Welcome for the 2nd episode of Chernobyl. Twas scary times, and much is still unknown. So, I won't say enjoy but witness the real life horror of Chernobyl. We thank you for your support! Please Like, Share and Subscribe!
Absolutely. There’s no shame in not knowing something. There’s a lot of information in the world and nobody can know all of it. The only shame is when you actively try not to learn.
@@diamcole Unfortunately, a lot of teachers and teacher unions have heavy communistic leanings themselves so of course they don't want to talk about anything that would paint the Soviet Union in a bad light. It's frigging insane that we allow it, but most of them downplay the evils of the Soviet Union (which was something that existed as recently as the 1991), yet talk on and on about N*zi Germany (before most of parents and grandparents were born). I'm not trying to downplay what Germany did in WWII, but the Soviet Union and all the Communist states it sponsored are objectively worse. It's kind of obvious that there is a HEAVY bias towards hyper-focusing on a dead bad ideology (N*zis), while ignoring a currently existing bad one that still plagues the earth (N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc) and that has killed millions MORE. The teachers themselves love communism, so of course they won't talk much if at all about it since if you do any light insight into communist countries, it becomes immediately obvious that they are bad BECAUSE OF COMMUNISM.
@@thespectator5259 No. Teachers tend to have _socialist_ leanings. Which, despite all the propaganda thrown around by the republicans, is _NOT_ the same thing as communism. Socialism is compatible with democracy, communism is not.
The "I'll do it myself" guy is Colonel-General Vladimir Karpovich Pikalov, Commander of Chemical Troops of the Soviet Union and veteran of Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. He actually did do the personal reconnaissance of the reactor complex as shown in the show. He was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for his part in leading the cleanup effort at Chernobyl.
@@pierreo33 There are tons of other real-life heroes that could make great movies. But there are movies being made about stupid comic book characters with totally stupid stories.
@@dacsus i dont see ur problem. its nice to have creativity in the world and to give children something to look up to that doesnt seem so brutal. every real life hero is going to die sooner or later. the comics heroes dont have much of an affect. art doesnt take away from life. + there ARE movies abt real life heroes like these and also some ppl dont want the stories spread (abt themselves). i dont see any problems w having marvel heroes, its actually the job of the parents to teach (or the family and wtvr) their children abt real life heroes and the moral compases. (also mb for my english its not my first language and im real tired rn)
the bald man who sits at the head of the long table is Gorbachev, who ran the Soviet Union at the time. I heard that Gorbachev made a statement once where he said he believed Chernobyl was the reason why the Soviet Union failed.
"You are dealing with something that has never occurred on this planet... before." That line hits so damn hard. That says I don't think you realize the gravity of the situation. We have no policy, no plans, no how-to guide, no fucking handbook on something like this. Whatever we do, everything moving forward, we are the first.
that is a very powerful line! When the firemen showed up, they sprayed water on the fire because that's what they do when they try to put out a fire. But if you spray water on something like Chernobyl, it has the opposite effect!
Not *quite* the first; a British graphite reactor overheated and caught fire at Windscale in 1957, and its ruins stand on the site to this day, but they were quite successful at covering up the extent of the disaster. Fire hoses didn't work there either. Fortunately, the reactor core was air-cooled instead of water-cooled, so there was no devastating steam explosion like at Chernobyl, but a lot of radioactive fallout was, nevertheless, released. Disquietingly, due to several botched design decisions and ill-considered retrofits to hurriedly try to catch up with the American H-bomb project, the air-cooled reactor had actually already been quietly venting uranium-235 particles into the surrounding countryside, from damaged fuel cartridges stuck in the exhaust duct, for two years before the fire; it's been suggested that the fire was actually beneficial in the long run because it forced them to shut the leaky Windscale reactors down permanently.
7:06 - 3,6 roentgens - measured by the small dosimeters. 0,008 or "eight milliroentgens measured in the Minsk, 400km away. Very small but still higher than the usual background. like meter and millimeter, liter and milliliter.
i have always been a history nerd. there are so many lessons to be learned , mistakes that were made and heros to be discovered. i always say history should not be erased or forgotten good or bad, but learned from so mistakes will not be repeated.
Gloves wouldn't have helped the doctors. All they have were latex gloves and that does nothing for radiation. The hospital didn't even have iodine pills. Think of how thick firefighter gloves are and how little they did for that one guy who picked up the graphite.
The helicopter crash really happened but it didn’t happen until October during cleanup. There was a crane there and the helicopter’s rotor blades hit the cable.
most people don't notice it, bit in teh show the helicopter crashes because it hits the cable of a the crane next to the ractor building. Most people think it crashes due to the radiation.
To answer your question, 400 rubles were equivalent to 2-3 monthly salaries in the USSR at that time. Great show about a terrible event, great reaction!
Don't ever apologize for not knowing something. My Dad was a professor, and he always used to say that the smartest students weren't afraid to look stupid and ask the "dumb" questions.
Regarding the 400 ruble annual payment for the three men who opened the sluice gate, there really is no way to directly convert the value into US dollars or any other currency. Yes, there is an exchange rate, but the USSR was a closed economy with strict price controls for products. So it is impossible to compare the actual purchasing power by merely converting to a different currency.
it still works like this today, for any country. In Ukraine 600 dollars rn is a pretty decent monthly salary whereas in US the average monthly salary is 6K dollars. The value of money is different.
That pile of clothes in the basement from firemen is still one of the most deadly locations in the area....extremely radioactive. Even people in gear avoid it.
the one part that still chills me to the bone with this episode is when the three men go down in to the water tanks tso the can be drained with the meters going crazy on them
@@KbIPbIL0The 3rd guy didn't die until he ended up succumbing to Leukemia in 2005. I am sure that overexposure to radiation played a major part in his eventual cancer diagnosis the fact that none of them died immediately after or became extremely sick due to extreme radiation poisoning is nothing short of an absolute miracle
25:31 Interesting you said that as those two turned out to be KGB experts. I think Legasov suspected as much because of her smug smile when she asked if there was anything to worry about.
well, but he also seemed surprised when they follow them outside. I think he didn't know, but growing up in the soviet union he was already used to shut up and not speak to his mind because he knew it was dangerous. Even if they weren't KGB there would be the chance that they spread the word and KGB would eventually find out he told them.
