The 3 man actually completed that task in conplete darkness hand tracing the pipes to find their way. Also crazy that all three men survived and 2 of them are still alive today
1:20 Europe was not affected to the extent that was possible, but it was affected. There were hotspots of fallout from the UK to Greece. And here in southern Germany, mushrooms in certain forest regions are still inedible today due to high levels of caesium-137. There are maps showing the fallout if you want to google it.
In real life, the 3 divers had to move in pitch dark just feeling the pipes with their hands. That's exactly why they used plant workers who knew the basement layout to it's every single detail and not military. Electronics would die real quick down there.
The thing I love about the meeting is the completely subdued reaction by Gorbachev and the other politicians. Legasov is worried about sending this many men into harms way and the Politburo is thinking "FINALLY we can just throw bodies at it and move on"
So some info about this episode: 1. When they doctors tell Lydmilla to not touch Vasily, it's not to protect her, it's to protect him. The firefighters would have been contaminated arriving at the hospital, but all you have to do is change clothes and shower since contamination is just radioactive material in an area where it shouldn't be. Most of the time it's dust, dirt, or rust, so changing clothes will clean you. They would have internal contamination but that would be very small and most of it wouldn't even escape his body so it's not a concern. When getting as much dose as the firefighters received, one of the things that happens is your immune system essentially doesn't exist anymore. So her touching him could potentially infect him with something. Even the slightest cold would be enough to kill him at that point in time. That's why they tell her not to touch him. 2. When they say the entrance to the tunnel won't be 12 meters below ground so it doesn't matter isn't true. The entrance would be facing away from the plant where most of the dose is coming from. The ground is an excellent shield against radiation, so the tunnel would be a very safe place to be. 3. The pictures the crowd is holding at the end are some of the actual firefighters
This is helpful information. My interpretation is also that in a society like the Soviet Union in the '80s, where every warning comes off as just another arbitrary order, even good, super important directions are treated by most people as probably illegitimate. And unfortunately, most professionals don't seem to have the habit or instinct of explaining things to people. So while it would seem obvious for the nurse to tell Lydmilla, "Don't touch him because it could harm him and you, or your baby if you're pregnant," it kind of doesn't occur to her. Her job is to give instructions, not explain. She's not even a bad person. It's part of Soviet culture that's developed over decades. Come to think of it, when Soviet officials are pushed to explain, like the miners do, and like Boris did to the plant workers when he asked them to go into the water to open the valves, the people generally stepped up. So it makes you wonder what a different approach could have meant throughout Soviet society. People seem willing to make great sacrifices, if the reasons are honestly explained to them, rather than being barked at them as orders.
@@apulrang I believe you are overthinking this a bit. This was an error of the show, which is clear from the scientists' comments about Ludmilla later in the series. So it was deliberate, probably for drama purposes. In other cases I think that line of thinking is reasonable. In several instances they overexaggerated the dangers in the series, but in those cases it is hindsight bias: At that time, people didn't know better so assuming the worst possible outcome instead of the most likely one was probably a reasonable approach.
Most of the hospital stuff is deliberately inaccurate, actually. Lyudmilla Ignatenko released a book with her memoires in which she narrates everything she went through. She took care of his husband and his crewmates, cooked for them, read them books and kept them comfortable until they passed. They were not dangerous to be around, radiation sickness doesn't work like that. The saddest part of the book is when she tells that shortly before Vasily passed, she attended a funeral for 30 minutes and went home to get clothes and stuff, when she returned to the hospital he had already passed, the nurses said he spent his last minutes desperately calling for her... Her holding his shoes during his burial is actually accurate, she says his feet were so swollen and in such bad shape when he passed that the shoes didn't fit.
Loveing you reaction to this series.; I'm in my mid 50's Live in the UK and remember this happening. I can remember we couldn't eat sheep, pigs and cows that had been grazing in the north for a couple of years. Even now when I go hiking in the Lake district I'm still carefull of drinking stream water.
I'm a little younger but I remember several things from that time. My dad put plastic over the windows. Us kids were told it was to keep the heat in (we'd just moved to a big house from a maisonette in London) but looking back on it I think it was to try to minimize the risk. We only did that for about a year. I remember the bans on food from certain areas too. A lot of milk had to be monitored for several years. I think there are still some locations where there's a risk of contamination. I'm not a conspiracy minded person, but I am a cynical realist, I'm absolutely certain there is a lot that our governments covered up to prevent mass panic. And I can honestly understand the need to do that.
@@ct5625 We almost had our owm nuclear disaster up at Windscale in the late 50's plus all the north west reactors-Seascale, Heysham, Calderhall were pumping millions of litres of radiactive water into the Irish sea for decades before the Gvt owned up to it.
