2 hours in the room where the uniforms are and you received a lifetime dose of radiation. Of course, since your body still accumulates radiation from being on flights, cosmic radiation reaching the earth, radiation from previous nuclear tests and accidents, your risks of cancer, leukemia and such is waaaay higher.
No, that's just wrong. You made that up. They are still contaminated with material that is radioactive, but the doses you'd receive are not that intense anymore. Ever heard of radioactive decay? I guess not.
Lajos Winkler yes there radioactive decay is happening still. nevertheless, the radioactive decay or halflife of Uranium and elements like it are at least 2500 years. So any item that absorbed Uranium particles will continue to radiate those same particles for a very long time. it also depends on how close and how long said items like a fireman jacket was next to a massive amount of Uranium.
Do you know how radioactive decay works? It's reverse exponential. There's the 7 hour rule for nuclear weapons for example. After 7 hours the amount of radiation is about a 10th of the original those, after 7x7 hours (49) it's a 100th, 7x7x7 (about 2 weeks). The half time is looking at the amount of atoms, not the dose. And since basically everything concerning radiation is accumulative, exponential or both the amount of atoms does not equal the amount of radiation dose one receives.
Aww you left out the "We'll be dead in five years" line - that was the turning point for Boris, and when he finally, truly understood the gravity of the situation. Also, when he finally started to take Legosav seriously.
Wrong. Gloves would help. The weird tan they're getting is from beta radiation and that will be attenuated, by some extent, with nice thick rubber gloves. There's also the issue of contamination. You do not want fission products on your hands where they will be hard to wash off. As for the lead, you couldn't carry lead gloves thick enough to stop the gamma rays to a safe level. Luckily, they mostly pass through us and deposit little energy.
Beta and gamma radiation most definitely. Alpha = helium nucleus, blocked by a sheet of paper Beta = electron or positron, blocked by a sheet of aluminum Gamma = gamma photon, blocked by a thick plate of lead And then there's the loose neutrons...
@@Tounushi It's not that simple. Great deal of electrons will be stopped by thick rubber or glass, too. It depends on their energy. Thick rubber gloves will absolutely prevent many injuries in this case.
Every single person in the show is a real person except for the female scientist from Minsk. She is a fictional amalgamation made to represent the hundreds of other scientists. Everyone else in the show did exist
Because he was an actual human being and not just a movie trope. Most humans might get stuck in their way of thinking, but they are not intentiously malicious, so when confronted with reality they will try to do the right thing.
My father from Lithuania (that's about 800km north from Chernobyl) had later told me, that that week after explosion he thought to himself, that the "sun" felt somewhat harsh on the skin
@Erich Kirk I wouldnt be so quick to dismiss it. Granted you are more than likely correct, however they also thought it had no taste. Turns out it has a metallic taste. This is the most amount of radiation ever released no one really could know what would or would not happen. Unfortunatly with the secretive nature of the USSR, we still do not know.
@@michaela9967 If it makes you feel any better, in large portions of the USA right now the tap water comes out purple, black, or orange, or it burns like Napalm...unless it eats through the sink first.
@Erich Kirk well how about you try to google before you call something a bullshit. fruiting water is not a normal water ...... it is sad that you don't know this knowledge. fruiting water turns green when there's something wrong with your body. Infections are one of them in normal life. Babies in fruiting water takes all shits inside. Including radiation. It is well documented. So don't try to be a smart ass
@Erich Kirk lol aww somebody is butthurt. Well how about you try to talk in another language first ? English is not my native language. We both know you can understand me, you're just hurt that you're wrong ... American, right ?
@@jamesricker3997 "Free housing"...but there was a catch;)..... you got on the waiting list only when you got married, and then had to spend a decade or more on the waiting list while living in dormitory or mostly in your parent's place. -During that time you could not just rent a flat as private rental market was non-existent(illegal). Some young families with kids lived at their parent's place well into their mid 30s.(people married ad had kids early 20s back then!) Also, the flat was not 'free' in many cases. You could be on that waiting list for a 'cooperative' apartment, which meant essentially you started to pay kind of mortgage(25-40% of couple's salary) after your turn came after 10 years or so and you got a flat. The advantage of 'cooperative' flat was it was your property and you could 'exchange'(but not sell) for same size apartment in different city. (not an option for 'state-rented' apartment-you were tied to it as you could not just move and get 'state-rented' flat in a different city) My family got 'assigned' 'state-rented' super-small flat of 30sq meters (basically a studio} when I was 3 years old, until then we lived in sub-rented room(yes, one room) essentially rented illegally from an older lady who lived in the flat. My parents got assigned decent state-rented flat(three rooms, 80sq m) when I was 11 and my brother 9. Both my parents were above-average paid professionals, my dad was university researcher (macromolecular chemistry) but they still could not rent a 'livable' flat for a family until I was 11 and they were married for 13 years! So think about it- 13 years in really bad housing was a price for (very cheap, not free) housing you got in the end. My parents would definitely prefer expensive mortgage if they just could live in decent accomodation for those 11 years with two kids But Of course, if you were willing to get assigned to a job in some very unpopular place (like small remote town with strategic industries), then you got your flat sooner, sometimes within two or three years, but then you were tied to that place for the rest of your life (as you could not sell and move elsewhere and buy or rent there)
Also the Soviet Rubles could not be freely traded. Exchanges could only occur on the black market and probably no one wanted to exchange a hard currency like US dollars for Soviet money.
I am loving the show so far, myself. But I am constantly freaked out by the fact that its all totally real shit. I live in Latvia, which used to be part of the Soviet Union. I recommended the show to my dad the other week and he said he had already heard its good, but didn't really want to watch it, cause its too real. He had a good friend of his who was conscripted to be part of the whole clean-up effort in Chernobyl, and the friend came back okay enough but then ended up dying of cancer like a couple of years later. Also, my dad supposedly dodged the conscription himself. He's a physicist, so I guess he was more in the loop about just how dangerous it would be to go and back then you could find ways of getting out of things if you knew the right people or knew how to avoid certain things, so yeah. Freaky stuff. Another interesting thing is in alot of european countries, including mine, people who were part of the clean-up efforts at Chernobyl actually receive special social payments for it kind of like disability benefits to this day.
One of the more higher ranking liquidators said that most of them were slated to recieve benefits but some didn't anyway. Like extra pay, promotions, free apartments etc. The man in question during his interview in 2007-2008 recieved and still recieves 27 hryvnia from the Ukrainian government monthly. For reference that's $1.01, and he noted that the tea he was drinking costed 35 hryvnia, or $1.30.
@@neuralmute Actually, no. Alot of it was filmed in our neighboring country Lithuania. They have a soviet-era reactor quite similar to the one in Chernobyl, so a lot of the scenes you see in/around the reactor are probably shot there.
You just summed up the reaction to the Chernobyl accident in a nutshell. It brought out the very best and worst of the Soviet system and people. On one hand, so many lives were sacrificed, but on the other, they faced an unprecedented disaster head on, and kept working until that reactor was sealed away and the surrounding area was more or less sterilised.
