The Japanese Battleship Island - did you know about this?

[Robert]

See http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-japans-rotting-metropolis/

This was news to me.


Hashima Island (端島?, or correctly Hashima, as -shima is Japanese for island), commonly called Gunkanjima or Gunkanshima (軍艦島; meaning Battleship Island), is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself.
The island was populated from 1887 to 1974 as a coal mining facility. The island's most notable features are the abandoned concrete buildings and the sea wall surrounding it. It has been administered as part of Nagasaki city since 2005; it had previously been administered by the former town of Takashima.

Stairway To Hell

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Stairway_to_Hell.jpg/800px-Stairway_to_Hell.jpg

[FrankenFretter]

What a cool place to film a music video, though!

[deeaa]

Great stuff, I always enjoy documents on such places. The same reason I'm interested in old Russian Sci-Fi movies; those are often shot in incredible places that are REAL not just props, abandoned nuclear sites and such, places you just can't imagine even exist...and with real hardware too. In particular I remember on film that was apparently shot in a large city that had been completely destroyed by an earthquake....it was a magnificent backdrop for nuclear war scenes, there were fires everywhere and scenes like real tanks driving thru pools of burning fuel, tracks ablaze and sending flames up in arches...just can't do that with CGI or props.

That place would indeed make for a great place to film some post-nuclear dystopian films...I wonder if anyone's thinking of turning the Fallout games series into a film...

[syo]

Very interesting article/place. Never heard of it before. I'd love to go there someday.
If you put a gun barrel on the bottom frame of that picture it would look like a classic first person shooter...

[Tig]

Wow, haunting. Looking at all of the photos, it appears to be simply falling apart naturally, with no vandalism.
Japanese government opened the island to visitors a few days later. http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-update/

Check out this slide show of Chernobyl today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157626251068003/

[NWBasser]

We too have a Battleship Island in Puget Sound. It's uninhabited, shaped like a battleship, no structures, and was used for target practice by the torpedo bombers at Whidbey Naval Air Station during WWII. I believe it's a wildlife refuge now.

I'll have to find a pic of it.

The pictures from Hamishi look like how I envision Detroit these days.

[Ch0jin]

Wow, haunting. Looking at all of the photos, it appears to be simply falling apart naturally, with no vandalism.
Japanese government opened the island to visitors a few days later. http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-update/

Check out this slide show of Chernobyl today:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yahooeditorspicks/galleries/72157626251068003/


Hey! C'mon dude, at least pimp a forum members Chernobyl photography ;) (that'd be me) My Chernobyl Set on Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/ch0jin/sets/72157623601303359/)

I am VERY into abandoned places photography (unfortunately I'm not VERY into being arrested, so the very, very few places in Sydney I could break into and shoot are as yet untouched by me) so thanks heaps for this information. My next trip to Japan would include that place for sure if in any way possible.

Oh and for those that aren't aware, or want to replicate that look, that's a HDR image. A very nice one too. You'll see some HDR processing in my gallery too.

[Tig]

Ack! I didn't know about your photos. Sorry, mate.

Your shot of Reactor Number 4 is nice and creepy. I really like the photos of the abandoned city Pripyat.

[Robert]

That's some great shots! What camera gear do you use?

Are there any health dangers from radiation for someone going there for a visit?

I can't imagine this being a very touristy area... but who knows? Some people enjoy "unusual" places... ;)

[Ch0jin]

@Tig, It's all good, my post was supposed to be completely tongue in cheek. Glad you liked them though. The HDR version of reactor number 4 has actually been published in NZ and a few others have popped up (unauthorised) on Ukrainian websites too which impressed me.

@Robert the bulk of my shots in that set were made with a Canon EOS 20D with a Canon 10-22mm lens. I also use a Canon 28-135 Zoom and a 50mm from time to time, but I am so in love with the 10-22 it's what I use most of the time.

