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• 1 2021-04-02T18:21:21-07:00 Chernobyl Play Equipment for No Body 4 Human play equipment long abandoned in the Chernobyl disaster area. plain 2021-04-02T18:46:58-07:00 Although humans have long abandoned Chernobyl for its high levels of radiation still emanating from the nuclear disaster site, scientists have known since 2007 about a fungus growing in the area that actually feeds and thrives off of this radiation, harmlessly converting it into energy. The world of natureculture clearly can and will go on whether humans remain a part of it or not. Interestingly, many mammals such as wolves, moose and deer are now also more abundant in this area than outside of it due to this lack of human presence. Insects in the area, however, have drastically reduced in number. Chernobyl thus has its own unique ecosystem that has emerged from the desolation of a human made disaster and leaves us with what Clare Colebrook would call, images that are ‘not referential for any body’ (Colebrook, 62) – a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round that no human can use surrounded by vegetation that swamps what used to be a human centred space. In this image the spindly frames of the Ferris wheel and the merry-go-round blend into the spindly bodies of the leafless trees. This human play equipment thus appears like trees that have been grown across a lattice into geometrical shapes. I am reminded here that human eyesight is adapted to notice straight lines and right angles more than it can notice the organic shapes of a forest or bush space due to how much time we have spent around sharp lines and angles in terms of evolution. Thus the empty Ferris wheel and merry-go-round stand like fossils of human eyesight itself, caught in the visible tangle of tree bodies that have replaced human bodies – fossils that will mark the oncoming extinction of humans, as the evacuated Chernobyl area ominously foretells.    
  
  Reference List:
  
  8 Facts About the Animals of Chernobyl.” Mental Floss, 20 June 2019, www.mentalfloss.com/article/586059/chernobyl-animal-facts.
  
  Colebrook, Claire. “Framing the End of the Species.” Symplokē, vol. 21, no. 1-2, 2013, p. 51., doi:10.5250/symploke.21.1-2.0051.
  
  Delbert, Caroline. “You Should Know About This Chernobyl Fungus That Eats Radiation.” Popular Mechanics, Popular Mechanics, 6 Feb. 2020, www.popularmechanics.com/science/a30784690/chernobyl-fungus.
  
  Wednesday, 23 May 2007 Maggie FoxReuters. “Fungus Eats Radiation for Breakfast.” ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), 23 May 2007, www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/05/23/1930936.htm
  
  
  By Claire - z3393668.