Yes its still an issue but they built a huge containment barrier around it. However, in the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine they took over several Nuke plants, one being this one Chernobyl. When the Russians dug trenches near it there was too much radiation in the soil so they abandoned the trenches. If a lot of this is confusing to you, it would help to just get a brief tutorial on WW1, the russian revolution, WW2, and the collapse of the soviet union which took place a few years after the events of this show. Learning these things also makes more sense of the Ukraine war going on right now.
when they were doing the evacuations, a soldier was trying to convince an old woman to leave. She was milking a cow at the time. She talked about all of the changes she had seen in her life, the revolution, WW1 & WW2, etc She said "now you want me to leave because of something I can't see?" She made a good point about all of the history she had seen, but she still had to leave.
You HAVE to see the videos where a group of guys sneak into Chernobyl to examine the lower floors. They are filled with water so they moved around on a cheap, plastic raft. The next time they went they try diving under water... but the guy essentially uses a fish bowl over his head. They also use a bike pump to feed the guy air. I forgot to mention that the time they dive under the water, the water is completely frozen!! They had to break out a hole!! Hahaha
Yep, even we were not fully informed by our own countries. And to some extent we are still not informed because nuclear is considered too important to even be criticised let alone being informed of its danger to life in accidents or security failiures.
@@MrTrevisco Actually, you and so many others are being misled by the media and activist groups. Nuclear energy is not nearly as dangerous as this show, popular media or activists want to make you believe. The death toll as a direct result of the desaster in Chernobyl is 40 (Plant workers and the firefighters). It is estimated that eventually about 4000 people will have died due to radiation inuced cancer. These are the official numbers of the UN In the accident at Fukushima Daiichi one person died from lung cancer so far. A worker of the plant who got higly contaminated.
You'd be mistaken if you thought he'd get 15,000 roentegen right away. Have you ever heard the term "per hour" in the context of radiation? In the context of radiation, the term "per hour" refers to the rate of radiation exposure at a certain place, measured in roentgen per hour (R/hr). It represents the amount of radiation released per unit of time. Therefore, if you stand in an area with a radiation level of 20 roentgen per hour for an hour, you will receive a dose of 20 roentgen. If the radiation level in the area is 20 roentgen per hour and you stand there for one minute, you will absorb only a portion of the entire dose. To get the dose received in one minute, divide the hourly rate by 60 (the number of minutes in an hour) to obtain the dose rate per minute.
After you finish this series, HBO has a documentary called - Cherynobyl The Lost Tapes, with newly unearthed film from the real event. It's even more fascinating because so much of what you see in the tv show dramatized, there were people on the ground actually filming the real thing it as it happened.
heroes indeed. these three men are not celebrated enough. to willingly lay down your life to save 10's of millions lives is the definition of "hero"!!!
There is a movie called "Citizen X" which is the story of how one man catches a serial killer in Soviet Russia and he runs into the same kind of obstacles.
@@clemsonalum98 Correction, was invaded and partially occupied by russia in 2014 whose propaganda justified invasion with "referendum" completely illegal by both Ukrainian and russian law and lacking independent observers and any reason to believe its results.
Something important to note. She is not a real person. The woman scientist who detects the spread of radiation is a representative of ALL the scientists in the Soviet Union who worked on the Chernobyl disaster
I was only a child living in Italy abut I still remember. In North Italy we were advised not to go out and stay home. I didn't go to school for days and there were 24 hrs news on tv talking and updating about it and about radiations. So scary. After the disasters and for many many years , italian families hosted many ukrainian orphans or cancer survivor children in the summer months to give them some "carefree" time in a healtier environement .
This is what living in communism was like. Some people today have forgotten or maybe they never knew in the first place, but this is a perfect representation of why we need to never go back to that. Thanks for reacting to this!
It's kind of darkly hilarious, because part of Communist theory is the withering away of the state. The whole idea was that there wouldn't be a big government, it wouldn't be needed. And then it got coopted by assholes who wanted to keep power, like so many revolutions do.
Fun fact: The actor that played the general was the actor that played Shagga , one of the Hilltribesmen that captured Tyrion and Bronn in the first season of GoT. The 400 rubles offered to the men to open the sluice gate was a pittance. The current form of government of Russia can best be described as an oligarchy. Generally speaking, this miniseries does a pretty good job of representing how the Soviet Union functioned during the Cold War, though keep in mind you're only seeing a small slice of it. The space program. foreign policy, domestic production, the economy, the war in Iraq... There are innumerable facets that aren't addressed at all in this. If you're a history buff reading up on the Cold War would be a good and rewarding use of your time.
The guy that opened the window and the alarm went off that works with the female scientist is Larys "the clubfoot" from House of the Dragon. Peop.e are actually allowed to live just outside the exclusion zone. I read an article about a woman who received a monthly stipend for food and stuff and was allowed to serve as a caregiver to an elderly gentleman who lived near the exclusion zone and they willed his house to her when he passed away after 5 years of her caring for him.
I know its been almost a year but I dont see your question answered so...yes a Ruble, Russias currency was not worth much OUTSIDE it. So 400 Rubles outside of Russia was very little. But inside Russia it was basically about as much as a person could expect in a poor state that did not care about its people.
I can't imagine having all the molecules and cells in my body disintegrate and suffer as my body literally falls apart. And it's all invisible . It's in the air, the water, and on everything you touch, just being next to someone exposed to it affects you. It's not a virus or bacteria it's radiation and it's horrifying. It freaks me out every time I get an x-ray done, like I know its totally safe, and so are nuclear power plants today but it's still so freaky to think about.
