Very good drama indeed. Too bad its so full of false info just to make it more exciting for the viewer. The helicopter thing never happened. The "if-the-reactor-touches-the-water-it-will-nuke-everything" never happened. Also, check out "Galen Winsor the man who ate uranium". Peace.
@@emil87th Yes. In reality a helicopter crashed 6 months after the explosion, and only because it hit a crane. In the show they make it seem like it goes down because of radiation... "Dont go to close to the core!" "Remind them of the perimiter!" "Nonono! They are too close to the core!" "The wind will have to carry it!" Etc..
7:24 When you're staring into the fire that just killed you. This whole thing is really freaking Lovecraftian in how it's presented, and I love it, because radiation has so many of those tropes. It's barely (certainly in the time and society onscreen) understood, if at all, even by the people stuck working with it. You can't see it most of the time it's around. Its mere presence begins to warp your body in ways you can't survive. Being near it is basically death, and if you do happen to lay eyes on it, then it's already too late.
Few things scare me as much as anything nuclear. If you mess with it your skin peels off, muscles and veins disintegrate and death is extraordinary painful.
The reason she asks if they stock iodine is because one of the common substances released in nuclear fallout (like from Chernobyl) is I-131, a radioactive isotope of iodine. Iodine in the body is absorbed by the thyroid gland. So in a nuclear event like this untreated people will absorb large amounts of radioactive I-131, however supplementing normal "healthy" iodine like what she is asking about will effectively "load" the thyroid gland, preventing it from absorbing radioactive iodine.
After Chernobyl everyone gets free Iodine at a apocathory (1 pack per person) with instructions of when to use etc... All over Europe (pretty much) It's free.
As soon as they said : Do you taste metal? They where pretty much dead. But standing next to an open reactor core that exploded no less will do that to you.
6:16 the fireman picked up a piece of graphite that had been used in the core. highly radioactive. The firemen were all dead as soon as they pulled up, they just didnt know it.
Not as radioactive as the show wants you to believe. The ACTUAL real-life fireman who touched the graphite complained about his hand feeling numb and swollen, a _full 24 hours later._ In other words: Yes, it's radioactive, but not THAT radioactive. Not radioactive enough to cause that kind of burns in just a few minutes.
You often hear that a TV show or movie is an "Important" piece of art. Chernobyl is truly that on so many levels. The human drama that unfolds on this show is just incredible. She's in for a heck of a journey.
Suggest watching ‘The Day After.’ President Reagan saw an advanced screening and it led him to kick off nuclear arms reductions talks with the Soviet Union. I think he made the Joint Chiefs and the Cabinet watch it too.
This was one of the most difficult series I ever watched. Frustration, anger, fear and horror as the Soviet hierarchy struggled to cover up the entire incident not only from the locals but from the world at large. Denial, stupidity and lack of regard for human life were all on full display..as were the occasional rational, thoughtful individual.
Watch the documentary on the effects on the people of Japan in the aftermath of the atomic bombs. That will really hit you in the feels. A lot of what we know about radiations effects on the body is from Japan being so thorough in examining and having to aid the affected populous
@@balls537 You do know there's varying degrees of sucky goverments right? The US is like petty garbage disposal, used panties in the toilet type. The iron curtain pre-collapse soviet union is like Orwellian, men in black, x-files kill your whole family to silence you type. So yeah, big difference.
If you notice when the fire brigade first shows up they're right away boots on the ground running everywhere doing what they do best, but later on we see them again and they're moving slower and looking very exhausted
Backstory of Chernobyl, they were doing a test that night when core exploded. Scheduled test was supposed to be done by day shift who are more experienced than this shift (inexperienced techs and incompetent supervisor). They halted the test by day shift. Waited for night shift.
She didn’t say in the beginning but I keep wondering if she knows this is an actual event that happened. She keeps reacting like it’s just a TV movie or show.
I can't wait for Maple's reaction to E05! As an Engineer I was super impressed with how great job Craig Mazin did getting the whole process and mishap across 😀
Negative void coefficient is the industry standard. It's explained how the positive void coefficient in the RBMK reactors was a contributing factor to the explosion. It increased reactivity rather than reduced it. The NVC acts against power increase, like snuffing out a fire for example. Western nuclear power plants are liquid moderated. While the dumbass Soviets used PVC and used graphite as a moderator. Hence Legasov stated "It's cheaper".
To be fair, radiation is not this gory, at least not immediately. Some of the firefighters ended up looking pretty gnarly, but a core doesnt melt your face like that.
you shouldn’t feel scared for power plants because the problem with this one was it being faulty and had a terrible design flaw. today it’s extremely safe and currently the best green option until we get nuclear fusion and not currently fission because fusion is supposed to be much better
"You did not see Graphite." - Dyatlov was in denial. He saw Graphite on the roof himself, he just could not process it. What do you do when something like that happens for the first time ever, no one knows how to fix it and you were in charge at the time? The idiot just shut down. Cognitive dissonance is especially dangerous here because he is still in a position where people expect him to help fix the problem, which he cannot even admit exists to himself. It did not help that he survived radiation leak previously in another power plant so he took the danger of it lightly.
At 3:40 he sees graphite chunks on the ground and even though he KNOWS what happened he convinces himself it didn’t At 6:15 he is holding a literal piece of the inside of the reactor core… in his hand. And yes we still have nuclear power plants and they are safe, this was what would be considered an exceptional example of incompetence, which was pretty typical of the USSR.
@tokyosmash I LOVE this series but I always fear what a series like this will do for the nuclear industry out of ignorant fear. Incase anyone watches this and thinks that nuclear power is too dangerous, Nuclear power is the safest form of energy per kilowatt hour of ANY form of power.
@@JebidiahCallaway Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the children from Pripyat who died shitting out their entrails while your equivalents in the Soviet backscratching apparatchik power structure we're telling everyone everything's cool & that nuclear power was still safe while the Chornobyl's poison cloud stretched all the way to Sweden. Seen the North Pacific lately? It's essentially TEPCO's tailings pond now.
It wasn't just cost-cutting - It was shoddy, second-grade materials, improper construction & bullshit scheduling & then the safety test put the system under pressure with the mistaken assumption that proper materials had been put in their proper place & with the time needed to put them there with the care & attention to detail & time required to do so. th-cam.com/video/GSVw8CWYwHw/w-d-xo.html
The thing is reactors nowawdays are way more advanced with many more failsafe and tests put in place to never have this situation happen wich, without spoiling, the show will go over what went wrong and a bit over the differences between russian and western reactors just in that time period. I'm a firm believer in using nuclear power and other sources of clean energy.
You have to understand that saying "No, I'm not going to do that" was NOT an option. You did what you were told or you'd be "reassigned" somewhere else for further education on how to be a good citizen. Or you'd be shot. There was no internet or any other way if getting information out. The greatest damage from Chernobyl was caused by pride and from people trying to cover their own asses.
