They’re great pictures either way, though. And how cool would that be, to ride a motorcycle around the zone? Dear GSC Gameworlds: put motorcycles in Stalker 2.
Mmm, time to go play more Stalker.
I love the black and white photo, seven from the top: A moody portrait of five guys acting like weary soldiers on patrol, made awesome by the one guy in arm-flailing zombie mode.
Sweet Jesus, even the sky was in on the gag that day; could it be any more perfect?
Very possible.
Actually, Chernobyl is not that hard to get into. There is a whole tourism industry now developing around tours into the area and they get pretty close to the damaged reactor. The problem isn’t short-term radiation, it’s long term exposure. For example, the reactor that blew was one of a group that are all basically in one building. They kept the others running for years after the accident, meaning that workers were being brought in every day.
Wiki has a pretty good article about the accident and the aftermath.
What’s the significance of this photo?
It’s a Ukrainian baked delicacy known as Iodized Surprise.
I just had me some sweet STALKER action. On the road into the Red Forest I took out the first Monolith guard post using 8 rounds and some serious headshots.
Mmm. Clear Skies. Come to me.
Nooo! The motorcycle chick who cruised around Chernobyl taking pictures is fake? Say it ain’t so! :( What’s your source on this, Damien?
As for the bread in that picture, isn’t that one of those ubiquitous food things I kept throwing out in STALKER to make room for more guns and ammo?
-Tom
Dammit, Natalya, this is serious game. There are mutants, starvation, militia, anomalies, and eternally respawning enemies. Stop smiling. I told you guys we shouldn’t have brought her.
She’s also the only not using proper trigger discipline!
If you google around you come across some of the controversies about that site. Even the wikipedia article about the woman who did the site mentions those. What it comes down to is that it is unlikely that she actually toured the area via motorcycle and instead took her photos while there on a guided tour. The site has also changed over the years as she has apparently removed some of the more controversial aspects of her original presentation.
Here’s a link that discusses some of the issues:
I bet she can make shit move using only her mind.
It’s been a while; I don’t really remember the details. At some point, her site had a partial admission of guilt on it–something about the account being more art than reality or some such. Alas, Google isn’t turning up any good references to it.
The current version of her site is quite a bit toned down from the original, which had lots of references to crouching over the bike and listening to the roar of the engine break the silence of the Zone. Most of that seems to be gone now.
The point which convinced me that she was faking was the lack of her bike in most of the photos–it’s in a couple of them, but not the vast majority, and not the ones that are clearly in the Zone proper. I ride a motorcycle myself. I don’t think I’ve ever met a rider who could resist putting their bike in every other photograph they take. The urge to get a nice shot of the sarcophagus with the bike in the foreground would be irresistible.
She clearly was in the Zone from some of the photos, but probably on one of the usual tours.
Mmm, diet sausage.
They need a pic of some guys sitting around a campfire with a guitar singing some crazy Russian music. Weird perhaps, but I always thought that was one of the coolest things about Stalker. The characters just felt a lot more real seeing them chilling out and bullshitting around a fire and singing songs.
What’s wrong with that Steyr barrel? So long, hmmm.
And waving them in the air… I get all scared just thinking about it. Ahh the shouting, the shouting!
Probably the sniper version. The Steyr has interchangable barrels so you can switch as the need arises.
Cool. So do they eat it, or toss it over their shoulder? I can’t imagine eating a small bread loaf with a pound of salt as dressing.
I would discount the whole viral marketing thing, since I heard about that pictures site from my math teacher about 4 years ago… four and a half, almost.
It looks like mayonnaise from a packet to me (the bread).