You have the best reactions to this. Absolute concern, a great sense of the gravity of the situation, and horror at exactly what was going on. Fantastic reaction, cheers 🙂
An Mi-8 helicopter really did crash, in the radio active smoke it clipped a crane and went down. Conjecture is the intense radiation affected the helicopters systems and the pilots. There was one helicopter that could fly over the reactor directly the massive Mi-26 Halo, it had enough shielding to withstand it and an automated drop system. Use of the Mi-26 reduced the amount of drop flights significantly. Several different types of helicopters were used, the small Mi-2 as a coordination platform, the Mi-24 attack helicopter with its forward gun removed and replaced with a dosimeter used to scout out safe paths to the reactor, the large Mi-6 Hook used to carry large loads (you see a CGI version in the episode 4) and the Mi-26 as a heavy lift type and drop helicopter. All these helicopters are now in a machine grave yard near the reactor too contaminated to ever be used again.
Fedaykin24 - Doesn't radiation also affect electronics to a degree as well? So even if the machines managed to be decontaminated the electronics would still be too degraded to use anyway?
216 roubles the average salary of a worker in industry in 86. It turns out that it is almost two monthly salaries. And the prices of products then were as follows Milk, a liter - 0,32 RUB(today 92 Rub) A loaf of black bread - 0.16, a loaf of white bread - 0.22 10 eggs - 1,05 Sugar, kilogram, - 78,84 Potatoes, kg, - 0.1 Fruit ice cream in a glass - 0.07 Butter - 3.5 Your figure is similar to the truth. But if you are a little more optimistic and compare the example of milk, it will be an example of 1760 dollars
400 rubles was the maximum possible pay for anybody who lived in the Soviet Union, you could be General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but would still only be entitled to a maximum 400 rubles. Of course in reality the higher you got up in the Soviet system there were ways to subsidise your earnings and high party officials gained all sorts of perks. This of course led to a significant 'Black economy' in the Soviet Union for goods along with an environment of giving bribes to officials to jump the queue for certain luxuries like a new Lada car.
Unfortunately, the families of the heroes were not taken care of pretty much at all...... the Soviet Union wasn't known for taking care of their own. Most of them died pretty quickly anyway...... it's a goddamn tragedy.
До сих пор в государственных учреждениях ликвидаторы ЧАЭС пропусктся вне очереди, как и ветераны второй мировой, но что тех, что этих почти не осталось
@@TheMartuksxxxx Who is actually paying the workers? Not the communist state, it collapsed a few years later. My guess is this occured much later, if you lived.
The podcast is excellent. For episode 4, they accidentally released it a day before the show thank God they did. I needed the spoilers to be prepared for probably the most traumatic hour of TV I have ever seen.
Prepare for a long cry while watching episode 3. By the way radiation hit Czechoslovakia when i was 3 years old and we was with kindergarthen on mountain week holidays. Our state television reported absolutely no risk so we did not go back home even if our parents want.
No one at the time thought it would be possible for a reactor to blow up like that, it would be like someone walking into a room with no gravity, no one would believe you, or would think you are high as balls, that was one of hte reasons everyone was in denial, it was a shitshow.
and a lot of people were not really aware of dangers caused by radiation, because before chernobyl there was no chernobyl to scare anyone (not known to the world at least)
well they knew meltdowns were possible, where a reaction runs away turns the water to plasma and melts a hole in the reactor vestal, the idea of a reactor exploding like a bomb was a little far fetched due to the design supposed to precluding that very event.
@@Dularr in reality, these three men weren't volunteers. however, the ones who cleared the graphite off the roof had an opportunity to refuse the mission - none of them did.
@@snickers_economy I figured the roof workers were all conscripts without much choice. The 90 seconds on the roof exposed them to a lifetime of occupational exposure radiation.
Lothar Scholz, I was born in Soviet Union and live in US for the past 15 years and i am gonna have to strongly disagree with you mister. America is an idea, just like Soviet Union was and a lot of people will give their lifes away for it. Especially if it is a matter of million lifes.
Legasov, the man in the first scene who hangs himself is only two years older then he was when he first answers the phone summoning him to Moscow. Gives a sense of the toll the radiation took on him
I have to tell you that my mom sister’s cousin and my sister’s godfather were the liquidators of the accident. He died last year, he had terrible consequences, his legs were very sore, his toes were blackening. There were severe pains, he drank a lot to endure it. As a result, alcohol did its job and he died of cirrhosis of the liver. Then his son and wife died. His wife died the day before yesterday, my mom buried her for the last money. Because for those pennies that he received to live it was not possible. That's the truth.
Boris Shcherbina died in 1990. He was also a chain smoker, but, the Chernobyl exposure was likely a factor. Yes, General Pikalov got a stiff dose of radiation by driving into that area, even with the shielding of that vehicle. From the books I've read about Chernobyl, this HBO series is pretty accurate.
Well, they were unprepared for a situation like this. Most of the populus, including medical staff in hospitals, didn't even knew about severity of radiation, especialy the old folks and doctors.
05:43 It is an ordinary hospital. They don't have full full radiation suits. And their absolute priority was getting that poison away from everyone else. This show is FULL of simple heroes like that. Brimming with them.
It's not a flashback at he start of the first episode, it's flash-forward. The man who kills himself is SPOILER the main character of the show, Valery Legasov.
Not really a spoiler though! They wanted you to know it as soon as the show starts, instead of having it be the "twist" or climax of the show. The show's creators made it this way knowing that anyone can look up what happened to the real Legasov once they watch the first episode of the show.
As others have pointed out, the Chernobyl podcast is highly recommended. The creator of the show talks about each episode and some background behind each scene. It's amazing because almost everything portrayed on the show really did happen. The creator spent a long time gathering accounts from multiple sources and from people who were really there. Very good listen. th-cam.com/video/rUeHPCYtWYQ/w-d-xo.html
Watching this series, one of the interesting things is to see how Boris Scherbina changes from being a loyal party man to realising the whole soviet secrecy thing was bollocks. 13:41 sums up perfectly just how politics played a major part in this disaster.
what made the real story of the three plantworkers far more heroic and anxiety inducing is that they didn't have wind up torches. They felt their way to their goal using the pipes. they knew which pipe needed to be followed and they did. the windup torches are just there as artistic license so that the viewers can see whats happening. Total claustrophobic darkness in a TV show doesn't quite create the same tension as it does in real life.....
Watching this late, because I randomly came across your reaction to ep 1 and it was fun to watch, but I appreciate you looking those men up. They don't get enough recognition for what they did, and are the embodiment of bravery.
The show is terrifying, but if you read up on the whole thing, the reality was far worse. If anything, they lightened it just well enough without being disrespectful or gratuitous. The podcast that accompanies the show is highly enlightening for anyone still curious, and I highly encourage you to check it out.
Sundot Jolangot What really gets me is what would’ve happened had they not been able to drain all that water out. Thank Zeus they did, cause it would’ve been an absolute disaster of unimaginable proportions.
@@goldenageofdinosaurs7192 I think disaster doesn’t even fully capture what it would have been like. If it had happened it would have been literally apocalyptic and we would be living in a completely different world today.
Three of the remaining reactors of Chernobyl continued to be operational for years after the disaster. The man with the large forehead birthmark is the last president of USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The USSR and most of Europe were hideously lucky that Gorbachev was in charge at that time. Any of his predecessors would probably have gone entirely with the connected party members line until vast areas were lethally contaminated.