2:18 they are the best flashlight to have in environment which kills your batteries. But in reality, they didn't have them, worked in the dark. It is just for us viewers to at least see something... 15:25 - Ludmila actually tried to help every firefighter, not just his husband. He hospital had not enough nurses to be present everywhere. But the no touching is for protecting the men, whose immune system is failing. Even common cold is devastating for them. Nurses use at least face masks and gloves. Consider them a catastrophically more severe cases of leukemia, same treatment. 15:45 - first reactor saying that. Everybody is horrified. But not able to acknowledge, that if even easing the pain is not possible, it would be better to end quickly. But you got also a research data on effects on humans from stuff that didn't happened before.. Do not search for fate of different irradiation accident - Hisashi Ouchi. 16:00 - and the damage is still downplayed. It was even worse. Skin and muscle tissues tearing from the bones... 31:15 - it happened multiple times, even that Chernobyl was the biggest. But Fukushima and Kystym disaster are close in the radiation danger scale..not in the number of people dying. And also there was time i 50/60s where both USSR and USA tested the nuclear bomb effects on its troops, battalions charging trough irradiated land land fallout to measure the effects and be more ready when Cold war turn hot... so that.
( little bit of info for the episode) at the end of the series, there is an epilogue that will answer some of your question's throughout the programme PLEASE don't watch anything on it, as it will spoil the genuine reactions that you will have to the info (more info below) FOR THE NEXT EPISODE, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE, PLEASE have a box of tissues with you, it will hit you HARD!!! (NO SPOILER'S) 10:33 & 15:57 -these were "TV friendly injuries", having watched dozens of documentaries on Chernobyl, and seen actual footage of the men in hospital, i'll just say this - the state of Ignotenko here would be considered "light" injuries 13:00 - in real life, the Crew chief (Andrei Glukhov), did pretty much the same thing, upon hearing what was needed to be done, the work staring within half an hour of the convo ending 23:25 - the whole process of putting them in coffins, nailing them shut, putting them in metal coffins and welding them shut, then pouring lead-induced concrete on them, really did take place, and was done to try and stop the radiation spreading to the surrounding area, she was holding his shoes because a report says that his feet were swollen and dis-figured to the point that his shoes didn't fit at all, the pictures that are being held here are genuine photo's and are a nod to the real-life fire-fighters that died fighting the fire
Pikalov is 100% right about no fans. People may not realize, but Pikalov is easily the 3rd expert on site after legasov and Khomyuk - he is head of soviet chemical division of the army, which means while he may not know theory of exactly what will happen with the core itself or the uranium, he knows all there is to know about how to keep his men safe, how to contain the damn thing, how to measure the damn thing ( its he who suggested high range dosimeter), etc. Pikalov knows that this dust is no ordinary dust. Its dust that has bullets in it. Its one thing being exposed to a pile of green goo shooting invisible bullets at you from distance messing with you. Its quite another thing to have a teeny tiny particle of that green goo stuck in your lung as a dust particle and firing at you from within for the rest of your life. I know it sucks for the miners and from their POV they are being treated like pigs - risk their lives AND work in inhumane conditions by hand, but the point Pikalov knows, is that with proper rotation, hydration and such, you WILL survive working in 50C mudhole underground. But if you breathe enough of the dust with bullets inside your lungs, you WILL die much, much quicker, in matter of years of couple of decades max. So yes, he is right- NO FANS !!
As a Russian, I can say, that ultimately, it's not a series about the Chernobyl catastrophe, but about modern Russia. You will see it at the end of the series. Thank you for your reaction.
Actually we now know bodies do not retain radioactivity as hinted at here. Ludmilla however was only a few miles from the power plant for two days after the explosion.
From my limited understanding of the subject, Vasily and others exposed ingested radionucleotides (radioactive substances) that lodged in their bodies. Like the fallout at the bridge, but at a substantially higher concentration, since they were actually on top of it.
1:27 in fact Legasow was hugly overesteminating how bad it could influence world. Do not get me wrong, it was very bad but what he told about Hiroshima was insane.
I will try to explain what happened to Ignatenko, with my very limited knowledge. Correction is appreciated. Our body constantly regenerates cells. Our DNA is crucial for cell division and repairs, it's like a blueprint. Gamma radiation, like from the nuclear accident, damages DNA itself. That means that - because the DNA 'blueprint' of our body is damaged, the body cannot regenerate cells anymore. Or worse, regenerate cells in a massively different way than the DNA intended to, turning the cells into mutated growths - cancer. In case of Ignatenko, and others with severe radiation poisoning, it's the former. Ignatenko looked fine at first because he is still living the last remaining cells in his body. His cells should regenerate, but the damaged DNA no longer allow this to happen. His cells began to decay. Worse, brain and nerve cells generally require a long time to decay and regenerate, so it keeps him alive, and in absolute agony; the body cells decay faster before the brain and nerves. Or in other words, his body was decomposing while he was still alive, and he could feel all of it. I believe Craig Mazin, and other experts of this matter, believe that this series downplays what actually happened with the patients. It was actually so much worse than what's depicted.
