This happened during my childhood and even in germany they told us to keep the children inside and not let them play outside for a while. They even changed the sand in parks ect.
The military person who drove the truck was a veteran of WW2. He volunteered because he was old and because he knew his reports of the radiation would not be as easily dismissed compared to if regular soldiers did the test with the Dosimeter. Radiation affects the ways cells work, it causes them to work badly. This is what cancer is. Cells that keep dividing whilst not doing their jobs effectively. Everyday we're losing cells and the rest are dividing and growing to fill the gaps. So radiation affects most badly the cells that divide and grow the fastest. Hair, for instance. People affected by radiation sickness aren't 'infected' per say. They can't pass it on (which is something the show gets slightly wrong.) People are encouraged to stay away from Radiation-affected persons because the radiation destroys the immune system. A simple cold can kill a radiation-affected person because they lack an immune system. The amount of radiation released and absorbed by some of those affected, much more than their immune systems is affected. One of the by-products of Uranium 235 decay, the element used to power the Nuclear reactor is Iodine 131. (Amongst others.) They give out Iodine pills because the human body can only absorb so much Iodine. Give them 'good' Iodine, and they cannot absorb the 'bad' Iodine. To use an analogy: Can't eat poison if you're full to bursting after a meal.
Well said. You can't "infect" someone with the radiation. But if there is any contamination on you, you can pass it on to others. That's how the nurses who were throwing the firemen's clothes away got burned - there was radioactive contamination on the clothes that they touched.
@@babalonkie Also in the case of the baby they still were wearing those clothes as seen in the previous episode, meaning all that radioactive ash would land in fabric, hair, etc. Nearly a direct path of radiation to surroundings.
@@babalonkie Another way is for radioactive material to become absorbed in your body when you eat contaminated food. Strontium-90 for example is so biochemically similar to calcium that the body will absorb and use it to build bone tissue. When this happens the bones end up with these tiny radioactive particles in them which constantly bombard the bone marrow and surrounding tissues with radiation. This leads cancers and leukemia. Though strontium-90 is more of a hazard for children and younger adults who are still building their bone structure, not so much for older people.
"Not the dog, that's so sad" ... oh boy ... about that ... Question on the radiation contamination. No, it's the immediacy. The clothes and their skin are contaminated with "fallout." Once the clothes are removed and the skin cleaned, they aren't "contagious." They took some liberties in this series with that for dramatic effect.
But I think that at the time people didn't know that or it wasn't something they could be sure about, so as a precaution, they isolated patients, wore protective gear, advised people not to touch them and all that because they thought that those who were exposed were radioactive.
remember that they were BREATHING in the radioactive dust ... which is in theyr lungs ... so yes the firefighters and anyone not wearing breathing masks in close proximity to the reactor was actively radioactive even after removing clothes and wash. every time they breathed in, every time they swallowed they deposited radioactive materials inside theyr bodies.
My mom actually went out and grabbed me from the sandbox when she heard the news on the radio. And we live in Sweden. It was actually a reactor in Sweden who first noticed it. Personell thought it was the reactor at first, but then realized it was from outside. We still notice the fallout from this in Sweden. Great reaction! Thanks for the upload! 👍 Edit: And I totally feel you! You feel so "heavy" after watching this series. But it is so good.
Yeah here in Germany we still can't safely eat certain mushrooms we find in the forest . My dad also told me that he was not allowed to play outside at the time . There is a very interesting documentary called Chernobyl: Cloud over Germany
I hate to sound flippant but here in the USA, the jokes started immediately, making fun of how the soviets always lied & spread propaganda...nobody knew how bad it was, but the soviets said it was minor, but after the swedes detected it, U.S. satellites took pictures that revealed the true nature of the disaster. the "joke" was that soviet propaganda was working until everyone started noticing Swedes with blue hair & blond eyes. We knew the Soviets were lying, but if ever a time for truth & openness was needed, it was then.
@@sophiecooper1824 I lived in Germany when it happened. They told us not go out in the rain our eat any mushrooms. My son was 2 at the time, was so scared for him
@@kerrythorn8575 Same. I'm from Germany too, I was about 15 at that time. And remember that was in the middle of the cold war, and also the start of the "green movement" with the "Atomkraft - nein danke (Atomic Power - no thanks)" slogan, so as a teenager you where probably more sensitized to the whole "nuclear danger"-topic than we are today. However, it was real scary back than. For weeks you expected something even worse (that might very well had been possible, as we learn in this show) might pop up. In the worst case, half of Europe could have been "gone". Still unbelievable that this disaster wasn't even the worst possible case.
