# Chernobyl (HBO) Mini-Series Thread *spoilers*



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Chernobyl on HBO -- 5 part mini-series, premieres May 6 2019.
_
from wiki...
*Chernobyl*_ is an historical drama television miniseries created by Craig Mazin. The series, a co-production between American cable network HBO and British television network Sky, is set to premiere in both the United States and the United Kingdom on May 6, 2019. The series depicts the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occurred in the Ukrainian SSR in April 1986.

_Chernobyl_ has received acclaim from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has an 100% approval rating with an average score of 8.91 out of 10 based on 19 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "_Chernobyl _rivets with a creeping dread that never dissipates, dramatizing a national tragedy with sterling craft and an intelligent dissection of institutional rot." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Holy moley, that was incredible. One of the best first hours of any show I've watched. I'm lucky it's an HBO series, and not Netflix, I'd be up all night binging it.

You really felt bad for everyone involved, especially at the plant. The workers and the first responders. I think most of them started to realize, fairly quickly, they were dead men walking.

I can't recommend this enough. Fascinating hour.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

astrohip said:


> You really felt bad for everyone involved, especially at the plant. The workers and the first responders. I think most of them started to realize, fairly quickly, they were dead men walking.


Has there been a similar film Re: 9/11 addressing the misinformation fed to our first responders regarding conditions at Ground Zero? Had to remind myself of this as I was considering how the Soviets could act this way.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

I haven't watched it yet but I've been trying to set a One Pass for it for a week. For some reason, a "Chernobyl" entry showed up in the OP list but it says that no information is available and wouldn't allow a One Pass to be set. I had to scroll through the HBO guide data for Monday to set it to record the first episode.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> I haven't watched it yet but I've been trying to set a One Pass for it for a week. For some reason, a "Chernobyl" entry showed up in the OP list but it says that no information is available and wouldn't allow a One Pass to be set. I had to scroll through the HBO guide data for Monday to set it to record the first episode.


There is an issue with the SP settings on this series...

Chernobyl on HBO

Checking the Season Pass Alerts forum daily is a great way to keep up with this info.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Thanks for the heads up! Sounds interesting.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

krkaufman said:


> Has there been a similar film Re: 9/11 addressing the misinformation fed to our first responders regarding conditions at Ground Zero? Had to remind myself of this as I was considering how the Soviets could act this way.


There have been several 9/11 documentaries and this area has been covered.

A lot of them used to air around the anniversary. I can't say I've noticed one in a few years.

(Spoiler: it was an inside job) 

ETA: Interesting site.

9/11 - Top Documentary Films


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

astrohip said:


> Holy moley, that was incredible. One of the best first hours of any show I've watched. I'm lucky it's an HBO series, and not Netflix, I'd be up all night binging it.
> 
> You really felt bad for everyone involved, especially at the plant. The workers and the first responders. I think most of them started to realize, fairly quickly, they were dead men walking.
> 
> I can't recommend this enough. Fascinating hour.


I fully agree this first episode is really intense. I thought that they would include how the accident happened but it turned out better the way this series starts. I understand the whole series is going to be like the first episode.
I also could have watched the entire series from beginning to end.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

The radiation levels were so high, that some workers received a fatal dose within one minute! They were initially unaware of how high they were.


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## Jed1 (Jun 18, 2013)

astrohip said:


> The radiation levels were so high, that some workers received a fatal dose within one minute! They were initially unaware of how high they were.


Yea the workers had no training or experience with nuclear reactors. Only one of them worked on a nuclear sub but he had no experience with the reactor. The first responders had no training either. The piece the one fire fighter picked up was a piece of graphite from the core of the reactor and those pieces were all over the place. Later on men will have to go on the roof of the plant and physically remove the pieces and throw them over the side of the building. They only can be on the roof for 45 seconds.
What is unique about this series is this accident is still ongoing and will be for thousands of years.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

waynomo said:


> (Spoiler: it was an inside job)
> 
> ETA: Interesting site.
> 
> 9/11 - Top Documentary Films


Aggressive, willful ignorance isn't interesting, it's concerning.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

krkaufman said:


> Aggressive, willful ignorance isn't interesting, it's concerning.


Excuse me?


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

"Go get the _good_ dosimeter." Yikes!


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## deli99 (Nov 12, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> "Go get the _good_ dosimeter." Yikes!


And the good one broke as soon as they turned it on!


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## purwater (Aug 25, 2005)

My wife and I enjoyed the first episode. It's hard to believe that's how they managed to run a nuclear power plant. Honestly it's amazing they didn't have an accident before this one. The boss of the plant (can't remember his name) kept saying they were wrong that the core had exploded. I've never seen anybody in such denial. I mean everybody that goes to check can't be delusional.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

purwater said:


> My wife and I enjoyed the first episode. It's hard to believe that's how they managed to run a nuclear power plant. Honestly it's amazing they didn't have an accident before this one. The boss of the plant (can't remember his name) kept saying they were wrong that the core had exploded. I've never seen anybody in such denial. I mean everybody that goes to check can't be delusional.


Massive amounts of denial on a daily basis is the human condition as is willing/purposeful ignorance, always with some self-serving goal. History is chock full of such examples and the only reason these are recognized later is because it is deemed distant enough to be "safe". I wonder how well this HBO series WOULD HAVE playED in the USSR? 
How many businesses are being run and controlled by folks at the top who actually have a clue as to how that work actually gets done right? 
The fact is that humans don't really want the truth or "reality", they want a good, stable, comforting illusion and a readily available scapegoat when things go wrong.
I enjoyed the episode in question precisely because it gave some insights in the human condition and it's foibles.
Edited to reflect the past tense of the USSR as this confuses some folks.


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## jay_man2 (Sep 15, 2003)

I'll be watching the first episode tonight, and looking forward to it based on the preview I saw recently and this thread.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

I started watching it as a background task on another monitor while doing something else, as I often do for other Documentary/Drama type shows. It didn't really work that way, the tension didn't really convey well. Having read this thread, I knew it was supposed to be better than that, so I started over again on the TV, without distraction. Much, much better that way.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

fcfc2 said:


> I wonder how well this HBO series will play in the USSR?


Where's that?


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## xuxa (Oct 8, 2001)

purwater said:


> My wife and I enjoyed the first episode. It's hard to believe that's how they managed to run a nuclear power plant. Honestly it's amazing they didn't have an accident before this one. The boss of the plant (can't remember his name) kept saying they were wrong that the core had exploded. I've never seen anybody in such denial. I mean everybody that goes to check can't be delusional.


 At the time no one believed that the type of reactor core at Chernobyl could blow up, much more logical that it was the tanks, add in culture of communism/national pride, the denial is easy and expected.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

Marco said:


> Where's that?


Very sorry you gleaned so little from my post and totally missed the point. Not sure of your age, but Chernobyl happened while it was still part of the USSR and it was completely handled by the USSR for 5 years or so until the Soviet Union fell apart. 
If you want to look closer to home for examples of mishandling atomic energy or weapons, there are many examples right here in the USA. Check this out if you want an eye opener, PBS American Experience: Command & Control
Command and Control (2016) - IMDb


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## jay_man2 (Sep 15, 2003)

Yeah, but this HBO series is playing now and the USSR is long gone. It can’t play in the USSR.


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## fcfc2 (Feb 19, 2015)

jay_man2 said:


> Yeah, but this HBO series is playing now and the USSR is long gone. It can't play in the USSR.


And yet another mini-mind, sad but just really more confirmation of what I have stated earlier...
I just edited my initial post to reflect the past tense of the USSR as it must appear as a shiny object to some folks. If you are still troubled by my statement, please take a handful or two of a good laxative and try again.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

xuxa said:


> At the time no one believed that the type of reactor core at Chernobyl could blow up, much more logical that it was the tanks, add in culture of communism/national pride, the denial is easy and expected.


That, however, is not true. Many Soviet nuclear engineers were fully aware of exactly how terrible the RBMK design was. A lot of denial, but there were several Soviet engineers fully cognizant of how dangerous that design was and did their best to figure out how to minimize the risk.

In many ways, that's worse.