I experienced the "Chernobyl Cloud" over Sweden. The techears said that we we're not aloud outside on breaks. We stayed inside. And it rained when the school was over, but we stayed inside until it stopped raining before we walked home. Oh, in 1986 kids walked home by themselves without GPS or phone or maps. You just went home, walking there alone or with a friend. Then you read books. No streaming videos. But there were great books! Like JRR Tolkiens "Lord of the Rings". One day I skipped school because the book was too exciting, I took a return buss right back home, since I was so into the story. Some years later a "cool" friend of mine - could not understand this: "You skipped school - to READ a book?!?"
nuclear power plants are one of the safest forms of power out there, coal power plants kill MANY more people per capita than nuclear power plants. Disasters like this are caused by poor engineering and continuous human error. Nuclear power is the single best answer to the climate crisis. This show is fantastic, but dont let it make you think nuclear power is something to be afraid of.
not mentioning the problem of nuclear waste, and the fact that u cant absolutely rule out the possibility of human error. while u cant rule out those fundamental issues on other technologies as well, few have the ability to create that amount of damage, if smth goes terribly wrong. i agree that nuclear power is safer and more ecologically sustainable than fossil fuel plants. there are certainly safer alternatives to nuclear power plants. (wind, solar, water)
@@jannabis Eh. Nuclear waste isn't that big a deal because of how little there is. And besides, we both know extremely well how to solve it (Yucca mountain would be a great solution, for one), or how to vastly reduce it through reprocessing in reactors that can intake waste products as fuel. The problem is politics, and fear - Everyone is more afraid of the waste than it merits, and that means there's no political ability to accept the very safe containment facility being near you, and the same reactors that reprocess waste can very easily be used to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel, which is the hard part of making nuclear weapons. There's therefore some fear behind the idea of building lots of reprocessing plants, because there's some (imagined and real, in different quantities) fear that each plant presents a risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. And several modern reactor designs are inherently safe - For example, pebble bed reactors which require no active maintenance to prevent a disaster - If all the machinery supporting the core was destroyed, the core would passively maintain its own temperature. You couldn't make one go the way of the RBMK at CNPP#4, because the design simply won't allow it. And every type of power plant has its problems. Nuclear plants are very expensive because of how precise you need to be to make it safe. Wind and solar are both not very space-efficient, so you have to consume an absolutely massive amount of ground to match up to what a nuclear plant can put out, and then there's problems with supply chain, failures of the wind turbines, etc...
16:17...Unfortunately stupidity has nothing to do with age. People can be dumb at 18 or 80. This denial is more to do with the fear of non-conformity bred into Soviet citizens and strengthened during the reign of Stalin.
Filmed in Reactor 3 at Chernobyl around 15 years ago... " The Disaster at Chernobyl | Zero Hour (Chernobyl Full Documentary) " th-cam.com/video/GSVw8CWYwHw/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=ZeroHour The series was filmed at Chernobyl's twin aka Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant it also had an emergency shut down years before Chernobyl.
The problem was not simply that it was a nuclear power plant. The problem was that it was 1) severely outdated, 2) terribly managed, and 3) in a Communist country. Any one of these factors makes an industrial setting very dangerous, but all three of them together made for the worst industrial disaster in history. Nuclear power plants using newer technology and managed better have been running safely for decades. This one is their opposite.
In Soviet Russia there was no such thing as “don’t do it.” The Soviet State operated in secrecy, neglectful, and superior. Especially during the Cold War where they believed their technology (I.E RBMK reactors) were highly advanced and couldn’t fail.
I lived during this horrific event. I was so scared it would reach where i lived. Thankfully the wind didn't blow in our direction. That's literally the difference between playing outside and not drinking or eating anything grown in the area of Eastern Europe during this time. It came down to which way the wind blew.
I live in middle of central Europe and from what I know, it is still not recommended to pick up mushrooms in nature and eat them (maybe its just a precaution but I dont wanna test it...)
@@phil_5430 I mean, yeah, but not really. Chernobyl itself was bad, but this is extreme caution nowadays. Radiation doesn't travel very far through air, the only real danger outside of Chernobyl was the ash from the fire. If there is no fire, you could have sat outside of the immediate power plant area and looked at it without much happening to you. The problem with Chernobyl was the fire and the ash sweeping up radioactive material into the skies and then raining down on other areas. That's why wind and range was such an important factor back then (or during the Fukushima accident). Now, there was a big concern about mushrooms in affected areas (they take the radioactive ash that rained down and incorporate it inside them), but that really subsided nowadays. Obviously there isn't a big fire spreading radioactive ash around the continent, so stuff just fell down and got buried, eaten or swept away into the ocean. Is there some stuff around still? Sure. There are still some elevated radiation levels, especially in mushrooms or animals that eat mushrooms. If you're hunting boar in e.g. Germany, there are regular tests for radiation. Now, how bad is that? It's not healthy, but e.g. flying a plane also gives you some radiation. Pilots are forbidden from flying to often. Just being on Earth in general gives you some and on a plane there is less air above you to shield you from space radiation, so you get a higher dosage. Now, all of that isn't healthy. But it doesn't immediately kill you or give you cancer either. Given how diluted all the Chernobyl stuff is nowadays, you can decide whether you want to fly to Indonesia or eat some mushrooms in Ukraine, the flight is probably riskier. Tldr, Chernobyl was bad, but some people are overestimating it. A lot. And Chernobyl, while a great series, doesn't help.
"I feel sad, he's gonna die I think." It's gonna be rough. I feel like Chernobyl is a miniseries made to make you feel uncomfortable, anxious and stressed out throughout the show.
Yeah, I like how they filmed it beat for beat with some of the found footage from the actual disaster. It really feels like you're there in the midst of it.
16:00 An irony about the old man's statement, and isolating the city, is "Glasnost" / openness, a principle directed by Premier Gorbachev who as leader of the USSR. He acknowledged big problems with how Soviet society and bureaucracy worked, and thought things like more openness with the people would improve things and build trust. It showed people just how poor their quality of life was compared to the west, and meanwhile the elites in leadership maintained the same secrecy as they had before. Which is why many ordinary people first heard about Chernobyl through foreign news instead of from the leadership or local authorities.
Nice! I BARELY watched this for the first time, watched the last episode a few days ago. I had to re-watch the 1st episode to connect who was who once I got to know them
Chernobyl Power Plant had 4 reactors. Reactor number 4 exploded in 1986, the other operated until they all got decomisioned in 2000 (2 shut down in 1991 due to an accident, 1 shut down in 1996, 3 was finally started being decomissioned in 1999). Imagine working in the other reactors knowing what happened literally 200 meters away from you. Also there were other accidents there. In 1982 reactor 1 partially melted down. No one noticed it for 7 hours and when it was discovered it was kept a secret. In 1984 reactors 3 and 4 had serious incidents. According to declassified KGB documents, Soviets already knew in 1984 that Chernobyl Power Plant is the most dangerous power plant in the world. In 1991 turbine in reactor 2 caught fire and the roof collapsed. They stopped using this reactor then.
that shot where they open the huge steel door & look into a strange fire with roiling black smoke, that's the exploded core, it's uranium actually burning which is incredibly toxic & radioactive.
