Stalkers Of Chernobyl

Image by Aram Balakjian from the linked article.

Words are coming out of my brain like thick sludge today, so I’ll keep it short. This piece called “Into The Zone: 4 days inside Chernobyl’s secretive ‘stalker’ subculture” crossed my feed today and I found it worth briefly responding to. The blocked off exclusion zone around the nuclear accident site creates a kind of permanent, ongoing disaster zone which attracts illegal visitors, including this subculture of young men who call themselves stalkers, naming themselves after Tarkovsky’s cult-classic film Stalker.

In a world that has been mapped, imaged and cataloged with satellite precision, the desire to discover wilderness becomes more pronounced. Modern normality becomes inescapable. The exclusion zone of Chernobyl represents a space off the map, an opportunity for wildness amidst the decaying ruins of the Soviet Union. I remember when the Chernobyl accident happened during my childhood, and the apocalyptic media images of a drifting radioactive cloud were potent fodder for my young imagination. The human imagination is drawn to disaster because of it’s rupturing of the normal, the feeling of possibility.

At the beginning of the millenium in New York we experienced two disruptive events almost back to back. The first was 9/11, the attack on the World Trade Center. I was present, and my childhood home was part of the evacuation zone. We moved out for two weeks. Not too long after there was a blackout, and the city was plunged into darkness. I remember experiencing complex emotions in both situations, particularly during the aftermath. 9/11 was a huge trauma for me, and I think I still have some mild PTSD from it 18 years later. But immediately after, and in the weeks following there was a feeling of community in the city that I had never felt before, and a feeling of the rupture of normal reality. It felt like anything could happen. The blackout which followed felt like a brief return to that strange space of possibility, even if it was much more banal. I remember playing frisbee in the street in the dark with a group of slightly random people who had come together for the night, unable to get home.