I was four months old when this happened. We lived in Yugoslavia, about 749.22 Miles (1205.76 Km) away from Chernobyl. Later when I was about 3-4 years old I had difficulty breathing and was diagnosed with bronchitis. But if this was due to the radiation that got carried across Europe with wind is unclear. My parents were instructed not to go outside nor to buy/eat dairy products.
I don't know if it was shown (i haven't watched the show yet) but there was a huge parade on 1st of May on International workers day and on 9th of May World War II victory day in every city. It means they kept young children (primary school and up) under the open air for hours and hours, celebrating. I remember my biology teacher being so remorseful and angry by this fact years later, they were told it was perfectly safe. Also that May week is usually the one when everyone takes a vacation and goes to a picnic outside of the city. =/
They cut that scene because it was too expensive, but it was supposed to show the party officials happily marching in the parade despite knowing the air was poisonous.
Radiation came as far as Sweden & Finland. We can find radiation from our forests here in Finland. From some mushrooms & berries still & will be long after all the living has been stopping on this planet. Some say 100k years, some 2.17 million years :C I was born in 89 & my childhood was very weird cuz of this.
that just fearmongering ... yes teh radiation is still present and yes it will be for a long time but by now its severely dissipated and in +- 100 years it will just blend into the natural background radiation ... most people do not realize that we are CONSTANTLY being subjected to small doses of all kinds of radiation naturally every day of our lives, hell the radiation levels in Prypiat are todesy somewhat comparable to the dose everyone gets on a long distance high altitude flight and thousands of people do that every single day.
11:19 Yes 1 a day but it depends on the size/dosage of the iodine pill. You will have to take a pill or amount to 130mg of Potassium Iodide per day for the duration of the radiation release to protect your thyroid from uptaking radioactive iodine 131.
My mother lived in the exclusion zone (30km) at the time of the accident, and what was shown in the series (according to her stories) was understated, until recently the liquidators were not told about the danger of liquidation, people just worked, understanding only from rumors how harmful the radiation was
Sweden, not Switzerland. Sweden was the first country that discovered the nuclear radiation outside of the Soviet Union. And as a result we couldn't pick mushrooms in parts of the country for a couple of years. Scary indeed.
Good news is most of those children if not in direct contact with people working on the plant, doctor or fireman might survive with not too many damages...human body can sustain for a short time a certain amount of radiation...however 36 hours is pretty long so cancer is possible...at least it's not like the other worker... you can see the weakness of the system at that time and the herculean task of a crisis noboby knows how to resolve...Such a great show !
The one in 2011 was Fukushima, a tsunami hit the generators which was located in the basement of the plant which cut out the electricity which cause the core to explode.
I was 6 when the actual event happened. I remember seeing the footage on TV, and asking my mother "Mom, what happened to that factory?" (at that age I thought any building with a big smokestack like that was a "factory") She just said "Really, really bad things."
Only one major inaccuracy here is that the helicopter crash happened months after the explosion. Other than that, there is actual footage of this crash happening, just about exactly as its shown. Fun fact, 2 out of 3 of those divers are still alive today. Also, Japan. The Fukushima melt down was actually worse than Chernobyl. 3 units exploded and melted down, and flood water took a lot of contamination into the ocean. It is largely contained currently, but it still poses a massive threat.
19:23 In 1986 that was equal to roughly 530$. Take in mind how much 530$ was worth to Americans in 1986 too. For Soviet Russia - that's actually not that bad. Monthly salary back then was around 120-150 rubles.
Something that not a lot of people know: the three heroes who entered the pipes and worked in the dark to open the sluice gates survived. One died in 2005. The other two are still alive.
Heard about this from my mother when I was about 10, probably cause we lived within the 20 mile radius of Shippingport Power Plant in Western Pennsylvania. My mom was always kinda paranoid about it, even now I can see the water vaper from the cooling tower.
Radiation burns and what they do to the body is like something out of a nightmare. Their makeup work for this show was incredibly accurate, and terrifyingly gruesome.
The problem with watching this show as some kind of entertainment, is that the sense of "movie justice" comes to the fore with many viewers, without registering these events really happened. Calling for someone to die because they don't understand the severity of the situation, or don't agree with the main protagonist is generally fine when watching a movie with fictional characters, but it's borderline offensive when calling for the death of real living people in a docudrama like this. Anatoly Dyatlov was an unpleasant and arrogant man, but he wasn't evil. His goal wasn't to destroy the reactor. He took shortcuts, and disregarded safety protocol while trying to force a completed test. His understanding of the working of the reactor also worked against him when trying to deal with the explosion. In his mind a reactor could meltdown, but not explode. The only thing that could have exploded was hydrogen in the Control Systems tank as it's the only explosive substance in an nuclear reactor. He couldn't grasp the idea that he may have just caused a catastrophic failure, and was giving orders based on what he thought he knew. Pumping water into the core to cool it, lowering control rods by hand to shut down the reactor, calling for reinforcement, calling the fire department, these are all valid measures to try to bring the situation back under control. Viktor Bryukhanov and Nikolai Fomin worked with the incorrect and incomplete information given by Dyatlov. Dyatlov was the most senior person on site, and his reports were given enormous weight over that of others. They were also coordinating the situation with Moscow, so would've had no time to check the situation at the plant themselves. Boris Shcherbina worked with the information he was given from the men on the ground at Chernobyl. There was no reason not to believe them, and their opinions held more weight than some scientist from hundreds of miles away. Valery Legasov's depicted outburst against party leader Mikhail Gorbachev would have been unheard of, and a break with all protocol. Since Legasov was brought into the meeting by Shcherbina, Shcherbina was accountable for Legasov's demeaner, which would motivate the attempt to try to shut Legasov down.
The subtitle to the show "The cost of lies" is so accurate and if you want to read some firsthand records, the voices of Chernobyl is an amazing and horrible book written by a Nobel prize laureate in literature. The story of the firefighter and his wife is from that book. Also, the HBO Chernobyl podcast is very interesting with the writer of this show explaining things they did not put in the show and things that are completely true.
21:50 Fomin had a breakdown before the trial and tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists with shards from his glasses. He survived, was sentenced to 10 years hard labour, and was released in a general amnesty for these things shortly after the Soviet Union fell apart.
DID YOU DO TWO IN A ROW?!!? NOOOOO damn I couldn't handle that much. Also, I just watched episode 4. Can't wait to see how you feel about it. I will say, have something really happy and fun to do afterwards.
terrakie I started crying from the first day/ first episode . Episode 4 was my breaking point I was sobbing my eyes out and can sincerely say this has been both educational and heartbreaking in so many ways.
The guys at the plant believed that if the reactor had exploded, they should have all been dead. As in, they explode with it. Since they are still alive, the reactor core must not have exploded. It's understandable that in the face of something impossible occurring, these guys are having a tough time coming to grips with reality.
I love your reaction. It's grounded but totally real. I felt quite the same way watching. . . the way this happened in reality is completely crazy. The end of this episode seriously nearly gave me a panic attack. I just remember watching and having to remind myself to breath when the credits started rolling.
@ManicMeeks I also couldn't imagine not crying at least a few times every episode! What a series, what a roller coaster. Love the actual reactions to hectic scenes!