14:35 Around 20% of the electricity supply in the US comes from nuclear power. Around 16% in the UK And France gets a whopping 70% of its power from nuclear power plants. They say the reactor designs are "far safer" nowadays, and I do think they could be improved a lot. But that still didn't stop what happened in Fukushima in Japan. One of the most technologically advanced Countries in the World, and they built nuclear reactors on the coast, on a known tsunami zone. Which in itself isn't so bad if the reactors were designed right. The problem was, most of the electrical switchgear and backup generators were on the *basement" level. sigh Which meant that when the tsunami hit in March 2011, it took out the generators, so the reactor cores could not be cooled properly over many days. That caused a partial "meltdown" of several of the reactors there, and a build up of hydrogen gas in the buildings, which eventually ignited, and blew the buildings apart. So yeah, we still haven't really learned the full lessons from the Chernobyl disaster, sadly.
Oh, and yes, a large area around Fukushima Daiichi is now a giant exclusion zone, very similar to around the Chernobyl power plant. Thousands of families were forced to drop everything and evacuate, and people won't be able to live there again for hundreds of years. Having said that, if nuclear reactors are designed properly, and using totally different methods to what we have now, they would be *far* safer, and it might actually be a big factor in helping solve the current energy crisis and reduce global warming. The downside is spending millions on proper storage of the nuclear waste, and whether we are really prepared to continue taking the risks of nuclear.
Well done reaction video. I'll catch up your 2nd episode, and comment more. FYI: this occurred shortly after I graduated college with a degree in...wait for it...Nuclear Engineering. The company I had went to work for eventually sent a robot to investigate area where the radiation was goo high for humans to go. Bear in mind the "explosion" was NOT a nuclear explosion (otherwise the town would have been vaporized). The series will eventually explain more. This is actually a very well done series...there are few inaccuracies. And remember...NONE of the US nuclear plants are this very dangerous design.
Ive watched this series 100x & was probably the best true story reenactments I've ever seen in my life. It really helps us all learn about this subject
Hey Maple, keep in mind that most of the info we learn about radiation in the show, we learn about almost immediately from experts like Legasov. The general public had no idea what was happening except on pirate radio. Large parts of the Kyiv population were sent out to celebrate May day (May 5th and the accident was in April) it was said, "nothing was wrong it was just a regular factory accident."
This Series hit very close to Home. I was born 1 Month before the Accident in Germany, and all over the Place were Bad Short- and Long Time Things happen because of Chernobyl, now imagine what happend in Ukraine were this happened...
The only thing bad about this series is how it scared normal people even further away from nuclear power when Chernobyl was an example of a faulty 50's design mixed with near-collapse USSR corruption.
14:37 Yes we do and they are extremely safe. Safer than coal plants, safer than wind farms, safer than solar panel farms. Chernobyl was caused by a design flaw (these plant designs are no longer operable) and Fukushima was caused by a natural disaster (modern plants are built to withstand this). I am working to design a new type of nuclear plant and it will be inherently safe. It is labeled as "walk-away safe" which means that it relies on NO human intervention to shutdown to a safe state.
About the mass denial: In the Soviet Union, perception trumped reality. You had to pretend that you were in a worker's paradise. If you surfaced a problem, it was your fault. The tractor factory: Construction fell behind schedule. To escape blame, everyone kept the paperwork moving on schedule. When the fire marshall showed up to inspect, he found a cement slab.
im pretty familiar with the iodin-pills because even here in germany we had to be aware and stopped eating our home-grown vegetables because of the contaminated rain.
"When They See Us" is another fantastic, horrifying miniseries that came out the same year that is a must see as well imo. Chernobyl and it competed in the awards circuit, with them both winning quite a few.
If you EVER see a pillar of blue light anywhere near a fission reactor something very bad has happened. the chunks of graphite on the ground were part of the core itself and are EXTREMELY RADIOACTIVE.
Ironically, Gorbachev was making a concerted effort to overhaul the Soviet Union and rid it of the rampant "soft" corruption of petty bureaucrats like the men in the meeting, people who were more interested in covering their asses, saving face and keeping their jobs than doing the right thing. It was so widespread and prolific it was a massive source of political instability. Later in life he would credit what happened at Chernobyl as the main impetus for the collapse of the Soviet Union as the house of cards it represented could no longer be sustained.
Chernobyl was not the only Soviet Nuclear Accident and not the worst Soviet Nuclear Accident. Since 1950 the Soviet Union had 57 land based Nuclear Accidents. The worst of which more than doubled the release of Chernobyl. These, for the most part, were in desolate places and closed cities in Siberia and Kazakhstan. One accident was in Leningrad/ St. Petersburg! They also had releases of weaponized anthrax among other things that wiped whole villages off the map. I strongly recommend you watch a documentary called "The Russian Woodpecker" that shows Chernobyl was not an accident but a deliberate sabotage by the Soviets to cover up the millions upon millions of Rubles they spent on this massive radio spy array that went finally switched on just made a constant knocking sound. That would have got the head of the project and everyone in leadership positions shot. I was in The Federal Republic of Germany at that time and down wind of the radiation. We ate a lot of canned food from the states for months after. You never got sick when coming to Europe from the states until Chernobyl. Now everyone gets sick after the first week or two on the ground.
The core had a design flaw, none of them knew that. That's why they think that the core cannot explode. That's why they think that. You've watched it, so you know, but people there thought it wasn't possible when it happened too.
the black chunks with odd cylindrical pieces carved out are graphite from the exploded core, they serve to dampen the nuclear reaction inside the core. you should absolutely never see them outside the core & if you do it's a sign things have gone very, very wrong. also those graphite chunks are extremely radioactive from being in the core & you should never touch or go near them if you prefer staying alive to not staying alive.
I heard you say "No, don't do it. Don't do it" many times. We all say that. BUT this was the old Soviet Union. Those words don't exist In Soviet. You do as you're told or you're history. Damn I remember this so well. I was 15 years old when it happened. . Even here in Sweden people got scared since the radiation travelled all the way up here. Sweden was one of the first countries to detect radiation.