There is podcast with Craig Mazin, five episodes, one per each series episode, and he explains there lot of things, including why they made the changes for some things the way they did, for example the fact that the series doesn't have any mention of Legasov's family, etc.
IRL the Minister of Coal was actually a good man who earned his position through merit. I think he was actually a coal miner himself early in his career, so the miners considered him "one of them".
@5:20 The walking ghost phase of radiation poisoning is a period of apparent health, lasting for hours or days, following a dose of 10-50 sieverts of radiation. As its name would suggest, the walking ghost phase is followed by certain death.
Impact on people yes but not the damage shown. Would take two seconds for you to see the real pictures. None of the victims look like depicted. Pick up a physics book maybe?
@ProteusTheInvincible I have a different information that based on the book "Voices from Chernobyl" and Ludmila Ignatenko's interview. She's been there at the hospital with her husband Vasily Ignatenko ( The fireman) I have no reason not to believe her...
Fun fact, during the invasion of Ukraine, russian forces captured Chernobyl and started digging defensive trenches in the soil that had been buried. Thousands of russian troops got radiation poisoning.
In Chernobyl not all places are infected and not all places are fatally infected. There are radiation fields of different strenghts. Some places there are almost clean.. P. S. : firstly - russians didn't capture Chernobyl. (listen less to stupid Western propaganda). Secondly - even if they captured, they're not so stupid (unlike westerners) that they don't use dosimeters..
@joeker1013 dude, you can say anytning you want, but i am Russian and i studied documentary materials, i've seen interview's with participants in those events, liquidators and workers of the Chernobyl plant.. I loved the movie! It's one of my two favorite series in my life, but in this story from hbo many embellishment.. Trust me😉
@@Bugmihvik No kidding, the helicopter crash was due to hitting the crane, not going over the core. The miners didn't mine nude. But the point that the three-remaining plant workers reported that they were captured and forced to work when the russian army captured the plants. It was only around a thousand days ago; you can look it up. And that the troops dug up the overburden into the radioactive soil and showed signs of rad poisoning. And as I am speaking on the war, remember all the damage done by russia if they win will have to be paid by russian taxpayers to repair.
Lyudmilla and Vasily's story are featured because she lived to tell the story. The tapes are real and are transcribed online. The entire crew in the control room is accurately followed here. The notebooks and interviews are real. In episode 5, there is an epilogue about everyone. Don't spoil it for yourself. but do react to it.
@fewwiggle Agreed, but still a serious incident. If what I have just read is correct it reached 800rem/h, when the initial reader in the series only went to 3.6rem/h
@@stevenb4285Three Mile Island was serious but because we built our reactors with the enclosement, the protective concrete building around the reactor to prevent The escape of radiation, it was not anywhere close to the seriousness of Chernobyl!! Had the Russians built THEIR reactors in a similar fashion this would NOT have been quite as near the disaster that it turned out to be!! That is just my opinion, I have absolutely no knowledge of exactly what would have happened had the Chernobyl reactor been enclosed in a radiation shield building! Or whatever they call the building that is built around that Shields the radiation!! But as episode 5 will teach us they did not build their reactors that way!! And for all that want to say spoiler it's not really that much of a spoiler!
@@bernardsalvatore1929 you are partly correct - if chernobyl had a containment building, the disaster scale would've been much smaller, but it still would've been a significant disaster and of similar consequence, albeit lesser intensity, because a core exploding under extreme heat and pressure cannot be contained by any containment building on earth and as fukushima showed us, containment buildings are not bulletproof and can be breached. The main problem with chernobyl wasnt its lack of contaimnent building, it was the RBMK design mainly, using unenriched uranium (which required a LOT more uranium for power by mass than refined reactors, creating a macro-reactor effect, with localized chain ractions etc due to scale of it, making it more difficult to control via rod manuevers), along with the fact that it runs a water cooled positive void coefficient system. When in fact, running a water moderated & water cooled negative void coefficient is the safer option, as it means if your pumps ever fail and water stops moving through the core, since its water moderated & negative void coefficient, it means reactivity dies and your core shuts down/chokes. This design is more expensive and less efficient at power extraction ( because it requires two layers of water heat exchange than 1 and water is a terrible heat exchanger) but inherently safer. This is exactly why in 3 mile island, the situation straightaway went towards a meltdown and not an explosion: if water stops moving through the core, the core will get hotter, as uranium is radioactive and radioactive decay does generate heat. Whereas in +ve void coefficient, lack of water means core is getting hotter + more reactive, in -ve void coefficient it means your core is getting hotter and less reactive. Which means there wont be a massive power spike from core due to excessive reactivity, which means no explosion. But it still means your core is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter till it melts down, coz no water = no cooling = core temperature rises. So no system is perfectly safe, but there are ways to make nuclear tech safer, albeit at trade off of cost and efficiency in power generation.
@kapilavastuvasin I appreciate that detailed explanation!! And as we found out that was the reason they had their reactors like that is because of expense!!
