[HN Gopher] Chernobyl's 'stalker' subculture
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Chernobyl's 'stalker' subculture
Author : galfarragem
Score : 91 points
Date : 2021-07-18 08:36 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.calvertjournal.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.calvertjournal.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "Roadside Picnic" IRL
| pugworthy wrote:
| I'm surprised nowhere in the article does it mention the
| S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)
|
| They are loosely based on the novel, however perhaps more well
| known (in the US at least) than the book or movie.
| xsmasher wrote:
| The game has an interesting "meta" aspect because it
| incorporates the Chernobyl disaster into its storyline, twenty
| years after after the Chernobyl workers incorporated the novel
| and movie into their mythology. Real "art imitates life
| imitates art" stuff.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I wonder still if much of the popularity of said stalking above
| is directly related to this game.
| pugworthy wrote:
| As a US resident, both the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games and the Metro
| 2033 game series have fascinated me in their different style
| of storytelling than most "traditional" FPS games. I have to
| put them in the same group as the Half Life series in terms
| of replay enjoy-ability for the story and engagement.
| whatever_dude wrote:
| I think it's a reflection of the culture from the general
| area. Russian sci-fi, for example, tends to be heavily
| introspective (Roadside Picnic, Solaris, etc). While most
| other western/American sci fi is more about extraordinary
| world building/future scenarios.
|
| To a lesser or different degree, you see the same approach
| in videogames, software development, etc.
| jl6 wrote:
| See, some people think our current
| culture/civilization/capitalism will not survive climate change,
| but clearly there is no wasteland too blasted and dangerous for
| it to eventually become a money-making tourist attraction. Our
| culture will live on in its perversity. I fully expect people to
| be huffing recreational Covid in 30 years' time.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _I fully expect people to be huffing recreational Covid in 30
| years' time._
|
| How much are you willing to bet on this? (Normally I'd try to
| argue, but...)
| seanalexander wrote:
| Alexa, remind me in 30 years
| Zababa wrote:
| I'm curious, why do you see this as a money-making tourist
| attraction and not as another way of visiting a museum?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is now just another tourist trap. If you'd gone in 20 years
| ago or more, things were different.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Intersting article! I always like this kind of story though I'd
| never do it myself.
| Zababa wrote:
| Website seems to be down: https://archive.is/vGC6C
|
| Anecdotally, I've visited Chernobyl and I remember seeing
| somewhere a few empty cans and an empty vodka bottle. Both looked
| pretty recent. I've also seen the bus that's photographed. There
| was something inside, the thing with a cardboard cover and metal
| rings where you can put pages inside (It's called a "classeur" in
| French, but I can't find how it's called in English). Edit: as
| some comments pointed out, it's called a "3 ring binder" or just
| "binder". Thanks. It was filled with text, with different
| handwriting. Most of it was Eastern European, though I can't tell
| which languages precisely. I have a few pictures. The bus itself
| is near an abandonned farm with lots of farming machines left
| outside to rust.
|
| I also had the chance of being here a few months before they put
| the second sacrophagus on the central, so I have pictures of the
| first.
|
| I think the place that marked me the most was the "Monument to
| Those Who Saved the World"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_Those_Who_Saved_th....
|
| One thing that I felt during my time here (two days) was how
| uncanny everything is. The buildings are still here, sometimes
| with furniture, but anything that you can easily carry has
| disappeared. All in all it was a great experience, I'm really
| glad I took the time to visit this place.
|
| Edit: small "fun" anecdote that I like to tell: I was more
| irradiated during my plane trip from France to Ukraine and back
| than during the two days here.
| akeruu wrote:
| On a rather unrelated note, those binders are called "fardes a
| anneaux" in my dialect of French. Translating directly to "ring
| binders". Languages are fun
| cjsawyer wrote:
| It's a "3 ring binder" or just "binder"
| ethbr0 wrote:
| "Three ring binder" maybe?
