That's an Irish actress (Jessie Buckley) playing the firefighter's wife who lost her baby. She was nominated for an Oscar just last year for Best Supporting Actress in a film called 'The Lost Daughter'. The young guy who volunteered and was working on animal control is another Irish actor, Barry Keoghan who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year for 'The Banshees of Inisherin'.
Old people still live in the exclusion zone. Everything had to be cleaned, which actually is the worst part, so all animals had to be killed. People still sneak into the zone for guided tours. One area can be safe and a few feet away, extremely radioactive!
When on the roof, the Liquidators had specific tasks they had to accomplish in those 90 seconds. You don't just randomly go up there and have people randomly muck about looking for rocks, multiple people might go for the same rock, wasting time ect. They're looking for graphite in specific areas that was assigned to them. Those areas often had the highest levels of radiation on the roof so they were basically whittling the levels down. It may look random but it's anything but.
@@popculturallychallenged haha, Yeah, they probably didn't go into it because as a miniseries, it super limited on time but in real life, they had more specific directions. Granted, the training and direction was as fast as possible because they only had 90 seconds. Realistically, 10 seconds of that was spent running to and from the entrance so they had even less time to do their specific tasks. And thousands had to be trained for their 90 second tasks. It was truly a nightmare. Imagine training for days for a minute amd change of work... Crazy stuff lol
Joker worked for awhile, at one point it got stuck on graphine and they had to run chains to it and hand winch it off, but it was used quite awhile before it died
Hey Toni, I feel for the woman in the maternity ward so much. Having to sit there recovering from a failed delivery surrounded by crying healty babies. Such a gut wreching scenario. ------ You have to understand that it was not until the 90's that American nurses were able to advocate for a separate section of the hosptial to house mothers of failed deliveries. ------ BEfore that they were all housed together as is shown in "Chernobyl". -------- It was not till much later for the rest of the world, since many hospital had limited space.
Legasov has a family they just don't mention in this series, so him telling the truth could cost his family and possible friends some undue suffering. The unknown of what could be done to you or your family would be the toughest.
@@gordonjenner2375 The point is the threat of it being a possibility at the time was unknown so would you take the chance? Many of the other scientist who spoke out were placed in prison or denounced of their position. I don't think my statement above mentions his family being harmed. I just stated he had a family which adds more risk to telling the truth.
19:30 The gas masks they were wearing reduce field of vision as well as fogging up if one is stressed, so it didn't surprise me that that one poor guy was tripping over rubble when in a hurry to get back. -- Anyway, I agree that they needed an organized section by section grid-square approach to clearing the graphite from Masha
There is historical footage of men clearing the graphite. It looks exactly like what they showed. That's a good point about organizing the shoveling. They could have cleared a strip at the edge, then pushed the remaining graphite over in layers from front to back.
With such a limited time available that they could be out there, I would have thought they would have really planned it out to maximize their efficiency but apparently not.
You asked if the "egg basket" actually does anything and the answer is yes. Ironically it would have harmed them since they wore it outside of their clothing, as it would have trapped contaminated debris close to their body. If they had worn it under their clothing it could have shielded them from some radiation but ultimately it's just men being overprotective of their genitals which weren't in any more or less danger than the rest of their bodies.
You mentioned how everything looked rundown and dirty. That's because pretty much everything the Soviet Union made was shoddy and of the lowest quality. That also include the protective equipment that the men on the roof was using. Most likely those crappy goggles were fogging up making it near impossible to see what they were doing. The Soviet Union always had the same approach. They threw bodies at their problems to fix them without much in the way of caring what happened to them.
@Gordon Jenner Yeah... It's not a lie at all. I have seen a fair share of Soviet built equipment and it's crap. Shoddily built and at the least expense that was manageable at the time. I was a teenager when this happened. You cite crime numbers as if that has some bearing on this discussion at all. Yeah, they had little crime... because everyone was terrified of what would happen to them if they were caught. When secret police forces can stop and ask for your papers at any second or invade your home for inspection with no warrant... you tend to not risk committing crimes. You younger idiots romanticize the past without ever having lived through it or actually knowing anything about it.
it's no accident that they drank a lot of vodka :-D it's hard to bear the horror that happens there. there was a stupid rumor that many people thought was true, that vodka also protects you from radiation :-D (of course this is not true, but it sounds good :-D ) there was also a fireman who went to put out the fire after the explosion while he was already drunk, when he came to himself the next day came back next to the radiation, even his head hurt.. (of course, this is not in the film and is just a rumor) as far as I know, not only dogs and cats, but also wild animals were culled, recently there was an investigation (a few weeks' news) there are green leaf frogs living in the nearby marshy area, after a few years and a few generations, more and more black versions appear among the frogs
Some of the men who were sent out on to the roof ended up forging draft cards multiple times so that they would be sent up to the roof instead of someone else. Heroes, every last one of them.
Hey David and Toni, That scene where they have to clean all of that debris off the roof, is one long tracking shot, an ingenious way to get you into the mind of the soldier on the roof. ------ The sound design with the meter being the score of the scene gives you chills. And at the end. COMRADE SOLIDER.... YOU're DONE.
