Russian, Ukrainian & FSU Information & Manosphere Discussion Forums
Information & Chat => Russian, Ukrainian and FSU Towns & Cities => Topic started by: ChrisE on August 30, 2011, 07:21:07 PM
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OK Mendy, or anyone else who may have information. Today's challenge is to find information on Orekhovsk, Belarus. I have been corrosponding with a great lady from there, but I cannot seem to find any information. It doesn't even seem to show up on most maps of the area, so must be very small.
I am also wondering if this area was part of the Chernobyl fallout area, and would I need to worry about the produce and water there? The maps I have seen show the winds blew the material directly towards this region.
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It's a smaller town/city in the Vitebskskaya Oblast.
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For a visit, no you would not need to worry.
I might even go to Chernobyl someday. BUT, if you can avoid it, why risk it?
Same basic advice I gave during the Tsunami when the State Department was misleading American civilians one day, and then causing panic the next.
Basic radiation class: People survived into old age at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, a lot of them died premature deaths. There are fancy diagrams and stuff. But, the basic is AVOID it if your mission will allow you to.
wayne
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Looks to be a suburb of Orsha. Ask your lady if she lives near Orsha. (looks like О́рша in Russian and Ворша in Belorussian).
Looks like great history.
The cancer rates went up about "200 percent" earlier in the decade. I think that represents about a 500% increase real increase.
I would go if the woman was right for me.
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Yes, she seems to be quite special. But when it dawned on me the proximity to Chernobyl and the fact that the family grows much of their own food, well I thought it best to be cautious. Now considering the fact that we had in passing discussed making a life there, perhaps I should invest in a Geiger counter before I go!
I am also thinking I may try to contact Elena Filatova to get her input as well. She seems to be the local expert on Cherny, and in my estimate would have the most current info available.
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I am also thinking I may try to contact Elena Filatova to get her input as well.
I sent Elena Filatova my canned "I'm a great guy and want to get to know you better" letter a few years ago.
Dating another hottie in a miniskirt in Kharkov? BORING!!! They're all the same after awhile. But dating a girl who rides around the Chernobyl zone on a crotch rocket? Now that's cool! I really wanted to meet her.
Unfortunately, she didn't reply. My heart was broken. :laugh:
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Yes, she seems to be quite special. But when it dawned on me the proximity to Chernobyl and the fact that the family grows much of their own food, well I thought it best to be cautious. Now considering the fact that we had in passing discussed making a life there, perhaps I should invest in a Geiger counter before I go!
I am also thinking I may try to contact Elena Filatova to get her input as well. She seems to be the local expert on Cherny, and in my estimate would have the most current info available.
You should not have a problem. I've spent a bit of time north of there.
Using 'Chernobyl' as an excuse will get you no where except an :o (:) :censored: and the idea in her mind that you're not serious and not a 'real man'
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I asked a local. They said 'it's a village. nothing is there and why would anyone want to go there?'
Here's a wiki link; http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA_%28%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%8F%29 (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%80%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA_%28%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%8F%29)
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She has been shell shocked from most every side in recent years. First the government of Russia resented the exposure to the story and put local pressure into stopping her reporting and more recently the change of administration in Kiev has turned the Ukrainian government against her also. Then some of her story and photos were challenged by local and international journalists so I suspect that she is gun shy of the Chernobyl issue at present.
The truth however is that regardless if she was riding alone or whether her trips were as part of a group, she made the rides, took the photos and told a compelling story about Prypiat and the exclusion zone. That cannot be disputed. Frankly, she traveled in the time period before regular tours were sold, as is now common, and security forces admit to hundreds of unauthorized visitors annually so count me as one of the believers.
She does have other interests of which she may be more open to discussing her research of the war fortifications known as the serpent's wall (http://www.theserpentswall.com) and the system of Gulag's established by Stalin (http://www.elenafilatova.com).
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As for location, Orekhovsk is here (thank god for Google!):
[attachimg=1]
From traveljournals.net -- Orekhovsk, with a latitude of 54.68 (54° 40' 54 N) and a longitude of 30.5 (30° 30' 3 E), is 249 kilometers north east (40°) of the approximate center of Belarus and 209 kilometers north east (64°) of the capital, Minsk.
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One should also note that most of the 'serious fall out' is to be found in southern BY and the village you are inquiring about is in the north eastern part of BY about 3-3.5hrs by car from Minsk. It's up near the Russian Latvian BY border area.
(http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/chrnbyl1.jpg)
MAP (http://www.indexmundi.com/z/?lat=54.6816667&lon=30.5008333&t=p&r=5940&p=orekhovsk&cc=bo&c=belarus)
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Orekhovsk (Ореховск)
Orekhovsk is part of the Vitebskaya Region (Vitebsk) of Belarus and prior to World War II/Great Patriotic War was a centre of Jewish culture in Belarus. Today it is a village with jobs coming from a power generation plant and in the manufacture of electrical parts and textiles. The town was established around 1917 for the purpose of manufacturing.
[attachimg=1]
Photo: А. Дыбовский
Because of the Jewish population prior to the war, the entire region was in ruins after the German invasion and most of the area's towns had to be rebuilt after the war. There are no airports but Orekhovsk is connected to several Belarussian roadways: R109 (M8) and just 8 km to the southwest of the village is "Orsha crossroads" - the intersection of highways 30 and M1E M8E 95.