Yes, there are health dangers, the whole area is still radioactive enough to keep the Geiger counter thing we had buzzing it's brains out most of the time. You also must sign a waiver before you enter the exclusion zone that basically says if you have ANY kind of after effects, so sad, too bad. You must also submit to a full body radiation scan (in this evil cold war era steel contraption that you climb into one way, and if you get a big green light it lets you out the other side) However, you are "escorted" the entire time by a government guide who keeps an eye on you and makes sure you don't forget the rules. The main one being stay well clear of anything alive. Stay off the grass, don't touch the apple trees (of which there are dozens), don't stir up dust inside the buildings, don't stand in one place too long and do not eat, drink, or smoke anything inside the exclusion zone. Apart from radiation precautions you just got to be careful in general, as this place hasn't been touched since '86 and nature is really starting to take her back. I snuck away from the guide at one point in an apartment building hoping to get some unusual shots, and as I walked into an abandoned fourth floor apartment my foot sunk almost completely through the floor...Ooops. I don't fancy Chernobyl Tetanus thankyouverymuch... The only other drama I had there though was when I swung my camera towards this very nicely maintained building that was clearly some kind of administrative structure that was very much still in use (this is Chernobyl itself, not Pripyat) and the guide freaked out telling me it would be a very bad idea to be seen taking photos of that building. About 5 minutes later as we were checking out the monster sized catfish that now live in the canals that formed part of the cooling system, dozens of office worker types piled out of the building for lunch. For a plant decommissioned in the 80's there are a surprising amount of civilians working there. The tiger stripe camo wearing, cigarette smoking military types I had expected, but the civvies were a shock. Supposedly they work on maintainence and clean-up duties, but they didn't LOOK like they did.

I don't think they get too many visitors and AFAIK there is only one company (one guy really) who facilitates tours and they are not especially cheap. Totally worth it though. (although the same dude now also runs tour of an old soviet ICBM base outside Kyiv that I would have LOVED to have seen, but ah well)

[Tig]

About 5 minutes later as we were checking out the monster sized catfish that now live in the canals that formed part of the cooling system

Did you see Blinky the Three Eyed Fist?
(The Simpsons)
http://blog.photos2view.com/files/images/simpsons-mutant-fish-blinky_0.jpg

[Ch0jin]

Haha yeah that's precisely what our little group thought! The story we were told is that they are so big because the staff of the supposedly decommissioned power plant feed them bread every day, and they have no predators human or otherwise so they just keep growing. I actually buy that story though, because in spite of what movies have taught me, radiation poisoning doesn't tend to give you super powers or make you grow super large. The real effects are very nasty and disgusting. (I saw the results in video and pictures when I visited Hiroshima also)

Oh I forgot to post something else before in response to Roberts post. As far as radiation absorption goes, we were told that in the 3 hours or so we spent at the plant and in Pripyat we could expect to receive about as much gamma radiation as 24 hours of international flight. It's for that reason that the 500 (I just checked my journal) staff of the power plant and surrounds, work in shift rotations and are screened every day for radiation.

Why are there 500 people working in and around a "decommissioned" nuclear power station? Well that's a question our guide never quite got around to answering to my satisfaction. I can't see why you'd need that many people to monitor radiation levels, do the gardening and operate a secure perimeter... But hey, they also told me the sarcophagus that covers reactor 4 was designed to last 20 years, enough time for the scientists of the USSR to come up with a permanent solution. Then the USSR collapsed and, well, the meltdown was in '86. Do the math....

[deeaa]

The rest of the reactors continued working and making electricity till long after the accident; the last ones were shut down only ten years back. But you don't just turn 'em off, even after they've stopped generating energy, it takes years to safely turn everything off and only after that they can start to really dismantle the still 'hot' reactors. It'll be done circa 2022, though. But as of now, they still need lots of personnel manning the reactors as they're being run down.

There's a lot of people working there also studying the area, people from radiology etc. institutes spend lots of time there, as it's a great place for studying the long-term effects of radiation. Radiation levels are even in the worst spots only a thousand times or so more than background radiation, so it's no more dangerous than flying in airplanes any more - unless you eat something there or rub yourself in the vegetation or something. And the dust in the buildings also contains nice amounts of fallout. But if you mind what you do, it's quite safe to spend even longer times there. Most of the lighter radioactive materials have already spent all their radioactiveness, but what remains, cesium, americum etc. will remain radioactive well into 2200's.

[deeaa]

BTW I can well remember when the accident happened...we were just at a cottage and having a sauna...it rained and the rainwater felt strangely warm (just a coincide I'm sure but still). We also used that rainwater in the sauna to throw on the stones to generate steam...if it was radioactive at all, it all ended up in our lungs...and a day after that we heard that Chernobyl had blown a few days before, and sorry, there's been a radioactive cloud over us since a few days now, so keep indoors especially if it rains :-)

Well, no ill effects as of now. I still vote for more nuclear power :-)

[Tig]

With the recent nuclear news in Japan, Chernobyl was brought back into the limelight. I remember reading that they are seeking 300 million dollars to encase the reactors with something more substantial.