I lived in communism, I could tell you about it, and I live in a neighboring country, as soon as this tragedy happened, everyone wanted to buy iodine, the medicine cabinet ran out very quickly (mostly you could only buy it there) and the old man was a political agitator, it is worth watching the series because it contains the truth and in the last part they tell what exactly happened (or not? 😉 )
One, this is one of many good reasons to keep on the path to fusion, instead of working with fission. Modern fission plants are better, but the radioactive material still must be dealt with. Two, will Maple be able to explain how an RBMK nuclear reactor explodes at the end of this series? 🤓
The Soviet Union placed factories in out of the way locations with no real infrastructure. They powered these places with huge Nuclear Batteries. When the Soviet Union broke up the factories closed and the batteries were left in place. They were big enough and heavy enough to need a crane hoist to move them. When the Russian Government went back a few years later to recover these batteries they were all gone. The Soviets discarded a lot of radioactive metal scrap in the woods and polluted lakes and rivers with radioactive waste.This has caused no end of problems for the people who live in these places.
This show is fantastic, but does have a not insignificant amount of inaccuracies. I recommend anyone who watches this show also sees Vanity Fair's video interviewing one of the Chernobyl doctors about the series.
The anxiety. The *anxiety* ! Watching this the first time was so hard, and just seeing the clips of it here is just... oof. This is an excellent series, but it is *so difficult* to watch because you know what's happening.
Hey Maple, Radiation poisoning is so scary, and frankly terrifying to even comprehend. Much, much scarier than any horror film monster anybody could ever come up with, and a realistic danger that still exists today. Keep tissues nearby, you'll need them! Such an emotional reaction, it get more intense as the story unfolds..
It still horrifies me to think of what the people might have had gone through in those dreadful time . For many its was just another day that turned to their last day . Its so sad to see a small mistake cost so much , no only lives but to nature also . Many younger generation don't know this horrible incident. Arguably one of the few worst man made mistakes costing many lives. And btw it's more like a real investigation documentary than a series.
This show perfectly captured how oppressive and stifling Soviet society was. The pervasive sense that you could not dissent from the party line, no matter what your eyes and ears told you, lest you be arrested and imprisoned (or worse) for spreading "misinformation".
“The show bankrolled and greenlit by Americans, sanctioned to be released by the FCC, produced and released by an American company which has released propaganda movies in the past, allowed to be created by the staunchly anti-communist and anti-Soviet US Government, acted out and written by Yankees with cool British accents playing Russians totally shows how life in the Soviet Union was! Says me the American!” This is how you sound like right now, I’d probably commit unalive if I had to live with what you refer to as ‘your brain’. Jesus Christ
I guess that’s the difference between people like you and me. If I want to learn about the past I read dozens of historical accounts and primary sources, if you want to learn something you go to the cinema or Netflix and watch some Hollywood production.
@@guccipucci3941 are you defending the USSR? Claiming they weren’t extremely rank and authority focused? They weren’t incompetent and cut corners? It was a communistic authoritarian government and culture. They had well known government agencies specifically for jailing political rivals and people who claimed anything different than the official government narrative. I’m assuming that offended you somehow, someone talking negatively about the ussr, but come on, it was not a great place to live during that time for the average person. I only see 2 replies of the listed 4, so maybe I’m missing some context of the conversation. What historian would disagree with the original comment?
Yikes, our schools are doing a terrible job. Maple seems to not know the first thing about this event or nuclear radiation. (*not dunking on her, just the education system) ☢
I'm glad they made this show. Everyone in the world knows who Valery Legasov is and what he did. Every time I find people who love communism. I point to Chernobyl and ask if they loved what happened. The secrecy and cut throat politics.
One thing americans consistently get wrong when they think that one guy goes up to the roof to look into the reactor of his own volition, he is "asked" to do it, but it's not a request, it's an order, and his initial hesitance is why there's an armed guard with him, ready to force him to do what he was tasked to do if he tries to decline. If he was even more insistent on not doing it earlier it would've likely landed him and his whole family in jail.
One of the best mini series ever. The haunting sounds throughout the series literally come from a nuclear reactor
Very good drama indeed. Too bad its so full of false info just to make it more exciting for the viewer. The helicopter thing never happened. The "if-the-reactor-touches-the-water-it-will-nuke-everything" never happened. Also, check out "Galen Winsor the man who ate uranium". Peace.
@@markhamstra1083 Indeed 👍
@@st3pwise Do you mean the helicopter that struck the crane and crashed in a later ep?
@@emil87th Yes. In reality a helicopter crashed 6 months after the explosion, and only because it hit a crane. In the show they make it seem like it goes down because of radiation...
"Dont go to close to the core!"
"Remind them of the perimiter!"
"Nonono! They are too close to the core!"
"The wind will have to carry it!" Etc..
@@st3pwise look at that scene again, closely. Then come back to this comment section.
7:24 When you're staring into the fire that just killed you.
This whole thing is really freaking Lovecraftian in how it's presented, and I love it, because radiation has so many of those tropes. It's barely (certainly in the time and society onscreen) understood, if at all, even by the people stuck working with it. You can't see it most of the time it's around. Its mere presence begins to warp your body in ways you can't survive. Being near it is basically death, and if you do happen to lay eyes on it, then it's already too late.
Few things scare me as much as anything nuclear. If you mess with it your skin peels off, muscles and veins disintegrate and death is extraordinary painful.
The reason she asks if they stock iodine is because one of the common substances released in nuclear fallout (like from Chernobyl) is I-131, a radioactive isotope of iodine. Iodine in the body is absorbed by the thyroid gland. So in a nuclear event like this untreated people will absorb large amounts of radioactive I-131, however supplementing normal "healthy" iodine like what she is asking about will effectively "load" the thyroid gland, preventing it from absorbing radioactive iodine.
After Chernobyl everyone gets free Iodine at a apocathory (1 pack per person) with instructions of when to use etc... All over Europe (pretty much) It's free.
As soon as they said : Do you taste metal? They where pretty much dead. But standing next to an open reactor core that exploded no less will do that to you.
6:16 the fireman picked up a piece of graphite that had been used in the core. highly radioactive. The firemen were all dead as soon as they pulled up, they just didnt know it.
Not as radioactive as the show wants you to believe. The ACTUAL real-life fireman who touched the graphite complained about his hand feeling numb and swollen, a _full 24 hours later._ In other words: Yes, it's radioactive, but not THAT radioactive. Not radioactive enough to cause that kind of burns in just a few minutes.
Tv requires dramatization to get across emotions you'd feel over a long period of time @@SpearM3064
You often hear that a TV show or movie is an "Important" piece of art. Chernobyl is truly that on so many levels. The human drama that unfolds on this show is just incredible. She's in for a heck of a journey.
Yeah, this is fantastic television. A powerhouse cast & compelling story. One of the best series made in the last few years.
Suggest watching ‘The Day After.’ President Reagan saw an advanced screening and it led him to kick off nuclear arms reductions talks with the Soviet Union. I think he made the Joint Chiefs and the Cabinet watch it too.
