted an *existing* CCTV camera to an Amiga computer. So while that particular product didn't exist, the cameras themselves, definitely did.
Son I was there and there were no “digicams” to be
Where's the fire? It took more than a week to extinguish the fire.
I was confused too so googled it. Found an article, apparently a photographer and friends did indeed take photos on April 26th. [article](https://flashbak.com/the-first-photos-of-chernobyl-after-the-nuclear-disaster-april-26-1986-450986/)
Just read the article. They can’t inhabit Pripyat for another 24,000 years. Wild to think that this happened and within a lot of peoples lifetimes (not mine I’m too young) and no one can come back for thousands of years
It happened on my birthday too, that was an odd day in history class seeing it on the projector.
Its going to be a doc out with the real footage..
So your mom's maiden name, first pet name and favourite colour please/s. Don't give out your shit on the net.
I didn't say it happened on my date of birth genius, do some math and figure out how many people were born on that day...every year and then track me down..I'll be waiting
You seem nice.
In many cultures, unsolicited and unwarranted advice is seen as an insult.
And rejection of said advice is seen as moronic in same said cultural ethos. As is insulting the bearer of said advice by antagonistic petty childish put downs.
Eat me you pedantic loser..
I was living in Hawaii at the time, and within less than a week, I had new friends from Denmark, who immediately left when they heard the news. It was crazy, because radiation was really going off the dial, and nobody knew exactly what was happening. There's a YouTube channel called "Ushanka Show", by a Ukranian-American who was living in Kiev, age 15, at the time. I highly recommend his videos on the subject of Chernobyl, Ukraine, growing up in the USSR, etc. One of the best YT channels for quasi-soviet *otaku* like me,
Yes and it could almost cast doubt on the popular conception that Nuclear energy is "green" or "sustainable".
But it's still melting down, and so is Fukushima, and nobody knows what to do about it.
If it melts down far enough it will solve itself!
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bad bot
God you can see the 5 tonner dump truck sized pieces of graphite. Wild. I still support nuclear. We just need more regulation. The vast majority of the scientific community supports nuclear, as it really is our best current option. Modern reactors are a far cry from this design, and with strict regulation; we as a planet can wean off fossil fuels.
There’s plenty of regulation already, people still NIMBY about it. Chernobyl did it’s thing because of the same reasons anything high tech failed in the USSR.
I think Fukushima did more to damage current state of nuclear phobia than Chernobyl. It happened so recently and it is still fresh on everyone's mind.
Yeah. It was a very well designed reactor, which is why it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Natural disaster is one of the concerning aspects to designing these facilities. You never know what Gaia has next.
That and that it happened in Japan of all countries that I think vast majority people have this image of "technological paradise" and everything is made with "Japanese precision and quality".
If there any good web series about Fukushima
[Here is an amazingly informative imgur album about Chernobyl](https://m.imgur.com/a/TwY6q)
Thank you for sharing. Here's an article on Artur Korneyev, the guy who kept visiting the elephants foot. When the elephants foot was first discovered it would kill anyone within 30 seconds, over the decades that has lowered to minutes. I'm guessing Artur would only spend brief moments in front of the foot. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl.amp
It looks like you shared an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
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Read the whole thing. So fascinating! And the author did a great job explaining things.
148 pictures & stories will keep people busy for awhile.
Super interesting!
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>Great post. Thanks! You're welcome!
This was fascinating, thank you!
Wow. That was great. Thanks for posting.
Really interesting, thanks very much for sharing!
Fucking awesome Thabk you
Oh no... I'm pretty sure I see graphite on the roof.
You can’t see graphite on the roof because it isn’t there!
Are you stupid? For there to be graphite on the roof, there would have to be a explosion. Now tell me, how can RBMK reactor explode?
I think this version of the image has been cleaned up, [this should be the original](https://atomicphotographers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/kostin-chernobyl1.jpg) as it looks more like it should if fogged due to radiation. Also the entire film would have been getting irradiated the whole time while in the camera slowly fogging (this is also how dosimeter badges work, that contain a piece of enclosed photographic film that fogs when exposed to radiation).
Surprised the helicopter didn’t just fall out of the sky due to the radiation in the air.
If you're referring to the scene from Chernobyl it's because they hit a tower that was obstructed by smoke. They didn't see it because it was obstructed by smoke.
It didn't actually have visible smoke. I saw the footage from the disaster showing the crash, and it was just pilot error and a hard to see cable
Taken on a Nokia 3310
Hasn't been charged since and still has 18% battery left
Thanks, Chernobyl, a cheap Soviet-era power plant with many cut corners, for permanently damaging people's view of nuclear power and giving them an inaccurate idea of how dangerous it actually is. Could solve the reliance on fossil fuels within a few years if we went nuclear but nOooOOOo...
It wasn't as much they were trying to cut corners, but rather the Soviet system was so inefficient and rife with cronyism at that point, there was no effective way to correct glaring mistakes. The explosion was made possible by a design defect which they discovered years before the explosion. But nothing was done about it because an official classified the information to save face.