If you think the story of Lyudmila ignatenko(the fireman's wife) is devastating in the show.. then you should read the book about Chernobyl..it has many more details about her and so much worse .. and the baby was buried next to her father 😢 and ... I can't say more it really crushed my heart 😭
This is pretty much the toughest episode to watch for almost everyone...but it is good that you made it through it. Something that does not often get mentioned is that many of the men who went out onto those incredibly radioactive roof sections actually volunteered to go back out more than once in order to save others from having to be "biorobots". Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up and did nothing to fix it, all the while lying to even the plant operators about the safety of the RBMK reactors, is something that could only happen in a totalitarian state like the USSR...where there is no free press or free scientific establishment for whistleblowers to talk to when they know about wrongdoing by the State.✌
No, this happens in our government too. I'm real sick of people truly believing we are exempt from our government lying to it's people, they've done it a million times in the past just as much as every other country with a totalitarian government. The huge difference is those countries are honest and open about having one.
I love that animal control sergeant. I only had to do that once overseas and was given the same instruction on not letting them suffer. It must be done, but don't let me see you enjoying it.
@@popculturallychallenged I was ok with it. A life is a life. Animals rate the same as humans to me. If it must be done, it must be done. Just document it. Never hide from it. I was chastised for wasting ammo. I did not let my target suffer. The other guy wounded his target. Turned around and grinned. 1SG immediately became furious. "Finish what you started". There should never be joy in killing. There should never be joy in being the survivor.
(Context: I served at the Tuwaitha nuclear compound in Iraq. We were worried about the fleas and ticks stray dogs had. It was a nuclear site. We don't talk about that.)
Hey guys, I see you're missing a lot of context, culturally. The library scene, for example, you didn't understand the looks. SSSR was heavily censored at the time. The state and the KGB kept many things from the public, that's why someone had to check on the documents she was requesting, they constituted a state secret.
I rewatch this series regularly and generally skip this episode, but realize I miss a lot of other important scenes outside of the animal-control scenes. You two kept composure way better than I could. Love your reaction to this series btw.
9:08...The animals would die on their own but it would take a while and dogs, cats, horses etc can cover a fair distance in a short time so there'd be a danger of spreading the contamination. Also if they're left to die they'll suffer a lot more than if they're shot.
I may be repeating what others have said, but I'm too lazy to read through all the comments. I think a key point of this series is that in the Soviet Union social and political culture, "explaining why" on just about any measure or official order simply didn't occur to people. Maybe it was first discouraged actively, but by the mid '80s almost nobody bothered to "explain" things when the important thing was just to obey. The old woman's instinct was to be stubborn and stand on her personal dignity ... and who can blame her? But she might instead have asked for more details on the nature of the risk. And the guy with the gun might have explained more too. But it's not part of Soviet culture to explain. And the flip side of that is that few people demanded explanations, and at the same time violated orders ... especially smaller orders from lower-level people like doctors and local bureaucrats ... without wondering much if there might actually be good reasons for some of them. I think that's why the firefighter's wife ignored warnings not to touch or be close to her husband. She figured they were just more petty orders, when in fact in that case they had real health implications. Once you lose faith in all authority, you tend to resist it, even when it happens now and then to be absolutely right.
They did make changes to the remaining RBMK reactors to decrease their inherent instability at low power levels. It took some time but if I remember correctly it was completed in the nineties. Running on higher enriched fuel, having the control rods go up and down much faster, changing lengths of some channels etc. So repeating what happened in Chernobyl would be now physically impossible even if tried on purpose. I think there are 8 such modified reactors still running somewhere, no unmodified ones exist any more.
Hey Toni and David, this series is just so devastating emotionally. Unless somehow this horrific event just escapes my memories, I don't recall hearing much about this at the time, and I was 18 in 1984. Perhaps the US MSM didn't cover this news very much? But truly sad for these people and families. And I can't help but have my thoughts racing when we're seeing so many TV series being shown, beginning with Walking Dead, if catastrophies throughout the world. God help us all become closer and stronger! Much love guys!
@@shercahn yeah, and I was probably out smoking weed and drinking...lol. I was a party guy back then. 3 kids later and 57 yrs old, I can't handle that life any more.😂😂
Hey guys and gals. The show also turned down the horror of the animal section.------- People reported animals were walking around with body parts melted together from radioactive disintegration. --------- To the point where workers could not recognize cats as cats and dogs as dogs. Some cats looked like lizards. Some dogs looked like frogs. ------- Just imagine seeing something like that and it almost looked alien-like.
They didn't have a choice. Some of what was described by others - and you are right in saying it was toned down - wouldn't have passed the censor. To be viewable this was probably as graphic as they could go.
Many of the dogs survived, and there are now two distinct populations of animals, separated by quarantine zones. Scientists have recently started to study the two populations and the different ways they have changed in isolation, as there aren’t really isolated populations with incidents of drastic change like this anywhere else in the planet.
2:07...Don't forget, if the soldier leaves the old lady, she'll end up dying of radiation poisoning and it won't be a pleasant death (same thing goes for the cow).