LURKINGELMO REVIEWS man look at your negative as trying to make me care about your opinion, Cute! I cried from start to finish every episode, IS THAT ALRIGHT WITH YOU MATE?!? Need to continue my day pls respond quick ! :/
The expense of cleaning up after the Chernobyl disaster was estimated to be about three to four hundred billion dollars. That expense contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union
The three guys who opened the water tanks were not killed by radiation, like many sources claim. In fact, first of them died in 2005 from heart disease, and the other two are still alive afaik. But yeah, these guys had balls made of pure titanium.
you sound pretty naive. Its not just ussr government that was like that in post war and cold war times, even today many countries would think about thier prestige more than thier people. During cold war most important was to maintain power and dont looks weak vs other superpower. Usa tested thousands of nukes on thier own soil, most cancers people have nowadays cause of that, same in ussr, china and many other countries. Usa is lucky that they didnt had something similar, i bet it would be handeled very similar, maybe faster slightly cause of help of other countries, ussr did it alone with many many brave sacrifices of soviet citizens. Also no glove or robe would save those firefighters or medics, even solid concrete cant stop radiation, even robots stopped working cause of that. Those who were close died in weeks, those who worked to help them, died in months and years.
I was 10 when this happened, living in the south of England and I remember the fear everyone had because of the radiation cloud coming over Europe. We were told to stay inside and to this day whenever it rains I think about that time & acid rain.
Well I was 4 years old at April 1986, and I have a fellow guy he was 3 years old, but he lived in Pripyat till the evacuation. He showed some photos 5-6 years ago of his abandoned room and teddy bear in it.
I was growing up here in Norway at the time. It was hardcore af. We all got those Idontrememberwhat pills incase the radition would increase to a certain level. Sweden had it rougher though. It was wall to wall coverage and constant monitoring, at times our main channel looked like one of those weather channels with wind direction updates all the time. "Good" times...
The nurse knew enough to know that no gloves would have made a single atom of difference. The only thing she could do was remove the intense source from being so directly close to the victims, and even if she had gloves....even if they were made of lead.....even if they were a foot thick....would not have helped her.
Mentions seeing Destination Truth = instant subscribe 😂 I used to LOVE DT and Josh Gates! Seriously, love your reaction and overall vibe, you’re amazing! Can’t wait to watch more from you!
I know this is pretty old, I just wanna mention... 400 rubles in 1986 was a lot. Flying between Moscow and Saint Petersburg would cost you 20 rubles. A nice dinner with wine would be 5 rubles. The average monthly salary was around 200 rubles, leadership positions and such would be around 500 rubles. Rent for a three-room apartment was around 20 rubles.
I was about ten years old when this happened. On the day the news broke, I was playing outside in the rain with my friends in Northern Europe. Yeeessshhh.
the fireman uniforms which are in the hospital basement are still radioactive in the deadly amount of radiation to this day.
2 hours in the room where the uniforms are and you received a lifetime dose of radiation. Of course, since your body still accumulates radiation from being on flights, cosmic radiation reaching the earth, radiation from previous nuclear tests and accidents, your risks of cancer, leukemia and such is waaaay higher.
No, that's just wrong. You made that up. They are still contaminated with material that is radioactive, but the doses you'd receive are not that intense anymore. Ever heard of radioactive decay? I guess not.
Lajos Winkler yes there radioactive decay is happening still. nevertheless, the radioactive decay or halflife of Uranium and elements like it are at least 2500 years. So any item that absorbed Uranium particles will continue to radiate those same particles for a very long time. it also depends on how close and how long said items like a fireman jacket was next to a massive amount of Uranium.
Do you know how radioactive decay works? It's reverse exponential. There's the 7 hour rule for nuclear weapons for example. After 7 hours the amount of radiation is about a 10th of the original those, after 7x7 hours (49) it's a 100th, 7x7x7 (about 2 weeks). The half time is looking at the amount of atoms, not the dose. And since basically everything concerning radiation is accumulative, exponential or both the amount of atoms does not equal the amount of radiation dose one receives.
Krok, I would like no more about. So thanks for explaining.
Aww you left out the "We'll be dead in five years" line - that was the turning point for Boris, and when he finally, truly understood the gravity of the situation. Also, when he finally started to take Legosav seriously.
That happened earlier, when he saw him freak the hell out in fear on the chopper. But yeah, they do start working together as a real team after that.
@@JoshSweetvale no, he uses the 5 years line while inside pripyat apartments.
@@edragyz8596 I wasn't referring to the 5 years line.
@@JoshSweetvale well he did. And you pointed put the other line that she did leave in.
He died 4 years after.
14:49 Pripyat to Frankfurt is 930 miles or 1,499 km.
5:35 Because it doesn't matter, unless if you have lead gloves. Radiation will just pass through cloth.
Wrong. Gloves would help. The weird tan they're getting is from beta radiation and that will be attenuated, by some extent, with nice thick rubber gloves.
There's also the issue of contamination. You do not want fission products on your hands where they will be hard to wash off.
As for the lead, you couldn't carry lead gloves thick enough to stop the gamma rays to a safe level. Luckily, they mostly pass through us and deposit little energy.
Beta and gamma radiation most definitely.
Alpha = helium nucleus, blocked by a sheet of paper
Beta = electron or positron, blocked by a sheet of aluminum
Gamma = gamma photon, blocked by a thick plate of lead
And then there's the loose neutrons...
Heavy rubber gloves would help a lot, actually. But only if they're left on top of the pile too.
@@neuralmute Exactly. Doing the dirty stuff with them, and then disposing them. Prevents significant beta burns and contamination of the skin.
@@Tounushi It's not that simple. Great deal of electrons will be stopped by thick rubber or glass, too. It depends on their energy.
Thick rubber gloves will absolutely prevent many injuries in this case.
The fact that this really happened is absolutely insane!
The insane part is we ended up at nearly the best outcome. It could have gone much much worse.
@Sim2Go mostly accuarte
@Sim2Go Those who criticize are probably Russian media and their government.
well the dialogues are made up and some things are changed but yeah the events are mostly accurate...
@@egor2927 Some might. but the creator interviewed freking Gorbachev for this!! :D
Every single person in the show is a real person except for the female scientist from Minsk. She is a fictional amalgamation made to represent the hundreds of other scientists. Everyone else in the show did exist
Which is actually fitting since there were actually a lot of female scientist.
Dane Byrd not hundert 12 scientist
But actually Boris Scherbina wasn't an idiot. Opposite, he played a major role in elimination of consequences of the accident.
Yeah and those moments are not in her reaction
Though an antagonist in this episode. The series as a whole paints sherbina in a good light
@@R3adybreck Yes, and in 1988 he continued to save people after earthquake in Armenia. That was a great man, I hope so.
Because he was an actual human being and not just a movie trope. Most humans might get stuck in their way of thinking, but they are not intentiously malicious, so when confronted with reality they will try to do the right thing.
It's still too early in the series.
My father from Lithuania (that's about 800km north from Chernobyl) had later told me, that that week after explosion he thought to himself, that the "sun" felt somewhat harsh on the skin
my mother from Czech rep. told me that a lot of pregnant women lost their babies and the water was literally green. But they couldn't say a shit
@Erich Kirk I wouldnt be so quick to dismiss it. Granted you are more than likely correct, however they also thought it had no taste. Turns out it has a metallic taste. This is the most amount of radiation ever released no one really could know what would or would not happen. Unfortunatly with the secretive nature of the USSR, we still do not know.