@meganoob12 you can use tools to detect it but you are wrong, you cannot see it nor can you detect it with any of the human senses except for its dire affects. Affects such as literally melting the molecules of your cells apart.
@@dalialto I can sense that you only feel fear an have no sense for natural sience. Compared to muchdangerous things like viruses or chemicals, radiation is pretty tame. You need a huge dose to actually die and it is easy to detect, measure and avoid. People work with radiation every fucking day.
When Scherbina is saying why "it must be done" ....he says if not, "millions will die" : I always thought he could have added "....including everybody here " ... at least they'd have known they were likely no worse off for going in and were all pretty much in the same boat.....
There’s no shame in not knowing some stuff, Major! Everyone had to learn something new at some point. A friend once told me never to be ashamed at what we don’t know. It’s only when we have no desire to learn that we should be ashamed.
Nothing has changed in Russia either. They had a nuclear accident a couple years back testing some nuclear powered cruise missile. Nothing as bad as this of course, but if you look up the Polygon and whatever the name of their company town and nuclear lake dump site its bad. They have a long horrible history in nuclear energy and weapons and their people always pay the price. Thanks for watching this though. It's extremely important historically and still influences geopolitics to this day.
You should watch the series “The Americans” it takes place in the 80’s during the Cold War. It’ll give you a better understanding about about the US/Soviet tensions. It’s a great series about the KGB spies living amongst us
Love that show was going to suggest it. They get the time in the 80s dead on. I love that there was an episode where the spies kids are watching “The Day After” just remember us watching it as a group when i was 12…. It was terrifying. People who were born after the Cold War have no idea how it was back then…
There is a documentary called "Chernobyl: the lost tapes" that has real archival footage and recordings by people involved. It's a good follow-up to the series
i would have to say thank you to the brave men and women who dealt with the disaster of chernobyl because i would only have been almost 2 years old when this actually happened i consider myself lucky
I'm so glad you're watching this show. I remember it happening and sheep in Wales were getting ill within a week of the explosion. After the show finishes I'll give you some suggestions for you to Google, the after effects of what the Radion did to the animals and children. Horrific 😱😡
So I had a coworker who lived near the area of Pripyat (just outside of the evacuation zone) and she told me that to this day she gets moments where the radiation still affected her.
This happened in l986 at the height of the Cold War. It happened in the Ukraine which was a part of the Soviet Union at that time. The fallout cloud went over Europe and actually went across the USA. They were warning us to limit our time outside when it went over. I had just studied the effect of nuclear fallout in university. I knew what fallout could do to people. I was a young mother at the time. I had to keep my 4-year-old son inside to keep him safe. He didn't understand why I wouldn't let him play outside as he normally did How do you explain to a 4-year-old that something is outside that could hurt him? Something he couldn't see or hear. I had to get really creative at ways to distract him and keep him inside. It was a hard week for us both. lol I think that Communism had a something to do with this being so bad.
@@SweetLadyTiger i remember them making a big deal out of watching it with others, we did it with my church group so parents could be there. I was only 12 and it terrified us…. Love the show The Americans which takes place during that era…
I know a Ukrainian here in the 🇺🇸 that lost his entire family because of the disaster he was 8 or 9 when it happened his parents sent him to a school outside of Pripyat at the time so he didn't get hit with the nuclear fallout like they did.. His siblings, parents, grandparents.. An aunt and uncle took him in and they ended up over here.. He went back over and is fighting for his country against the communists. I hope and pray he's still okay i haven't heard from him in months though.. If you want you should check out actual documentaries of Chernobyl. They didn't want to look weak in the face of Russia..
Russia at the time was known as the Soviet Union or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). 1 party rule or 'communism' was the system of government. This series throws into stark reality the mindset of a communist society. The government rules everything, media, schools, distribution of goods... everything. State-media would obfuscate and lie to the nth extent to protect the party. You can see it creeping into the US with the way the media and the government are working together to keep US citizens overloaded with social BS and mitigating serious issues.
One of crazy things I always found horryingly fascinating was when at the meeting after even when reaching a small victory with the drops they realized they inadvertently built a possibly worlds largest thermal nuclear weapon ready to detonate in 2 days 🤨😬
which is laughable and complete nonsense. A reactor is not and will never be a thermal nuclear weapon. All that would have happened is another steam explosion similar to the one in episode one. The problem would not be that half of europe would be destroyed by the explosion... the issue would've been, that it would've send more radioactive dust into the upper atmosphere speading more radiactive material.
The evacuation message in pripyet states the accident at chernobyl everyone is to evacuate this won't last long in three days you'll return home Pripyet still remains radioactive to this day. No one has ever returned since
I still remember it from the News and stuff when i was a kid. The radiation went up to Norway where i live. Cancer rare has gone up wild the last 20 years over here.
We watched those helicopter clips on the news at night, where it fell into the reactor. It was shocking stuff , but we all knew it had to be done, and that they were heroes for doing it!
400 rubles in 1986 In 1986 the trade value from Rubles to Dollar was ~0.76 Rubles for $1 Meaning for 1 Ruble you had ~$1.32 400 rubles = $526.32 Adjust that for inflation to 2023: $1335.85 So a yearly bonus of 1300 bucks. To sacrifice your life... not much. However, since it's for saving millions of people, I do think it's worth it
22:03 Respect for a real leader. Despite the lies and corruption it’s clear there were plenty of heroes acting as patriots for their country. I respect those who sacrifice themselves for others.
When you said the respectto the general part. You did it almost perfectly. It wouldhave been respect comrade general (last name). You got really close! Keep going!
The pile of contaminated fire fighters uniforms still remain undisturbed in the basement of what had been the hospital in Pripyat still, 37 years later!
About the rubles, the money. You have to take into consideration that the living standards in the soviet union in that time were few times lowers that in the us. So it is a significant amount of compensation, tho, I don't know how much.