This was one of the most difficult series I ever watched. Frustration, anger, fear and horror as the Soviet hierarchy struggled to
cover up the entire incident not only from the locals but from the world at large. Denial, stupidity and lack of regard for human life were
all on full display..as were the occasional rational, thoughtful individual.
Watch the documentary on the effects on the people of Japan in the aftermath of the atomic bombs. That will really hit you in the feels. A lot of what we know about radiations effects on the body is from Japan being so thorough in examining and having to aid the affected populous
@@plnkfloydian7814 Which documentary?
This is how the Soviet Union operated. Secrecy and looking superior over the safety of it's own people.
My brother in christ, the united states operates in the same way
@@balls537 You do know there's varying degrees of sucky goverments right?
The US is like petty garbage disposal, used panties in the toilet type.
The iron curtain pre-collapse soviet union is like Orwellian, men in black, x-files kill your whole family to silence you type. So yeah, big difference.
@@balls537 The lack of self awareness is astounding.
@@dolan_plz I was agreeing with Ben. My reply was aimed at the original comment.
СССР был хороший!
If you notice when the fire brigade first shows up they're right away boots on the ground running everywhere doing what they do best, but later on we see them again and they're moving slower and looking very exhausted
Backstory of Chernobyl, they were doing a test that night when core exploded. Scheduled test was supposed to be done by day shift who are more experienced than this shift (inexperienced techs and incompetent supervisor). They halted the test by day shift. Waited for night shift.
Iodine Pills used for protection of Thyroid Gland
She didn’t say in the beginning but I keep wondering if she knows this is an actual event that happened. She keeps reacting like it’s just a TV movie or show.
I guess she doesnt know a thing about the actual event. Zero common knowledge about it.
I can't wait for Maple's reaction to E05! As an Engineer I was super impressed with how great job Craig Mazin did getting the whole process and mishap across 😀
Yes, and nuclear power is so much safer and cleaner than all other sources of power now days.
Especially with modern advances.
Yes this was an older design ...plants now have many safety overrides that these plants didn't
Negative void coefficient is the industry standard. It's explained how the positive void coefficient in the RBMK reactors was a contributing factor to the explosion. It increased reactivity rather than reduced it. The NVC acts against power increase, like snuffing out a fire for example. Western nuclear power plants are liquid moderated. While the dumbass Soviets used PVC and used graphite as a moderator. Hence Legasov stated "It's cheaper".
I know it's not written to be as such but this is by far one of the scariest horror series ever.
It makes it even worse that it really happened 🙏
To be fair, radiation is not this gory, at least not immediately. Some of the firefighters ended up looking pretty gnarly, but a core doesnt melt your face like that.
you shouldn’t feel scared for power plants because the problem with this one was it being faulty and had a terrible design flaw. today it’s extremely safe and currently the best green option until we get nuclear fusion and not currently fission because fusion is supposed to be much better
This is an entire show made of 'bruh wut' moments. Truly terrifying and horrific, it's a masterpiece.
Shows what people will overlook when they up for promotion
"You did not see Graphite." - Dyatlov was in denial. He saw Graphite on the roof himself, he just could not process it. What do you do when something like that happens for the first time ever, no one knows how to fix it and you were in charge at the time? The idiot just shut down. Cognitive dissonance is especially dangerous here because he is still in a position where people expect him to help fix the problem, which he cannot even admit exists to himself. It did not help that he survived radiation leak previously in another power plant so he took the danger of it lightly.
@@GeorgeTropicana If he wasnt like that, the reactor would never have been exploded. They went above and beyond to the extremes.
Not power plant, but nuclear submarine i think.
At 3:40 he sees graphite chunks on the ground and even though he KNOWS what happened he convinces himself it didn’t
At 6:15 he is holding a literal piece of the inside of the reactor core… in his hand.
And yes we still have nuclear power plants and they are safe, this was what would be considered an exceptional example of incompetence, which was pretty typical of the USSR.
@@jdailey01230 historically the Soviet Union has shown it doesn’t give a shit about ramifications to their people
@tokyosmash I LOVE this series but I always fear what a series like this will do for the nuclear industry out of ignorant fear. Incase anyone watches this and thinks that nuclear power is too dangerous, Nuclear power is the safest form of energy per kilowatt hour of ANY form of power.
@@JebidiahCallaway the Three Mile Island show is going to be much worse, it’s essentially a hit piece against the nuclear industry.
@@JebidiahCallaway Sorry I can't hear you over the sound of the children from Pripyat who died shitting out their entrails while your equivalents in the Soviet backscratching apparatchik power structure we're telling everyone everything's cool & that nuclear power was still safe while the Chornobyl's poison cloud stretched all the way to Sweden.
Seen the North Pacific lately? It's essentially TEPCO's tailings pond now.
It wasn't just cost-cutting - It was shoddy, second-grade materials, improper construction & bullshit scheduling & then the safety test put the system under pressure with the mistaken assumption that proper materials had been put in their proper place & with the time needed to put them there with the care & attention to detail & time required to do so.
th-cam.com/video/GSVw8CWYwHw/w-d-xo.html
The thing is reactors nowawdays are way more advanced with many more failsafe and tests put in place to never have this situation happen wich, without spoiling, the show will go over what went wrong and a bit over the differences between russian and western reactors just in that time period. I'm a firm believer in using nuclear power and other sources of clean energy.
Yes, nowadays the reactor are way safer. Each accident occured from a human mistake.
Thought you were talking about Maple and Ariana as reactors lmao
@@jayanthkumar7964 not really those kind of reactors😂😂
@@Comissar_Carolus well good thing humans aren't involved anymore 🤔
@@blammular There always will be humans. Now the failsafe are very good. No clean energy will be as powerful as the nulear.
You have to understand that saying "No, I'm not going to do that" was NOT an option. You did what you were told or you'd be "reassigned" somewhere else for further education on how to be a good citizen. Or you'd be shot. There was no internet or any other way if getting information out. The greatest damage from Chernobyl was caused by pride and from people trying to cover their own asses.