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## jay_man2 (Sep 15, 2003)

fcfc2 said:


> And yet another mini-mind, sad but just really more confirmation of what I have stated earlier...
> I just edited my initial post to reflect the past tense of the USSR as it must appear as a shiny object to some folks. If you are still troubled by my statement, please take a handful or two of a good laxative and try again.


 No need to be a jerk because you made a misstatement and got called on it.


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## markymark_ctown (Oct 11, 2004)

Sounds like a good show based on comments here...adding to my list.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Very good first episode. 

My question with any dramatization is how accurate is it? (what's accurate and what's not)

I went to college near Three Mile Island. I wasn't there at the time, but I had a lot of good friends who were still attending. It's scary to think they could have been in a similar predicament.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

astrohip said:


> You really felt bad for everyone involved, especially at the plant. The workers and the first responders. I think most of them started to realize, fairly quickly, they were dead men walking.


Good observation. I never thought about that before. Very scary.


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## jebbbz (Sep 7, 2007)

I have not watched the series (no HBO) but in the past spent some time reading up on nuclear accidents. About two or three years after the Three Mile Island accident I got hold of a copy of the official report of what happened. I read a good deal about Chernobyl and Fukushima after they happened. Chernobyl was unusual to say the least and much more complicated (positive versus negative void coefficients, low power instability, graphite-tipped control rods). TMI and Fukushima are far more easily understood and avoided.

Super short version is that at TMI and Fukushima nuclear power killed no one but the evacuations probably did. Chernobyl was a crazy design that would never have been built in the West but, even so, deaths from the accident and radiation release killed a few hundred but the disruption of evacuations probably killed far more.

The following link sets out a critique of the HBO drama that some may find interesting:

The Reason They Fictionalize Nuclear Disasters Like Chernobyl Is Because They Kill So Few People


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## swyman18 (Jan 7, 2016)

The denial truly is shocking... I think 3 different people asked what the reading was on the “crappy” dosimeter , and when they heard the response 3.6 (or whatever it was) they responded “not great, but not terrible” even FULLY KNOWING that was as high as the meter would go. They were convincing themselves that is what the true reading was. 

I laughed out loud each time, even though it’s not funny at all.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

swyman18 said:


> The denial truly is shocking... I think 3 different people asked what the reading was on the "crappy" dosimeter , and when they heard the response 3.6 (or whatever it was) they responded "not great, but not terrible" even FULLY KNOWING that was as high as the meter would go. They were convincing themselves that is what the true reading was.
> 
> I laughed out loud each time, even though it's not funny at all.


Yeah, every time they kept saying 3.6, you wanted to grab them by the shoulders and give them a good shaking, "WTF are you talking about, 3.6 is as high as it goes." But we have the benefit of hindsight, and free thought. They didn't.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I guess it's SOP to keep the good dosimeter locked up. 

I'm surprised they didn't have access to radiation suits. I'm wondering if that is standard equipment at US nuke plants.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I was thinking back to when the accident happened. My recollection is that we didn't know about it for a couple of days. News started trickling out. I think the west started picking up high radiation counts and they pieced it together. 

I would hope our intelligence agencies figured out what was going within a couple of hours.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

fcfc2 said:


> Very sorry you gleaned so little from my post and totally missed the point.


Hee hee.

Loved the mansplaining though.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

fcfc2 said:


> And yet another mini-mind ... please take a handful or two of a good laxative and try again ...


Makin' friends on the internet.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

jebbbz said:


> The following link sets out a critique of the HBO drama that some may find interesting:
> 
> The Reason They Fictionalize Nuclear Disasters Like Chernobyl Is Because They Kill So Few People


And others will always cast a skeptical eye toward potential biases of a "Forbes Contributor."


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Marco said:


> And others will always cast a skeptical eye toward potential biases of a "Forbes Contributor."


Figuring out exactly how many people died, including early death from cancer, is surprisingly difficult, and various groups tends to try hard to inflate or deflate the number.

One of the better assessments is the WHO one:

Chernobyl: the true scale of the accident

So far, the HBO show does seem to be erring on the side of overly dramatizing the day 1 effects. Lots of burn victims. Lots of people knowing they got bad doses of radiation. But those deaths and injuries didn't show up until much later


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

waynomo said:


> I'm surprised they didn't have access to radiation suits. I'm wondering if that is standard equipment at US nuke plants.


"Radiation Suits" as such are mostly the realm of SF. You simply can't wear enough to protect against high levels of beta, gamma, or neutron radiation.


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## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

Yeah, the suits are only really to be an outer layer that you can shed so you don't carry radioactive dust around with you when you're done. Those with hoods are so you don't breathe in and/or eat the dust, which would be really bad even at low levels.

--Carlos V.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> "Radiation Suits" as such are mostly the realm of SF. You simply can't wear enough to protect against high levels of beta, gamma, or neutron radiation.


You mean Back to the Future wasn't real?


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

astrohip said:


> But we have the benefit of ... free thought.


Debatable.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I watched the beginning again. The first time through I didn't realize that he committed suicide two years to the second after the disaster. (I probably should have based on the episode title.) 

Listening to the recording Legasov states that Dyatlov received a 10 year hard labor prison sentence which implies he survived the disaster. I was surprised that he didn't die.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Also a very powerful first few sentences.

Legasov:
"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. "


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

waynomo said:


> "What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. "


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

waynomo said:


> Listening to the recording Legasov states that Dyatlov received a 10 year hard labor prison sentence which implies he survived the disaster. I was surprised that he didn't die.


Dyatlov ... was ... the engineer in charge in the control room at the moment of the accident?


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Marco said:


> Dyatlov ... was ... the engineer in charge in the control room at the moment of the accident?


Yes. The one in denial that the core had exploded.


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## krkaufman (Nov 25, 2003)

Marco said:


> Dyatlov ... was ... the engineer in charge in the control room at the moment of the accident?


... and supposedly the engineer in charge of conducting/monitoring the test being run on reactor 4, which apparently triggered the explosion.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

krkaufman said:


> ... and supposedly the engineer in charge of conducting/monitoring the test being run on reactor 4, which apparently triggered the explosion.


Who quickly blamed the other operators in the control room.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

So far, pretty decent. Actual depiction of the damage is pretty good, with some adjustments to match the filming location (a decommissioned RBMK in Lithuania). 

A few quibbles:

1. Most of the radiation sickness is overly dramatized at this point in the timeline. Even with a huge dose, vomiting won’t show up for hours. But the hand burns from picking up the graphite is borderline plausible. 
2. They are obviously doing the “Bridge of Death”, and that’s not well supported by actual evidence

Some things I’d like to see, but probably won’t:

1. One of the fiercest firefights was in the cooling tunnel connecting Units 1-4. The fire chief knew that things would get much, much worse if the fire spread to the other units, and the chief thought he was sending firefighter to certain death (that group of firefighters actually ended up losing people mostly to burns)
2. Speaking of Unit 3, it shares most of the building with Unit 4. And was staffed throughout the incident (and continued to produce power until 2000, with the Unit 4 sarcophagus literally next door)

Things that I can confirm:

1. The “plant workers” going under the core to open valves to drain the pool in knee deep water is real. Will avoid spoilers...
2. The “site is filled with cheap Soviet dosimeters that peak at 3.6 Roentgens” is real, although I don’t know anything about a better one being in a safe


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## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

@kaszeta should host a Talking Chernobyl Live! show that follows each episode of Chernobyl.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

kaszeta said:


> They are obviously doing the "Bridge of Death", and that's not well supported by actual evidence


What is the BoD?


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## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

Guide is incorrect for tonight. Episode 2 listed as S1E1 ("Please Remain Calm" title is correct)


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

astrohip said:


> What is the BoD?


Folklore is that all of the people that went to the railroad bridge to see the glowing reactor died.