@@michaela9967 If it makes you feel any better, in large portions of the USA right now the tap water comes out purple, black, or orange, or it burns like Napalm...unless it eats through the sink first.
@Erich Kirk well how about you try to google before you call something a bullshit. fruiting water is not a normal water ...... it is sad that you don't know this knowledge. fruiting water turns green when there's something wrong with your body. Infections are one of them in normal life. Babies in fruiting water takes all shits inside. Including radiation. It is well documented. So don't try to be a smart ass
@Erich Kirk lol aww somebody is butthurt. Well how about you try to talk in another language first ? English is not my native language. We both know you can understand me, you're just hurt that you're wrong ... American, right ?
The 3 largest nuclear incidents are (by severity):
1. Chernobyl - USSR
2. Fukushima - Japan
3. Three Mile Island - USA
Kyshtym Disaster: am I a joke to you?
Filal exactly there were way too more incidents before USSR learned to build nuclear reactors
Daniel Tinkov 1978 Kosmos 954, nuclear satellite from soviets crashed near NWT great slave lake! High cancer rates!
Idaho Falls SL-1, and Rocky Flats, CO weapons plant are interesting.
Don't forget Windscale.
400 Soviet Rubles in 1986 ware equivalent to $520. Due to inflation, those will be about $1560 today
The average soviet monthly salary back then was around a 100 Rubles. So basically it's 4 monthly salaries to the average soviet citizen.
You also have to consider Free housing, free utilities, and free healthcare ( they're going to need that) were standard in the Soviet Union
@@jamesricker3997 "Free housing"...but there was a catch;)..... you got on the waiting list only when you got married, and then had to spend a decade or more on the waiting list while living in dormitory or mostly in your parent's place. -During that time you could not just rent a flat as private rental market was non-existent(illegal).
Some young families with kids lived at their parent's place well into their mid 30s.(people married ad had kids early 20s back then!)
Also, the flat was not 'free' in many cases. You could be on that waiting list for a 'cooperative' apartment, which meant essentially you started to pay kind of mortgage(25-40% of couple's salary) after your turn came after 10 years or so and you got a flat.
The advantage of 'cooperative' flat was it was your property and you could 'exchange'(but not sell) for same size apartment in different city. (not an option for 'state-rented' apartment-you were tied to it as you could not just move and get 'state-rented' flat in a different city)
My family got 'assigned' 'state-rented' super-small flat of 30sq meters (basically a studio} when I was 3 years old, until then we lived in sub-rented room(yes, one room) essentially rented illegally from an older lady who lived in the flat.
My parents got assigned decent state-rented flat(three rooms, 80sq m) when I was 11 and my brother 9.
Both my parents were above-average paid professionals, my dad was university researcher (macromolecular chemistry) but they still could not rent a 'livable' flat for a family until I was 11 and they were married for 13 years!
So think about it- 13 years in really bad housing was a price for (very cheap, not free) housing you got in the end. My parents would definitely prefer expensive mortgage if they just could live in decent accomodation for those 11 years with two kids
But Of course, if you were willing to get assigned to a job in some very unpopular place (like small remote town with strategic industries), then you got your flat sooner, sometimes within two or three years, but then you were tied to that place for the rest of your life (as you could not sell and move elsewhere and buy or rent there)
@@jamesricker3997also consider 25 years waiting for Free housing, ugly free utilities and horrible free healthcare
Also the Soviet Rubles could not be freely traded. Exchanges could only occur on the black market and probably no one wanted to exchange a hard currency like US dollars for Soviet money.
I am loving the show so far, myself. But I am constantly freaked out by the fact that its all totally real shit. I live in Latvia, which used to be part of the Soviet Union. I recommended the show to my dad the other week and he said he had already heard its good, but didn't really want to watch it, cause its too real. He had a good friend of his who was conscripted to be part of the whole clean-up effort in Chernobyl, and the friend came back okay enough but then ended up dying of cancer like a couple of years later. Also, my dad supposedly dodged the conscription himself. He's a physicist, so I guess he was more in the loop about just how dangerous it would be to go and back then you could find ways of getting out of things if you knew the right people or knew how to avoid certain things, so yeah. Freaky stuff.
Another interesting thing is in alot of european countries, including mine, people who were part of the clean-up efforts at Chernobyl actually receive special social payments for it kind of like disability benefits to this day.
One of the more higher ranking liquidators said that most of them were slated to recieve benefits but some didn't anyway. Like extra pay, promotions, free apartments etc. The man in question during his interview in 2007-2008 recieved and still recieves 27 hryvnia from the Ukrainian government monthly. For reference that's $1.01, and he noted that the tea he was drinking costed 35 hryvnia, or $1.30.
Quite a lot of the series was actually filmed in Latvia, I've read.
@@neuralmute Actually, no. Alot of it was filmed in our neighboring country Lithuania. They have a soviet-era reactor quite similar to the one in Chernobyl, so a lot of the scenes you see in/around the reactor are probably shot there.
Juu, man opi, gandrīz aizsūtīja uz Černobiļu.
@@neuralmute It was filmed in Lithuania and Ukraine
This show is fascinating in that it showed simultaneously the very best and the very worst of the Soviet Union.
You just summed up the reaction to the Chernobyl accident in a nutshell. It brought out the very best and worst of the Soviet system and people. On one hand, so many lives were sacrificed, but on the other, they faced an unprecedented disaster head on, and kept working until that reactor was sealed away and the surrounding area was more or less sterilised.
Best are people, worst are people as well 😏
The melted core is still giving off heat to this day.
and it wont stop for several thousand years... what a great "gift" for all the generations to come...
Humans are gonna destroy this world before anything and its really depressing how fucked up how our race is
Just visit that nuclear powet plant and when you have a child it'll be having 3 eyes
@@peaveyst7 Well, it wont be hot to the touch, I mean right now its like 10 degrees above its surrounding environment.
@@Baghuul nah, depends on where you touch
05:43: it depends on the nature of the radiation. If Alpha, Beta, gloves would protect. If Gamma, gloves would not protect.
Yeah I think you need lead to block Gamma, not sure tho
You have the best reactions to this. Absolute concern, a great sense of the gravity of the situation, and horror at exactly what was going on. Fantastic reaction, cheers 🙂
"excuse me" i lost it totaly there...
lmao the best??? the claping and her overaction would say otherwise shes hands down the worse
@@BERSERKERKINGREVIEWS why are you here then...
An Mi-8 helicopter really did crash, in the radio active smoke it clipped a crane and went down. Conjecture is the intense radiation affected the helicopters systems and the pilots.
There was one helicopter that could fly over the reactor directly the massive Mi-26 Halo, it had enough shielding to withstand it and an automated drop system. Use of the Mi-26 reduced the amount of drop flights significantly.
Several different types of helicopters were used, the small Mi-2 as a coordination platform, the Mi-24 attack helicopter with its forward gun removed and replaced with a dosimeter used to scout out safe paths to the reactor, the large Mi-6 Hook used to carry large loads (you see a CGI version in the episode 4) and the Mi-26 as a heavy lift type and drop helicopter.
All these helicopters are now in a machine grave yard near the reactor too contaminated to ever be used again.
Fedaykin24 - Doesn't radiation also affect electronics to a degree as well? So even if the machines managed to be decontaminated the electronics would still be too degraded to use anyway?