That's why we don't use this type of reactor in the west. Ours have a negative coefficient, which is explained in the next episode. Our style would have shut down in similar situation. They went with positive coefficient reactor, because you can use lower grade uranium.
Suuuuuch a good show. If only they hadn't written things like: “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead." Uhm...not possible. Really wish they hadn't made much of the audience believe things like that...Fortunately, just about all the bad science has been fact checked by numerous experts, many of them available in videos right here on YT 😊
(7:15) I don't blame him in this instance. He shouldn't have run the test the way he did, but he had the failsafe, the kill switch on standby. The others in the room told her they pressed it and Booom!
The area around chernobyl is free of humans and as such has now become ideal for all manner of animals who have a better life expectancy than anywhere else.
As I said, this is the toughest episode for almost everyone to watch, I hope you folks can get some legal cannabinoid remedies to help take the edge off of watching this...I know it helps me a lot. You had a few questions or things you wondered about... One quick note...the soldier shooting the cow at the beginning is a pretty brutal dose of reality right in your face, there is no question about that...but keep in mind that cow had to die regardless of anything else that happens...all the contaminated livestock had to be euthanized and disposed of. You are not wrong that the soldier was a d**k about it, and should have been more compassionate, but for him she could have been his 50th old woman with cow of the day...and how many days has he been dealing with old folks who don't want to leave...and pretty quickly you can understand how he would lose the emotional energy to have any compassion. The main reason that the contaminated animals had to be killed, as I understand it, was to reduce the chances that any contaminated animals would move out of the contaminated area and thus spread the contamination far and wide beyond the exclusion zone. The 90 second time limit was supposedly calculated to be half the total maximum lifetime dosage of radiation that a human being is capable of being exposed to WITHOUT major health effects...so in theory a man could do that job once and be "OK"...assuming that man had never been exposed to radiation before and was basically never exposed to radiation ever again. Of course, I already mentioned that many men chose to go out on that roof more than once to save others...and those men would almost certainly all die. As with most things about Chernobyl, it is very difficult to know due to the incredibly poor records the USSR kept of the cleanup and almost everything else about the disaster. As far as Lyudmila being in the maternity ward, that was the ward for women who had just given birth, so that was where she was. Regardless of whether she had a few complications, or the fact that the baby had died, that was where she was going to end up. I would hope that most places that help women give birth, whether hospitals or clinics or midwives, are not that callous in throwing women that have miscarried or had their babies die in childbirth into the same ward with mothers taking care of their newborns, but my guess is that it happens a lot more than we think. Anyway, sorry to blather on so much...I hope at least some of this is interesting...LOL...I look forward to sharing the last episode with you folks.
I don't understand why the series always talked about the "scary" graphite blocks on the roof of the power unit, but did not talk about the nuclear fuel rods, which were the biggest threat
I believe it was because there is far more graphite in the reactor than nuclear fuel so there was far more of it to deal with. Also graphite is far more brittle than uranium so it is possible that not much of the fuel was actually ejected when the reactor exploded but the graphite that surrounded it was shattered and that's what went flying.
As an empathic person myself, this episode really got me. New born babies dieing, pets slaughtered, lives forever ruined or lost, must of felt like the end of the world for those out there. And for those on the roof, 7 month salary is really nothing to their sacrifice meaning.
the animals had to be killed. they were almost certainly irradiated and would have died slow, painful deaths. Then other non-contaminated animals would have become contaminated when they ate the remains. they had to be removed and then buried in the concrete to keep them from doing more damage.
based on all available information, it was very scattergun in terms of the approach, as stated in the first episode, they were dealing something that had never happened on planet earth before, it was a first for everything and while it's not really shown too much in the show (likely due to a limitation with regards to the props/effects departments) the chunks of graphite on the roof were very large for the most part and you need to keep in mind they were extremely heavy which meant that the people who were doing the cleanup were only going for blocks they could actually lift and carry which is why there was no organisation as suggested to 'make a path'; something to also keep in mind is this was the soviet union in 1986-1988 if you consider that they were about 10-15 years BEHIND 'the west' technologically they were still using equipment and strategies from the 70's they didn't have the luxury of automated things or large scale equipment for massive projects that were available in 'the west' at the time.
She was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. I was always scared of her but due to respect for her. On my way to meet her for my monthly financial / operations recap, I would pray all the way there on my 20 minute drive!! LOL. I think secretly, she loved making everyone nervous. Lol - Toni
Even if you lose the baby. You have to stay on the maternity ward. Because that's also where they deal with any post birth complications. Mother and child. Very cruel, but practically sensible.
18:02 interesting thing, there is a power plant that looks exactly like the Chernobyl power plant, (in Russia) the movie was shot there ;-) (not cgi) the next part will be the one from which you can learn a lot
The reason for unlimited vodka has to do with not having enough iodine tablets to go around. They both are thyroid-gland protective vs radiological exposure in that both iodine and alcohol flush the thyroid gland out. It's why in Japan to this day, due to the bombings and occasional nuclear reactor problems most households keep a supply of whiskey or other strong alcohol in case another accident happens. If you go for a chest X-ray, having a few drinks that evening might not be a bad idea. Just saying, one can never be too careful in such matters.