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## brianric (Aug 29, 2002)

Chernobyl had a major impact on my life. I was working at Seabrook Nuclear Station in New Hampshire at the M&TE Calibration Lab when Chernobyl happened. Seabrook was still under construction. Michael Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts at the time and was getting ready to sign off on the evacuation plan that Seabrook Station needed for approval in order for the plant to get an operating license. After the accident at Chernobyl Dukakis refused to sign off on the evacuation plan and backed the neighboring towns to the plant who refused to participate in the evacuation plan. This eventually forced Public Service of New Hampshire to go bankrupt on January 28, 1988, two days before my birthday. Seabrook Nuclear was my dream job as it was 23 miles from where I grew up. I spent eight years in Admiral Rickover's nuclear Navy and couldn't believe my luck that I landed a job so close to home. Not being sure if Seabrook Station was ever going to get their operating license I accepted a job at the Salem Nuclear plant in south New Jersey, eventually going to the adjacent Hope Creek Nuclear Station as an I&C Procedure Writer, from where I retired from. I still live in New Jersey.


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## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

Finished E02, really liking this show. To me it has an Apollo 13 / Martian cinematic vibe to it where they don't dumb the science or problem solving aspects down too much or give that part of the plot a back seat to the dramatic aspects of the event.


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## xuxa (Oct 8, 2001)

They do a great podcast for each episode 




‎The Chernobyl Podcast on Apple Podcasts


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

DeDondeEs said:


> Finished E02, really liking this show. To me it has an Apollo 13 / Martian cinematic vibe to it where they don't dumb the science or problem solving aspects down too much or give that part of the plot a back seat to the dramatic aspects of the event.


Agree. The thing about this is how scary it had to be for the people and for the scientists "in the know". If this was not handled correctly, it could have lead to a disaster that led to millions of deaths, not just a few hundred. It was scary to think about.

Yeah, perhaps over dramatic, but it's a TV show, and I would not expect anything different.


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## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

Steveknj said:


> Agree. The thing about this is how scary it had to be for the people and for the scientists "in the know". If this was not handled correctly, it could have lead to a disaster that led to millions of deaths, *not just a few hundred*. It was scary to think about.
> 
> Yeah, perhaps over dramatic, but it's a TV show, and I would not expect anything different.


From Wiki
Less than a few hundred direct death:
_While there is rough agreement that a total of either 31 or 54 people died from blast trauma or Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster (see § Differing direct, short-term death toll counts),_​But many more from long-term effects:
_there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations)_​


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Tony_T said:


> From Wiki
> Less than a few hundred direct death:
> _While there is rough agreement that a total of either 31 or 54 people died from blast trauma or Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) as a direct result of the Chernobyl disaster (see § Differing direct, short-term death toll counts),_​But many more from long-term effects:
> _there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations)_​


Well yeah, we don't know the exact number, but even if it's as high as 100,000 deaths related directly or indirectly, it's better than the millions that it could have been.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Steveknj said:


> If this was not handled correctly, it could have lead to a disaster that led to millions of deaths, not just a few hundred.


I know that the "millions" figure was in the show. But it seems that the idea that the feared secondary explosion would be of megaton magnitude, and would "raze Minsk" 200 miles away, is not a widely held opinion.


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## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

Marco said:


> I know that the "millions" figure was in the show. But it seems that the idea that the feared secondary explosion would be of megaton magnitude, and would "raze Minsk" 200 miles away, is not a widely held opinion.


I am only going by what I saw in the show as I really know nothing about the subject. So my reactions are purely on what I saw in the show. I would also imagine that this being the first time anything like this happened, whatever they were speculating were just educated guesses and I'm sure 30 something years later, we know a lot more about what happened and what would have happened.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Steveknj said:


> I am only going by what I saw in the show as I really know nothing about the subject. So my reactions are purely on what I saw in the show. I would also imagine that this being the first time anything like this happened, whatever they were speculating were just educated guesses and I'm sure 30 something years later, we know a lot more about what happened and what would have happened.


The scientific community still isn't exactly sure what happened at Chernobyl.

Overall, the episode was pretty good, but same sorts of drama problems as Ep 1:

1. There's almost no consensus on the >3 MT explosion, even at the time. That said, they did know it would be at least a few hundred kilotons, and probably make the problem at least a factor of 4 worse ("Hey, let's now have four reactors blown up!).

2. There was a Mi-8 crash, but much later (from hitting a crane, not the plume). Communications with the pilots were nearly impossible due to wideband radio noise.

At least they mentioned that the other units at Chernobyl still kept operating (indeed, Units 1 and 2 were desperately trying to avoid anything happening to their units under very trying circumstances, thinking, probably correctly, that "scram and run" would have been disastrous.

As an aside, the volunteers for draining the bubbler lived. I even met one of them in '95.


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## dcheesi (Apr 6, 2001)

kaszeta said:


> 2. There was a Mi-8 crash, but much later (from hitting a crane, not the plume). Communications with the pilots were nearly impossible due to wideband radio noise.


If you look closely, the helicopter in the episode appears to clip the hoist cable of the nearby crane just before going down. Seems like they were trying to split the difference there, being technically (relatively) accurate, while also making it _seem_ like the plume effects caused the crash?


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Yeah, the Mi-8 crashed weeks later, when there wasn’t even much plume left. You can find footage of it on Youtube.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Another thumbs-up for the podcast. Good stuff.


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## heySkippy (Jul 2, 2001)

It was dramatic, though. They picked a good place to embellish.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> Yeah, the Mi-8 crashed weeks later, when there wasn't even much plume left. You can find footage of it on Youtube.


I was reading Philip Grossman's (@PGPImages) Twitter feed. (A photographer who has spent a lot of time there.) He has some great photos and interesting comments. Among the media is a link to the crash.


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## hairyblue (Feb 25, 2002)

I thought people not believing and finger pointing was to save themselves from the wrath of the government. At one point someone had a list of people to blame for the accident. And it looked like anyone could be murdered by the government...like throwing a man out of a helicopter.

And people seemed really scared of Gorbachev.

Really liking the show. The English speaking actors does not take away from it either.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

hairyblue said:


> I thought people not believing and finger pointing was to save themselves from the wrath of the government. At one point someone had a list of people to blame for the accident. And it looked like anyone could be murdered by the government...like throwing a man out of a helicopter.
> 
> And people seemed really scared of Gorbachev.
> 
> Really liking the show. The English speaking actors does not take away from it either.


That's definitely part of it. It's discussed some in the podcast. The party line was an RMBK reactor core couldn't explode. They discuss the whole mentality of being under Soviet rule and knowing the truth is something else, but going along with the party line anyway.

They also discussed not using fake Russian accents. They felt like actors were acting the accent and not the character. They wanted the actors to act and felt letting them use their natural accents worked better. They also intentionally did not use anyone with an American accent.

I highly recommend the podcasts.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Chernobyl has the potential to be a bit of a black hole for me. (Anyone else?)

I've been reading a bunch and want to watch some documentaries.

This page has a lot of good information.

Chernobyl | Chernobyl Accident | Chernobyl Disaster - World Nuclear Association


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## jebbbz (Sep 7, 2007)

waynomo said:


> Chernobyl has the potential to be a bit of a black hole for me. (Anyone else?)
> ...
> This page has a lot of good information...


Thanks for the link. I read a fair amount about Chernobyl back in the 90s but your link and the Wikipedia article refreshed my recollection and added quite a bit to my layman's understanding of what happened, e.g., I now have some idea about how the RBMK positive void coefficient occurs and matters.


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## spartanstew (Feb 24, 2002)

The ending to episode #2 was fantastic.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

400 Rubles? At least give be a statue or plaque and take care of my immediate family for life if you want me to voluntary to die.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

There's a discussion/analysis on Reddit about how much that would be worth.


__
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChernobylTV/comments/bocw1s

One post suggested it was equal to around $500 in 1986. Another post was equating that to what it would buy.

My crude example:

It's more than it seems. If a loaf of bread cost $1 in the US, if you converted that dollar to a rubles you could by a lot more than 1 loaf of bread in the USSR.

ETA: I forgot that creating a link to something in Reddit on Tapatalk doesn't work. This is what I googled.

400 ruble in 1986 dollars


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

It's still not nearly enough for me to have volunteered.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

cheesesteak said:


> It's still not nearly enough for me to have volunteered.


Even if you were the *only* one who could do it?

In the podcast they discuss what would drive them to do it.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

waynomo said:


> One post suggested it was equal to around $500 in 1986. Another post was equating that to what it would buy.