I experienced the "Chernobyl Cloud" over Sweden. The techears said that we we're not aloud outside on breaks. We stayed inside. And it rained when the school was over, but we stayed inside until it stopped raining before we walked home. Oh, in 1986 kids walked home by themselves without GPS or phone or maps. You just went home, walking there alone or with a friend. Then you read books. No streaming videos. But there were great books! Like JRR Tolkiens "Lord of the Rings". One day I skipped school because the book was too exciting, I took a return buss right back home, since I was so into the story. Some years later a "cool" friend of mine - could not understand this: "You skipped school - to READ a book?!?"
nuclear power plants are one of the safest forms of power out there, coal power plants kill MANY more people per capita than nuclear power plants. Disasters like this are caused by poor engineering and continuous human error. Nuclear power is the single best answer to the climate crisis. This show is fantastic, but dont let it make you think nuclear power is something to be afraid of.
not mentioning the problem of nuclear waste, and the fact that u cant absolutely rule out the possibility of human error. while u cant rule out those fundamental issues on other technologies as well, few have the ability to create that amount of damage, if smth goes terribly wrong.
i agree that nuclear power is safer and more ecologically sustainable than fossil fuel plants. there are certainly safer alternatives to nuclear power plants. (wind, solar, water)
@@jannabis Eh. Nuclear waste isn't that big a deal because of how little there is. And besides, we both know extremely well how to solve it (Yucca mountain would be a great solution, for one), or how to vastly reduce it through reprocessing in reactors that can intake waste products as fuel. The problem is politics, and fear - Everyone is more afraid of the waste than it merits, and that means there's no political ability to accept the very safe containment facility being near you, and the same reactors that reprocess waste can very easily be used to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel, which is the hard part of making nuclear weapons. There's therefore some fear behind the idea of building lots of reprocessing plants, because there's some (imagined and real, in different quantities) fear that each plant presents a risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
And several modern reactor designs are inherently safe - For example, pebble bed reactors which require no active maintenance to prevent a disaster - If all the machinery supporting the core was destroyed, the core would passively maintain its own temperature. You couldn't make one go the way of the RBMK at CNPP#4, because the design simply won't allow it.
And every type of power plant has its problems. Nuclear plants are very expensive because of how precise you need to be to make it safe. Wind and solar are both not very space-efficient, so you have to consume an absolutely massive amount of ground to match up to what a nuclear plant can put out, and then there's problems with supply chain, failures of the wind turbines, etc...
This was such an amazing show. I actually remember watching the news as a child when this happened. It was very scary.
The interesting thing is I’ve seen lots of horror movies but Chernobyl terrified me to my core because I know it’s real. Scariest tv show or movie.
16:17...Unfortunately stupidity has nothing to do with age. People can be dumb at 18 or 80. This denial is more to do with the fear of non-conformity bred into Soviet citizens and strengthened during the reign of Stalin.
Filmed in Reactor 3 at Chernobyl around 15 years ago... " The Disaster at Chernobyl | Zero Hour (Chernobyl Full Documentary) " th-cam.com/video/GSVw8CWYwHw/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=ZeroHour
The series was filmed at Chernobyl's twin aka Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant it also had an emergency shut down years before Chernobyl.
The problem was not simply that it was a nuclear power plant. The problem was that it was 1) severely outdated, 2) terribly managed, and 3) in a Communist country. Any one of these factors makes an industrial setting very dangerous, but all three of them together made for the worst industrial disaster in history.
Nuclear power plants using newer technology and managed better have been running safely for decades. This one is their opposite.
17:20 He himself saw the graphite on the floor when he ventured out earlier. He just doesn't want to admit it.
In Soviet Russia there was no such thing as “don’t do it.” The Soviet State operated in secrecy, neglectful, and superior. Especially during the Cold War where they believed their technology (I.E RBMK reactors) were highly advanced and couldn’t fail.
The trees that you mention late in the episode... that became known as the Red Forest.
Awesome! I was hoping you guys would do this. This show was incredible in my opinion.
I lived during this horrific event. I was so scared it would reach where i lived.
Thankfully the wind didn't blow in our direction. That's literally the difference between playing outside and not drinking or eating anything grown in the area of Eastern Europe during this time.
It came down to which way the wind blew.
I live in middle of central Europe and from what I know, it is still not recommended to pick up mushrooms in nature and eat them (maybe its just a precaution but I dont wanna test it...)
@@phil_5430 for sure. I don't blame you for being skeptical.
@@phil_5430
I mean, yeah, but not really.
Chernobyl itself was bad, but this is extreme caution nowadays. Radiation doesn't travel very far through air, the only real danger outside of Chernobyl was the ash from the fire. If there is no fire, you could have sat outside of the immediate power plant area and looked at it without much happening to you. The problem with Chernobyl was the fire and the ash sweeping up radioactive material into the skies and then raining down on other areas. That's why wind and range was such an important factor back then (or during the Fukushima accident).
Now, there was a big concern about mushrooms in affected areas (they take the radioactive ash that rained down and incorporate it inside them), but that really subsided nowadays. Obviously there isn't a big fire spreading radioactive ash around the continent, so stuff just fell down and got buried, eaten or swept away into the ocean.
Is there some stuff around still? Sure. There are still some elevated radiation levels, especially in mushrooms or animals that eat mushrooms. If you're hunting boar in e.g. Germany, there are regular tests for radiation.
Now, how bad is that? It's not healthy, but e.g. flying a plane also gives you some radiation. Pilots are forbidden from flying to often. Just being on Earth in general gives you some and on a plane there is less air above you to shield you from space radiation, so you get a higher dosage.
Now, all of that isn't healthy. But it doesn't immediately kill you or give you cancer either. Given how diluted all the Chernobyl stuff is nowadays, you can decide whether you want to fly to Indonesia or eat some mushrooms in Ukraine, the flight is probably riskier.
Tldr, Chernobyl was bad, but some people are overestimating it. A lot. And Chernobyl, while a great series, doesn't help.
"Contain the spread of misinformation" I heard that recently somewhere. oh well.
"I feel sad, he's gonna die I think." It's gonna be rough. I feel like Chernobyl is a miniseries made to make you feel uncomfortable, anxious and stressed out throughout the show.
Yeah, I like how they filmed it beat for beat with some of the found footage from the actual disaster. It really feels like you're there in the midst of it.
16:00 An irony about the old man's statement, and isolating the city, is "Glasnost" / openness, a principle directed by Premier Gorbachev who as leader of the USSR. He acknowledged big problems with how Soviet society and bureaucracy worked, and thought things like more openness with the people would improve things and build trust. It showed people just how poor their quality of life was compared to the west, and meanwhile the elites in leadership maintained the same secrecy as they had before. Which is why many ordinary people first heard about Chernobyl through foreign news instead of from the leadership or local authorities.
Nice! I BARELY watched this for the first time, watched the last episode a few days ago. I had to re-watch the 1st episode to connect who was who once I got to know them
Chernobyl Power Plant had 4 reactors. Reactor number 4 exploded in 1986, the other operated until they all got decomisioned in 2000 (2 shut down in 1991 due to an accident, 1 shut down in 1996, 3 was finally started being decomissioned in 1999). Imagine working in the other reactors knowing what happened literally 200 meters away from you.
Also there were other accidents there.
In 1982 reactor 1 partially melted down. No one noticed it for 7 hours and when it was discovered it was kept a secret.
In 1984 reactors 3 and 4 had serious incidents. According to declassified KGB documents, Soviets already knew in 1984 that Chernobyl Power Plant is the most dangerous power plant in the world.