It still was not much. It was like 2-3 months pay for a factory worker. Not even like hazard pay. But their whole compensation system & ideas about private ownership was different. That said, it was not much.
You will be interest to know that the three men who went in survived and did not even have radiation sickness--I can only ascribe that to a genuine miracle. Somebody up there was watching out for them.
22:28 "I don't know nothin about Soviet Union" Ah, but the point is you're learning😁 and that's what matters! That whole society was built on wanting to keep secrets and a circle of accountability - fear and deniability. So finally finding out all these things helps keep the world from repeating these mistakes... hopefully.😖
I doubt you'll see this but I always wondered why they couldn't use a pipe system of some type instead of helicopters.... like either crudly run on hook up some big pipes pointed at the core from a decent amount meters away then run it so far and then high pressure spray it... but I don't know the consistency of boron so might not be possible... I'm gonna look it up actually right now lol...
Chernobyl is only one of multiple incidents where they had similar type radiation events. Look up the Kyshtym Disaster and City 4. I’m willing to bet Chernobyl was just the first one to make the news. Also, Russia still denies the footage of the helicopter crashing.
until today, we breathe the radiation in, every one on this planet! Not only Chernobyl, every nuclear test, every nuclear bomb…. the concentration is not high, but it is there.
You have to understand the context (USSR) to truly make sense of the secrecy. To begin with, the Soviet Union was far more communist than socialist, at least by modern definition. That means the state owns, operates and controls everything right down to the people, themselves. By 1986 the Cold War had reduced the Soviet Union to the mere perception of power and control. 30 years of lies and secrecy took their toll and the state was in dire economic and political turmoil, Gorbachev and all his staff didn't start it, and by that point they could do little to solve the systemic problems, it was all they could do to just save face. Aside from the government, the worldwide general public wasn't well informed about the effects of radiation (even after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Soviet scientists actually thought radiation could provide amazing health benefits), Chernobyl is why we know.
Major that monetary conversion is legit. Rubles vs US Dollars was always garbage. This story is just so heartbreaking. Idk if you remember but Japan's Fukushima plant that had their cores overheat sent waves of radioactive wind to the west coast of the US. That's why I moved out of Southern Cali. This shit is crazy my dude.
this was the Soviet Union (USSR). Consisting of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other republics. They split apart in 1991. It was a communist dictatorship. If you want to see how bad it was, watch the HBO show "Stalin" with Robert Duvall. It was based on a book by Stalin's daughter. Scary stuff.
I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that the "Maester Leuwin," the old man who made the horrible "inspiring" speech to that local committee in the bunker in Episode One was an old dude that people listened to, but didn't necessarily take orders from. Think he may have briefly helped bolster the two plan managers' efforts to cover up their negligence, but I'm not sure anyone literally shut down all communication the way he suggested. He seems like one of those "respected elders" the younger leaders keep around, but aren't people who actually make policy. I could be wrong though!
Welcome for the 2nd episode of Chernobyl. Twas scary times, and much is still unknown. So, I won't say enjoy but witness the real life horror of Chernobyl. We thank you for your support! Please Like, Share and Subscribe!
So fucked bro
Fuckin the current war it’s so fucked man
The fireman uniforms are still in the basement of the hospital and heavily contaminated with radition to this day
Never apologize for lacking knowledge when you are actively learning about the subject at hand. ❤️
Absolutely. There’s no shame in not knowing something. There’s a lot of information in the world and nobody can know all of it.
The only shame is when you actively try not to learn.
Especially when we Americans born in the 90s were taught almost nothing about the horrors and atrocities of the Soviet Union......
@@jakevandewoestyne269 Seriously! I had to seek that information out for myself, it was never even touched on in my school.
@@diamcole Unfortunately, a lot of teachers and teacher unions have heavy communistic leanings themselves so of course they don't want to talk about anything that would paint the Soviet Union in a bad light. It's frigging insane that we allow it, but most of them downplay the evils of the Soviet Union (which was something that existed as recently as the 1991), yet talk on and on about N*zi Germany (before most of parents and grandparents were born).
I'm not trying to downplay what Germany did in WWII, but the Soviet Union and all the Communist states it sponsored are objectively worse. It's kind of obvious that there is a HEAVY bias towards hyper-focusing on a dead bad ideology (N*zis), while ignoring a currently existing bad one that still plagues the earth (N Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, etc) and that has killed millions MORE. The teachers themselves love communism, so of course they won't talk much if at all about it since if you do any light insight into communist countries, it becomes immediately obvious that they are bad BECAUSE OF COMMUNISM.
@@thespectator5259 No. Teachers tend to have _socialist_ leanings. Which, despite all the propaganda thrown around by the republicans, is _NOT_ the same thing as communism. Socialism is compatible with democracy, communism is not.
The "I'll do it myself" guy is Colonel-General Vladimir Karpovich Pikalov, Commander of Chemical Troops of the Soviet Union and veteran of Stalingrad, Kursk, and Berlin. He actually did do the personal reconnaissance of the reactor complex as shown in the show. He was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union for his part in leading the cleanup effort at Chernobyl.
The scene where he's asking the men to volunteer gets me every time. Every actor just absolutely killed it in that scene.
Yea, they were real heroes, not Marvel BS.
@@dacsus what.
@@pierreo33 There are tons of other real-life heroes that could make great movies.
But there are movies being made about stupid comic book characters with totally stupid stories.
Those 3 guys actually lived a decently long life. They were well protected from the radiation. Idk that until I watched a MoJo video.😊
@@dacsus i dont see ur problem. its nice to have creativity in the world and to give children something to look up to that doesnt seem so brutal. every real life hero is going to die sooner or later. the comics heroes dont have much of an affect. art doesnt take away from life. + there ARE movies abt real life heroes like these and also some ppl dont want the stories spread (abt themselves). i dont see any problems w having marvel heroes, its actually the job of the parents to teach (or the family and wtvr) their children abt real life heroes and the moral compases. (also mb for my english its not my first language and im real tired rn)
the bald man who sits at the head of the long table is Gorbachev, who ran the Soviet Union at the time. I heard that Gorbachev made a statement once where he said he believed Chernobyl was the reason why the Soviet Union failed.