Sure, Legasov is incredibly book smart - but he is _insanely_ naive about the political situation. Boris actually does a good job in helping him navigate it all without getting himself killed...
The show is about the human experience. One of the problems is the science of the show. Some of it is on point with the history other parts are completely wrong. This episode is a bad example of radiation poisoning. After an exposure and initial treatment and cleanings the human body is not radioactive. The only way for living tissue to be come radioactive is if there is material that is radioactive is lodged in the flesh. That is why in ABC (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) treatment the first step is a shower of water. The show got great response from everyone but scientist and historians were upset that the dramatization of some things changed the facts of history and science for the show to make its point.
The show got the radioactivity of the bodies correct. You're right, too - that for the bodies to be radioactive they would need to be contaminated with radioactive material. And they were, through inhalation, as well as radioactive isotopes being absorbed through the skin then migrating to internal tissues.
They toned down the affects of radiation because it was much worse in real life. For lack of a better word, it turns the human body into mush and its a horrendous way to go.
Not necessarily true. Anything inhaled or collected internally in the body basically sits there until it decays. During that half life time frame you can still expose other to radiation, albeit much more minor of a magnitude than exterior contamination.
Here we go again. You are asking same questions already explained and without spoilers, but you did not read them. So why bother to write more. Im debating whether to give a DISLIKE because of this or not
What part of they don't read comments because they don't want to accidentally come across a spoiler do you not understand? You have a weird obsession with these reactions and commenting the same thing on everyones video
@@tawogtrailers UMMMM isn't that the whole point of having comments? I have to say this channel is F N Wierd. Never have I got some much strange comments to MY comments. I Don't give spoilers, Im careful about that..They must be paying people to do this is only thing can think of
@cherylsims5636 except tou just keep copying and pasting the same response and then get mad if they don't respond to you. Thats whats a narcissist is. Dont be a narcissist
It amazes me that when humans are suffering and are helped to stop it, it's called mercy ending. But when animals are suffering and are euthanized to stop their pain people hate that.
10:33 she should not go to meet him. She was pregnant with his child and all of that was bad for child. She should protect unborn at any cost. And she did not. She lost pregnancy.
I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and the show is correct. The firefighters inhaled & absorbed radioactive material, and that material became lodged in the tissues of their body. That radioactive material would then continue to emit radiation making the body a radiation source.
I think the only dropout in this thread is you for making such a stupid comment!! You have no idea if these people dropouts or what their intelligence level is so why don't you just keep your negativity to yourself and go find Wall to Punch or a dog to kick!😮
@@FutureMartian97 that's not something you can just guess about, you'd have to do a pretty in-depth analysis to reach a conclusion about their radioactivity. What we do know for sure is that the Chernobyl firefighters were really sealed in lead coffins and buried in concrete. It happened. They wouldn't have done that for no reason. By today's standards pretty much anything above background levels would warrant safety precautions, and my guess would be the bodies would *at the very least* be treated with the same caution as low-level nuclear waste.
I think someone should have forewarned Tristan, this is a show yes, but it is one of the worst historical disasters involving real people, so making jokes, smiling is not appropriate.It should be watched and reacted to with great reverence for those who suffered and how terrifying this was for the world at large.
The 3 man actually completed that task in conplete darkness hand tracing the pipes to find their way. Also crazy that all three men survived and 2 of them are still alive today
1:20 Europe was not affected to the extent that was possible, but it was affected. There were hotspots of fallout from the UK to Greece. And here in southern Germany, mushrooms in certain forest regions are still inedible today due to high levels of caesium-137. There are maps showing the fallout if you want to google it.
Same here in the Nordics.
Radiation levels went around the earth, causing cancer rates to go up globally .. Still affecting people today
Together with new awareness of the hazards of radiation, and international treaties to try to mitigate it.... it has been a long 38 years.
2:07 the air is ionised, hence it will conduct electricity, hence it will short-circuit the batteries in those flashlights.
I would also wonder about the high-energy particles perforating the electrolyte and damaging it that way.
In real life, the 3 divers had to move in pitch dark just feeling the pipes with their hands. That's exactly why they used plant workers who knew the basement layout to it's every single detail and not military. Electronics would die real quick down there.
The thing I love about the meeting is the completely subdued reaction by Gorbachev and the other politicians. Legasov is worried about sending this many men into harms way and the Politburo is thinking "FINALLY we can just throw bodies at it and move on"
So some info about this episode:
1. When they doctors tell Lydmilla to not touch Vasily, it's not to protect her, it's to protect him. The firefighters would have been contaminated arriving at the hospital, but all you have to do is change clothes and shower since contamination is just radioactive material in an area where it shouldn't be. Most of the time it's dust, dirt, or rust, so changing clothes will clean you. They would have internal contamination but that would be very small and most of it wouldn't even escape his body so it's not a concern. When getting as much dose as the firefighters received, one of the things that happens is your immune system essentially doesn't exist anymore. So her touching him could potentially infect him with something. Even the slightest cold would be enough to kill him at that point in time. That's why they tell her not to touch him.