[attachimg=2]
Photo: А. Дыбовский
[attachimg=3]
Photo: А. Дыбовский
Much of the village remains in ruins from the war. There are many lakes in the surrounding area and the Wooden Church of the Trinity is unique in the vertical placement of the logs.
[attachimg=4]
Photo: Kazimier Lachnovič
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To find anything out about the village, and there isn't that much available, best to use the Cyrillic spelling of Ореховск.
There is a site showing some very interesting looking concrete bunkers from the German army's invasion of the region but frankly the site made me uncomfortable about it's intent and devotion to the Nazi war machine so I moved on and would rather not post a link to it.
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Yes, she seems to be quite special. But when it dawned on me the proximity to Chernobyl and the fact that the family grows much of their own food, well I thought it best to be cautious. Now considering the fact that we had in passing discussed making a life there, perhaps I should invest in a Geiger counter before I go!
I am also thinking I may try to contact Elena Filatova to get her input as well. She seems to be the local expert on Cherny, and in my estimate would have the most current info available.
Men, you guys really need to work around issues ....
Just negotiate that for the health of your future children, you would want a doctor's opinion if a move to a different locale would be better ....
Geiger counters only help if they are calibrated and you know how to use them.
I do not know which veggies are susceptible to radiation. That is something I never studied. But, some pull rads out of the ground. If I remember right, some can do some other stuff - but, organic absorption rates are known and studied.
But, it is probably no more dangerous than eating tuna .... or other fish.
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Thanks for all the great info! I don't know the population of the town, but it must be very tiny. I did find the exact location finally with Bing maps. Google Earth did not find it.
Here's a photo of one of the local lakes (girl edited out) [attach=1] It looks to be quite a beautiful part of the world!
As for the radiation problem, here is some of the info I have now discovered. Yes, Oerkhovsk was spared the brunt of the fallout, although BY in general did recieve about 70% of the output of the Cherny disaster. The total varies a few percent by source, of course the BY government gives a lower figure. But what isn't common knowledge is that during the time of the disaster, the Russian government had done airborne chemical drops on the radioactive cloud in the atmosphere in an attempt to knock it out of the air. What this had done was cause "hotspots" on the ground around the country. Not all of them are known to this day, as it was more random in nature.
The wonderful president of BY has also decided to begin using areas of the exclusion zone for farming again, to show that it is "safe". But though the milk and produce from those areas are contaminated, it was decided to mix the contaminated products with clean at a set ratio for consumption throughout the country. In 1992, there was an experiment done to feed contaminated cattle prussian blue in the attempt to reduce the contamination in the animals, with some success. I do not know the full outcome as I could not find more on this issue.
The latest problem to be discovered is that since the contamination has sunk into the ground, it is being redistributed throughout underground aquifers to areas once thought to be safe. One other issue has been criminal activity. So things such as the illegal harvesting of contaminated trees from the zone for lumber, or looting of building materials in abandoned villages has been another cause for concern.
Here's a link to what I think was the most honest reporting done to date. It was written in 2001 by an independent BY scientist studying the fallout issues. He was dismissed from his position immediately after the release of the article.
http://stgvisie.home.xs4all.nl/Belarus.html (http://stgvisie.home.xs4all.nl/Belarus.html)
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If you want to find reasons to be paranoid and not go or visit, you can find them. Whether it's the gvt., the economy, the village, the lady, the...whatever.
If you have a viable prospect GO! get on the :plane: already. It's a great place to visit, I haven't been disappointed and neither has at least one other senior forum member here. :nod:
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Population of the entire region is only 100,000 so this village is small. No stats seem available on the exact population of Orekhovsk.
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Re: Radiation from Chernobyl (Pripyat, Ukraine).
Scientists now work permanently inside the adjoining reactors and there is a regiment of Ukrainian military on-site. Journalists are allowed to make photo tours inside the complex but must wear a scintillation counter. On 26-27 April of this year, the most recent anniversary of the meltdown we did a two-part feature in the Mendeleyev Journal:
http://russianreport.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/chernobyl-as-time-stood-still-part-1/
http://russianreport.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/chernobyl-remembered/
Many of the elderly who refused to leave the town remain alive and they maintain gardens and fruit trees in addition to being supplied a couple times monthly from Kiev. Also, a priest comes up a couple times each month from Kiev to keep one surviving church open.
An outlying bus station in Pripyat remains open for traffic back and forth to Kiev and inside the station are 2 small markets where food and consumer items are transported from Kiev and sold to the remaining local residents.
Several publications picked up our feature, including France24 TV, Canada.com and Liquida News: http://www.liquida.com/article/20595444/russia-dmitry-medvedev-russian-president/
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If you want to find reasons to be paranoid and not go or visit, you can find them. Whether it's the gvt., the economy, the village, the lady, the...whatever.
If you have a viable prospect GO! get on the :plane: already. It's a great place to visit, I haven't been disappointed and neither has at least one other senior forum member here. :nod:
I never said I wasn't planning to go, quite the contrary. But I thought the information was valuable to know, and that others who may think of going may want to have all the facts possible.
Wayne, certain food plants are very succeptable to accumulating radioactive fallout materials, especially spinich and mushrooms. As to geiger counters, again you show your ignorance. Modern handheld meters such as the Medcom Inspector Alert http://www.medcom.com/inspect.htm (http://www.medcom.com/inspect.htm) are simple to use, self calibrating, and even come with instructions!