" i did not need to see that!" Yes. You did. Because thousands of men were forced to live it. 'For the happiness of all mankind,' they were LIVING it. For months and years. It's still an ongoing problem.
Whenever I watch this or something like it and it becomes too much, I always remind myself people lived through this. They have to live with this memory, they have to live with the results. If they can experience it, surely I can watch from the comfort of my home.
Everything is drab because it was a socialist state, much like a prison. If you went to the store to buy wallpaper, there would be a line. You would have one choice or none at all. Normally you would have to stand in line for shoes, and they only would have size 7, only size 7. You would buy the one pair you are allowed to buy. You would trade it for the wallpaper you couldn't buy at the store that was out of wallpaper.
Thank you guys for reacting this episode Chernobyl great tv series just awesome. I suggest and I hope you will reacts this classic movies: Out of Africa (1985) The Crying Game (1992) Hoosiers (1986) Somewhere in Time (1980) Chariots of Fire (1981) Don Juan DeMarco (1995) White Nights (1985) Casualties of War (1989) Alive (1993) Saturday Night Fever (1977) Ladyhawke (1985) Revenge of the Nerds (1984) Dragonfly (2002) and The Party (1968) all highly recommended 👍👍👍👍
Well Guys I thought you would be crying more in this episode vs previous, but you got sneaky didnt show lots of the key scenes...The last episode gives a good explanation as to what happened with some twists. Be sure to watch all of the ending credits and make a Part 2 if you have to because of RUclipss BS rules. I've noticed some other RUclipss have started doing it. Right now Putin was sending Russian Soldiers over the Exclusions on foot. Many died from radiation exposure, hows that?
Yes, a lot of things do not look clean. Only the elites in the Communist Party experience modern conveniences and cleanliness. Communism about achieving equality by lowering all to the lowest common denominator. Sprucing things up, or even maintaining things on a base-level, might uplift spirits. Cuba is a prime example. A majority of the automobiles on the streets are from the 1950's - 60's, and I'm talking about in 2023. Newer cars might breed a free spirit, so let's keep the old, broken-down one's visible.
Nuclear power plants are statistically the second safest, just short after solar. Plus, they're the greenest. Technically, uranium is not a renewable resource, but it's the best we currently have.
@@johnstrong4089 That makes no sense. Do you know how many people have been killed by chemical plants in relation petroleum production? Far more. People who knows nothing about a topic should not speak about it until they're educated. Just because you, personally, don't understand something, that doesn't mean ban it.
Bio-robots. Semantics The position of the state was that the work was too dangerous for men to do, only robots could be used. So they didn't use "men" they used "bio-robots"
That's an Irish actress (Jessie Buckley) playing the firefighter's wife who lost her baby. She was nominated for an Oscar just last year for Best Supporting Actress in a film called 'The Lost Daughter'. The young guy who volunteered and was working on animal control is another Irish actor, Barry Keoghan who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar this year for 'The Banshees of Inisherin'.
Cool! Thanks for the info!
Upon rewatching the series, I was surprised to see how many now recognizable faces were in this show. Such a deep cast.
Old people still live in the exclusion zone. Everything had to be cleaned, which actually is the worst part, so all animals had to be killed. People still sneak into the zone for guided tours. One area can be safe and a few feet away, extremely radioactive!
Wow! I don't think I'd want to live anywhere near there!
When on the roof, the Liquidators had specific tasks they had to accomplish in those 90 seconds. You don't just randomly go up there and have people randomly muck about looking for rocks, multiple people might go for the same rock, wasting time ect. They're looking for graphite in specific areas that was assigned to them. Those areas often had the highest levels of radiation on the roof so they were basically whittling the levels down. It may look random but it's anything but.
That’s great to know, I was crazy in my head thinking they weren’t given better instructions! I was totally freaking out internally. - Toni
@@popculturallychallenged haha, Yeah, they probably didn't go into it because as a miniseries, it super limited on time but in real life, they had more specific directions. Granted, the training and direction was as fast as possible because they only had 90 seconds. Realistically, 10 seconds of that was spent running to and from the entrance so they had even less time to do their specific tasks. And thousands had to be trained for their 90 second tasks. It was truly a nightmare. Imagine training for days for a minute amd change of work... Crazy stuff lol
As the roof was cleared and the levels went down that 90s was extended out to the point where it was still a lifetime dose
Joker worked for awhile, at one point it got stuck on graphine and they had to run chains to it and hand winch it off, but it was used quite awhile before it died
There is video of it in operation, and of it being winched off where it got stuck
I'll have to check out the video. Thanks!
I'll need to go find that video now to take a look. - Toni 🤓
Hey Toni, I feel for the woman in the maternity ward so much. Having to sit there recovering from a failed delivery surrounded by crying healty babies. Such a gut wreching scenario. ------ You have to understand that it was not until the 90's that American nurses were able to advocate for a separate section of the hosptial to house mothers of failed deliveries. ------ BEfore that they were all housed together as is shown in "Chernobyl". -------- It was not till much later for the rest of the world, since many hospital had limited space.
That would have been a horrible situation to go through. 😭
Legasov has a family they just don't mention in this series, so him telling the truth could cost his family and possible friends some undue suffering. The unknown of what could be done to you or your family would be the toughest.