Having not waded into the Reddit discussion, but also having some experience with early 90s Russian living, it's a bit hard to compare exchange rates between a Soviet-style central economy and Western economies, but it you go by the basic "basket of goods" approach to valuation and look primarily at daily items of interest to a Pripyat-area worker looking at buying things on the local economy, 400 rubles was a lot if you were looking at very basic food staples (bread, cabbage, potatoes, eggs), or cheap state-subsidized vokda. Otherwise, it wouldn't go far.

At the time, 400 rubles would pay for basic food for one person for about a year. So not a huge amount of money, but nothing to snicker over, either.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

waynomo said:


> Even if you were the *only* one who could do it?
> 
> In the podcast they discuss what would drive them to do it.


Yeah, it was much like "volunteering" to get bumped to the next flight on an airplane.

Somebody's getting bumped. If there aren't enough volunteers, someone is getting forced to.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

By the way, I'm in the process of moving offices, and found a '20 Years Later' retrospective in _Nuclear Engineering_ magazine that I had held onto.

It's got a nice map of the facility:










It's also worth noting that the facility that they filmed it at in Lithuania is actually pretty close to this in layout, so I expect the filming to look pretty accurate.


----------



## nirisahn (Nov 19, 2005)

Just finished watching Ep 3. I can't imagine what those people went through. And those family members, having to stand there and watch their loved ones being covered by cement.

This series is just amazing.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Watched Ep3 last night, and I'll have to say, that was a powerful episode, and really tracked well with several other sources I've read (_Voices from Chernobyl_ is really powerful reading, and actually way more horrific than this episode).


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

I saw the nudity warning at the opening of episode 3 and that made me go Hmmmmmmm ...


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

kaszeta, great share, thanks.

Loved the scene where the miners walk by the apparatchik and press their hand to his suit.


----------



## hairyblue (Feb 25, 2002)

astrohip said:


> kaszeta, great share, thanks.
> 
> Loved the scene where the miners walk by the apparatchik and press their hand to his suit.


And then one of them said something like "Now, you look like the Minister of Coal." lol

Common Russian people really stepped up for this crisis. Even knowing how fatal or dangerous it was to do so. Is this being shown in the Ukraine and Russia?

Oh, and the KGB is scary. I guess people could be snatched and just disappear. As in..."I don't know who that is." to "I know her name."


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

hairyblue said:


> Common Russian people really stepped up for this crisis. Even knowing how fatal or dangerous it was to do so. Is this being shown in the Ukraine and Russia?


It is airing in Russia. Don't know about Ukraine.



> Oh, and the KGB is scary. I guess people could be snatched and just disappear. As in..."I don't know who that is." to "I know her name."


I like how, in the middle of the the disaster, there are still KGB people at the hotel posing as tourists (the ones at the bar, who were also the ones walking in the empty park), even after the evacuation.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

I read that it is now the highest rated TV show on Rotten Tomatoes.

Thanks @astrohip for creating the thread. I don't think I would have known about it otherwise.


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

waynomo said:


> Thanks @astrohip for creating the thread. I don't think I would have known about it otherwise.


You're welcome!


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I managed my way though the miniseries today, albeit looking away periodically during the 3rd episode. This was very affecting.

This should be required viewing for high school students.

The writer, director, and cinematographer all deserve Emmy awards for their work.

I need to do follow-up reading (and to check out the Chernobyl podcast) but thought to ask here at the same time: does anyone know if the State did anything for the first responders and their families long-term, in recognition of the sacrifice of the first responders? Such as, lifetime living stipends? (And no, I don't mean 500 rubles.)

This is why science and scientists, and the media and journalists, matter.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Mikeguy said:


> I need to do follow-up reading (and to check out the Chernobyl podcast) but thought to ask here at the same time: does anyone know if the State did anything for the first responders and their families long-term, in recognition of the sacrifice of the first responders? Such as, lifetime living stipends? (And no, I don't mean 500 rubles.)


Mostly, not much. Not helped by the fact that the "State" didn't last much longer than the cleanup, and in the post-Soviet era Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia just had a lot more things to worry about


----------



## Squeak (May 12, 2000)

kaszeta said:


> I like how, in the middle of the the disaster, there are still KGB people at the hotel posing as tourists (the ones at the bar, who were also the ones walking in the empty park), even after the evacuation.


I didn't make that connection that the bar patrons in the first episode were KGB. Thanks.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

kaszeta said:


> Mostly, not much. Not helped by the fact that the "State" didn't last much longer than the cleanup, and in the post-Soviet era Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia just had a lot more things to worry about


Thanks.

But for some brave great-grandparents, this could have been part of my family's story. Give me the Minnesota Winter any day.


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## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Look up "bleak" in the dictionary, and it simply says "See Episode 4 of Chernobyl".

That was... unpleasant. There were segments I couldn't watch. I do admire the tenacity of the people who kept at it, proposal after proposal, never giving up, trying to solve the problem.

Biorobots. 


PS: Still an amazing hour of TV.


----------



## nataylor (Apr 26, 2000)

Truly gut wrenching.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

nataylor said:


> Truly gut wrenching.


Especially since that basic 90 second rotation of workers cycled almost 4000 workers through roof cleanup, and most of the foremen got acute radiation sickness even though they stayed in the stairwell room.

Actual photo:


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

Making a whole lot of fudge factors, oversimplifying things, and hand-waving radiation tolerance of devices (heavy-ion, proton, gamma, etc), the worst environment NASA designs to is the Jovian system equatorial regions. Even then, NASA designs trajectories that don't spend a whole lot of time in those regions.

That roof was roughly 80X worse than Jupiter equatorial regions.

--Carlos "no, not *that* one" V.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Yeah, most of my "radiation-hardened" systems I work with are designed for a total dose around 25 and 100 kRad total ionizing dose, and would get cooked in a matter of hours in that environment. Even the system designed to 1000 kRad wouldn't last long in that environment.

Especially if you've got a lot of thermal neutrons, beta, and gamma, all sorts of materials go bad quickly. In most cases, even a little bit of neutron absorption does horrible things to metallic crystalline structures.


----------



## mt1 (Dec 13, 2002)

Wow. I loved the first three episodes, but episode 4 was just a bit too grim for me. Several of those scenes were pretty brutal to watch.


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

kaszeta said:


> Actual photo:


And Video:






--Carlos V.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

While it looks fairly random, they did think out the shoveling, too, goal was to try and first remove the largest chunks, and then make paths so that they could efficiently move people around. In later iterations they had added stuff like little hand-pushed plows and wheelbarrows, all lined with lead to help reduce exposure.

On another note, one other little production detail was nice: going through the workers camp, you could see flags for several different SSRs (Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan). Since yeah, they dragged in middle-aged reservists from just about everywhere ("Hey, it's this, or another tour in Afghanistan!")


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

kaszeta said:


> ("Hey, it's this, or another tour in Afghanistan!")


Afghanistan is sounding better all the time!


----------



## zyzzx (Jan 22, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> Especially since that basic 90 second rotation of workers cycled almost 4000 workers through roof cleanup, and most of the foremen got acute radiation sickness even though they stayed in the stairwell room.


What were the long term radiation effects on these 4000 roof workers?


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

zyzzx said:


> What were the long term radiation effects on these 4000 roof workers?


Like anything with Chernobyl, hard to tell. ~60 cancers deaths likely traceable directly to the activity, and that number will climb. (I think it was 6 deaths *during* the cleanup).

But a lot of it is like the children of the general region. Two things are really apparent from the oncology studies:

(a) There was a huge, huge uptick in thyroid cancer in the extended region, hitting truly epidemic portions, but...
(b) Both Western and Soviet Bloc nations got a lot, lot better at actually treating thyroid cancer

Sadly, medicine learned a lot to supplement what, in actuality, we didn't know all that much about with acute radiation sickness. And got better at handling some of the lesser cases of it.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

This recent discussion has caused me to hesitate to watch the 4th episode--the first 3 already were affecting me, and I would have to look away from the television periodically.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

mt1 said:


> Wow. I loved the first three episodes, but episode 4 was just a bit too grim for me. Several of those scenes were pretty brutal to watch.