Umm.. must not forget the 3 Mile Island incident either. We also had a local incidence where the nearby nuclear plant had to be converted to coal because the contractor had massively cheated by not checking 90% of the welds but submitted manipulated pictures. I think nuclear as a power source can be feasible but safe waste disposal remains a problem.
I want coal and natural gas plants to safety disposal of its waste. And not just in the air.
*Three Mile Island has entered the chat*
Who else has cut corners and we just don't know about it? What's to stop the next one having cut corners?
Heavy regulation.
I told a college professor this my freshman year and she laughed me out of the class room and asked the rest of the class “what else is wrong with nuclear power?” Really is amazing how people will avoid solutions to keep complaining about problems.
As of 2014 according to this [documentary](https://youtu.be/AZ4qOMN527s) the journalist had survived.
"Exposed" being relative in this context. A shutter won't keep gamma rays away from the photochemical layer.
I second that. You should check the story how the company Kodak found out about nuclear bomb tests near their factory
The scary bit is that the bomb tests WEREN'T near their factory. The film was being irradiated by the cardboard packaging for their film, which was made in Indiana and Iowa. This was due to fallout from the Trinity test in New Mexico.
Ahh true. I remembered it wrong. Thanks for correcting
I know that story. Pretty amazing. For those who don't, Wikipedia has it, just search for "Kodak" and "nuclear test".
Thank you. The “radiation exposure” is occurring the entire time the camera is close enough to the source, not just when the shutter is open.
It might if it's got enough metal.
In that case it's called an X-ray camera. Or maybe a proton scanner. Not the most portable kind of camera anyway.
But exactly the type of camera that would be available to and used by the Soviet Nuclear Commission investigating the blast. (js)
The crazy thing was the contractors they ‟persuaded” to clean and sweep nuclear material off the roof. They were only allowed out for like 30 seconds at a time.
Only known* There are bound to be more in someone's home picture collection. A lot of people were in and out, I'd think there are better than average odds someone had a camera and snapped a photo
Known as in shown.
Shouldn't there be smoke from the fire?
Grafite doesn't smoke when burning
This is exactly why I never eat heavy grains.
r/killthecameraman
\>began to destroy the camera film the second it was exposed Didn't it begin to destroy the film when they got near enough ragardless of the camera shutter position? Gamma rays are supposed to go through any materials.
Meh, just needs a little paint, couple of two by fours, plasterboard and it will be as good new
Isn’t there always a huge amount of radiation in the air here on our tiny planet? Or do you mean ionizing radiation?
Nowadays, when normal people talk about radiation, they mean ionising radiation, because people don't know that there is safe non-ionising radiation everywhere.
I remember seeing a picture of a fireman trying to cool down the reactor (or something ) and it looked like the radiation was literally tearing him apart.
Radiaton from a nuclear reactor cant tear apart human, no idea what kind of image you saw
it was the image of the elphants foot with the distorted man in it i think
Yes. I think that’s it. He’s holding a hose and spraying water at something. [This one.](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/elephants-foot-chernobyl)
We definitely should build more nuclear power plants. Radiations aren't that dangerous. Very fee people died from those. Solar? Wind? Pff, those are for commoners.
💀
What happened to the photographer?
Died In 2015
Of what cause?
Im not sure. Im pretty sure it was Not cancer tho
So not radiation sickness or any kind of cancer then…Probably old age.
Yeah
I hope he didn't develop cancer this exposure. . .
I do nt see any graphite, everything is ifne I am sure.
I feel like I absorbed rdiation just looking at this picture..
Looks like a Pink Floyd album
Radiation and radiation poising is such an interesting concept
The radiation doesn't care about the shutter, it'll go through the whole camera.
If you haven't seen the series Tchernobyl give it a try it's really good
Seems to have been an explosion
The netflix series was 👍
Watch Chernobyl on HBO, absolutely chilling..
The heavy grain is due to the huge amount of radiation in the air that began to destroy the cameraman the second he was exposed.
Interesting is it not, lives lost not only human, animals and vegetation but hey who cares let’s go build a few thousand more of these fabulous power station. Seriously guys the buck stops where you spend your dollar you know!
Sure the grainy quality of the photo wasn’t due to less advanced technology at the time?? You can’t see radiation.
I don't think you get it. The grain is due to the heavy radiation in the air instantly degrading the films surface, not that it is somehow visible in the air. Film not digital!
You can't see radiation, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to say radiation affected the film, since the film is so sensitive that it can record light (hence photography).
I can see radiation. For example, the color red. Ta da!
You can see the effects of radiation...
Even scarier, there is a video of a helicopter just disintegrating mid air above the reactor
It was actually the helicopter hitting a chain that caused the crash not disintegrating from radiation.
Where can I see this video
Wow. This is the first time I've ever seen this. So interesting /s