@@gordonjenner2375 The point is the threat of it being a possibility at the time was unknown so would you take the chance? Many of the other scientist who spoke out were placed in prison or denounced of their position. I don't think my statement above mentions his family being harmed. I just stated he had a family which adds more risk to telling the truth.
That would be a scary situation to be in!
19:30 The gas masks they were wearing reduce field of vision as well as fogging up if one is stressed, so it didn't surprise me that that one poor guy was tripping over rubble when in a hurry to get back. -- Anyway, I agree that they needed an organized section by section grid-square approach to clearing the graphite from Masha
I hope there was some kind of a plan for each person but how it was filmed it didn't seem like it.
There is historical footage of men clearing the graphite. It looks exactly like what they showed. That's a good point about organizing the shoveling. They could have cleared a strip at the edge, then pushed the remaining graphite over in layers from front to back.
With such a limited time available that they could be out there, I would have thought they would have really planned it out to maximize their efficiency but apparently not.
"Listen Comrade. These are the most important 90 seconds of your life."
Yes Boss, NO PRESSURE. I live to serve the Soviet Union.
I have all the respect in the world for the men who did that! So brave!
You asked if the "egg basket" actually does anything and the answer is yes. Ironically it would have harmed them since they wore it outside of their clothing, as it would have trapped contaminated debris close to their body. If they had worn it under their clothing it could have shielded them from some radiation but ultimately it's just men being overprotective of their genitals which weren't in any more or less danger than the rest of their bodies.
It looks like it would have been super uncomfortable to walk around with!
Only the roof workers wore things like that, they randomly covered body parts in lead sheet, none of the other liquidators did
You mentioned how everything looked rundown and dirty. That's because pretty much everything the Soviet Union made was shoddy and of the lowest quality. That also include the protective equipment that the men on the roof was using. Most likely those crappy goggles were fogging up making it near impossible to see what they were doing. The Soviet Union always had the same approach. They threw bodies at their problems to fix them without much in the way of caring what happened to them.
That’s sad. - Toni
@Gordon Jenner Yeah... It's not a lie at all. I have seen a fair share of Soviet built equipment and it's crap. Shoddily built and at the least expense that was manageable at the time. I was a teenager when this happened. You cite crime numbers as if that has some bearing on this discussion at all. Yeah, they had little crime... because everyone was terrified of what would happen to them if they were caught. When secret police forces can stop and ask for your papers at any second or invade your home for inspection with no warrant... you tend to not risk committing crimes. You younger idiots romanticize the past without ever having lived through it or actually knowing anything about it.
it's no accident that they drank a lot of vodka :-D it's hard to bear the horror that happens there. there was a stupid rumor that many people thought was true, that vodka also protects you from radiation :-D (of course this is not true, but it sounds good :-D ) there was also a fireman who went to put out the fire after the explosion while he was already drunk, when he came to himself the next day came back next to the radiation, even his head hurt.. (of course, this is not in the film and is just a rumor) as far as I know, not only dogs and cats, but also wild animals were culled, recently there was an investigation (a few weeks' news) there are green leaf frogs living in the nearby marshy area, after a few years and a few generations, more and more black versions appear among the frogs
Definitely sounds good. 😂
Some of the men who were sent out on to the roof ended up forging draft cards multiple times so that they would be sent up to the roof instead of someone else. Heroes, every last one of them.
Wow. That's incredible! Truly heroic. 😀
Hey David and Toni, That scene where they have to clean all of that debris off the roof, is one long tracking shot, an ingenious way to get you into the mind of the soldier on the roof. ------ The sound design with the meter being the score of the scene gives you chills.
And at the end. COMRADE SOLIDER.... YOU're DONE.
That scene was intense!
If you think the story of Lyudmila ignatenko(the fireman's wife) is devastating in the show.. then you should read the book about Chernobyl..it has many more details about her and so much worse .. and the baby was buried next to her father 😢 and ... I can't say more it really crushed my heart 😭
That is devastating…. - Toni
What is the name of the book ?
This is pretty much the toughest episode to watch for almost everyone...but it is good that you made it through it.
Something that does not often get mentioned is that many of the men who went out onto those incredibly radioactive roof sections actually volunteered to go back out more than once in order to save others from having to be "biorobots". Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up and did nothing to fix it, all the while lying to even the plant operators about the safety of the RBMK reactors, is something that could only happen in a totalitarian state like the USSR...where there is no free press or free scientific establishment for whistleblowers to talk to when they know about wrongdoing by the State.✌
That's incredible that they volunteered to go back out! That's true bravery!
Or north Korea. Same thing. Absolute madness.
No, this happens in our government too. I'm real sick of people truly believing we are exempt from our government lying to it's people, they've done it a million times in the past just as much as every other country with a totalitarian government. The huge difference is those countries are honest and open about having one.
I love that animal control sergeant. I only had to do that once overseas and was given the same instruction on not letting them suffer. It must be done, but don't let me see you enjoying it.