I thought the scenes where they had to kill dogs just went on too long. We got the point after the first couple of minutes. Yeah, it was grim having to deal with radioactive dogs.


----------



## rorrim (Jun 21, 2005)

kaszeta said:


> It is airing in Russia. Don't know about Ukraine.


I know for sure that it is airing in Moldova, so I would suspect Ukraine is getting it as well.


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Steveknj said:


> I thought the scenes where they had to kill dogs just went on too long. We got the point after the first couple of minutes.


We did get the point. But, on the other hand ... imagine having to *do* that job. I think the "too long" brought that point home forcefully.


----------



## zyzzx (Jan 22, 2002)

On the podcast this week, the creator of the miniseries said they filmed another dog scene that actually happened but was deemed too gruesome to include.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Man, that was harrowing to watch. I fast forwarded a couple of times through the pet shooting scenes because I expected the young guy to shoot himself and I did NOT want to see that.


----------



## Squeak (May 12, 2000)

kaszeta said:


> Especially since that basic 90 second rotation of workers cycled almost 4000 workers through roof cleanup, and most of the foremen got acute radiation sickness even though they stayed in the stairwell room.
> 
> Actual photo:


One thing that was not clear (or maybe I was just dense): did the bio robots only do one rotation of 90 seconds and that was it? Or did they get rotated through multiple times?

And the one in the show that fell down and split his boot open and the supervisor said he was done, did that mean he was dead?


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Most of the workers literally worked only 90 seconds on the main roof. And most of the suits were single use, since they got too contaminated to reuse. 

On the lower roofs, they lengthened the period, and sometimes had people work multiple shifts. 

Guy with the ripped boot that also looked over the rampart? Probably got radiation sickness.


----------



## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

Great mini-series (HBO is worth every penny).
I like how Boris Shcherbina progressed from Ep1 as a Party Man touting the party line and dismissing Valery Legasov to a leader fighting the party line and working with Legasov to try to find solutions and save lives.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Tony_T said:


> Great mini-series (HBO is worth every penny).
> I like how Boris Shcherbina progressed from Ep1 as a Party Man touting the party line and dismissing Valery Legasov to a leader fighting the party line and working with Legasov to try to find solutions and save lives.


That said, it's also important to note that Shcherbina, and his very direct approach to managing things, was in no small part responsible for the accident as well.

One of the major contributing factors to the accident itself was that the person ultimately having responsibility for reactor output wasn't the plant manager, but the electrical load dispatcher. During the planned shutdown, instead of following the designed, planned shutdown curve, they were required to hold at half power for 9 hours.

Who implemented the system where the dispatcher had that authority? One Minister of Oil and Gas[1], Boris Shcherbina. He rose up to eventually being vice chair of the Council of Ministers primarily based upon his "reform" of the failing Soviet power grid: he had instituted a system of changes where the only important factors were producing power and meeting schedules, everything else be damned (one of the reasons that Fomin and Dyatlov made the hugely bad decision to proceed with the pump test despite having racked up over a dozen irregularities from a normal shutdown).

Unfortunately, he also was one of the leaders of the Soviet investigation into the accident, and most of the blame got placed lower (don't get me wrong, the people found guilty at the Soviet hearings were indeed guilty of some pretty terrible negligence, but there's a lot more blame to go around).

Oh, he worked tirelessly to try and fix the mess afterward (and also did an impressive job restoring power and water in the massive Armenian quake a few years later), and almost certainly died from his Chernobyl efforts. But he's at best a tarnished hero.
[1] Also responsible for nuclear reactors and power grids.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

For those interested, the Wikipedia entry for the Chernobyl accident is a fascinating read.


----------



## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

Mikeguy said:


> For those interested, the Wikipedia entry for the Chernobyl accident is a fascinating read.


yeah, it hit pause about 5 minutes into the first ep and spent an hour or so online reading up on chernobyl, with that entry getting repeatedly eyed over, along with the reference links at the bottom of the page. i realized early on they were moving quickly through events, keeping their focus on certain characters and events.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

NorthAlabama said:


> yeah, it hit pause about 5 minutes into the first ep and spent an hour or so online reading up on chernobyl, with that entry getting repeatedly eyed over, along with the reference links at the bottom of the page. i realized early on they were moving quickly through events, keeping their focus on certain characters and events.


When the scientist was investigating (in the 3rd episode?) why the accident had occurred and was interviewing the initial reactor room victims, that's when I turned to Wikipedia for a "fuller" explanation--not that I devoted the time to fully follow it, but at least I got a better idea of the factors involved.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Mikeguy said:


> When the scientist was investigating (in the 3rd episode?) why the accident had occurred and was interviewing the initial reactor room victims, that's when I turned to Wikipedia for a "fuller" explanation--not that I devoted the time to fully follow it, but at least I got a better idea of the factors involved.


If you have any questions, I used to work with several of the authors of INSAG-7. They were very, very informative about explaining their theories and findings on Chernobyl.


----------



## jr461 (Jul 9, 2004)

Steveknj said:


> I thought the scenes where they had to kill dogs just went on too long. We got the point after the first couple of minutes. Yeah, it was grim having to deal with radioactive dogs.


We thought the same thing. We get it already.



Marco said:


> We did get the point. But, on the other hand ... imagine having to *do* that job. I think the "too long" brought that point home forcefully.


The point was made pretty forcefully in the first segment, which would have had the same effect if it was half as long - we certainly didn't need the second one or the puppies. It just seemed gratuitous at that point.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Perhaps, but it showed the progression of the new kid from which we could extrapolate the emotional toll it took on everyone.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> Most of the workers literally worked only 90 seconds on the main roof. And most of the suits were single use, since they got too contaminated to reuse.
> 
> On the lower roofs, they lengthened the period, and sometimes had people work multiple shifts.
> 
> Guy with the ripped boot that also looked over the rampart? Probably got radiation sickness.


Wouldn't the amount of radiation (roentgen?) drop as they cleared the debris?

If that happened couldn't they extend the shifts and eventually bring in robots?


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Just finished ep. 4. Mondo depressing (I took a break midway through).


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

waynomo said:


> Wouldn't the amount of radiation (roentgen?) drop as they cleared the debris?


Let me see if I can find the paper on that, but after the first dozen or so sorties the radiation was lower but still crazy high, and still somewhat constant, for two reasons:

1. Mostly of the dosage came from actually having to handle the big debris with shovels and wheelbarrows and tip it over the edge. They cleared paths quickly, and after that most of the dosage was from the actual handling, not the transit time...
2. The entire time they were dumping stuff over into the core, much of the core radiation was getting worse and not better.

But once they got the large stuff taken care of, then they switched to a round of hand-pushed bulldozer plows, and then work crews building walls of high-density concrete to start containing it.


----------



## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

Steveknj said:


> I thought the scenes where they had to kill dogs just went on too long. We got the point after the first couple of minutes. Yeah, it was grim having to deal with radioactive dogs.


I think the point was to show that after awhile the new kid got to the point where it didn't bother him to do the job.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I was just (happy) that they didn't actually show, completely, the dogs being shot. I found the entire episode gruesome and depressing enough.


----------



## heySkippy (Jul 2, 2001)

Mikeguy said:


> I was just (happy) that they didn't actually show, completely, the dogs being shot. I found the entire episode gruesome and depressing enough.


Yeah, could have been a lot worse.


----------



## Tony_T (Nov 2, 2017)

I found it harder to watch the Fireman and his pregnant wife.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Final episode coming up. I hope there is a happy ending.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

waynomo said:


> Final episode coming up. I hope there is a happy ending.


I won't spoil the ending for you . . . .


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

waynomo said:


> Final episode coming up. I hope there is a happy ending.


Legasov is going to wake up next to Suzanne Pleshette.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Marco said:


> Legasov is going to wake up next to Suzanne Pleshette.


And then head off to his job at the Fukushima Power Station.


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

kaszeta said:


> And then head off to his job at the Fukushima Power Station.


Or Sterling Cooper.


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

astrohip said:


> Or Sterling Cooper.