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_binder
| cdirkx wrote:
| Curious that there are two replies here calling it a _three_
| ring binder explicitly, while if I think about it I have only
| seen them with two or four rings.
|
| According to the wiki article: "A few years later three-ring
| binders became the standard in the United States"
| Symbiote wrote:
| It's just a ring binder in Britain, which like most of the
| world has ISO paper sizes and either 2 or 4 rings on
| binders.
|
| (4 rings for durability, 2 for convenience.)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| In US school, we were generally required to have a three
| ring binder every year for class. Like with #2 pencils,
| we're vaguely aware other types exist but virtually never
| encounter them.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| And I'd assume they're called "X ring" binders, as
| opposed to just binders, because "binder" is a fairly
| generic term.
|
| As for the number of rings: first mover advantage and
| network effects.
|
| Paper is produced with three rings. Teachers buy three
| ring hole punches. Soon binder manufacturers target the
| most common standard. All other standards die off.
|
| I have seen and used four ring binders in America. But
| three ring was the phrase that jumped out in my head.
| version_five wrote:
| The article talks about Roadside Picnic, the Russian sci-fi novel
| where the Stalker term was coined. I learned about this book on
| HN and highly recommend it.
| baruchel wrote:
| Agree. Tarkovski's movie is great also.
| pwnmonkey wrote:
| I like the movie but it's also the ultimate nap movie.
| usrusr wrote:
| Tarkowski with 30 minutes nap still beats most other movies
| by a large margin. I used to hate myself for the nap, but I
| wonder if I should stop doing that: the sequences work just
| so well in the nearly dreaming state.
| hgs3 wrote:
| I watched Tarkovski's movie for the first time the other
| night. It was a lot more "artsy" than I expected (in a good
| way).
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If you liked it, watch the Russian Solaris. It's
| interesting to compare and contrast with 2001.
| maest wrote:
| From the synopsis, looks like it's based on the Asimov
| novel.
| agency wrote:
| It's a Stanislaw Lem novel.
| canjobear wrote:
| I'm curious what you expected...all Tarkovski is like
| maximum artsy.
| hgs3 wrote:
| It was my first Tarkovski film and I wasn't aware of the
| directors style.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Concur. My all-time favorite sci-fi novel. And that's reading
| it in the English translation. It must be sublime in Russian.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Second this recommendation. And if you're used to sci-fi by
| Western authors, books by Cold War, Iron Curtain authors like
| Strugatsky, Lem (Polish) and others are fascinating.
| version_five wrote:
| Thanks for that, anything in particular by Lem that you
| recommend getting started with?
|
| I find we get very little exposure to Russian / slavic
| authors in North America, and when I do occasionally get to
| read one (including the classics but also some paperbacks) I
| suspect how much we must be missing by not having more of
| them readily available and marketed.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I mean... Solaris is amazing and was made into a film at
| least twice. The book is about the difficulties
| communicating with an alien in the vein of Arrival, but it
| predates Arrival by many years and is a better book, in my
| humble opinion.
| telesilla wrote:
| Lem is pretty accessible, a good place to start might be
| the Cyberiad collection of short stories. The futurological
| congress is also a fun read. You can't really go wrong with
| him, he had a great sense of humour.
| trhway wrote:
| couple notes.The movie, the book and several original scripts
| by Strugatskies all have partially different stories and
| endings (with the endings every time telling different thing).
|
| One of the brothers - Arkady - worked as a translator in the
| Far East in the beginning of 195x. The large areas on the
| border there were deeply and strongly fortified areas of Japan
| Kwantung army which USSR defeated in 1945. The motif of the
| dangerous zone full of hazards can be traced in the
| Strugatskies' works from the earlier short stories where the
| events directly happen at those Kwantung army fortifications to
| the abstracted Zone in the "Roadside Picnic" and the forest
| booby-trapped with automated weapons in the "The Inhabited
| Island".
| user-the-name wrote:
| It is absolutely mad how Roadside Picnic and derived works
| basically created a fictional setting and subculture that,
| decades later, was brought wholesale into reality.
|
| Never seen anything like it, and I doubt anything like it will
| ever happen again.
| jacobkg wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation!
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's an equally interesting virtual subculture built around
| the videogame series set in a more actively dangerous version of
| the Zone.
|
| Blowout soon, stalker.
| ionwake wrote:
| "Stalker" is my favorite film of all time and I highly recommend
| it.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| I've also seen it many times and love it but I wouldn't
| recommend it to just anyone. Here's a list with the top 1000
| films of all time as voted by MUBI (a community of movie geeks
| that like arthouse films). Stalker is at sitting at no 5.
| https://mubi.com/lists/the-top-1000
| jamestimmins wrote:
| The piece about possibly coming across killers as they buried a
| body feels like quite the buried lede...
| henriquez wrote:
| It might be poor opsec to elaborate too heavily about a time
| you witnessed organized criminals concealing a murder.
| whatshisface wrote:
| At some point we're going to have to re-introduce the word
| "dangerous" to mean "poor opsec minus operational."
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