I know this is late. I apologize. It was one of the reasons Chernobyl, Soviet afghan war and the wall coming down.
The fireman was wearing gloves, you'll realise the more you watch radiation rips through everything. Everything!
Gamma radiation penetrates everything... alpha can get stopped by a sheet of paper
radiation =/= radiation
"You are dealing with something that has never occurred on this planet... before." That line hits so damn hard. That says I don't think you realize the gravity of the situation. We have no policy, no plans, no how-to guide, no fucking handbook on something like this. Whatever we do, everything moving forward, we are the first.
That is / was a very scary line !!....
that is a very powerful line! When the firemen showed up, they sprayed water on the fire because that's what they do when they try to put out a fire. But if you spray water on something like Chernobyl, it has the opposite effect!
Not *quite* the first; a British graphite reactor overheated and caught fire at Windscale in 1957, and its ruins stand on the site to this day, but they were quite successful at covering up the extent of the disaster. Fire hoses didn't work there either. Fortunately, the reactor core was air-cooled instead of water-cooled, so there was no devastating steam explosion like at Chernobyl, but a lot of radioactive fallout was, nevertheless, released. Disquietingly, due to several botched design decisions and ill-considered retrofits to hurriedly try to catch up with the American H-bomb project, the air-cooled reactor had actually already been quietly venting uranium-235 particles into the surrounding countryside, from damaged fuel cartridges stuck in the exhaust duct, for two years before the fire; it's been suggested that the fire was actually beneficial in the long run because it forced them to shut the leaky Windscale reactors down permanently.
The firefighters clothes are still in the basement of the Pripyat hospital and are still extremely radioactive.
The most radioactive place in the world, outside of a reactor.
I love how eager you are to learn and understand the past.
7:06 - 3,6 roentgens - measured by the small dosimeters. 0,008 or "eight milliroentgens measured in the Minsk, 400km away. Very small but still higher than the usual background. like meter and millimeter, liter and milliliter.
i have always been a history nerd. there are so many lessons to be learned , mistakes that were made and heros to be discovered. i always say history should not be erased or forgotten good or bad, but learned from so mistakes will not be repeated.
Absolutely correct. It's sad how we seem to be repeating bad parts of history now a days...
They more or less are not teaching kids about history in schools.
This man reacting had never heard of the Chernobyl reactor meltdown.
Or changed, and sadly, that is exactly what happens nowadays.
@@dacsus Are you complaining about taking the bias and propaganda out of history, or is there something else changing lately that's actually bad?
@@MySerpentine Its not about propaganda, but about characters, and some details. There are documentary movies about that.
Gloves in the 80's lmao. The only gloves we had on our ambulance was for child birth. Wash your hands was your gloves.
Gloves wouldn't have helped the doctors. All they have were latex gloves and that does nothing for radiation. The hospital didn't even have iodine pills. Think of how thick firefighter gloves are and how little they did for that one guy who picked up the graphite.
The helicopter crash really happened but it didn’t happen until October during cleanup. There was a crane there and the helicopter’s rotor blades hit the cable.
most people don't notice it, bit in teh show the helicopter crashes because it hits the cable of a the crane next to the ractor building. Most people think it crashes due to the radiation.
To answer your question, 400 rubles were equivalent to 2-3 monthly salaries in the USSR at that time.
Great show about a terrible event, great reaction!
gorbachev is the president of the Soviet Union during Chernobyl, he’s the one with the birth mark on his head
Don't ever apologize for not knowing something. My Dad was a professor, and he always used to say that the smartest students weren't afraid to look stupid and ask the "dumb" questions.
Agreed. Also even for the people who know the answers to the question now, there was a time when it was new to them.
Reallllly gotta be thankful this shit didn’t go completely sideways and end the whole damn planet. Damn humans…
We can be idiots, huh?
Despite the many systematic failures, there are so many heroes who stood up during this disaster.
Much love to the bio-bots!
Regarding the 400 ruble annual payment for the three men who opened the sluice gate, there really is no way to directly convert the value into US dollars or any other currency. Yes, there is an exchange rate, but the USSR was a closed economy with strict price controls for products. So it is impossible to compare the actual purchasing power by merely converting to a different currency.
it still works like this today, for any country. In Ukraine 600 dollars rn is a pretty decent monthly salary whereas in US the average monthly salary is 6K dollars. The value of money is different.
That pile of clothes in the basement from firemen is still one of the most deadly locations in the area....extremely radioactive. Even people in gear avoid it.
the one part that still chills me to the bone with this episode is when the three men go down in to the water tanks tso the can be drained
with the meters going crazy on them
It make my skin crawl.
i heard 2 of them survived 😮
@@KbIPbIL0The 3rd guy didn't die until he ended up succumbing to Leukemia in 2005. I am sure that overexposure to radiation played a major part in his eventual cancer diagnosis the fact that none of them died immediately after or became extremely sick due to extreme radiation poisoning is nothing short of an absolute miracle
this was the only time that a u.s. president and russian president ever talked candidly and offered mutual support over anything.
25:31 Interesting you said that as those two turned out to be KGB experts. I think Legasov suspected as much because of her smug smile when she asked if there was anything to worry about.
well, but he also seemed surprised when they follow them outside. I think he didn't know, but growing up in the soviet union he was already used to shut up and not speak to his mind because he knew it was dangerous. Even if they weren't KGB there would be the chance that they spread the word and KGB would eventually find out he told them.
Ha Ha. Fun Fact. The guy in the Institute from the beginning was Mr. foot Fetish from " House of the Dragon"
You beat me to it!😂😂
Yes its still an issue but they built a huge containment barrier around it. However, in the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine they took over several Nuke plants, one being this one Chernobyl. When the Russians dug trenches near it there was too much radiation in the soil so they abandoned the trenches. If a lot of this is confusing to you, it would help to just get a brief tutorial on WW1, the russian revolution, WW2, and the collapse of the soviet union which took place a few years after the events of this show. Learning these things also makes more sense of the Ukraine war going on right now.