Where he closes his office door and pops open a Coke.


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

Powerpoint-ish explanation of the explosion sequence, as explained by the courtroom scene:

Reactor Basics

--Carlos V.


----------



## jamesbobo (Jun 18, 2000)

The perils of putting someone in charge who will not listen to reason, has no idea of what he is doing, and is only interested in his own self interests since doing this test will cement his reputation with his leaders.


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

That was a particularly well done recreation of the actual accident sequence. I kind of liked the reverse story telling they used here.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

That was one of the best (albeit grim) shows I have seen on television in quite some time.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Damn.


That was the only word I could come up with at the end of the final episode. This series needs to win the miniseries Emmy and they should create a couple more awards for it.

I was thinking about dropping you HBO post-Game Of Thrones, but you got me with this one. You got me.


----------



## Hank (May 31, 2000)

Photos From the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Hank said:


> Photos From the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster


Wow, some amazing pics. Thanks for sharing.


----------



## Hank (May 31, 2000)

I just want to know what crazy photographer got up on that roof to take photos and expose himself to the lifelong max radiation limit just to take those photos!


----------



## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

So, one of the men who caused the accident was allowed to work on them again after serving his time?????


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Hank said:


> Photos From the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster


Here's a bunch more. The Chernobyl Story [Updated & Expanded]


----------



## Hank (May 31, 2000)

Marco said:


> Here's a bunch more. The Chernobyl Story [Updated & Expanded]


Holy cow, those were amazing. We just finished watching the finale, too.


----------



## warrenn (Jun 24, 2004)

Nova had a show about building the sarcophagus: Building Chernobyl's MegaTomb.

It doesn't seem to be available for streaming, so setup a wishlist recording and you'll get it whenever your PBS station decides to rerun it. I'm guessing it will be a popular show during pledge drive season.


----------



## Hank (May 31, 2000)

I watched that when it was on. It's amazing the challenges of just building the thing, much less moving it into place. Highly, highly recommended.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

jamesbobo said:


> The perils of putting someone in charge who will not listen to reason, has no idea of what he is doing, and is only interested in his own self interests since doing this test will cement his reputation with his leaders.


One of the things they discussed in the podcast was how unqualified the people running the reactor were. They were promoted for reasons other than their qualifications.


----------



## DeDondeEs (Feb 20, 2004)

warrenn said:


> Nova had a show about building the sarcophagus: Building Chernobyl's MegaTomb.
> 
> It doesn't seem to be available for streaming, so setup a wishlist recording and you'll get it whenever your PBS station decides to rerun it. I'm guessing it will be a popular show during pledge drive season.


The get an idea of the enormity of that structure, just look at it on Google Maps:

Google Maps

There's a Google Streetview layer for Pripyat, which is interesting to explore.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

What HBO's "Chernobyl" Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

The whole Chernobyl site is weird. They kept Unit 3 running until the early 2000s, the main electrical switching yard is _still_ where much of Ukraine's power is routed, and since that Google Maps image they've started building a giant solar power generating station there as well. That, and the New Safe Confinement facility requires a fair bit of operations and monitoring staff, so there are still several hundred people working regularly on site there.

A colleague sent me images from a visit, and they've even got a plant cafeteria and a transit station.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Steveknj said:


> What HBO's "Chernobyl" Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong


When I read it last night I felt the author was being critical for the sake of being critical. I'll have to reread it.


----------



## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> The whole Chernobyl site is weird. They kept Unit 3 running until the early 2000s, the main electrical switching yard is _still_ where much of Ukraine's power is routed, and since that Google Maps image they've started building a giant solar power generating station there as well. That, and the New Safe Confinement facility requires a fair bit of operations and monitoring staff, so there are still several hundred people working regularly on site there.
> 
> A colleague sent me images from a visit, and they've even got a plant cafeteria and a transit station.


They create this large exclusion zone, but people still work there. They must know that they are at increased risk. Do they do anything to mitigate the effects?


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

waynomo said:


> They create this large exclusion zone, but people still work there. They must know that they are at increased risk. Do they do anything to mitigate the effects?


Yeah, the short answer is "lots of contamination control" and lots of dosimeters and other monitoring systems.

Realistically, just about any nuclear facility has to deal with those anyways. All three sites I worked at at Oak Ridge National Laboratory had portal monitors (you had to walk or drive through scanners entering or leaving each site), frequent inspections with hand-held detectors (especially the bottoms of your feet). All of those sites had historical contamination of mild concern, and the main HFIR reactor had all sorts of spot contamination from an accident with _highly_ radioactive iridium pellets and we'd occasionally find secondary contamination from that.


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Steveknj said:


> What HBO's "Chernobyl" Got Right, and What It Got Terribly Wrong
> 
> 
> waynomo said:
> ...


I tend to agree with your assessment. The "wrongs" are things that almost have to be tweaked to make a TV series. And the writer admits it, that several inaccuracies were because the truth isn't telegenic. For example, he said the higher-ups would never threaten to have someone shot on the spot, as Shcherbina did to Legasov. He said the general resignation of the Soviet people, as a overriding trait, would get them to follow commands, not threats. I find that a difference so insignificant as to wonder why he even brings it up. It's a drama, not a doc.

They really didn't get anything wrong that is of material concern. And remembering that it's a dramatization of a real event, I think they did an amazing job.

That article was nitpicking just to nitpick.


----------



## Steveknj (Mar 10, 2003)

astrohip said:


> I tend to agree with your assessment. The "wrongs" are things that almost have to be tweaked to make a TV series. And the writer admits it, that several inaccuracies were because the truth isn't telegenic. For example, he said the higher-ups would never threaten to have someone shot on the spot, as Shcherbina did to Legasov. He said the general resignation of the Soviet people, as a overriding trait, would get them to follow commands, not threats. I find that a difference so insignificant as to wonder why he even brings it up. It's a drama, not a doc.
> 
> They really didn't get anything wrong that is of material concern. And remembering that it's a dramatization of a real event, I think they did an amazing job.
> 
> That article was nitpicking just to nitpick.


Which happens with the most "prefect" of TV shows. I just posted that because there was some discussion early on that there were some inaccuracies around the events.


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Russian-born perspective on the miniseries.
Click on it and follow the thread.


__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1132029943297265664


----------



## astrohip (Jan 7, 2003)

Really good interview with Craig Mazin (creator, writer):

'Chernobyl' Creator Breaks Down the HBO Drama's Haunting Finale and Cautionary Message


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

I found the 5th episode of "Chernobyl" very affecting, to the degree that I'm still feeling it hours later. The science and technology of the events and nuclear power, and the issues surrounding them, were interesting to hear explained and to consider, but it was more than that: it was the human interactions and reactions, from defensiveness to honor to country-felt patriotism to the honor of truth and science as institutions--both the good and the "bad," and all so integral to the nature of being human, and as a warning and a study of what people and institutions, including governments, are and can be, including fallible (for many reasons). As I said here once before, this should be the makings for high school student studies.


----------



## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

Russians don't like HBO/Sky's version, will make their own:

https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424

With it being a KGB vs CIA story.

--Carlos V.


----------



## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

Unbeliever said:


> *Russians *don't like HBO/Sky's version, will make their own:
> 
> https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424
> 
> ...


"Russians" as in, the Russian propaganda machine, and not real Russian people.


----------



## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

Yeah, actual Russian citizens have praised the show.


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

If you get a chance check out a program called "Cafe 10" on Amazon Prime. It was made in 2016 and takes you on a tour of what the area is now. People are actually showing up by the bus load to take tours of the area. They also talk about the amount of radioactive metals that scavenger have taken and have ended up in China where it is made into metal products and used for all types of products that get ship all over the world and are still radioactive. Now the local government wants to allow farming in the area again even though the soil is still radioactive. The people building the sarcophagus can only work for 15 days at a time and then have to leave the area for 15 days.


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## danielhart (Apr 27, 2004)

Just wanted to chime in that after watching the final episode I think this is one of the best miniseries ever done - if you are reading this and you haven't watched it you definitely should. This series should sweep the Emmy's and Golden Globes (except Patricia Arquette is a rightful shoo-in for Best Actress for Escape at Dannemora).