2. When they say the entrance to the tunnel won't be 12 meters below ground so it doesn't matter isn't true. The entrance would be facing away from the plant where most of the dose is coming from. The ground is an excellent shield against radiation, so the tunnel would be a very safe place to be.
3. The pictures the crowd is holding at the end are some of the actual firefighters
This is helpful information. My interpretation is also that in a society like the Soviet Union in the '80s, where every warning comes off as just another arbitrary order, even good, super important directions are treated by most people as probably illegitimate. And unfortunately, most professionals don't seem to have the habit or instinct of explaining things to people. So while it would seem obvious for the nurse to tell Lydmilla, "Don't touch him because it could harm him and you, or your baby if you're pregnant," it kind of doesn't occur to her. Her job is to give instructions, not explain. She's not even a bad person. It's part of Soviet culture that's developed over decades.
Come to think of it, when Soviet officials are pushed to explain, like the miners do, and like Boris did to the plant workers when he asked them to go into the water to open the valves, the people generally stepped up. So it makes you wonder what a different approach could have meant throughout Soviet society. People seem willing to make great sacrifices, if the reasons are honestly explained to them, rather than being barked at them as orders.
@@apulrang I believe you are overthinking this a bit.
This was an error of the show, which is clear from the scientists' comments about Ludmilla later in the series. So it was deliberate, probably for drama purposes.
In other cases I think that line of thinking is reasonable. In several instances they overexaggerated the dangers in the series, but in those cases it is hindsight bias: At that time, people didn't know better so assuming the worst possible outcome instead of the most likely one was probably a reasonable approach.
Most of the hospital stuff is deliberately inaccurate, actually. Lyudmilla Ignatenko released a book with her memoires in which she narrates everything she went through. She took care of his husband and his crewmates, cooked for them, read them books and kept them comfortable until they passed. They were not dangerous to be around, radiation sickness doesn't work like that.
The saddest part of the book is when she tells that shortly before Vasily passed, she attended a funeral for 30 minutes and went home to get clothes and stuff, when she returned to the hospital he had already passed, the nurses said he spent his last minutes desperately calling for her...
Her holding his shoes during his burial is actually accurate, she says his feet were so swollen and in such bad shape when he passed that the shoes didn't fit.
Loveing you reaction to this series.; I'm in my mid 50's Live in the UK and remember this happening. I can remember we couldn't eat sheep, pigs and cows that had been grazing in the north for a couple of years. Even now when I go hiking in the Lake district I'm still carefull of drinking stream water.
I'm a little younger but I remember several things from that time. My dad put plastic over the windows. Us kids were told it was to keep the heat in (we'd just moved to a big house from a maisonette in London) but looking back on it I think it was to try to minimize the risk. We only did that for about a year. I remember the bans on food from certain areas too. A lot of milk had to be monitored for several years. I think there are still some locations where there's a risk of contamination.
I'm not a conspiracy minded person, but I am a cynical realist, I'm absolutely certain there is a lot that our governments covered up to prevent mass panic. And I can honestly understand the need to do that.
@@ct5625 We almost had our owm nuclear disaster up at Windscale in the late 50's plus all the north west reactors-Seascale, Heysham, Calderhall were pumping millions of litres of radiactive water into the Irish sea for decades before the Gvt owned up to it.
2:18 they are the best flashlight to have in environment which kills your batteries. But in reality, they didn't have them, worked in the dark. It is just for us viewers to at least see something...
15:25 - Ludmila actually tried to help every firefighter, not just his husband. He hospital had not enough nurses to be present everywhere. But the no touching is for protecting the men, whose immune system is failing. Even common cold is devastating for them. Nurses use at least face masks and gloves. Consider them a catastrophically more severe cases of leukemia, same treatment.
15:45 - first reactor saying that. Everybody is horrified. But not able to acknowledge, that if even easing the pain is not possible, it would be better to end quickly. But you got also a research data on effects on humans from stuff that didn't happened before.. Do not search for fate of different irradiation accident - Hisashi Ouchi.
16:00 - and the damage is still downplayed. It was even worse. Skin and muscle tissues tearing from the bones...
31:15 - it happened multiple times, even that Chernobyl was the biggest. But Fukushima and Kystym disaster are close in the radiation danger scale..not in the number of people dying. And also there was time i 50/60s where both USSR and USA tested the nuclear bomb effects on its troops, battalions charging trough irradiated land land fallout to measure the effects and be more ready when Cold war turn hot... so that.
( little bit of info for the episode) at the end of the series, there is an epilogue that will answer some of your question's throughout the programme PLEASE don't watch anything on it, as it will spoil the genuine reactions that you will have to the info (more info below)
FOR THE NEXT EPISODE, PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE, PLEASE have a box of tissues with you, it will hit you HARD!!!