That would be a terrible job!!! I’m sorry you had to do that! - Toni
@@popculturallychallenged I was ok with it. A life is a life. Animals rate the same as humans to me. If it must be done, it must be done. Just document it. Never hide from it. I was chastised for wasting ammo. I did not let my target suffer. The other guy wounded his target. Turned around and grinned. 1SG immediately became furious. "Finish what you started". There should never be joy in killing. There should never be joy in being the survivor.
(Context: I served at the Tuwaitha nuclear compound in Iraq. We were worried about the fleas and ticks stray dogs had. It was a nuclear site. We don't talk about that.)
Wow…. - Toni
Hey guys, I see you're missing a lot of context, culturally.
The library scene, for example, you didn't understand the looks. SSSR was heavily censored at the time. The state and the KGB kept many things from the public, that's why someone had to check on the documents she was requesting, they constituted a state secret.
Thanks for the info!
I rewatch this series regularly and generally skip this episode, but realize I miss a lot of other important scenes outside of the animal-control scenes. You two kept composure way better than I could. Love your reaction to this series btw.
Thank you! 😃
9:08...The animals would die on their own but it would take a while and dogs, cats, horses etc can cover a fair distance in a short time so there'd be a danger of spreading the contamination. Also if they're left to die they'll suffer a lot more than if they're shot.
Good point! 😢
I recommend watching actual footage of roof cleaning - the fact it was documented on tape is mind blowing for me.
We’ll have to check it out. Thanks!
I may be repeating what others have said, but I'm too lazy to read through all the comments.
I think a key point of this series is that in the Soviet Union social and political culture, "explaining why" on just about any measure or official order simply didn't occur to people. Maybe it was first discouraged actively, but by the mid '80s almost nobody bothered to "explain" things when the important thing was just to obey. The old woman's instinct was to be stubborn and stand on her personal dignity ... and who can blame her? But she might instead have asked for more details on the nature of the risk. And the guy with the gun might have explained more too. But it's not part of Soviet culture to explain.
And the flip side of that is that few people demanded explanations, and at the same time violated orders ... especially smaller orders from lower-level people like doctors and local bureaucrats ... without wondering much if there might actually be good reasons for some of them. I think that's why the firefighter's wife ignored warnings not to touch or be close to her husband. She figured they were just more petty orders, when in fact in that case they had real health implications. Once you lose faith in all authority, you tend to resist it, even when it happens now and then to be absolutely right.
Very good points!
Great video. Thank you for sharing. This one is a hard watch. Ep5 will help explain a lot.
Thank you! And thank you for watching with us! 😀
They did make changes to the remaining RBMK reactors to decrease their inherent instability at low power levels. It took some time but if I remember correctly it was completed in the nineties. Running on higher enriched fuel, having the control rods go up and down much faster, changing lengths of some channels etc. So repeating what happened in Chernobyl would be now physically impossible even if tried on purpose. I think there are 8 such modified reactors still running somewhere, no unmodified ones exist any more.
That's good to know! 😀
Pripyat is still a time capsule as everyone had minutes to pack up and leave.
That's so sad. Imagine all of the things they had to leave behind.
Hey Toni and David, this series is just so devastating emotionally. Unless somehow this horrific event just escapes my memories, I don't recall hearing much about this at the time, and I was 18 in 1984. Perhaps the US MSM didn't cover this news very much? But truly sad for these people and families. And I can't help but have my thoughts racing when we're seeing so many TV series being shown, beginning with Walking Dead, if catastrophies throughout the world. God help us all become closer and stronger! Much love guys!
I’m thinking about being a prepper now!!
@@popculturallychallenged Me too! 😔
I was about 12 when this happened and I do remember it being all over the news but it is probably because my parents were following it.
@@shercahn yeah, and I was probably out smoking weed and drinking...lol. I was a party guy back then. 3 kids later and 57 yrs old, I can't handle that life any more.😂😂
@@kevmodee1866 - lol, I hear ya!
Hey guys and gals. The show also turned down the horror of the animal section.------- People reported animals were walking around with body parts melted together from radioactive disintegration. --------- To the point where workers could not recognize cats as cats and dogs as dogs. Some cats looked like lizards. Some dogs looked like frogs. ------- Just imagine seeing something like that and it almost looked alien-like.
Ugh.. That would be horrible! 😭
They didn't have a choice. Some of what was described by others - and you are right in saying it was toned down - wouldn't have passed the censor. To be viewable this was probably as graphic as they could go.
Many of the dogs survived, and there are now two distinct populations of animals, separated by quarantine zones. Scientists have recently started to study the two populations and the different ways they have changed in isolation, as there aren’t really isolated populations with incidents of drastic change like this anywhere else in the planet.
Wow, that’s so interesting!! Thanks for sharing! - Toni
6:57 friendship
And to think just a few episodes earlier he was threatening to throw him from a helicopter! 😂
2:07...Don't forget, if the soldier leaves the old lady, she'll end up dying of radiation poisoning and it won't be a pleasant death (same thing goes for the cow).
Very true. What a terrible situation..
That's why we don't use this type of reactor in the west. Ours have a negative coefficient, which is explained in the next episode. Our style would have shut down in similar situation. They went with positive coefficient reactor, because you can use lower grade uranium.
