Sorry, I took a while typing that. You beat me to it. #1 is definitely Chernobyl.

I can't identify the specific array in #2, but I'm quite sure it's some kind of low-frequency radio antenna.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker

Cool shiz

 

Wow, I'd never heard of that particular system, which is weird as cold-war-era defense technology is particularly fascinating to me.

Looks like my OTH radar hunch was right.

I take it this was in some videogame that I'm not aware of?

 

Yeah, a game called Stalker. I'm not so much a buff, but cold war era stuff is pretty interesting to me as well. I recall seeing this on a History channel show, back when they actually showed that kind of thing, when it was still a good channel. I'm also fascinated with Chernobyl, so of course I immediately recognized both of these. Well not immediately, until I noticed the familiar red and white tower, then it clicked.

 

read some stuff about Pripyat and tell me you don't get the Centralia, PA heebie jeebies

 

Wow, I've never heard of that disaster, somehow. That kind of thing really captures me. I'm gonna have to do some reading on Centralia.

 

I've been catching up on past episodes of Top Gear. Good to know the US isn't the only place where ICP fucktards roam freely. Too bad Jeremy didn't call the guy out.

 

that dude is so industrial

 

What the ****, man??




Hahaha.. Yes and Yes. So much for that game.

 

I knew that it'd never work to give ground level photos of either because they're both pretty easily recognized.

For those curious who don't know..

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/12...m-antenna.html

A radio friend forwarded me that link of the Duga array. I've read much about the "Woodpecker" but haven't ever seen one on google maps so I checked out the link from that article.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...=lmc:panoramio

That's the google maps link to the Duga array, but after zooming out I noticed Prypyat wasn't far away so I started looking..



First thing I saw was the pickup tube extended out into the lake which clicked in my head, "wait a second.." Then I zoomed in...



Nuclear cooling towers?!? WTF? I've seen hundreds of pictures and read numerous books about Chernobyl but never remember mention or sight of cooling towers. Guess I had a retarded moment, but I completely forgot the Chernobyl Nuclear facility wasn't actually in the town of Chernobyl, so I googled the plant:



Yep, that unique guyed tower next to reactor number 4's cover was familiar.. Doh!

I guess the two cooling towers were never completed? I found a couple photos of them in an online album http://uk.photos.com/search?freetext_field=Chernobyl where you can buy pictures, but sadly you can't see very large versions of them..

 

People seem to be making a habit of this:



:-/


Ah, My favorite kind of honda..



Here bro, allow me to put your car out with my beer..


Sucks you can't see it, but this is supposedly an armed robbery at a poker game. Worlds first INTERESTING poker game:

 

dude slams on the brakes and jerks the wheel. wtf does he expect to happen?

 

We dont have corvettes in Oz, but am I right in saying that they are like our SS commodore drivers (upspeccd G8's).. and all totally useless?

Dann

 

Camera guy doesn't even take his attention off the Grand Natty to show the now totaled Vette that almost rolled... hahah


Jesus christ, do C6 owners just not know how to ******* drive? Look, I'm 90 degrees right of where I *was* going, I'll just give it MORE throttle!!

 

WTF Russia?? How do Commies get these things?

 

 

That would be pretty awesome if the wheels were installed correctly.

 

lol at old spice.

 

Well, it seems that in the US, a large percentage of Corvette owners are either the newly rich or the middle-aged / retired wealthy. Both of these groups are accustomed to always being right, and seem to feel that being good at lawyering or investment banking automatically makes them good at everything else, including driving. This also holds true for some of Harley-Davidson's higher end stuff, such as the V-rod. For example: http://bikerpunks.com/mediaviewer/12...nice-bike.html

This man is fairly typical of a first-time Harley owner. He has selected a V-rod as his first bike.





I'm not quite sure why they would be there. The Chernobyl station (like most of the other Soviet-era RMBK power plants) uses a once-through cooling design, where water is drawn in from a lake or river, flowed through the condenser, and then dumped straight back out again.

Can you identify this?



Answer: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=55.604...h&z=16&vpsrc=6



Our own little teakettle here in San Onofre has the largest cooling system in the world- the Pacific ocean:







I haven't read nearly as much on Chernobyl as some other incidents. Frankly, the Chernobyl meltdown explosion, while catastrophic, wasn't very interesting from a human-factors standpoint. It was a stupid design (graphite-moderated yet water-cooled, no containment, positive void-coefficient, poorly designed control rods, unstable at low output) and thus, was basically just an accident waiting to happen. While the event was triggered by human error, it wasn't a complex error- just push one button and *boom*, the genie is out of the bottle.

TMI-II, by comparison, is a really fascinating case study on human behavior in complex systems. Yes, there were a lot of underlying design flaws. But every one of them was actually quite minor in the grand scheme of things. It took a fascinating comedy of errors for the initial event to be set in motion, and once it had begun, the operators spent several days trying to comprehend and then control the system. It is that time, particularly the first six hours after the event began, which is particularly fascinating.

This is probably the best (eg: most accurate) simplified overview I have found on the TMI-II incident: http://www.engineering.com/Library/A...le-Island.aspx

 

wow.