The discovery of natural gas in Donbass also had something to do with the Russian invasion
when they were doing the evacuations, a soldier was trying to convince an old woman to leave. She was milking a cow at the time. She talked about all of the changes she had seen in her life, the revolution, WW1 & WW2, etc She said "now you want me to leave because of something I can't see?" She made a good point about all of the history she had seen, but she still had to leave.
You HAVE to see the videos where a group of guys sneak into Chernobyl to examine the lower floors. They are filled with water so they moved around on a cheap, plastic raft. The next time they went they try diving under water... but the guy essentially uses a fish bowl over his head. They also use a bike pump to feed the guy air. I forgot to mention that the time they dive under the water, the water is completely frozen!! They had to break out a hole!! Hahaha
Never apologize for learning ❤. Honestly loving the unkown reaction.
I was in the US military stationed in Germany when it happened. Parents kept their kids at home for a while not knowing the full story.
Yep, even we were not fully informed by our own countries. And to some extent we are still not informed because nuclear is considered too important to even be criticised let alone being informed of its danger to life in accidents or security failiures.
@@MrTrevisco Actually, you and so many others are being misled by the media and activist groups. Nuclear energy is not nearly as dangerous as this show, popular media or activists want to make you believe.
The death toll as a direct result of the desaster in Chernobyl is 40 (Plant workers and the firefighters). It is estimated that eventually about 4000 people will have died due to radiation inuced cancer.
These are the official numbers of the UN
In the accident at Fukushima Daiichi one person died from lung cancer so far. A worker of the plant who got higly contaminated.
Those men were absolutely hero's!
You'd be mistaken if you thought he'd get 15,000 roentegen right away. Have you ever heard the term "per hour" in the context of radiation?
In the context of radiation, the term "per hour" refers to the rate of radiation exposure at a certain place, measured in roentgen per hour (R/hr). It represents the amount of radiation released per unit of time.
Therefore, if you stand in an area with a radiation level of 20 roentgen per hour for an hour, you will receive a dose of 20 roentgen.
If the radiation level in the area is 20 roentgen per hour and you stand there for one minute, you will absorb only a portion of the entire dose. To get the dose received in one minute, divide the hourly rate by 60 (the number of minutes in an hour) to obtain the dose rate per minute.
After you finish this series, HBO has a documentary called - Cherynobyl The Lost Tapes, with newly unearthed film from the real event. It's even more fascinating because so much of what you see in the tv show dramatized, there were people on the ground actually filming the real thing it as it happened.
Oh wow I had no idea. Thanks for letting us know.
It’s also a great documentary…. Seeing the live footage is the craziest part…
heroes indeed. these three men are not celebrated enough. to willingly lay down your life to save 10's of millions lives is the definition of "hero"!!!
There is a movie called "Citizen X" which is the story of how one man catches a serial killer in Soviet Russia and he runs into the same kind of obstacles.
I was born in Donetsk (Ukraine) 400 miles away from Chernobyl. I was 1 year old when this happened.
Isn't that one of the regions that voted to be independent?
@@clemsonalum98 yeah Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.
@@clemsonalum98 Correction, was invaded and partially occupied by russia in 2014 whose propaganda justified invasion with "referendum" completely illegal by both Ukrainian and russian law and lacking independent observers and any reason to believe its results.
Something important to note. She is not a real person. The woman scientist who detects the spread of radiation is a representative of ALL the scientists in the Soviet Union who worked on the Chernobyl disaster
I was only a child living in Italy abut I still remember. In North Italy we were advised not to go out and stay home. I didn't go to school for days and there were 24 hrs news on tv talking and updating about it and about radiations. So scary. After the disasters and for many many years , italian families hosted many ukrainian orphans or cancer survivor children in the summer months to give them some "carefree" time in a healtier environement .
Someone asked me to sum up this series in one word. The one I thought of was dread. Just overwhelming dread.
This is what living in communism was like. Some people today have forgotten or maybe they never knew in the first place, but this is a perfect representation of why we need to never go back to that. Thanks for reacting to this!
And this was relaxed compared to the 50s and 60s
It's kind of darkly hilarious, because part of Communist theory is the withering away of the state. The whole idea was that there wouldn't be a big government, it wouldn't be needed. And then it got coopted by assholes who wanted to keep power, like so many revolutions do.
Just curious if you ever lived in a socialist country? There has never been a communist country
@@pyatig bro is telling a Romanian there has never been a communist country go back to bed pls.
Fun fact: The actor that played the general was the actor that played Shagga , one of the Hilltribesmen that captured Tyrion and Bronn in the first season of GoT. The 400 rubles offered to the men to open the sluice gate was a pittance. The current form of government of Russia can best be described as an oligarchy. Generally speaking, this miniseries does a pretty good job of representing how the Soviet Union functioned during the Cold War, though keep in mind you're only seeing a small slice of it. The space program. foreign policy, domestic production, the economy, the war in Iraq... There are innumerable facets that aren't addressed at all in this. If you're a history buff reading up on the Cold War would be a good and rewarding use of your time.
Hahah. I did not catch that. He looked vaguely familiar but I not recognize him from anything.
The guy that opened the window and the alarm went off that works with the female scientist is Larys "the clubfoot" from House of the Dragon. Peop.e are actually allowed to live just outside the exclusion zone. I read an article about a woman who received a monthly stipend for food and stuff and was allowed to serve as a caregiver to an elderly gentleman who lived near the exclusion zone and they willed his house to her when he passed away after 5 years of her caring for him.
I know its been almost a year but I dont see your question answered so...yes a Ruble, Russias currency was not worth much OUTSIDE it.
