Spaceship Junkyard: some amazing photos of the Grim Meathook Future by Jonas Bendiksen: 
ALTAI, Russia - Villagers collect scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies, 2000. Environmentalists fear for the region's future due to toxic rocket fuel. 
KAZAKHSTAN - The booster engine section of a crashed Soyuz craft, 2000.
ALTAI, Russia - Villagers collect scrap from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies, 2000. Environmentalists fear for the region's future due to toxic rocket fuel.
KAZAKHSTAN - The booster engine section of a crashed Soyuz craft, 2000.
ALTAI, Russia - A farmer takes an evening stroll past the wreck of a Soyuz spacecraft, 2000. In this farming village, rockets routinely fall into people's back yards.
KAZAKHSTAN - Scrap-metal dealers wait for a rocket to crash, 2000.
ALTAI, Russia - Dead cows lie on a cliff, 2000. Locals say that whole herds of cattle and sheep regularly die because rocket fuel poisons the soil.
KAZAKHSTAN - The fiery wreck of a rocket after crashing, 2000.
ALTAI, Russia - A man cuts a wrecked spacecraft to sell off as high-grade titanium alloy, 2000.
KAZAKHSTAN - A Soyuz rocket-fuel tank lies on the steppe, 2000.
Yesterday was the anniversary of Soyuz 1's quick no-chute return to the recycling bin.
but it is derived from crude oil:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002936018&zsection_id=2002923094&slug=pacificpflotsam23&date=20060421
Plastic junk starving deep sea birds...
That was a good read, thanks for the link.
Dead Soviet space tech always reminds me of the story Red Star, Winter Orbit, helpfully pirated by some .ru website.
Grim Meathook Present, if you really want to be depressed.
I can't quite put my finger on it but something about a few of those pictures seem photoshopped to me.
Ugh, sometimes I wish Photoshop had never been invented. Every time someone posts a photo someone always comments that it must have been Photoshopped.
This isn't a personal attack on you specifically, just a general observation.
The orientation and defects on the circular piece in photos 1, 3, and 7?
Yes, yes, and not really. 1 and 3 definitely caught my eye as being "not quite right".
could just be a funky camera set up. super narrow DOF, maybe origionally shot on film.there was a photo exhibit in banff which looked like pictures of models. turns out the guy had used an old fashion barrel type camera. like this:
super weird results.
I just might be driving through the area next year, and I'm really hoping we'll see some of that.