We learned so much about nuclear reactors from this show. 😃
Suuuuuch a good show. If only they hadn't written things like: “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead." Uhm...not possible. Really wish they hadn't made much of the audience believe things like that...Fortunately, just about all the bad science has been fact checked by numerous experts, many of them available in videos right here on YT 😊
I'm going to look around on RUclips now that we've finished watching it. I'd like to learn more about it.
(7:15) I don't blame him in this instance. He shouldn't have run the test the way he did, but he had the failsafe, the kill switch on standby. The others in the room told her they pressed it and Booom!
That's a good point.
The area around chernobyl is free of humans and as such has now become ideal for all manner of animals who have a better life expectancy than anywhere else.
I don't know, the dogs of Chernobyl have a life expectancy of about 3-5 years or so... Kyle Hill did a video about them.
@@frufruJ well, I've heard that the wolves have returned so dogs dying sooner is probably part of the food chain reestablishing itself
Are the radiation levels still high in that area?
@@popculturallychallenged yes
The animals were "disposed" in much harscher ways than using bullets. Bullets cost money, was the reason.
That’s even sadder…. - Toni
Thanks again for reacting to this series!
Thank you for watching with us! 😀
Yup, told ya this one was a tearjerker 😢 RIP 👶🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕🐕
Yep, you were right!! - Toni
@@popculturallychallenged Don't know if you guys have seen it, but the Band of Brothers miniseries is right up there with Chernobyl 😏👍👍
As I said, this is the toughest episode for almost everyone to watch, I hope you folks can get some legal cannabinoid remedies to help take the edge off of watching this...I know it helps me a lot. You had a few questions or things you wondered about...
One quick note...the soldier shooting the cow at the beginning is a pretty brutal dose of reality right in your face, there is no question about that...but keep in mind that cow had to die regardless of anything else that happens...all the contaminated livestock had to be euthanized and disposed of. You are not wrong that the soldier was a d**k about it, and should have been more compassionate, but for him she could have been his 50th old woman with cow of the day...and how many days has he been dealing with old folks who don't want to leave...and pretty quickly you can understand how he would lose the emotional energy to have any compassion.
The main reason that the contaminated animals had to be killed, as I understand it, was to reduce the chances that any contaminated animals would move out of the contaminated area and thus spread the contamination far and wide beyond the exclusion zone.
The 90 second time limit was supposedly calculated to be half the total maximum lifetime dosage of radiation that a human being is capable of being exposed to WITHOUT major health effects...so in theory a man could do that job once and be "OK"...assuming that man had never been exposed to radiation before and was basically never exposed to radiation ever again. Of course, I already mentioned that many men chose to go out on that roof more than once to save others...and those men would almost certainly all die. As with most things about Chernobyl, it is very difficult to know due to the incredibly poor records the USSR kept of the cleanup and almost everything else about the disaster.
As far as Lyudmila being in the maternity ward, that was the ward for women who had just given birth, so that was where she was. Regardless of whether she had a few complications, or the fact that the baby had died, that was where she was going to end up. I would hope that most places that help women give birth, whether hospitals or clinics or midwives, are not that callous in throwing women that have miscarried or had their babies die in childbirth into the same ward with mothers taking care of their newborns, but my guess is that it happens a lot more than we think.
Anyway, sorry to blather on so much...I hope at least some of this is interesting...LOL...I look forward to sharing the last episode with you folks.
Thank you! That's some great info! 👍
I don't understand why the series always talked about the "scary" graphite blocks on the roof of the power unit, but did not talk about the nuclear fuel rods, which were the biggest threat
Good question.
I believe it was because there is far more graphite in the reactor than nuclear fuel so there was far more of it to deal with.
Also graphite is far more brittle than uranium so it is possible that not much of the fuel was actually ejected when the reactor exploded but the graphite that surrounded it was shattered and that's what went flying.
@@xboxman1710 oh, now it's clear. Thank you)
As an empathic person myself, this episode really got me. New born babies dieing, pets slaughtered, lives forever ruined or lost, must of felt like the end of the world for those out there. And for those on the roof, 7 month salary is really nothing to their sacrifice meaning.
This was a rough episode. Probably the most impactful episode yet! I agree, 7 months salary was nothing for what they did.
Awesome reaction video keep up the great work
Thank you so much for your kinds words!! - Toni
the animals had to be killed. they were almost certainly irradiated and would have died slow, painful deaths. Then other non-contaminated animals would have become contaminated when they ate the remains. they had to be removed and then buried in the concrete to keep them from doing more damage.
That would have been a heartbreaking job. 😢
14:45 i hope it was more organized in reality
based on all available information, it was very scattergun in terms of the approach, as stated in the first episode, they were dealing something that had never happened on planet earth before, it was a first for everything and while it's not really shown too much in the show (likely due to a limitation with regards to the props/effects departments) the chunks of graphite on the roof were very large for the most part and you need to keep in mind they were extremely heavy which meant that the people who were doing the cleanup were only going for blocks they could actually lift and carry which is why there was no organisation as suggested to 'make a path'; something to also keep in mind is this was the soviet union in 1986-1988 if you consider that they were about 10-15 years BEHIND 'the west' technologically they were still using equipment and strategies from the 70's they didn't have the luxury of automated things or large scale equipment for massive projects that were available in 'the west' at the time.