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

agreed, i watched the final ep again last night before deleting - it's incredible television - the story arc pulled together nicely (despite the time shifts).


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

But the KGB says that it's not accurate and that the CIA did it!


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Unbeliever said:


> Russians don't like HBO/Sky's version, will make their own:
> 
> https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424
> 
> ...


I'd watch the "official" Russian version if they cast Kevin Hart as the CIA agent.


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## MScottC (Sep 11, 2004)

Mikeguy said:


> Thanks.
> 
> But for some brave great-grandparents, this could have been part of my family's story. Give me the Minnesota Winter any day.


My great grandfather and grandmother, who I actually knew very well, him living to 102 when I was 32 came from Minsk, Belarus. So yea... same situation.


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## ingsoc747 (Apr 5, 2017)

Unbeliever said:


> Russians don't like HBO/Sky's version, will make their own:
> 
> https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424
> 
> ...


Big shocker there.

Stalin spirit is still very alive and well.


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## swyman18 (Jan 7, 2016)

SNJpage1 said:


> If you get a chance check out a program called "Cafe 10" on Amazon Prime. It was made in 2016 and takes you on a tour of what the area is now. People are actually showing up by the bus load to take tours of the area. They also talk about the amount of radioactive metals that scavenger have taken and have ended up in China where it is made into metal products and used for all types of products that get ship all over the world and are still radioactive. Now the local government wants to allow farming in the area again even though the soil is still radioactive. The people building the sarcophagus can only work for 15 days at a time and then have to leave the area for 15 days.


I see something called Chernobyl's Cafe on Amazon Prime, assuming that is the one?
Description sounds like it.


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

swyman18 said:


> I see something called Chernobyl's Cafe on Amazon Prime, assuming that is the one?
> Description sounds like it.


Yes that is the same one. The cafe itself is called Cafe 10, the program is Chernobyl's Cafe. Sorry for the mix up.


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## Tobashadow (Nov 11, 2006)

kaszeta said:


> Yeah, the short answer is "lots of contamination control" and lots of dosimeters and other monitoring systems.
> 
> Realistically, just about any nuclear facility has to deal with those anyways. All three sites I worked at at Oak Ridge National Laboratory had portal monitors (you had to walk or drive through scanners entering or leaving each site), frequent inspections with hand-held detectors (especially the bottoms of your feet). All of those sites had historical contamination of mild concern, and the main HFIR reactor had all sorts of spot contamination from an accident with _highly_ radioactive iridium pellets and we'd occasionally find secondary contamination from that.


I had a family member who worked there years ago, and lost a personal van he used to carry his equipment due to driving thru contamination on the ground and it splattered the underside.

They wrote him a check and buried it.

That was back when they kept barrels of stuff stacked everywhere.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Tobashadow said:


> I had a family member who worked there years ago, and lost a personal van he used to carry his equipment due to driving thru contamination on the ground and it splattered the underside.


When? I was actually working there at the time of two similar incidents like that:

1. An employee couldn't find parking at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and parked on the side of the road just north of the facility, and then had some traction trouble and spun the tires a bit, getting mud all over the tires and the driver's boots. Driver got the vehicle unstuck, but later set off the portal detector when they had to drive equipment on-site. The mud was downhill from Solid Waste Storage Area 5, which was infamous for it's poor storage and occasional leaks, and apparently there was a contamination. After a day or so of attempted cleanup, they bought the van and the driver's boots, although I don't remember what happened with the van. They dug up a lot of dirt, brought in fill, and put in a few monitoring wells.

2. A pair of DOE auditors did the exact same thing with a rental car a few months later (having ignored the signs put in after item 1), showing that the cleanup from the first event wasn't thorough enough. Lab ended up buying the rental car. More earth moving and piling up of rip-rap, more signage, and fencing. The rental car was kept as an "on-reservation-only" car that we could borrow.

But those both recall another incident from a few years before my working there:

3. The infamous "radioactive frogs" incident. Oak Ridge had had minor problems with leopard frogs getting into some of the waste storage ponds, picking up enough contamination to become noticeably, but not dangerously, radioactive relative to background, and occasionally herons would eat the frogs, and, as predators, concentrate and spread the contamination. Having slight concern about that (old memos you can still find about concerns of radioactive heron crap...), they put a big steel mesh nets over some of the ponds to cut back on the herons feeding on the frogs. Which completely changed the ecosystem, and next thing you know, there was an explosion in the radioactive leopard frog population, and they had a handful of incidents of portal monitors getting set off by people running over frogs and getting "hot wheels". They sent some of the Environmental Science folks out to round up frogs for testing, and found that yeah, there were enough radioactive frogs jumping around that it could be a problem. Then a somewhat alarmist memo went out telling employees to avoid frogs at all costs and call Health Physics... then the media got wind of it and it got really crazy. 

I'm wondering if your family member was item 1.



> That was back when they kept barrels of stuff stacked everywhere.


Yeah, as mentioned above, earlier waste storage at ORNL was, ummm, less than enlightened. When I worked there, they were still clearing out some of the waste pits which had all sorts of nasty stuff in them, particularly in the liquid waste pit. They used to dispose of radioactive gas cylinders by throwing them into a water-filled pit, with the Y-12 security people practicing their marksmanship by shooting holes in the as they tumbled. They weren't always successful, so the pit had all sorts of corroding, still-pressurized gas bottles in it. And, apparently, the occasional leopard frog (see above  )

(There was also the "day the parking lot went critical", but that's a story for another time)

Moral of the story: the US has had more than a few stupidities with our nuclear programs as well.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Yeah, but at least our people who did stupid stuff had the proper degrees to do stupid stuff. 

(It was discussed on the podcast how many had no business being anywhere near a nuclear reactor. I think it was Fomin who had a mail order degree/piece of paper, etc.)


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## Tobashadow (Nov 11, 2006)

kaszeta said:


> When? I was actually working there at the time of two similar incidents like that:
> 
> 1. An employee couldn't find parking at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and parked on the side of the road just north of the facility, and then had some traction trouble and spun the tires a bit, getting mud all over the tires and the driver's boots. Driver got the vehicle unstuck, but later set off the portal detector when they had to drive equipment on-site. The mud was downhill from Solid Waste Storage Area 5, which was infamous for it's poor storage and occasional leaks, and apparently there was a contamination. After a day or so of attempted cleanup, they bought the van and the driver's boots, although I don't remember what happened with the van. They dug up a lot of dirt, brought in fill, and put in a few monitoring wells.
> 
> ...


Not really sure this was around the mid 80's


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## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

anyone listen to the creator podcasts? (Amazon has three listed in the Bonus materials, for eps 1,2 & 5) They worth a listen.

Been through the series twice and kinda want more.


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## Mikeguy (Jul 28, 2005)

kaszeta said:


> 3. The infamous "radioactive frogs" incident. Oak Ridge had had minor problems with leopard frogs getting into some of the waste storage ponds, picking up enough contamination to become noticeably, but not dangerously, radioactive relative to background, and occasionally herons would eat the frogs, and, as predators, concentrate and spread the contamination. Having slight concern about that (old memos you can still find about concerns of radioactive heron crap...), they put a big steel mesh nets over some of the ponds to cut back on the herons feeding on the frogs. Which completely changed the ecosystem, and next thing you know, there was an explosion in the radioactive leopard frog population, and they had a handful of incidents of portal monitors getting set off by people running over frogs and getting "hot wheels". They sent some of the Environmental Science folks out to round up frogs for testing, and found that yeah, there were enough radioactive frogs jumping around that it could be a problem. Then a somewhat alarmist memo went out telling employees to avoid frogs at all costs and call Health Physics... then the media got wind of it and it got really crazy.


Really just fascinating, how the parts link together to get such a result. Not unlike the accident at Chernobyl. 


> Moral of the story: the US has had more than a few stupidities with our nuclear programs as well.


I thought they were caused by KGB spies.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

There's even a song about the frogs


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Yesterday I heard someone say that she stopped watching early on because she couldn't get past the fact that everyone in the series had British accents.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

Saturn_V said:


> anyone listen to the creator podcasts? (Amazon has three listed in the Bonus materials, for eps 1,2 & 5) They worth a listen.
> 
> Been through the series twice and kinda want more.