@@mrtveye6682 Agree 100%. Even though I was an adult at the time, I was quite naive and just getting on with my life, ignoring all the cold war talk as I had heard it so much I was desensitized, so it really had the opposite effect. This disaster opened my eyes to the lengths Russia would go to to hide their incompetence until they couldn't lie anymore and also, what the potential of mass destruction was if a nuclear war ever broke out. And now here we are again...too many damn psychopaths in governments around the world. I shall now get off my soap box and wish you a nice weekend!
18:45 the speakers are saying something along the lines of: "there's an emergency and we need to evacuate the town for a few hours" they weren't told why, and all thought they would be back shortly so packed barely anything.
"Seems like something you don't really hear about anymore." It's interesting because I was born in 1989 in Romania and I remember how they gave us iodine pills in elementary school.
Yeah, I spent all my youth near polish-belarussian border, about 600 km from Chernobyl. Communist Poland. They told us nothing. But they did give iodine pills.
It was a different world 40 years ago. Even as far away as Canada, everyone knew about this and it loomed large in our minds for a long time because we all still got our news from TV broadcasts and newspapers. If you were a kid, you heard the news your parents were watching and talking about, so it became general knowledge. It's difficult for me to believe that young people barely know about this anymore, and it's because news doesn't travel the way it used to.
30:20 the official answer to that is as quoted by the UCSF is: "There are types of radiation where human bodies could retain radioactive particles and remain radioactive over time, but this is not the type that was seen at Chernobyl. After gamma radiation has passed through the body, the person is no longer radioactive and can’t expose other people." However, since people pretty much dind't knew anything about the real events, doctors and nurses would isolate patients because they weren't sure what type of radiation contamination that was.
also while 'unlikely' it is possible microscopic particulates could have been inhaled, swallowed or get stuck in pores/hair etc, those could be sources of later radioactive emmissions, in terms of likelyhood and risk factor i wouldnt rate it as anything more than 'eh maybe i guess' but as with the they didnt know what they had been exposed to taking the paranoia approach is typically safest
I was 3 when it happened and I remember the birds in my grandma's aviary dropping dead (except for one cockatoo who's still going strong), that I wasn't allowed to play in my sandpit and that we weren't allowed to eat vegetables grown above ground. And this was in Belgium... 1160 miles away.
Here's an interesting fun fact about Ulana Khomyuk. Craig Mazin, the show's creator, wanted to add a character who represented the various scientists and specialists who attempted to investigate and contain the disaster. While several real scientists were involved in the investigation, the show's makers chose to create a composite character to simplify the story and focus on the essential events and people involved.
Hospital #6 did (and does) specialize in radiation sickness. The two people in the hotel were doubtlessly KGB trying to see if Legasov would talk. The people who were evacuated were moved to Kyiv and surrounding towns. They had been told to being three days worth of clothes.
One of my favorite shows ever, I'm loving watching you guys react to it. Each episode will get tougher, but it's absolutely worth it. They will explain why it happened, so no worries.
Well we have heard about Chernobyl recently as Russia has hit the Chernobyl area repeatedly with missiles. And also driving tanks through the area churning up the top layer and dragging radioactive dirt along the way. Just thank god Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader then. He wasn't the typical party line idiot.
The Chairman was the top leader of Soviet Russia; in this case Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union. I were 7. Due to weirdness of geography and wind patterns a very small area around where I lived in Norway got hit exceptionally hard (I didn't know this was the case until years later). Schools closed, children weren't allowed to go outside for at least a week, may have been two, except for a quick trip to drink some iodine solution. There was a ban on picking berries and fruit, and warnings against going on hikes, especially they said to stay inside if it rained... and this place was near the top in amount of rain in Norway. And this was more than 2000 kilometers from Chernobyl. My family moved to the south of Norway a few years later. We didn't turn radioactive or any such thing. But.. let's just say those friends of my parents up there that happened to be outdoorsy people.. a relatively large amount of them have died of cancer since. Of all the people we knew who has passed on up there, I don't think I'm lying if I'm saying cancer stood for more than 50%. There is nothing official supporting my statement. Why should there be? Not like they can do anything about it, but cause fear and sadness. There was a drop in birthrate in that area for a couple of years, but scientists say it is impossible to know how much of that was caused by radioactivity and how much was caused by people choosing not to risk it for a time.