(NO SPOILER'S)
10:33 & 15:57 -these were "TV friendly injuries", having watched dozens of documentaries on Chernobyl, and seen actual footage of the men in hospital, i'll just say this - the state of Ignotenko here would be considered "light" injuries
13:00 - in real life, the Crew chief (Andrei Glukhov), did pretty much the same thing, upon hearing what was needed to be done, the work staring within half an hour of the convo ending
23:25 - the whole process of putting them in coffins, nailing them shut, putting them in metal coffins and welding them shut, then pouring lead-induced concrete on them, really did take place, and was done to try and stop the radiation spreading to the surrounding area, she was holding his shoes because a report says that his feet were swollen and dis-figured to the point that his shoes didn't fit at all, the pictures that are being held here are genuine photo's and are a nod to the real-life fire-fighters that died fighting the fire
Pikalov is 100% right about no fans. People may not realize, but Pikalov is easily the 3rd expert on site after legasov and Khomyuk - he is head of soviet chemical division of the army, which means while he may not know theory of exactly what will happen with the core itself or the uranium, he knows all there is to know about how to keep his men safe, how to contain the damn thing, how to measure the damn thing ( its he who suggested high range dosimeter), etc.
Pikalov knows that this dust is no ordinary dust. Its dust that has bullets in it. Its one thing being exposed to a pile of green goo shooting invisible bullets at you from distance messing with you. Its quite another thing to have a teeny tiny particle of that green goo stuck in your lung as a dust particle and firing at you from within for the rest of your life.
I know it sucks for the miners and from their POV they are being treated like pigs - risk their lives AND work in inhumane conditions by hand, but the point Pikalov knows, is that with proper rotation, hydration and such, you WILL survive working in 50C mudhole underground.
But if you breathe enough of the dust with bullets inside your lungs, you WILL die much, much quicker, in matter of years of couple of decades max.
So yes, he is right- NO FANS !!
In reality nobody worked on that tunnel naked in response to that.
But it was a great scene!
As a Russian, I can say, that ultimately, it's not a series about the Chernobyl catastrophe, but about modern Russia. You will see it at the end of the series. Thank you for your reaction.
As a fellow Russian I would ask you to elaborate.
@@MotorbreathChannelI think it’s quite clear - still the arsehole of the planet, spewing shit onto everyone else.
@@MotorbreathChannel "What is everyone going to hear?"
What is everyone going to know!?!
@@MotorbreathChannelevery lie incurs a debt to the truth. What is the cost of lies?
The 3 divers were not there for 10mins. They were there for hours in total darkness without any flashlights.
All three survived. 2 are still around.
Actually we now know bodies do not retain radioactivity as hinted at here. Ludmilla however was only a few miles from the power plant for two days after the explosion.
From my limited understanding of the subject, Vasily and others exposed ingested radionucleotides (radioactive substances) that lodged in their bodies. Like the fallout at the bridge, but at a substantially higher concentration, since they were actually on top of it.
Many thanks to Sam and Tristan! ☢
1:27 in fact Legasow was hugly overesteminating how bad it could influence world. Do not get me wrong, it was very bad but what he told about Hiroshima was insane.
I will try to explain what happened to Ignatenko, with my very limited knowledge. Correction is appreciated.
Our body constantly regenerates cells. Our DNA is crucial for cell division and repairs, it's like a blueprint.
Gamma radiation, like from the nuclear accident, damages DNA itself.
That means that - because the DNA 'blueprint' of our body is damaged, the body cannot regenerate cells anymore.
Or worse, regenerate cells in a massively different way than the DNA intended to, turning the cells into mutated growths - cancer.
In case of Ignatenko, and others with severe radiation poisoning, it's the former.
Ignatenko looked fine at first because he is still living the last remaining cells in his body.
His cells should regenerate, but the damaged DNA no longer allow this to happen. His cells began to decay.
Worse, brain and nerve cells generally require a long time to decay and regenerate, so it keeps him alive, and in absolute agony; the body cells decay faster before the brain and nerves.
Or in other words, his body was decomposing while he was still alive, and he could feel all of it.
I believe Craig Mazin, and other experts of this matter, believe that this series downplays what actually happened with the patients. It was actually so much worse than what's depicted.
There is podcast with Craig Mazin, five episodes, one per each series episode, and he explains there lot of things, including why they made the changes for some things the way they did, for example the fact that the series doesn't have any mention of Legasov's family, etc.
IRL the Minister of Coal was actually a good man who earned his position through merit. I think he was actually a coal miner himself early in his career, so the miners considered him "one of them".
@5:20 The walking ghost phase of radiation poisoning is a period of apparent health, lasting for hours or days, following a dose of 10-50 sieverts of radiation. As its name would suggest, the walking ghost phase is followed by certain death.