Yes. I felt the podcasts added a lot. There are 5 podcasts; 1 for each episode.

I ended up streaming the last episode and discovered there was a bit of bonus commentary after the credits and perhaps after "next time on." (I don't remember exactly where it was.) So I fast forwarded through the other 4 to watch that also. There was nothing earth shattering in those, but they were still interesting.


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## waynomo (Nov 9, 2002)

cheesesteak said:


> Yesterday I heard someone say that she stopped watching early on because she couldn't get past the fact that everyone in the series had British accents.


They explained this decision in the first podcast. They got better performances from the actors that way. They found when actors use an accent they act the accent. Using their natural accents they acted the role. They did decide to not use any American actors/accents.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

I'm sure others have said this, but after watching Ep 5, it's worth going back and re-watching Ep 1 (or more). There's something about watching the events following the explosion, chained right after the performance in Ep 5, that's a different experience than the original watching of Ep 1 cold.


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## efilippi (Jul 24, 2001)

Here is a report by one of the three "volunteers" who opened the sluice gates in the early stages. He claims they were not volunteers, just guys doing their jobs. Also still alive, obviously.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

efilippi said:


> Here is a report by one of the three "volunteers" who opened the sluice gates in the early stages. He claims they were not volunteers, just guys doing their jobs. Also still alive, obviously.


Unfortunately a sub is required to read the article (although I see you can get a 30 day "free" trial).


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## efilippi (Jul 24, 2001)

Sorry, I was quite sure that the Times of London had a paywall but allowed unlimited free access via link. Apparently I was mistaken.


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## getreal (Sep 29, 2003)

Just watched the fifth episode. 

Will Season Two feature all the new superheroes as a result of the radiation over-exposure?


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## getreal (Sep 29, 2003)

waynomo said:


> Perhaps, but it showed the progression of the new kid from which we could extrapolate the emotional toll it took on everyone.


I agree ... it's the same as if they were showing a young innocent person who becomes a "soldier", handed a rifle a told to shoot and kill people. He would have to psychologically process the whole concept, the fact that HE is now "one of them" who is able to eventually point at his target and pull the trigger and move on to do it again and again. In this case, the target was domestic pets.


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## realityboy (Jun 13, 2003)

'Chernobyl' star reveals tragic family connection to nuclear plant accident


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## swyman18 (Jan 7, 2016)

realityboy said:


> 'Chernobyl' star reveals tragic family connection to nuclear plant accident


I'm probably a jerk for thinking this, but claiming a "close family connection" to the tragedy based on not much proof seems like a stretch. So basically anyone who got wet in the rain in that area of Scotland could have been affected I guess.

I know it's not the point of the article, but I'd be interested to learn more details about the cancer that those guys died from. While it certainly is sad that it happened, it seems a bit disingenuous to attempt to tug on people's heartstrings based on just a "belief" of the cause.


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## Hank (May 31, 2000)

We're all going to hell:






You may have to open that link in youtube. It doesn't work remotely linked.


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

The podcast was EXCELLENT that mirrored the show. Done with an NPR guy and the writer/director/creator


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## xuxa (Oct 8, 2001)

They just released a bonus episode of the podcast, very good as well, has Jared Harris (Valery Legasov) on it. The speak on the reaction to the show and even have a prologue on last weeks nuclear incident in Russia.

‎The Chernobyl Podcast: Bonus Episode with Jared Harris on Apple Podcasts


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

I am two episodes in and have skipped most of the thread to avoild "spoilers"

I just needed a diversion this week.. Something to take my mind off of things. 

Looking froward to more of this..


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## NorthAlabama (Apr 19, 2012)

jsmeeker said:


> I am two episodes in and have skipped most of the thread to avoild "spoilers"
> 
> I just needed a diversion this week.. Something to take my mind off of things.
> 
> Looking froward to more of this..


i've watched twice, and will watch it again in the future - hope you enjoy it as much as i did.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

My parents were looking for something to watch so I recommended this. They didn’t really like it. They said it was to hard to keep the characters straight. I don’t recall having that issue.


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

^^^
I liked it but I recall the beginning was confusing and had to circle back once I was done, besides looking some things up about the actual people involved. Since I'm not Russian, I do recall having some trouble keeping some of the names and roles straight for some of it.

I think I also might've watched it over a very split time period: started with it on an airplane (inflight video) and finished months later during see free preview.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

cwerdna said:


> ^^^
> I liked it but I recall the beginning was confusing and had to circle back once I was done, besides looking some things up about the actual people involved. Since I'm not Russian, I do recall having some trouble keeping some of the names and roles straight for some of it.


When it came out, Carol was often confused about various details because she wasn't all that familiar with the details of the incident, and that the structure of the show was designed to convey much of the uncertainty at the time about what was happening, not really showing the event itself until the last episode.

Whereas I'm practically a walking wikipedia on the incident, both due to my nerd-dom and having worked for a member of the IAEA Nuclear Safety Advisory Group who truly was about as detailed an expert on Chernobyl as exists anywhere. So I was regularly explaining things for her. And having both the occasional "hey, that's an interesting obscure detail they captured" and the "well, that's not the way it happened, but it'll do for a drama"


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## gossamer88 (Jul 27, 2005)

I watched it when it first aired and found it very compelling as well as depressing. I for one would not recommend watching it right now.


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## HarleyRandom (Sep 17, 2015)

There was a goof last night on "Mixed-ish". Rainbow was trying to get her school to celebrate Earth Day, April 22. But Chernobyl was a big story on the news. I had forgotten the exact date but the anchor said April 26. So they were still not celebrating Earth Day a whole week later?


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## jsmeeker (Apr 2, 2001)

jsmeeker said:


> I am two episodes in and have skipped most of the thread to avoild "spoilers"
> 
> I just needed a diversion this week.. Something to take my mind off of things.
> 
> Looking froward to more of this..


And I'm done with it.. Wound up watching episode 3 on Tuesday then the last two episodes last night

I thought this was a fantastic mini series. I liked how they walked through the minute by minute/second by second time time of the fateful test at the end during the trial.

I didn't have many issues with keeping track of characters. Sure, the NAMES of people were tricky. But keeping them straight by faces/roles and also the actors themselves being very familair (the two leads) made it not so bad.


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## SNJpage1 (May 25, 2006)

According to the news there is a fire out of control in the stay out zone right now.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

SNJpage1 said:


> According to the news there is a fire out of control in the stay out zone right now.


In typical soviet fashion, that depends who you ask. 

... The fire that burned for 10 days was completely extinguished 3 days ago due to heavy rains...
... The fire that was completely extinguished 3 days ago may not have been completely extinguished, small pockets of ground fire remain...
... The fire that was mostly extinguished 3 days ago has started spreading again due to high winds in the area, but it's minor...
... The major fire that started out of nowhere in the past three days, is now under control...

I cannot find a trustworthy answer to the question, is &$(@ on fire yo...

Edit: Official news is sketchy, but it looks like yes, #&%*'s on fire. _"Forest fires in Chernobyl have resumed. Kiev residents are asked to not go outside and close their windows due to fears of radioactive smoke reaching the capital." - 2 hours ago_


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

I was surprised when I watched it that Chernobyl is so close to Kiev. I wish they had done more with how the area is now, since I'm too lazy to look it up.


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## efilippi (Jul 24, 2001)

Chernobyl is close to Kyiv, yes. I just read an AP story about the fires and they referred to the effect on Kyiv and I said "What?". A bit of google told me that the Ukranians have long wanted the world to spell names they want and avoid the old Russian spellings. Then just recently The United States Board of Geographic Names agreed. So now its #KyivNotKiev.


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## stellie93 (Feb 25, 2006)

Funny that the Russian spelling looks more like English than the Ukrainian.


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## Marco (Sep 19, 2000)

https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/47-dead-at-hbo-chernobylcon/


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## MikeMar (Jan 7, 2005)

WTF!??!?!?!


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

MikeMar said:


> WTF!??!?!?!


Satire site.


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