Love the contrast between the cowardice of the people in charge vs the rare but sharp bravery of the general and the 3 volunteers. The music also gives the radiation an aura of an unstoppable beast. It's incredible to think some of us were living our lives totally oblivious of literal annihilation ..
7:12- "It's been less than 50 years. I feel like it's not something you ever hear about" Despite the nuclear bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even as late as the 60s, Soviet scientists believed that radiation had hidden health benefits. Chernobyl is perhaps the singular reason we all know about the effects of radiation.
My childhood friend was a “child of chernobyl” he was a bit older then me, born during the accident (in Lithuania) died in 2005 (quick, just like that, in 3 weeks) due to blood cancer. Doctors said it had something to do with Chernobyl and radiation, hence the name. Crazy.
Just a little context for the scene at 14:30 because i see a lot of people who are reacting and misunderstanding this scene. Those 2, the man and the woman at the bar that are asking Legasov : "Is there anything we should be worried about ?" are not ordinary people, they are KGB agents, informants and Legasov knew that, that's why he answered by not telling the truth, because Legasov knew they were testing him, so he answered the way they would have expected of him to answer just so as not to get in trouble. You'll see those 2 re-appear in a future episode. You have to always keep in mind when watching Chernobyl that it was a communist society, spying was everywhere, people deemed suspicious or who were handed an important task in the name of the state were ALWAYS spied by the KGB, by the secret police, they knew & needed to know everything and were able to find out ANYTHING about someone or something and this made a lot of people paranoid (this explains the coded language used for boron and sand during Khomyuk phone conversation scene at 16:10) because there were informants everywhere, phones were tapped, even kids were encouraged to rat on their parents.
*Anybody* could be KGB. So a person in that time and place had to be very cautious about who they talked to and what they said. At this point in the Legasov did not know but played it safe anyway. Nice explanation btw.
@@pedrolopez8057 "Anybody could be KGB." Everyone was KGB. Some of the Hungarian state police documents from the time show how two friends were reporting on each other while they both were convinced they were the ones watching the other. It was a sociopathic system.
SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't seen the whole show. You're right about Legasov being tested by the agents, but you're wrong about thinking he knew they were testing him as he even states in a later episode that he "saw these people before" when he notices that he and Sherbina are being followed by them when they're walking in the park which means that he didn't suspect them at first.
I remember it not being that long ago where RUclipsrs and explorers woul go check out the basement where the nurse stored all the fireman's clothes and that is still highly radioactive to this day. Ukraine had to go back and seal the basement to prevent people from going.
I think I've said this at just about every reaction video I've seen. As far as the medical staff not wearing gloves, it wouldn't have mattered at all. The radiation coming from those contaminated clothes, would have gone right thru latex gloves as if they weren't wearing them in the first place.
For those who don't know boron glass or boron plus sand is how you make Pyrex glass which is the stuff you put in your oven to make casseroles and things
Man oh man, I don't think I've ever seen such anguish on your faces like the end of this episode! But in contrast to that, I laughed so hard at Sarah's reaction to the dude saying "Where are scientists when you need them? When there's a disease that needs to be cured? " (9:45) That made me burst out laughing, out loud! In fact, I'm going go rewatch that part right now! lol. You guys do "infuriating" and gaslighting" really well! You've got to do "Rosemary's Baby" one day, since that has both in it! lol. (And when you want to hit super-classics: Kubrick's "Paths Of Glory" - which Chernobyl is very much a "Paths Of Glory" story - and the origin of "gaslighting": "Gaslight"! (two old versions, the 1944 version is the one I'd do, with Ingrid Bergman). But seriously, Sarah's face when that guy says "Where are scientists when you need them?" 🤣
Dude and dudette, you should make a short of that entire line; I know it's incomplete on this edit, that entire line is hilarious and obviously Sarah is reacting to every comma and nuance of that sentence!