Yeah they explain that later in the episode bud but thanks for the recap
I would have put on a Radiation Suit and lived in it, never taking it off if I lived there during that time. ☢️
The impact of radiation shown in this episode is a family-friendly version. The reality was much more horrifying 😳
Impact on people yes but not the damage shown. Would take two seconds for you to see the real pictures. None of the victims look like depicted. Pick up a physics book maybe?
huuh NOT EVEN CLOSE! tons of scientist had issues with how dramatized they made it look
@ProteusTheInvincible I have a different information that based on the book "Voices from Chernobyl" and Ludmila Ignatenko's interview. She's been there at the hospital with her husband Vasily Ignatenko ( The fireman) I have no reason not to believe her...
@@MolecularResearchLab No, no the damage is quite accurate.
How fireman Vasiliy Ignatenko, Akimov and Toptunov died is an artistic exaggiration for more drama.
participation at the cleanup was not voluntarily done.
Fun fact, during the invasion of Ukraine, russian forces captured Chernobyl and started digging defensive trenches in the soil that had been buried. Thousands of russian troops got radiation poisoning.
In Chernobyl not all places are infected and not all places are fatally infected. There are radiation fields of different strenghts. Some places there are almost clean..
P. S. : firstly - russians didn't capture Chernobyl. (listen less to stupid Western propaganda). Secondly - even if they captured, they're not so stupid (unlike westerners) that they don't use dosimeters..
@@Bugmihvik ROFLOL! Did you even watch Chernobyl? The techs at the plant said this happened.
@joeker1013 dude, you can say anytning you want, but i am Russian and i studied documentary materials, i've seen interview's with participants in those events, liquidators and workers of the Chernobyl plant.. I loved the movie! It's one of my two favorite series in my life, but in this story from hbo many embellishment.. Trust me😉
@@Bugmihvik No kidding, the helicopter crash was due to hitting the crane, not going over the core. The miners didn't mine nude. But the point that the three-remaining plant workers reported that they were captured and forced to work when the russian army captured the plants. It was only around a thousand days ago; you can look it up. And that the troops dug up the overburden into the radioactive soil and showed signs of rad poisoning.
And as I am speaking on the war, remember all the damage done by russia if they win will have to be paid by russian taxpayers to repair.
@joeker1013 WTF invasion In 1986!?👀 What the hell you try to tell me!?🤷
Lyudmilla and Vasily's story are featured because she lived to tell the story.
The tapes are real and are transcribed online.
The entire crew in the control room is accurately followed here. The notebooks and interviews are real.
In episode 5, there is an epilogue about everyone. Don't spoil it for yourself. but do react to it.
You guys had a partial melt down at 3 Mile Island in 1979 ... was I believe the worst nuclear accident until Chernobyl.
While very bad for the reactor, the release of radiation was negligible at TMI
@fewwiggle Agreed, but still a serious incident. If what I have just read is correct it reached 800rem/h, when the initial reader in the series only went to 3.6rem/h
@@stevenb4285Three Mile Island was serious but because we built our reactors with the enclosement, the protective concrete building around the reactor to prevent The escape of radiation, it was not anywhere close to the seriousness of Chernobyl!! Had the Russians built THEIR reactors in a similar fashion this would NOT have been quite as near the disaster that it turned out to be!!
That is just my opinion, I have absolutely no knowledge of exactly what would have happened had the Chernobyl reactor been enclosed in a radiation shield building! Or whatever they call the building that is built around that Shields the radiation!!
But as episode 5 will teach us they did not build their reactors that way!!
And for all that want to say spoiler it's not really that much of a spoiler!
@@bernardsalvatore1929 you are partly correct - if chernobyl had a containment building, the disaster scale would've been much smaller, but it still would've been a significant disaster and of similar consequence, albeit lesser intensity, because a core exploding under extreme heat and pressure cannot be contained by any containment building on earth and as fukushima showed us, containment buildings are not bulletproof and can be breached.
The main problem with chernobyl wasnt its lack of contaimnent building, it was the RBMK design mainly, using unenriched uranium (which required a LOT more uranium for power by mass than refined reactors, creating a macro-reactor effect, with localized chain ractions etc due to scale of it, making it more difficult to control via rod manuevers), along with the fact that it runs a water cooled positive void coefficient system.
When in fact, running a water moderated & water cooled negative void coefficient is the safer option, as it means if your pumps ever fail and water stops moving through the core, since its water moderated & negative void coefficient, it means reactivity dies and your core shuts down/chokes.
This design is more expensive and less efficient at power extraction ( because it requires two layers of water heat exchange than 1 and water is a terrible heat exchanger) but inherently safer.
This is exactly why in 3 mile island, the situation straightaway went towards a meltdown and not an explosion: if water stops moving through the core, the core will get hotter, as uranium is radioactive and radioactive decay does generate heat. Whereas in +ve void coefficient, lack of water means core is getting hotter + more reactive, in -ve void coefficient it means your core is getting hotter and less reactive. Which means there wont be a massive power spike from core due to excessive reactivity, which means no explosion. But it still means your core is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter till it melts down, coz no water = no cooling = core temperature rises.