So 400 Rubles outside of Russia was very little. But inside Russia it was basically about as much as a person could expect in a poor state that did not care about its people.
I can't imagine having all the molecules and cells in my body disintegrate and suffer as my body literally falls apart. And it's all invisible . It's in the air, the water, and on everything you touch, just being next to someone exposed to it affects you. It's not a virus or bacteria it's radiation and it's horrifying. It freaks me out every time I get an x-ray done, like I know its totally safe, and so are nuclear power plants today but it's still so freaky to think about.
radiation is actually not that scary. Yes you cannot see it, but is is really easy to measure.
@meganoob12 you can use tools to detect it but you are wrong, you cannot see it nor can you detect it with any of the human senses except for its dire affects. Affects such as literally melting the molecules of your cells apart.
@@dalialto I can sense that you only feel fear an have no sense for natural sience. Compared to muchdangerous things like viruses or chemicals, radiation is pretty tame. You need a huge dose to actually die and it is easy to detect, measure and avoid. People work with radiation every fucking day.
Unbelievably those three legends survived.
19:00. Many Government official the Soviet Union comes from factory workers
whereas in the United States the average politician comes from a lawyer
When Scherbina is saying why "it must be done" ....he says if not, "millions will die" : I always thought he could have added "....including everybody here " ... at least they'd have known they were likely no worse off for going in and were all pretty much in the same boat.....
There’s no shame in not knowing some stuff, Major! Everyone had to learn something new at some point. A friend once told me never to be ashamed at what we don’t know. It’s only when we have no desire to learn that we should be ashamed.
Remember Santayana. Those who can't remember the past are doomed to repeat it
Nothing has changed in Russia either. They had a nuclear accident a couple years back testing some nuclear powered cruise missile. Nothing as bad as this of course, but if you look up the Polygon and whatever the name of their company town and nuclear lake dump site its bad. They have a long horrible history in nuclear energy and weapons and their people always pay the price. Thanks for watching this though. It's extremely important historically and still influences geopolitics to this day.
You should watch the series “The Americans” it takes place in the 80’s during the Cold War. It’ll give you a better understanding about about the US/Soviet tensions. It’s a great series about the KGB spies living amongst us
Love that show was going to suggest it. They get the time in the 80s dead on. I love that there was an episode where the spies kids are watching “The Day After” just remember us watching it as a group when i was 12…. It was terrifying. People who were born after the Cold War have no idea how it was back then…
@@Pharmerlynda 💯
There is a documentary called "Chernobyl: the lost tapes" that has real archival footage and recordings by people involved. It's a good follow-up to the series
what's really amazing is the fact that the clothes are still sitting in the bottom of the hospital to this day.
i would have to say thank you to the brave men and women who dealt with the disaster of chernobyl because i would only have been almost 2 years old when this actually happened i consider myself lucky
I believe the pile of clothes is still there in the hospital basement--and I expect that the hospital has long been abandoned...
This series got and still gets entire generations to learn about the Cold War and nuclear reactors with just 5 episodes..
I'm so glad you're watching this show. I remember it happening and sheep in Wales were getting ill within a week of the explosion. After the show finishes I'll give you some suggestions for you to Google, the after effects of what the Radion did to the animals and children. Horrific 😱😡
So I had a coworker who lived near the area of Pripyat (just outside of the evacuation zone) and she told me that to this day she gets moments where the radiation still affected her.
This happened in l986 at the height of the Cold War. It happened in the Ukraine which was a part of the Soviet Union at that time. The fallout cloud went over Europe and actually went across the USA. They were warning us to limit our time outside when it went over. I had just studied the effect of nuclear fallout in university. I knew what fallout could do to people. I was a young mother at the time. I had to keep my 4-year-old son inside to keep him safe. He didn't understand why I wouldn't let him play outside as he normally did How do you explain to a 4-year-old that something is outside that could hurt him? Something he couldn't see or hear. I had to get really creative at ways to distract him and keep him inside. It was a hard week for us both. lol I think that Communism had a something to do with this being so bad.
Do u remember watching the day after?😊
@@Pharmerlynda Yes, I did watch it. I also watched the British film Threads. Both were about nuclear war. Pretty scary stuff.
@@SweetLadyTiger i remember them making a big deal out of watching it with others, we did it with my church group so parents could be there. I was only 12 and it terrified us…. Love the show The Americans which takes place during that era…
She says that Chernobyl is so far away that to get that high a radiation reading "they would have to be split open' which, of course they were.
I know a Ukrainian here in the 🇺🇸 that lost his entire family because of the disaster he was 8 or 9 when it happened his parents sent him to a school outside of Pripyat at the time so he didn't get hit with the nuclear fallout like they did.. His siblings, parents, grandparents.. An aunt and uncle took him in and they ended up over here.. He went back over and is fighting for his country against the communists. I hope and pray he's still okay i haven't heard from him in months though.. If you want you should check out actual documentaries of Chernobyl. They didn't want to look weak in the face of Russia..
"The professor form Thor" hahaha
When it comes to addressing in the Soviet Union, you address civilians as 'comrade' or 'tovarisch' and military members by their respective rank.
Chernobyl is masterpiece , great reaction
The fireman's cloths are still in the hospital basement today
Russia at the time was known as the Soviet Union or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). 1 party rule or 'communism' was the system of government. This series throws into stark reality the mindset of a communist society. The government rules everything, media, schools, distribution of goods... everything. State-media would obfuscate and lie to the nth extent to protect the party. You can see it creeping into the US with the way the media and the government are working together to keep US citizens overloaded with social BS and mitigating serious issues.
Facts - the last 3 years… well 🤷🏼♀️
One of crazy things I always found horryingly fascinating was when at the meeting after even when reaching a small victory with the drops they realized they inadvertently built a possibly worlds largest thermal nuclear weapon ready to detonate in 2 days 🤨😬
which is laughable and complete nonsense. A reactor is not and will never be a thermal nuclear weapon.