I’m sure someone else has mentioned it already, but the firefighter’s gear is STILL in the basement of the hospital. There’s videos and photos of explorers finding it. Dangerous radiation but brief exposure is manageable.
The abandoned city is still abandoned. Plates were left on tables... They were told it was short term, but they were never allowed to return. Frederick Pohl wrote a semi fictionalized account of what happened in his novel, Chernobyl. It was my primary source of understanding in the years after the event.
This series is pretty historically accurate. It does take some filmaker license of course. One of my friends who now lives here was living near there in the 80s. Since the Soviet nuclear industry was considered a state secret most people even the plant workers were kept in the dark about it, only those who really needed to know did.The KGB Soviet Secret Police watched everything. Thats what they tried to cover everything up until it was impossible to then atleast Gorbachev acted well. The mentality of the Soviet Union was to do what you are told to do. If you object your arrested and sent to prison or shot. Thats why there wasnt that much of a panic by the general public. The mayor of Kiev, which is the largest city like 25 miles away later shot himself when he found out that by not cancelling the May Day Celebrations (Russia biggest holiday) so many got sick and died.Atleast they managed to stop the explosion, if not you and I would not even be alive now. The announcement made at evacuations was basically ""An unpleasant level of radiation has been detected at the plant so we must have a temporary evacuation. Take doucuments, medicine and like 3 days worth of food. Of course they never returned. Whats ""Unpleasant level"? I enjoy your reactions. Get ready its 5 episodes and it will get much worse before it gets better. Come Episode 5 they will atleast show and explain what happened, why and how. Be sure to show and read the after show credits they are interesting. Well ok look forwards to your next show.
The fire and cloud went worldwide. Every baby born after 1986 has caesium-137 in their blood now. I'm sure its diluted more by now but it forever adjusted humanity as a whole.
It's a good series - dramatically and politically especially. I'd also recommend watching a few nuclear engineers' / physicists' reviews to get an idea of where the mini-series is really good and also where the science/medicine doesn't quite match.
As to your question about the people themselves becoming radioactive, the show portrays them as being radioactive themselves but that is one of the biggest complaints I've heard about the show from doctors that this is causing stigma on their patients unnecessarily.
I live in Scotland, radiation was detected here also. I worked in an opticians for 14 years and every year we had kids from that area come over for free sight tests and medical help. Lots of them are suffering from birth defects and genetic changes, even still today, so sad 😢
The fireman and his wife's story is a real one and was taken from a documentary book of Svetlana Alexievich's book "Chernobyl Prayer" - a very good book to read if you want to know more what happened to the people there... and the book to cry on every page... The author basically spend years talking to people who survived the tragedy and wrote their storied down. She wrote amazing documentary books about soviet reality. Even got Nobel prize for it.
15:53 radiation isn’t actually hot enough to melt anything. The pilot was meant to have been blinded by the smoke and didn’t see the crane that his propellers collided with (typical soviet era pilot), in real life the crash happed upon the same circumstances but it was well after this point in time of the story
14:39 The smug way she asked that question, Legasov figured a likelihood that she was KGB. He later mentions it to Shcherbina that he recognized them spying on the two.
In this episode, there were a few things the makers of the show got wrong. For one thing, the character who said that they should close off the city in the first episode and is evacuated in this one, did not exist...he was added for dramatic purposes. Also, the helicopter crash did not happen so soon after the explosion...it really happened months later in October, 1986, and had nothing to do with radiation...it just got too close and hit a crane cable with its rotors and you can see that in the show if you watch carefully at 15:44 💯 As I mentioned in my comment to episode 1, once you are done with the series, the History vs Hollywood article on the show is a must read. ✌
this was the episode that hooked me. i was mortified and morbidly curious to see how this panned out.. fast-forward to HBO announcing that Craig Mazin would be working with Neil Druckman on adapting The Last of Us 🤯
The helicopter crash was due to the rotor hitting the crane, in the show this was not made clear at all. Audiences were left thinking it weas the radiation that caused it, it was not.
Latex gloves wouldn't done anything against the radiation. So it wouldn't have mattered if they wore gloves or not. The hospital didn't even have iodine pills.