[Ch0jin]

@Deeaa Way to blow away the smoke of my conspiracy theories mate ;)

I'm sure your 100% correct, it was just unusual at the time that our guide couldn't say any more than that they were their for "cleaning and maintenance", but after reading your post, "Maintenance" probably meant "continued decommissioning". It's scary to think people continued to work there so soon after, as the complex isn't that large.

To add to what you said regarding the radioactive materials, whilst there still is a ships graveyard at the Chernobyl site for all the ships used in the clean up. (a bunch of ships just rusting away in a man made lake that formed part of the cooling circuit) the vehicle graveyard you used to be able to see is now buried deep underground. I was kind of hoping to see all the old tanks and trucks and helo's they used but (or so the story goes..) the government had hoped to sell them all off as scrap metal, but as they remained highly radioactive, and will do for a long *** time, they decided to just bury them all. It is, I assume, for the same reason all the construction equipment that was in place building reactor 5, a number of cranes and the like, are just rusting in place like a construction job everyone just walked away from over 20 years ago.

I remember one of the guys in my group, whilst obeying all the rules I mentioned before, grabbed a school book from the library and as I watched him blowing the dust off it and flicking through it you could see the light go on in his head and he dropped it and started frantically washing his hands as I chuckled. I little later another guy told me he wanted to smuggle out a book or a newspaper (there are quite a few papers from the day it happened still floating around inside buildings in Pripyat) an awesome souvenir for sure, but when I pointed out that a. You get a full body scan on the way out, and b. stuffing a radioactive newspaper down your pants might not be the smartest thing in the world, he saw reason. The guide did mention that he caught a guy about to eat an apple picked from a tree in Pripyat on one trip. Also that on another trip, a tourist who had recently had some kind of medical procedure requiring radiative materials was held up on the way out as he set off the full body scanner.

You sound like you've been there too Deeaa Have you been? or do you just know your stuff :)

@Tig. Too bloody right mate. I've been to Hiroshima as well as Chernobyl so I've read and seen what happens when radiation is unleashed on people. As soon as I heard about the reactor drama's in Japan I felt a little sick in the guts knowing full well the potential for incredible disaster. Regarding the 300 Million, it's as I said before, the original was built to last 20 years, but then the USSR fell and the Ukraine no longer received funding from Moscow and our guide told us point blank that the Ukraine can not afford to fix it and they want someone to come in and do it for them, or at least fund it, before it breaks down to the point it starts leaking badly. It's a bit of a worry.

Oh and regarding your sauna story Deeaa, I guess you can blame the Soviet government for that, as I believe they kept it quiet for two full days before scientists in other countries started noticing drastically elevated radiation levels and start asking questions. In Gorbachev's defence though, I'm betting under a previous ruler it'd have been kept quiet a LOT longer. After all 'Gorby' did implement 'Glasnost' after all.

Just to bring it up something kind of on topic, but very important though.

Everyone should also remember that two years earlier in 1984 the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal India had a massive gas leak killing thousands (recent estimates put the number as high as 20,000 dead) and leaving the area poisoned to this day. The difference is, not many people still live in and around Chernobyl and Pripyat, but Bhopal has a population of like a million people today.

Union Carbide settled with the Indian Government for $470 Million. Sounds like a fair chunk of cash, but that's for between 80-100 THOUSAND affected people (depending on who's figures you read). Then when Dow Chemicals bought UC they stated that they considered the Bhopal settlement to be final, and then proceeded to pay out 2 Billion dollars to just 14 people in Texas for asbestos related claims.

My point being, corporate greed has just as big a potential to cause massive disasters as a socialist republic does.

[deeaa]

Nah, never been to Chernobyl, but it's close enough to me to have always been quite interested in it :-)

[Ch0jin]

Nah, never been to Chernobyl, but it's close enough to me to have always been quite interested in it :-)

Actually yeah, I just looked at a map in the book I was using as a reference and realised Finland and Russia are neighbours, so I can see why you'd have been quite concerned :)

[deeaa]

http://www.kuas.net/tserno.JPG

It's not like it's that close, but yeah, being neighbors to Russia we're always interested what goes in there. We also have a couple of Russian friends who are originally from Ukraine, and around there.