YeahNahHowYaGoin it melted everyone and everything
Thanks for the information. The pilots were very skilled and brave under extraordinary circumstances!
400 rubles were around 400 US dollars back in 1986, or around 1200+ of today's dollars when adjusted to inflation
400rub ~ two good salary - at that date. So it will be more accurate comparison, with past prices and salary level different countries.
216 roubles the average salary of a worker in industry in 86. It turns out that it is almost two monthly salaries.
And the prices of products then were as follows
Milk, a liter - 0,32 RUB(today 92 Rub)
A loaf of black bread - 0.16, a loaf of white bread - 0.22
10 eggs - 1,05
Sugar, kilogram, - 78,84
Potatoes, kg, - 0.1
Fruit ice cream in a glass - 0.07
Butter - 3.5
Your figure is similar to the truth.
But if you are a little more optimistic and compare the example of milk, it will be an example of 1760 dollars
In 1986, SUR1was $0,7585.
@@VonRichtburg Yeah and when you adjust for inflation you get around 700$
400 rubles was the maximum possible pay for anybody who lived in the Soviet Union, you could be General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union but would still only be entitled to a maximum 400 rubles.
Of course in reality the higher you got up in the Soviet system there were ways to subsidise your earnings and high party officials gained all sorts of perks. This of course led to a significant 'Black economy' in the Soviet Union for goods along with an environment of giving bribes to officials to jump the queue for certain luxuries like a new Lada car.
Unfortunately, the families of the heroes were not taken care of pretty much at all...... the Soviet Union wasn't known for taking care of their own. Most of them died pretty quickly anyway...... it's a goddamn tragedy.
До сих пор в государственных учреждениях ликвидаторы ЧАЭС пропусктся вне очереди, как и ветераны второй мировой, но что тех, что этих почти не осталось
They were tho. well not sure about those 3 guys but clean up workers got paid for rest of thier lives. some still do.
@@TheMartuksxxxx Who is actually paying the workers? Not the communist state, it collapsed a few years later. My guess is this occured much later, if you lived.
@@Dularr I'd assume Ukraine or possibly the federation
Daniel Clark
Give your source.
Listen to the HBO's accompanying podcast, it provides interesting background information from the creator
thanks for letting us know, I'm going to check it out.
and I'm kinda wrecked by this show 😥
The podcasts are as awesome as the series themselves. Totally recommended. 👍
The podcast is excellent. For episode 4, they accidentally released it a day before the show thank God they did. I needed the spoilers to be prepared for probably the most traumatic hour of TV I have ever seen.
Prepare for a long cry while watching episode 3. By the way radiation hit Czechoslovakia when i was 3 years old and we was with kindergarthen on mountain week holidays. Our state television reported absolutely no risk so we did not go back home even if our parents want.
Radek Pastor Ep4 is as much of a tear jerker. I've cried my eyes out watching 3 & 4, and I never cry!! Tragic this actually happened.
@@katyb6979
episode 4 was so brutal...its the greatest betrayal ever
No one at the time thought it would be possible for a reactor to blow up like that, it would be like someone walking into a room with no gravity, no one would believe you, or would think you are high as balls, that was one of hte reasons everyone was in denial, it was a shitshow.
and a lot of people were not really aware of dangers caused by radiation, because before chernobyl there was no chernobyl to scare anyone (not known to the world at least)
Actually in my opinion I quite like the show.
Okay seriously though Chernobyl was fucked.
In reality, the scientists knew about the danger. They knew it was a poor design, they just had "scientific consensus" because of politics.
Good show. What are you? A former Soviet aparachek?
well they knew meltdowns were possible, where a reaction runs away turns the water to plasma and melts a hole in the reactor vestal, the idea of a reactor exploding like a bomb was a little far fetched due to the design supposed to precluding that very event.
Asking yourself if you could volunteer is something I think everyone who watched this asked themselves.
Volunteering for a suicide mission is very anti-american.
At some point you do what the Communist state told you to do. While these three men volunteered, 100,000s of men did not volunteer for this work.
@@Dularr in reality, these three men weren't volunteers. however, the ones who cleared the graphite off the roof had an opportunity to refuse the mission - none of them did.
@@snickers_economy I figured the roof workers were all conscripts without much choice. The 90 seconds on the roof exposed them to a lifetime of occupational exposure radiation.
Lothar Scholz, I was born in Soviet Union and live in US for the past 15 years and i am gonna have to strongly disagree with you mister. America is an idea, just like Soviet Union was and a lot of people will give their lifes away for it. Especially if it is a matter of million lifes.
Legasov, the man in the first scene who hangs himself is only two years older then he was when he first answers the phone summoning him to Moscow. Gives a sense of the toll the radiation took on him
Frankfurt is in Germany and it is 1,782 km from Chernobyl.
Which shows how far that radiation was spreading from that fire.
The radiation spread across Europe even reaching my country UK
19:00 The three plant workers who went into the basement actually survived. One died in 2005, the other two are still alive as of 2019.
I have to tell you that my mom sister’s cousin and my sister’s godfather were the liquidators of the accident. He died last year, he had terrible consequences, his legs were very sore, his toes were blackening. There were severe pains, he drank a lot to endure it. As a result, alcohol did its job and he died of cirrhosis of the liver. Then his son and wife died. His wife died the day before yesterday, my mom buried her for the last money. Because for those pennies that he received to live it was not possible. That's the truth.
Very sorry to hear about their suffering. What part of the World are you in?
@@PanzerBuyer we're from Russia. Thank you.
Boris Shcherbina died in 1990. He was also a chain smoker, but, the Chernobyl exposure was likely a factor.
Yes, General Pikalov got a stiff dose of radiation by driving into that area, even with the shielding of that vehicle.
From the books I've read about Chernobyl, this HBO series is pretty accurate.
He was coughing up blood like legaso
Well, they were unprepared for a situation like this. Most of the populus, including medical staff in hospitals, didn't even knew about severity of radiation, especialy the old folks and doctors.
those three men in the end survived and lived for years
No. Two.
@@JV-br3sq The man who died lived until his 60's and died of a heart problem not related to radiation at all.
@@commanderdon4300 I know it.
05:43 It is an ordinary hospital. They don't have full full radiation suits. And their absolute priority was getting that poison away from everyone else. This show is FULL of simple heroes like that. Brimming with them.
17:47 Haha you though Legasov tapping on the desk was a knock at the door for a second. I've done that with earbuds in too.
It's not a flashback at he start of the first episode, it's flash-forward. The man who kills himself is
SPOILER
the main character of the show, Valery Legasov.
Not really a spoiler though! They wanted you to know it as soon as the show starts, instead of having it be the "twist" or climax of the show. The show's creators made it this way knowing that anyone can look up what happened to the real Legasov once they watch the first episode of the show.
As others have pointed out, the Chernobyl podcast is highly recommended. The creator of the show talks about each episode and some background behind each scene. It's amazing because almost everything portrayed on the show really did happen. The creator spent a long time gathering accounts from multiple sources and from people who were really there. Very good listen.
th-cam.com/video/rUeHPCYtWYQ/w-d-xo.html
Watching this series, one of the interesting things is to see how Boris Scherbina changes from being a loyal party man to realising the whole soviet secrecy thing was bollocks. 13:41 sums up perfectly just how politics played a major part in this disaster.