In 1991 turbine in reactor 2 caught fire and the roof collapsed. They stopped using this reactor then.
That guy who held the door lived quite a long time
the name they've given to the "beautiful bridge" townspeople watched the accident from is the Bridge of Death.
that shot where they open the huge steel door & look into a strange fire with roiling black smoke, that's the exploded core, it's uranium actually burning which is incredibly toxic & radioactive.
Self fuelling event....
The recording of the people calling for the fire brigade were actual recordings from emergency service lines.
Heartbreaking. Terrifying. Infuriating.
Painfully well-told in this series with some stellar performances across the board.
14:35 Around 20% of the electricity supply in the US comes from nuclear power.
Around 16% in the UK
And France gets a whopping 70% of its power from nuclear power plants.
They say the reactor designs are "far safer" nowadays, and I do think they could be improved a lot.
But that still didn't stop what happened in Fukushima in Japan.
One of the most technologically advanced Countries in the World, and they built nuclear reactors on the coast, on a known tsunami zone. Which in itself isn't so bad if the reactors were designed right.
The problem was, most of the electrical switchgear and backup generators were on the *basement" level. sigh
Which meant that when the tsunami hit in March 2011, it took out the generators, so the reactor cores could not be cooled properly over many days.
That caused a partial "meltdown" of several of the reactors there, and a build up of hydrogen gas in the buildings, which eventually ignited, and blew the buildings apart.
So yeah, we still haven't really learned the full lessons from the Chernobyl disaster, sadly.
Oh, and yes, a large area around Fukushima Daiichi is now a giant exclusion zone, very similar to around the Chernobyl power plant.
Thousands of families were forced to drop everything and evacuate, and people won't be able to live there again for hundreds of years.
Having said that, if nuclear reactors are designed properly, and using totally different methods to what we have now, they would be *far* safer, and it might actually be a big factor in helping solve the current energy crisis and reduce global warming.
The downside is spending millions on proper storage of the nuclear waste, and whether we are really prepared to continue taking the risks of nuclear.
Well done reaction video. I'll catch up your 2nd episode, and comment more. FYI: this occurred shortly after I graduated college with a degree in...wait for it...Nuclear Engineering. The company I had went to work for eventually sent a robot to investigate area where the radiation was goo high for humans to go. Bear in mind the "explosion" was NOT a nuclear explosion (otherwise the town would have been vaporized). The series will eventually explain more. This is actually a very well done series...there are few inaccuracies. And remember...NONE of the US nuclear plants are this very dangerous design.
scarier than most traditional horror because it really happened. also Maple needs her own channel
Hi I have my own channel SeriouslySyrup I just haven’t posted yet. Also yeah this show made me sick to my stomach
@@MapleDivine I just subscribed :D
Ive watched this series 100x & was probably the best true story reenactments I've ever seen in my life. It really helps us all learn about this subject
I love your joker reaction video!
i honestly thought this channel was called Diet Jesus, no joke
I really didn't expect you to have Maple react to this. She's gonna have a hard, hard time with this one.
Hey Maple, keep in mind that most of the info we learn about radiation in the show, we learn about almost immediately from experts like Legasov. The general public had no idea what was happening except on pirate radio. Large parts of the Kyiv population were sent out to celebrate May day (May 5th and the accident was in April) it was said, "nothing was wrong it was just a regular factory accident."
Those firemen picked up chunks of Graphite. Graphite is as a moderator for nuclear plants
This Series hit very close to Home. I was born 1 Month before the Accident in Germany, and all over the Place were Bad Short- and Long Time Things happen because of Chernobyl, now imagine what happend in Ukraine were this happened...
"He's past his freaking expiration date." (≧▽≦)
The big guy who opened dore survived
The only thing bad about this series is how it scared normal people even further away from nuclear power when Chernobyl was an example of a faulty 50's design mixed with near-collapse USSR corruption.
14:37 Yes we do and they are extremely safe. Safer than coal plants, safer than wind farms, safer than solar panel farms. Chernobyl was caused by a design flaw (these plant designs are no longer operable) and Fukushima was caused by a natural disaster (modern plants are built to withstand this). I am working to design a new type of nuclear plant and it will be inherently safe. It is labeled as "walk-away safe" which means that it relies on NO human intervention to shutdown to a safe state.
As soon as those men looked down into the exposed reactor core, they were dead men. Radiation travels in straight lines.
About the mass denial: In the Soviet Union, perception trumped reality. You had to pretend that you were in a worker's paradise. If you surfaced a problem, it was your fault. The tractor factory: Construction fell behind schedule. To escape blame, everyone kept the paperwork moving on schedule. When the fire marshall showed up to inspect, he found a cement slab.
im pretty familiar with the iodin-pills because even here in germany we had to be aware and stopped eating our home-grown vegetables because of the contaminated rain.
This was an absolutely brilliant mini series that brought to light the transgressions and attempted cover ups of one of the worst nuclear disasters.
My show of the year in 2019. Absolutely love it!
This was indeed their moment to shine
"When They See Us" is another fantastic, horrifying miniseries that came out the same year that is a must see as well imo. Chernobyl and it competed in the awards circuit, with them both winning quite a few.
I lived about 100 miles west of Three Mile Island during the incident there. It was terrifying and nothing compared to Chernobyl.
The other scarcer fact is that radiation is very much invisible with the naked eye... that ash is for dramatic effect.
If you EVER see a pillar of blue light anywhere near a fission reactor something very bad has happened. the chunks of graphite on the ground were part of the core itself and are EXTREMELY RADIOACTIVE.
You have a terrific talent for understatement.
This is a magnificent series. And soul-wrenching. Episode Four is brutal.
Pretty much all your questions will pretty much be answered by the end.
Ironically, Gorbachev was making a concerted effort to overhaul the Soviet Union and rid it of the rampant "soft" corruption of petty bureaucrats like the men in the meeting, people who were more interested in covering their asses, saving face and keeping their jobs than doing the right thing. It was so widespread and prolific it was a massive source of political instability. Later in life he would credit what happened at Chernobyl as the main impetus for the collapse of the Soviet Union as the house of cards it represented could no longer be sustained.
Chernobyl was not the only Soviet Nuclear Accident and not the worst Soviet Nuclear Accident. Since 1950 the Soviet Union had 57 land based Nuclear Accidents. The worst of which more than doubled the release of
Chernobyl. These, for the most part, were in desolate places and closed cities in Siberia and Kazakhstan. One accident was in Leningrad/ St. Petersburg! They also had releases of weaponized anthrax among other
things that wiped whole villages off the map. I strongly recommend you watch a documentary called "The Russian Woodpecker" that shows Chernobyl was not an accident but a deliberate sabotage by the Soviets to cover up the millions upon millions of Rubles they spent on this massive radio spy array that went finally switched on just made a constant knocking sound. That would have got the head of the project and everyone in leadership positions shot. I was in The Federal Republic of Germany at that time and down wind of the radiation. We ate a lot of canned food from the states for months after. You never got sick when coming to Europe from the states until Chernobyl. Now everyone gets sick after the first week or two on the ground.