15:43 on my first viewing, I too thought the radiation/heat somehow just obliterated the propeller, but if you look closely, you'll see that the propeller actually tears itself apart on the cable of a crane, and you'll see the hook at the end of the cable fall down after being sheared by the heli blades. In real life, this actually happened over 5 months after the events the show depicts, without the big plume of smoke. (In the show, the helicopter crashed due to the smoke, in real life, it's theorised to have been a simple distancing error on the pilot's part.) In fact, the construction of the sarcophagus that covers the reactor to this day was well underway.
I was 7 yo in Italy and I don’t remember what I ate for lunch today, but I perfectly remember the fear during those days. We couldn’t go out for some days and for weeks after the explosion a lot of contaminated kids came to Italy from Ukraine to breath a better air.
15:50 No the rotors hit the crane’s cable. Althought that crash didn’t happen during the sand and boron drop but i think later on during cleanup efforts.
18:54 the information they were given was “pack 1 bag only, leave your pets behind, this will only be a short temporary trip so don’t pack too much”… No one has ever been back since 1986. That’s why the city is like a ghost town, people just stopped whatever they were doing and left and you can see still that when you go today
Guys I absolutely love y'all's reaction videos. You guys are the best. Love your channel and game playthrough channel as well. Keep up the awesome reactions.
If you really want to know what the speakers are saying on the evacuation it is the original recording playing and it is up on youtube with subtitels same as the newscast and the phonecall to the firestation from the first episode.
Chernobyl used RBMK reactor design, which had many issues. At that time, people were under the impression that the RBMK reactor can’t explode. When Unit 4 exploded, many people thought it was just a water tank explosion, because the “core can’t just explode”. The firefighters there never knew the tremendous amounts of radiation they were exposed to. They described having a metal taste in their mouth, because that is usually the first symptom of radiation poisoning. They never knew that, so many of them died. Had this information been known, much less deaths and more safer protocols would be in play.
7:18...I'm afraid not hearing about Chernobyl might be an American thing. In Europe we still occasionally get documentaries on tv telling us what happened, what the ecological impact was and what was done afterwards to contain the problem.
This is dramatised a bit. The 3 men who went in survived, although one died of cancer later and the other two had controllable medical issues and as of February 2022 were still alive. They didn’t volunteer - they were told they had to go so they did. As of February 2022 ukraine was paying disability pensions to 300,00 people affected by the Chernobyl disaster. The remaining reactors continued operating into the 2000s, when they were shut down in stages. The site is now no longer operative and is a restricted zone (i wont spoil this by telling you what was done with the exploded reactor). Wildlife in the area around Chernobyl continues to be monitored. Many bizarrely mutated creatures have been found, from deer to rats and frogs. In early 2022 soviet military forces surrounded Chernobyl and dug trenches in ground in the restricted area. International and ukrainian nuclear authorities issued repeated warnings to the Russians about staying in the area and about disturbing the soil, which were largely ignored. Those russian forces later abruptly pulled out and returned to russia amid reports that many of the russian soldiers were experiencing symptoms of radiation sickness. There is a similar exclusion area around the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, japan. No one is allowed in except for authorised purposes for specific tasks. Some old people have sneaked back to their homes and japanese authorities do their best to ignore that. Those old people live off the grid. The agricultural land around Fukushima is a no-go zone. Children of parents from the area continue to be monitored for health reasons. Unlike Chernobyl, fukushima’s evacuation area includes one of the world’s biggest cities - Tokyo.
Boron is a neutron absorber. Sand is used to cover the radiation from escaping into the atmosphere. The problem is the mass of these substances won’t necessarily stop the reactor and can cause the meltdown to drop into the earth and poison the ground water.
The Chairman is Mikhail Gorbechev, known for his port wine stain birthmark on his head. He was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991, He was instrumental in Perestroika. He is totally google worthy.
It's important to point out that, while some downplayed what was going on despite knowing the truth, some weren't responding with enough urgency because they didn't have accurate information.
This show is divided in: the accident, how to fix it, and the consequences. You guys need to prepare yourselves emotionally, because the consequences part is coming.
That woman in the bar asking "are you here because of the fire?" was KGB. If he said there was a big problem he would be arrested and silenced, and he probably knew that already so he said no.