22:30 you are talking about Fukushima multi-unit meltdown in Japan. Units 1 through 4 of the Daiichi plant exploded due to hydrogen then melted down.
what made the real story of the three plantworkers far more heroic and anxiety inducing is that they didn't have wind up torches. They felt their way to their goal using the pipes. they knew which pipe needed to be followed and they did. the windup torches are just there as artistic license so that the viewers can see whats happening. Total claustrophobic darkness in a TV show doesn't quite create the same tension as it does in real life.....
Watching this late, because I randomly came across your reaction to ep 1 and it was fun to watch, but I appreciate you looking those men up. They don't get enough recognition for what they did, and are the embodiment of bravery.
The show is terrifying, but if you read up on the whole thing, the reality was far worse. If anything, they lightened it just well enough without being disrespectful or gratuitous. The podcast that accompanies the show is highly enlightening for anyone still curious, and I highly encourage you to check it out.
Sundot Jolangot What really gets me is what would’ve happened had they not been able to drain all that water out. Thank Zeus they did, cause it would’ve been an absolute disaster of unimaginable proportions.
@@goldenageofdinosaurs7192 I think disaster doesn’t even fully capture what it would have been like. If it had happened it would have been literally apocalyptic and we would be living in a completely different world today.
Three of the remaining reactors of Chernobyl continued to be operational for years after the disaster.
The man with the large forehead birthmark is the last president of USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev.
I was surprised that they actually presented President Gorbachev (the one with the red birthmark on his head) in a relatively good light...
The USSR and most of Europe were hideously lucky that Gorbachev was in charge at that time. Any of his predecessors would probably have gone entirely with the connected party members line until vast areas were lethally contaminated.
5:36 because it penetrates all material, did you forget the fireman taking the graphite with his gloves?
I was four months old when this happened. We lived in Yugoslavia, about 749.22 Miles (1205.76 Km) away from Chernobyl. Later when I was about 3-4 years old I had difficulty breathing and was diagnosed with bronchitis. But if this was due to the radiation that got carried across Europe with wind is unclear. My parents were instructed not to go outside nor to buy/eat dairy products.
I don't know if it was shown (i haven't watched the show yet) but there was a huge parade on 1st of May on International workers day and on 9th of May World War II victory day in every city. It means they kept young children (primary school and up) under the open air for hours and hours, celebrating. I remember my biology teacher being so remorseful and angry by this fact years later, they were told it was perfectly safe. Also that May week is usually the one when everyone takes a vacation and goes to a picnic outside of the city. =/
They cut that scene because it was too expensive, but it was supposed to show the party officials happily marching in the parade despite knowing the air was poisonous.
Splendid commentary. Even sticking to the audio alone would give one chills.
Radiation came as far as Sweden & Finland. We can find radiation from our forests here in Finland. From some mushrooms & berries still & will be long after all the living has been stopping on this planet. Some say 100k years, some 2.17 million years :C I was born in 89 & my childhood was very weird cuz of this.
that just fearmongering ... yes teh radiation is still present and yes it will be for a long time but by now its severely dissipated and in +- 100 years it will just blend into the natural background radiation ...
most people do not realize that we are CONSTANTLY being subjected to small doses of all kinds of radiation naturally every day of our lives, hell the radiation levels in Prypiat are todesy somewhat comparable to the dose everyone gets on a long distance high altitude flight and thousands of people do that every single day.
11:19 Yes 1 a day but it depends on the size/dosage of the iodine pill. You will have to take a pill or amount to 130mg of Potassium Iodide per day for the duration of the radiation release to protect your thyroid from uptaking radioactive iodine 131.
My mother lived in the exclusion zone (30km) at the time of the accident, and what was shown in the series (according to her stories) was understated, until recently the liquidators were not told about the danger of liquidation, people just worked, understanding only from rumors how harmful the radiation was
Sweden, not Switzerland. Sweden was the first country that discovered the nuclear radiation outside of the Soviet Union. And as a result we couldn't pick mushrooms in parts of the country for a couple of years. Scary indeed.
Good news is most of those children if not in direct contact with people working on the plant, doctor or fireman might survive with not too many damages...human body can sustain for a short time a certain amount of radiation...however 36 hours is pretty long so cancer is possible...at least it's not like the other worker... you can see the weakness of the system at that time and the herculean task of a crisis noboby knows how to resolve...Such a great show !
The one in 2011 was Fukushima, a tsunami hit the generators which was located in the basement of the plant which cut out the electricity which cause the core to explode.
I was 6 when the actual event happened. I remember seeing the footage on TV, and asking my mother "Mom, what happened to that factory?" (at that age I thought any building with a big smokestack like that was a "factory")
She just said "Really, really bad things."
5:37 radiation can penetrate plastic gloves. So even if she did, she would still have that red mark on her hand.
I was 16 when this happened, it was terrifying. We had no idea if we were safe or not.
Only one major inaccuracy here is that the helicopter crash happened months after the explosion. Other than that, there is actual footage of this crash happening, just about exactly as its shown.
Fun fact, 2 out of 3 of those divers are still alive today.
Also, Japan. The Fukushima melt down was actually worse than Chernobyl. 3 units exploded and melted down, and flood water took a lot of contamination into the ocean. It is largely contained currently, but it still poses a massive threat.
19:23
In 1986 that was equal to roughly 530$.
Take in mind how much 530$ was worth to Americans in 1986 too.
For Soviet Russia - that's actually not that bad. Monthly salary back then was around 120-150 rubles.
🤑 I would it!!!
I just found your channel and your having the same reactions I did! I’ve lost count of how many times I said “Y’all are going to die”! 😭😂
I'm halfway through the series now and reacted the same way as you. So frustrating when they were still in denial!
I remember this.... I lived in Latvia then. We weren't allowed to go out if it rained....
Something that not a lot of people know: the three heroes who entered the pipes and worked in the dark to open the sluice gates survived. One died in 2005. The other two are still alive.
That helicopter crashing scene really did happened. There is even footage of it.
Happened IRL months later though, during salvage operations I believe.
@@MegaBoeboe Yeah, but they still wants to show it how difficult and risky the process it was to clean up the massive mess.
Heard about this from my mother when I was about 10, probably cause we lived within the 20 mile radius of Shippingport Power Plant in Western Pennsylvania. My mom was always kinda paranoid about it, even now I can see the water vaper from the cooling tower.
Fascinating that actually only one person died from radiation sickness in this operation 20:00 other two survived and died in the old age
Actually 2 are still alive I did terrible mistake
Fun fact: Out of these 3 divers nobody immediately died because of radiation. Boris Baranov died in 2005, and two other guys are still alive.
The 3 people that went in the water, actually lived.
2 of them are still alive to this day.
The 3rd died of a heart attack in 2005.
Radiation burns and what they do to the body is like something out of a nightmare. Their makeup work for this show was incredibly accurate, and terrifyingly gruesome.
The problem with watching this show as some kind of entertainment, is that the sense of "movie justice" comes to the fore with many viewers, without registering these events really happened.
Calling for someone to die because they don't understand the severity of the situation, or don't agree with the main protagonist is generally fine when watching a movie with fictional characters, but it's borderline offensive when calling for the death of real living people in a docudrama like this.