So no system is perfectly safe, but there are ways to make nuclear tech safer, albeit at trade off of cost and efficiency in power generation.
@kapilavastuvasin I appreciate that detailed explanation!!
And as we found out that was the reason they had their reactors like that is because of expense!!
Sure, Legasov is incredibly book smart - but he is _insanely_ naive about the political situation. Boris actually does a good job in helping him navigate it all without getting himself killed...
The show is about the human experience. One of the problems is the science of the show. Some of it is on point with the history other parts are completely wrong. This episode is a bad example of radiation poisoning. After an exposure and initial treatment and cleanings the human body is not radioactive. The only way for living tissue to be come radioactive is if there is material that is radioactive is lodged in the flesh. That is why in ABC (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) treatment the first step is a shower of water. The show got great response from everyone but scientist and historians were upset that the dramatization of some things changed the facts of history and science for the show to make its point.
The show got the radioactivity of the bodies correct. You're right, too - that for the bodies to be radioactive they would need to be contaminated with radioactive material. And they were, through inhalation, as well as radioactive isotopes being absorbed through the skin then migrating to internal tissues.
They toned down the affects of radiation because it was much worse in real life. For lack of a better word, it turns the human body into mush and its a horrendous way to go.
What happened to the first responders was actually worse than they have shown in the show, the producers felt they had to lesson it for audiences.
they should've called the series "stomach-churnobyl"
Being exposed to radiation doesn't make you radioactive. After a shower and change of clothes there is zero radiation risk to others.
I already to them this but they dont read the comments, why bother to keep writing it
@@cherylsims5636 its for those who do read like me and want learn from those who know
Yeah, they dont pay much attention to this community comments
Not necessarily true. Anything inhaled or collected internally in the body basically sits there until it decays. During that half life time frame you can still expose other to radiation, albeit much more minor of a magnitude than exterior contamination.
Maybe this show will help explain why Ukraine a country that has had such a horrific history is fighting so hard for their own sovereignty.
Here we go again. You are asking same questions already explained and without spoilers, but you did not read them. So why bother to write more. Im debating whether to give a DISLIKE because of this or not
Do it. I already did.
What part of they don't read comments because they don't want to accidentally come across a spoiler do you not understand? You have a weird obsession with these reactions and commenting the same thing on everyones video
@@tawogtrailers UMMMM isn't that the whole point of having comments? I have to say this channel is F N Wierd. Never have I got some much strange comments to MY comments. I Don't give spoilers, Im careful about that..They must be paying people to do this is only thing can think of
@cherylsims5636 except tou just keep copying and pasting the same response and then get mad if they don't respond to you. Thats whats a narcissist is. Dont be a narcissist
@cherylsims5636 take off the foil hat bud
Please react to DREDD (2012).
when you guys will react to moon knight??
Love you guys! After this, you guys should watch another series by Craig Mazin, The Last of Us
You think this episode was hard to watch? The next one will leave you weeping.
It amazes me that when humans are suffering and are helped to stop it, it's called mercy ending. But when animals are suffering and are euthanized to stop their pain people hate that.
10:33 she should not go to meet him. She was pregnant with his child and all of that was bad for child. She should protect unborn at any cost. And she did not. She lost pregnancy.
Holy average people logic. No radiation doesn't spread by being near people. Love watching dropouts come to this conclusion.
I have a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and the show is correct. The firefighters inhaled & absorbed radioactive material, and that material became lodged in the tissues of their body. That radioactive material would then continue to emit radiation making the body a radiation source.
@@snrrub Not enough to make a difference. Any dose they would be putting off would be incredibly low
I think the only dropout in this thread is you for making such a stupid comment!!
You have no idea if these people dropouts or what their intelligence level is so why don't you just keep your negativity to yourself and go find Wall to Punch or a dog to kick!😮
@@FutureMartian97 that's not something you can just guess about, you'd have to do a pretty in-depth analysis to reach a conclusion about their radioactivity. What we do know for sure is that the Chernobyl firefighters were really sealed in lead coffins and buried in concrete. It happened. They wouldn't have done that for no reason.
By today's standards pretty much anything above background levels would warrant safety precautions, and my guess would be the bodies would *at the very least* be treated with the same caution as low-level nuclear waste.
@@snrrub Evidence from chernobyl goes against everything you say. Stop spreading rumors. You sound like a kid.
I think someone should have forewarned Tristan, this is a show yes, but it is one of the worst historical disasters involving real people, so making jokes, smiling is not appropriate.It should be watched and reacted to with great reverence for those who suffered and how terrifying this was for the world at large.
it is understandable, but bear in mind that trying to use jokes to bear the reality is also a human reaction to high stress situation.
Sam is gorgeous without makeup. Hopefully it's because you guys are going to a fancy dinner after.
Found the old doomer creep.
@ one way to look at it.
@ have you ever considered that you're wrong?
FUKUSHIMA