The first responders and plant workers were selected, during April 26 news reached Moscow, and hospital number 6 was located near a university and specialised in radiology and burns. Dr Angelina Guskova sent representatives to Pripyat, they selected people to be treated in Moscow including vasily ignatenko. In total 299 people were taken to Moscow. 89 were discharged and 210 treated, with Acute radiation sickness being confirmed in 134. 27 Died in the following weeks including vasily, Akimov, Sitnikov, Toptunov etc. several dozen were taken to a hospital in Kiev and 1 died there- Lelechenko.
Oral iodine pills help keep your thyroid from absorbing radiation. It is very important for preventing and treating Acute Radiation Sickness. The sooner you get it, the better your chances. That is why the nurse asked for it in the first episode.
Why vere they calm during the evac? Because they WEREN´T told what exactly is happening, only that there is a problem and they need to leave for a while. People vere only allowed to bring with them just the neccessities - important documents, ID´s, medications, and the like. Of course the reason was that all the things were irradiated, but they didn´t told them that. Pets also were forbidden to bring. Plus, they were told it´s just for a few days, so they were kinda OK with that - most pets CAN survive day or two without their humans, if they have enough food and water.
Gen X Brit here. I remember it fairly clearly. As a generation of teenagers during the Cold War our senses were heightened to the threat of radiation. Fortunately for us, the radiation didn't affect the UK much but quite a bit of Eastern Europe including Turkey was to some degree. Ukraine suffered most. Back then I didn't know the difference between Ukraine and Russia. It was all the USSR.
These 3 men at the end actually fared better than pretty much everyone else we've seen, for reasons I don't understand. I think 2 of them are still alive. The end showed their flashlights burning out. They were able to do it in the dark because they knew the rooms so well.
18:20 kiev 18:25 the fact that the Soviet government was able to force 50,000 people to evacuate without panic in 3.5 hours is overwhelming 18:32 If you panic the soldiers will handcuff you and throw you onto the bus. there's no point in panicking. the orders of the government were the most important in the Soviet Union
Yeah, radiation at that level can rip through the delicate circuitry of many machines. It does even worse things to living human tissue. I hated Boris at first. Then, he turned around and focused on the real problems at hand. When he simply turned and did what he COULD do, getting tons of sand and boron. Then, he learned that by going there, he was going to die. Yet he then gave a truly fine and good reason to all those men--it MUST BE DONE, no one else CAN, millions of lives are at stake! By now I respect Boris a lot. Anatoly Dyatlov is something of an anomoly. This was his second exposure to an atomic accident. For some reason he survived both! Despite getting bad radiation poisoning. People are not radioactive and still alive. Ludmilla has already been exposed to radiation living in Pripyat in the wake of the disaster. He went to Moscow because that is where the best hospitals are. The people were being told this was a temporary evacuation. Of course it was not. Not at all. Love your reaction, especially the visceral sense of enduring/experience this real piece of human horror. The disaster at Chernobyl btw is ongoing, albeit managed far better.
The firefighters and people who were working at the plant who went anywhere near where the ruined reactor was received the highest doses of radiation. As someone else said in the comments, they're being sent to a hospital in Moscow that specialises in radiation. Here is what google tells me in the translation of the announcement over the PA system during the evacuation: “For the attention of the residents of Pripyat! The City Council informs you that due to the accident at Chernobyl Power Station in the city of Pripyat the radioactive conditions in the vicinity are deteriorating. The Communist Party, its officials and the armed forces are taking necessary steps to combat this. Nevertheless, with the view to keep people as safe and healthy as possible, the children being top priority, we need to temporarily evacuate the citizens in the nearest towns of Kiev region. For these reasons, starting from 27 April 1986 2 pm each apartment block will be able to have a bus at its disposal, supervised by the police and the city officials. It is highly advisable to take your documents, some vital personal belongings and a certain amount of food, just in case, with you. The senior executives of public and industrial facilities of the city has decided on the list of employees needed to stay in Pripyat to maintain these facilities in a good working order. All the houses will be guarded by the police during the evacuation period. Comrades, leaving your residences temporarily please make sure you have turned off the lights, electrical equipment and water and shut the windows. Please keep calm and orderly in the process of this short-term evacuation.” The Russian on the radio at the beginning is a poem about a soldier returning home from a war. Apparently, this kind of thing was played often on the radios in the Soviet Union to help with a sense of national pride or whatever.