All that would have happened is another steam explosion similar to the one in episode one. The problem would not be that half of europe would be destroyed by the explosion... the issue would've been, that it would've send more radioactive dust into the upper atmosphere speading more radiactive material.
The evacuation message in pripyet states the accident at chernobyl everyone is to evacuate this won't last long in three days you'll return home
Pripyet still remains radioactive to this day. No one has ever returned since
I still remember it from the News and stuff when i was a kid. The radiation went up to Norway where i live. Cancer rare has gone up wild the last 20 years over here.
More terrifying that any stupid cheesy ass hollywood horror movie.
3.5 roentgen, to 200 , to 15,000. 2 hiroshima bombs per hour...have a nice day!
We watched those helicopter clips on the news at night, where it fell into the reactor. It was shocking stuff , but we all knew it had to be done, and that they were heroes for doing it!
Just realized watching this Ulana's assistant in the beginning is the same actor who plays Larys Strong in House of the Dragon.
400 rubles in 1986
In 1986 the trade value from Rubles to Dollar was ~0.76 Rubles for $1
Meaning for 1 Ruble you had ~$1.32
400 rubles = $526.32
Adjust that for inflation to 2023: $1335.85
So a yearly bonus of 1300 bucks. To sacrifice your life... not much. However, since it's for saving millions of people, I do think it's worth it
22:03 Respect for a real leader. Despite the lies and corruption it’s clear there were plenty of heroes acting as patriots for their country. I respect those who sacrifice themselves for others.
When you said the respectto the general part. You did it almost perfectly. It wouldhave been respect comrade general (last name). You got really close! Keep going!
7:04 That was 8 milliroentgen, gang. They detected 0.008 roentgen
That pile of contaminated firefighter clothing is still in that basement.
400 rubles at the time was actually like $650, but still a pittance of what those guys should have got for life.
Just realized the male scientist at the lab with Ulana is the same actor that plays Larys in House of the Dragon
There's a documentary called "Chernobyl's Heart". It's about 50 minutes long. It's interesting and about the 2nd generation.
The pile of contaminated fire fighters uniforms still remain undisturbed in the basement of what had been the hospital in Pripyat still, 37 years later!
About the rubles, the money. You have to take into consideration that the living standards in the soviet union in that time were few times lowers that in the us. So it is a significant amount of compensation, tho, I don't know how much.
It still was not much. It was like 2-3 months pay for a factory worker.
Not even like hazard pay.
But their whole compensation system & ideas about private ownership was different.
That said, it was not much.
32:56 is this a suitcase pass?? Information out??
You will be interest to know that the three men who went in survived and did not even have radiation sickness--I can only ascribe that to a genuine miracle. Somebody up there was watching out for them.
22:28 "I don't know nothin about Soviet Union" Ah, but the point is you're learning😁 and that's what matters!
That whole society was built on wanting to keep secrets and a circle of accountability - fear and deniability. So finally finding out all these things helps keep the world from repeating these mistakes... hopefully.😖
I doubt you'll see this but I always wondered why they couldn't use a pipe system of some type instead of helicopters.... like either crudly run on hook up some big pipes pointed at the core from a decent amount meters away then run it so far and then high pressure spray it... but I don't know the consistency of boron so might not be possible... I'm gonna look it up actually right now lol...
In Soviet union 400 was a big sum. Average salary in Soviet union in 1986 was 179 rubles (according to google)
Chernobyl is only one of multiple incidents where they had similar type radiation events. Look up the Kyshtym Disaster and City 4. I’m willing to bet Chernobyl was just the first one to make the news.
Also, Russia still denies the footage of the helicopter crashing.
I bet your frustration will only grow stronger and stronger, before the series reaches its conclusion. Please remain calm.
until today, we breathe the radiation in, every one on this planet! Not only Chernobyl, every nuclear test, every nuclear bomb…. the concentration is not high, but it is there.
400 Rubles in 1986 was about $700
I visited Chernobyl in 2011. Sobering place.
Just wait. The pile of clothes they put in the hospital basement is still there till this day
i think four hundred roubles is about enough to buy a new television. it’s not a lot, really.
You have to understand the context (USSR) to truly make sense of the secrecy. To begin with, the Soviet Union was far more communist than socialist, at least by modern definition. That means the state owns, operates and controls everything right down to the people, themselves. By 1986 the Cold War had reduced the Soviet Union to the mere perception of power and control. 30 years of lies and secrecy took their toll and the state was in dire economic and political turmoil, Gorbachev and all his staff didn't start it, and by that point they could do little to solve the systemic problems, it was all they could do to just save face. Aside from the government, the worldwide general public wasn't well informed about the effects of radiation (even after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Soviet scientists actually thought radiation could provide amazing health benefits), Chernobyl is why we know.
Major that monetary conversion is legit. Rubles vs US Dollars was always garbage. This story is just so heartbreaking. Idk if you remember but Japan's Fukushima plant that had their cores overheat sent waves of radioactive wind to the west coast of the US. That's why I moved out of Southern Cali. This shit is crazy my dude.
Just got home from my parents. Can't wait to see this one. Thanks Major.
This is Soviet politics. F the people as long as the chosen few look powerful.
Communist mentality- facts!
this was the Soviet Union (USSR). Consisting of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other republics. They split apart in 1991. It was a communist dictatorship. If you want to see how bad it was, watch the HBO show "Stalin" with Robert Duvall. It was based on a book by Stalin's daughter. Scary stuff.
This was the old USSR when it happened. This disaster was just one factor to bring the USSR to fall.
I don't know for sure, but I get the feeling that the "Maester Leuwin," the old man who made the horrible "inspiring" speech to that local committee in the bunker in Episode One was an old dude that people listened to, but didn't necessarily take orders from. Think he may have briefly helped bolster the two plan managers' efforts to cover up their negligence, but I'm not sure anyone literally shut down all communication the way he suggested. He seems like one of those "respected elders" the younger leaders keep around, but aren't people who actually make policy. I could be wrong though!