One of the best if not the best miniseries ever made.
The core had a design flaw, none of them knew that. That's why they think that the core cannot explode. That's why they think that. You've watched it, so you know, but people there thought it wasn't possible when it happened too.
that green fire from reactor is
real "HELL FIRE"
Oh no Maple 🥺🥺 ... Great mini series, but you're going to cry ... alot :( Stay strong :)
He picked up a fragment of a carbon reaction moderator, graphite. It is highly radioactive.
the black chunks with odd cylindrical pieces carved out are graphite from the exploded core, they serve to dampen the nuclear reaction inside the core. you should absolutely never see them outside the core & if you do it's a sign things have gone very, very wrong. also those graphite chunks are extremely radioactive from being in the core & you should never touch or go near them if you prefer staying alive to not staying alive.
All the people observing on the bridge with the fallout died 😢
Jared Harris and Skarsgard were really great, but Emily Watson knocked it out of the park like she always does.
The sound design is amazing.
the terminal list on amazon prime is awesoem
I heard you say "No, don't do it. Don't do it" many times. We all say that. BUT this was the old Soviet Union. Those words don't exist In Soviet. You do as you're told or you're history.
Damn I remember this so well. I was 15 years old when it happened. . Even here in Sweden people got scared since the radiation travelled all the way up here. Sweden was one of the first countries to detect radiation.
9:38 Iodine pills help block radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid
I lived in communism, I could tell you about it, and I live in a neighboring country, as soon as this tragedy happened, everyone wanted to buy iodine, the medicine cabinet ran out very quickly (mostly you could only buy it there) and the old man was a political agitator, it is worth watching the series because it contains the truth and in the last part they tell what exactly happened (or not? 😉 )
Loved this series, can’t wait to hear what she thinks.
True detective season 1 is a must
One, this is one of many good reasons to keep on the path to fusion, instead of working with fission. Modern fission plants are better, but the radioactive material still must be dealt with. Two, will Maple be able to explain how an RBMK nuclear reactor explodes at the end of this series? 🤓
The Soviet Union placed factories in out of the way locations with no real infrastructure. They powered these places with huge Nuclear Batteries. When the Soviet Union broke up the factories closed and the batteries were left in place. They were big enough and heavy enough to need a crane hoist to move them. When the Russian Government went back a few years later to recover these batteries they were all gone. The Soviets discarded a lot of radioactive metal scrap in the woods and polluted lakes and rivers with radioactive waste.This has caused no end of problems for the people who live in these places.
He picked up graphite that was shielding the core
Aka they are all dead people walking
I would kill to see you guys react to the terror from AMC. the first season shares a lot of cast with chernobyl and is just a masterpiece
Firstly i want to say I love the reactions and reviews on this channel. Can we all agree Mable is absolutely gorgeous.
Oh man. Maple's gonna die inside with this one.
This show is fantastic, but does have a not insignificant amount of inaccuracies. I recommend anyone who watches this show also sees Vanity Fair's video interviewing one of the Chernobyl doctors about the series.
The anxiety. The *anxiety* ! Watching this the first time was so hard, and just seeing the clips of it here is just... oof. This is an excellent series, but it is *so difficult* to watch because you know what's happening.
"Applaud him to death" 🤣🤣🤣 hahahahahaha i love you Maple. Cant wait for the rest of the episodes 🥰
This one is rough, but it's also amazingly good.
Soviet and Western nuclear power plants are designed very differently. There are no RBMK plants in the West and our power plants have a concrete dome.
You would take Iodine pills after radiation exposure.. That kind of radiation exposure.
Hey Maple, Radiation poisoning is so scary, and frankly terrifying to even comprehend. Much, much scarier than any horror film monster anybody could ever come up with, and a realistic danger that still exists today.
Keep tissues nearby, you'll need them! Such an emotional reaction, it get more intense as the story unfolds..
It still horrifies me to think of what the people might have had gone through in those dreadful time . For many its was just another day that turned to their last day . Its so sad to see a small mistake cost so much , no only lives but to nature also . Many younger generation don't know this horrible incident. Arguably one of the few worst man made mistakes costing many lives. And btw it's more like a real investigation documentary than a series.
This show perfectly captured how oppressive and stifling Soviet society was. The pervasive sense that you could not dissent from the party line, no matter what your eyes and ears told you, lest you be arrested and imprisoned (or worse) for spreading "misinformation".
Source: the feces in your rectum
Stay sipping that corn syrup and stop commenting on geopolitics of the 20th Century, Yankee, it’s embarrassing.
“The show bankrolled and greenlit by Americans, sanctioned to be released by the FCC, produced and released by an American company which has released propaganda movies in the past, allowed to be created by the staunchly anti-communist and anti-Soviet US Government, acted out and written by Yankees with cool British accents playing Russians totally shows how life in the Soviet Union was! Says me the American!”
This is how you sound like right now, I’d probably commit unalive if I had to live with what you refer to as ‘your brain’.
Jesus Christ
I guess that’s the difference between people like you and me. If I want to learn about the past I read dozens of historical accounts and primary sources, if you want to learn something you go to the cinema or Netflix and watch some Hollywood production.
@@guccipucci3941 I'm actually not American, and I lived in the Soviet bloc during this period so I'm speaking from personal experience.
@@guccipucci3941 are you defending the USSR? Claiming they weren’t extremely rank and authority focused? They weren’t incompetent and cut corners? It was a communistic authoritarian government and culture. They had well known government agencies specifically for jailing political rivals and people who claimed anything different than the official government narrative. I’m assuming that offended you somehow, someone talking negatively about the ussr, but come on, it was not a great place to live during that time for the average person. I only see 2 replies of the listed 4, so maybe I’m missing some context of the conversation.
What historian would disagree with the original comment?
Yikes, our schools are doing a terrible job. Maple seems to not know the first thing about this event or nuclear radiation. (*not dunking on her, just the education system) ☢
I'm glad they made this show. Everyone in the world knows who Valery Legasov is and what he did. Every time I find people who love communism. I point to Chernobyl and ask if they loved what happened. The secrecy and cut throat politics.
Oh dayum this show is intense ahhhh
One thing americans consistently get wrong when they think that one guy goes up to the roof to look into the reactor of his own volition, he is "asked" to do it, but it's not a request, it's an order, and his initial hesitance is why there's an armed guard with him, ready to force him to do what he was tasked to do if he tries to decline. If he was even more insistent on not doing it earlier it would've likely landed him and his whole family in jail.
Ironically nuclear power is the safest cleanest and most efficient type of power we have.