Anatoly Dyatlov was an unpleasant and arrogant man, but he wasn't evil. His goal wasn't to destroy the reactor. He took shortcuts, and disregarded safety protocol while trying to force a completed test. His understanding of the working of the reactor also worked against him when trying to deal with the explosion. In his mind a reactor could meltdown, but not explode. The only thing that could have exploded was hydrogen in the Control Systems tank as it's the only explosive substance in an nuclear reactor. He couldn't grasp the idea that he may have just caused a catastrophic failure, and was giving orders based on what he thought he knew. Pumping water into the core to cool it, lowering control rods by hand to shut down the reactor, calling for reinforcement, calling the fire department, these are all valid measures to try to bring the situation back under control.
Viktor Bryukhanov and Nikolai Fomin worked with the incorrect and incomplete information given by Dyatlov. Dyatlov was the most senior person on site, and his reports were given enormous weight over that of others. They were also coordinating the situation with Moscow, so would've had no time to check the situation at the plant themselves.
Boris Shcherbina worked with the information he was given from the men on the ground at Chernobyl. There was no reason not to believe them, and their opinions held more weight than some scientist from hundreds of miles away. Valery Legasov's depicted outburst against party leader Mikhail Gorbachev would have been unheard of, and a break with all protocol. Since Legasov was brought into the meeting by Shcherbina, Shcherbina was accountable for Legasov's demeaner, which would motivate the attempt to try to shut Legasov down.
the main problem was that most of these people had no idea how dangerous the radiation was and how bad the overall situation was .
The subtitle to the show "The cost of lies" is so accurate and if you want to read some firsthand records, the voices of Chernobyl is an amazing and horrible book written by a Nobel prize laureate in literature. The story of the firefighter and his wife is from that book. Also, the HBO Chernobyl podcast is very interesting with the writer of this show explaining things they did not put in the show and things that are completely true.
Wow, your reactions are great girl, keep up hope to see more of you!
21:50 Fomin had a breakdown before the trial and tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists with shards from his glasses. He survived, was sentenced to 10 years hard labour, and was released in a general amnesty for these things shortly after the Soviet Union fell apart.
DID YOU DO TWO IN A ROW?!!? NOOOOO
damn I couldn't handle that much. Also, I just watched episode 4. Can't wait to see how you feel about it. I will say, have something really happy and fun to do afterwards.
I watched episodes 1,2,3 in one night, I managed by drinking lots of vodka, because of obvious reasons.
terrakie
I started crying from the first day/ first episode .
Episode 4 was my breaking point
I was sobbing my eyes out and can sincerely say this has been both educational and heartbreaking in so many ways.
The guys at the plant believed that if the reactor had exploded, they should have all been dead. As in, they explode with it. Since they are still alive, the reactor core must not have exploded. It's understandable that in the face of something impossible occurring, these guys are having a tough time coming to grips with reality.
I love your reaction. It's grounded but totally real. I felt quite the same way watching. . . the way this happened in reality is completely crazy. The end of this episode seriously nearly gave me a panic attack. I just remember watching and having to remind myself to breath when the credits started rolling.
@ManicMeeks I also couldn't imagine not crying at least a few times every episode! What a series, what a roller coaster. Love the actual reactions to hectic scenes!
she cryed at everything that wasnt needed to cry about yes its sad so is peaple that are that sensitive
LURKINGELMO REVIEWS man look at your negative as trying to make me care about your opinion,
Cute! I cried from start to finish every episode, IS THAT ALRIGHT WITH YOU MATE?!?
Need to continue my day pls respond quick ! :/
18:16
That promise would only last 5 years until the government fell and the country that they did this for ended.
The expense of cleaning up after the Chernobyl disaster was estimated to be about three to four hundred billion dollars. That expense contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union
“Up and through here” killllled meeeeee 😂
The three heroes that they thought would die in a weel lived: one die in 2008, heartattack, the others two live still today.
5:39 - Nothing saves from radiation.
Radiation goes through everything. 😨
18:49 ok so rewatch this part reaction with cc on 😂
The three guys who opened the water tanks were not killed by radiation, like many sources claim. In fact, first of them died in 2005 from heart disease, and the other two are still alive afaik. But yeah, these guys had balls made of pure titanium.
you sound pretty naive. Its not just ussr government that was like that in post war and cold war times, even today many countries would think about thier prestige more than thier people. During cold war most important was to maintain power and dont looks weak vs other superpower. Usa tested thousands of nukes on thier own soil, most cancers people have nowadays cause of that, same in ussr, china and many other countries. Usa is lucky that they didnt had something similar, i bet it would be handeled very similar, maybe faster slightly cause of help of other countries, ussr did it alone with many many brave sacrifices of soviet citizens.
Also no glove or robe would save those firefighters or medics, even solid concrete cant stop radiation, even robots stopped working cause of that. Those who were close died in weeks, those who worked to help them, died in months and years.
@Tanner Clark that might be true. but rest i said is true too.
if you want something light to cleanse the pallete, Derry Girls is pretty fun, comedy set in North Ireland in the 90's
I was 10 when this happened, living in the south of England and I remember the fear everyone had because of the radiation cloud coming over Europe. We were told to stay inside and to this day whenever it rains I think about that time & acid rain.
Just saw it.
How the hell did we all survive this?!
Those firefighter clothes, are still in the basement of the hospital in Pripyat - and still very, very radioactive!
the people weren't aware of the danger (most of them not all) because their government lied to them. and they continue to do so
Thank you for your reaction to this series.
Keep it up
@5:45 you're upset the nurses were handling the clothes without protective gear, but even if they had PPE it wouldnt have mattered.
Well I was 4 years old at April 1986, and I have a fellow guy he was 3 years old, but he lived in Pripyat till the evacuation. He showed some photos 5-6 years ago of his abandoned room and teddy bear in it.
I was growing up here in Norway at the time. It was hardcore af. We all got those Idontrememberwhat pills incase the radition would increase to a certain level. Sweden had it rougher though. It was wall to wall coverage and constant monitoring, at times our main channel looked like one of those weather channels with wind direction updates all the time. "Good" times...
It's absolutely crazy to me that we won't know the true effect this has had on the population in our lifetime.
One issue I had with this episode is there is no way a steam explosion would be in the megaton range as speculated at 16:10
The nurse knew enough to know that no gloves would have made a single atom of difference. The only thing she could do was remove the intense source from being so directly close to the victims, and even if she had gloves....even if they were made of lead.....even if they were a foot thick....would not have helped her.
This is what happens when you put idiots in charge, not because their qualifications, but because their ideology...
Boris was misinformed but he backed legasov eventually
Mentions seeing Destination Truth = instant subscribe 😂 I used to LOVE DT and Josh Gates!
Seriously, love your reaction and overall vibe, you’re amazing! Can’t wait to watch more from you!
I know this is pretty old, I just wanna mention... 400 rubles in 1986 was a lot. Flying between Moscow and Saint Petersburg would cost you 20 rubles. A nice dinner with wine would be 5 rubles. The average monthly salary was around 200 rubles, leadership positions and such would be around 500 rubles. Rent for a three-room apartment was around 20 rubles.
I was about ten years old when this happened. On the day the news broke, I was playing outside in the rain with my friends in Northern Europe. Yeeessshhh.
"Well I don't hear any facts!"
"EXCUSE ME!"
Fell in love with you this vid.
You have my sub and my heart miss lady