I hope so too. With such a limited time they could be out there, I would hope they would have had a plan in place to maximize every second. 🙂
15:43 i want to know more about cindy. 😬😆
sounds a little mean, but also kinda funny 🤔
She was one of the best bosses I’ve ever had. I was always scared of her but due to respect for her. On my way to meet her for my monthly financial / operations recap, I would pray all the way there on my 20 minute drive!! LOL. I think secretly, she loved making everyone nervous. Lol - Toni
Vodka literally means "little water".
Does it really? I like "little water" - Toni 🥰
Even if you lose the baby. You have to stay on the maternity ward. Because that's also where they deal with any post birth complications. Mother and child. Very cruel, but practically sensible.
The loss of the baby in any situation would be so difficult. - Toni
18:02 interesting thing, there is a power plant that looks exactly like the Chernobyl power plant, (in Russia) the movie was shot there ;-) (not cgi) the next part will be the one from which you can learn a lot
We've learned a lot from this series. I'm very glad we watched it. 😀
There are still stray dogs in Chernobyl
Oh man.. 😢
The reason for unlimited vodka has to do with not having enough iodine tablets to go around. They both are thyroid-gland protective vs radiological exposure in that both iodine and alcohol flush the thyroid gland out. It's why in Japan to this day, due to the bombings and occasional nuclear reactor problems most households keep a supply of whiskey or other strong alcohol in case another accident happens.
If you go for a chest X-ray, having a few drinks that evening might not be a bad idea. Just saying, one can never be too careful in such matters.
I think I need to stock up on Vodka and cranberry juice now!! 🤣 - Toni
" i did not need to see that!"
Yes. You did. Because thousands of men were forced to live it. 'For the happiness of all mankind,' they were LIVING it. For months and years. It's still an ongoing problem.
Good point!
Whenever I watch this or something like it and it becomes too much, I always remind myself people lived through this. They have to live with this memory, they have to live with the results. If they can experience it, surely I can watch from the comfort of my home.
Same reactors are being used in those areas even today.. But I think they modified some of it
I would hope so…. - Toni
Everything is drab because it was a socialist state, much like a prison. If you went to the store to buy wallpaper, there would be a line. You would have one choice or none at all. Normally you would have to stand in line for shoes, and they only would have size 7, only size 7. You would buy the one pair you are allowed to buy. You would trade it for the wallpaper you couldn't buy at the store that was out of wallpaper.
That doesn't sound like a fun way to live.. 😥
No, its not. Hence the country fell apart.
Thank you guys for reacting this episode Chernobyl great tv series just awesome. I suggest and I hope you will reacts this classic movies: Out of Africa (1985) The Crying Game (1992) Hoosiers (1986) Somewhere in Time (1980) Chariots of Fire (1981) Don Juan DeMarco (1995) White Nights (1985) Casualties of War (1989) Alive (1993) Saturday Night Fever (1977) Ladyhawke (1985) Revenge of the Nerds (1984) Dragonfly (2002) and The Party (1968) all highly recommended 👍👍👍👍
Thank you for watching with us! We've added these to our list!
♥
Thank you!! - Toni
Why do they have to kill the animals? 🤦♀️ have you even been paying attention to the show at all?
I get it, it's just sad.... - Toni 🤓
Well Guys I thought you would be crying more in this episode vs previous, but you got sneaky didnt show lots of the key scenes...The last episode gives a good explanation as to what happened with some twists. Be sure to watch all of the ending credits and make a Part 2 if you have to because of RUclipss BS rules. I've noticed some other RUclipss have started doing it. Right now Putin was sending Russian Soldiers over the Exclusions on foot. Many died from radiation exposure, hows that?
This has been an incredible series! Part 5 will be up on Monday! 😃
Yes, a lot of things do not look clean. Only the elites in the Communist Party experience modern conveniences and cleanliness.
Communism about achieving equality by lowering all to the lowest common denominator. Sprucing things up, or even maintaining things on a base-level, might uplift spirits.
Cuba is a prime example. A majority of the automobiles on the streets are from the 1950's - 60's, and I'm talking about in 2023. Newer cars might breed a free spirit, so let's keep the old, broken-down one's visible.
That doesn't sound like a fun way to live. 😢
I think the whole world should get rid of nuclear power plants
Nuclear power plants are statistically the second safest, just short after solar. Plus, they're the greenest. Technically, uranium is not a renewable resource, but it's the best we currently have.
@@frufruJ that is until something bad happens
@@johnstrong4089 That makes no sense. Do you know how many people have been killed by chemical plants in relation petroleum production? Far more.
People who knows nothing about a topic should not speak about it until they're educated. Just because you, personally, don't understand something, that doesn't mean ban it.
I hope that modern plants have more safeguards in place after this incident. 🙂
@@steven95N source?
Bio-robots. Semantics
The position of the state was that the work was too dangerous for men to do, only robots could be used.
So they didn't use "men" they used "bio-robots"
That is so sad.. 😢
That's good to know. - Toni 🤓