Much bigger worry for us, and closer, would be all those hundreds of decommissioned and waiting-to-be sub reactors and portable nuclear plants nortwest of us @ Russian polar sea military bases.

[Tig]

Everyone should also remember that two years earlier in 1984 the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal India had a massive gas leak killing thousands (recent estimates put the number as high as 20,000 dead) and leaving the area poisoned to this day. The difference is, not many people still live in and around Chernobyl and Pripyat, but Bhopal has a population of like a million people today.

My point being, corporate greed has just as big a potential to cause massive disasters as a socialist republic does.

Well written, Ch0jin.

The Union Carbide factory in Bhopal India made me remember something I have forgotten. In '85, I had been working for NASA just a few months. My boss was a year from retiring. A big country guy with white hair. One of the facilities we had data acquisition servers in was called the Space Environment Simulation Lab (giant 7-story vacuum chamber). One of the experiments on the floor was called the "heat pipe radiator", which later became a cooling system in the shuttle bay. I didn't know until later that the main ingredients this thing had was MIC, the same toxin released in Bhopal.

We heard a very loud pop one day, and my bosses eyes got huge with fear... He yelled to me, "Quick! To that exit!" and flew out the door with me hot on his heels. I've never seen a man half his age move as fast! We go to the next building (upwind) and he tells me that the heat pipe has MIC, the same stuff that killed so many in India the previous year. Luckily, it was a false alarm, but I'm sure glad he was there all the same. So, when Columbia broke up over Texas, it released a small yet potentially lethal amount of MIC. It was high enough in the atmosphere to dissipate, but people below, as well as near Cape Canaveral (for launch and landings) never hear of this threat.

[Ch0jin]

@Deeaa Thanks for the map! You really do put in the effort to make you point, I love it :)

@Tig I'm going to go ahead and go even further OT cause I'm diggin this thread and mention two things related to your last post. Firstly, wow, that must have been a freakout at the time huh! I've been lucky to avoid incidents like that. Only thing I can think of is one of my old car projects, a turbocharged 351 Cleveland engine in a sedan (for street racing). We had wrapped most of the exhaust side piping in asbestos wrap to keep heat away from stuff. Bare hands, no masks, just wrap that stuff on and down a beer while you fire the engine up to "cook" the wraps in the shed that of course gets filled with asbestos smoke. Ah the good ole days when everyone was bullet proof (or so we thought)

About the shuttle though, I remember listening to Jello Biafra do a spoken word piece about the Challenger disaster saying that he was glad it had happened when it did, because the next mission was supposed to carry some kind of nuclear powered satellite (or maybe just carrying some kind of radioactive material, it was a long time ago) and if that one had exploded it would have spread radioactive particles all over the state. I don't know how accurate that is, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

[Tig]

About the shuttle though, I remember listening to Jello Biafra do a spoken word piece about the Challenger disaster saying that he was glad it had happened when it did, because the next mission was supposed to carry some kind of nuclear powered satellite (or maybe just carrying some kind of radioactive material, it was a long time ago) and if that one had exploded it would have spread radioactive particles all over the state. I don't know how accurate that is, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

He was accurate about the scheduled satellite containing a nuclear power source. There were some big protests over it. I'd have to look it up for details, but I believe it was a DOD satellite. Maybe I shouldn't look it up!

I did find something about it in the LA Times, 1986: Markey, chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy, said, "Energy Department documents projected that a launching pad explosion of the space shuttle conceivably could cause the release of 57,100 to 90,900 curies of plutonium, one of the deadliest substances known."
Wow, scary!

Speaking of foolish activities, I remember as a kid, the mosquito control truck would drive down our street every few weeks in summer, usually early evening. We called it "The Fog Machine". :thwap We would jump on our bikes, pajamas on, and follow the truck trying to ride in the "fog". We should be dead by now!

[Robert]

The Chernobyl topic is very interesting indeed... we got plenty of unhealthy stuff raining down in northern Sweden too after it happened... my dad hunted moose in the fall, and often there was concern about if they could keep the meat from the animals, because high amounts of becquerel. There was a lot of testing of both fish and meat and regulations for how much a person should eat, back then. Some lakes were blacklisted - too much radiation had come into them and the fish should not be consumed.

Chojin, how close to the disaster area do people actually live? Are there homeless people who try to sneak in there, or is it constantly guarded?