15:40 radiation does not melt things. it can disturb and destroy signals and electricity. this scene is the only one which is not exactly the truth. a helicopter crashed but it actually crashed coz it's wings got too close to some wires. and then it all went like a helicopter crash goes. how it is going down is actually pretty accurate again. but it was NOT the radiation. i think it is important to clear all of what happened. this helicopter crashed by accident, not coz of the radiation.
It's pretty hard to just "chill" at a time like this. I'd have told him off too, because I don't know the physicist at all, so you gotta keep people at arm's length. Trust isn't automatic; it's earned.
Restrictions on farms were put in place in the UK which lasted up until quite recently, and fallout was detected in the Highlands of Scotland and Wales.
7:10 Yes, it was 1986. You don't hear about it much anymore. A new containment building was completed around the reactor building in 2019 to replace the original containment building that was constructed after the disaster. It's designed to last 100 years. Work is ongoing at the site to monitor for problems and continue decommission work. It will be an active recovery site for generations. 12:00 The officer who drove the truck with the high range dosimeter did it himself for more than just the danger. He knew people were trying to cover up the severity but he was a respected and decorated high ranking officer. People would think twice about questioning his word on the reading. Many of your questions will be answered in the course of the series.
In Northern Norway, I was 3.5 years old. I remember well. I was not allowed to play outside in the sandbox. Also I could no longer eat my favorite dish "Fårikål" (sheep and cauliflower dish) - because sheep eat vegetation that absorbs radiation more (Bequerels). Same with reindeer meat. I remember watching the news and videos of the helicopters dropping sand. Even at that young age.
To help answer your question at 30:09... Radiation doesn't work in the same way as a disease so you're not "infected". There is a key difference between "radiation" and "radioactive material" to understand - radiation is what directly causes the damage; radioactive material emits radiation (and there are other ways to generate it without radioactive material). If you are exposed to radiation - e.g. an x-ray machine is turned on - it will directly damage your cells. Then if you stop being exposed to the radiation - the x-ray machine is turned off - no more damage to your cells can be done and you cannot harm anyone else either - you can't "catch" or "spread" radiation. However, if you get contaminated with radioactive material, such as uranium in nuclear fuel, which is constantly emitting radiation then it'll continually do damage to you and to others around you by emitting radiation. In the case of Chernobyl, the risk of people being exposed to the radioactive material itself is quite high - the dust and smoke would contain it. If it gets on your clothes or skin it will continue to damage yourself and others, though far less than being exposed to the radiation emitted from the radioactive material remaining at the site of the explosion simply because there is far less radioactive material present on you to be emitting the radiation. If you inhaled any radioactive material then it would continue to damage your body from the inside out. The trouble with radioactive material is there is no way to change its nature aside from nuclear reactions - it is radioactive, it will release radiation and you can't stop it. You can't kill it like a disease and you can't wash it away because that just moves the material into the water systems which people, animals and plants consume. The only ways to deal with it is to dilute it/spread it out enough so that there is less of it in one place or contain it in something which the radiation emitted cannot pass through, and then simply wait until it stops emitting which depends on the half-life of the radioactive material in question. The types of materials needed to block radiation depends on the type of radiation being emitted. The iodine pills saturate your thyroid with iodine to prevent it absorbing radioactive iodine which is a by-product of uranium decay. It cannot stop the radioactive material you've been contaminated by from emitting radiation and cannot undo damage caused by the radiation. If you still have radioactive residue contaminating you, the pills do nothing to stop you depositing the contaminants on other people or objects. It simply prevents your body from storing radioactive iodine in your thyroid which specifically protects your thyroid from excessive damage.
The clothes of the firemen are still 1 of the most radiactive hazards in Pripyat. After a complete bozo actually stole a fireman helmet they decided to fully seal off the hospital basement permanently.
The helicopter crash scene was phenomenally recreated to the real crash which was filmed. Im not sure the cause was related to radiation, and more so related to lack of visibility in the smoke. The rotors struck the cable of the crane ahead of them. The radio distortion sort of sensationalized the radiation effect, but the true manner of this scene was to show the brash and desperate nature of this operation, with the following line "send the next one in." There was no time to just put their hands on their heads and say "omg, stop everything, we have a helicopter crash!". Instead, they continue the operation.
@@ЕвгенийАрхипов-у8м I also realize in the real footage there was no smoke engulfing the helicopter, that was a false memory assumption on my part. I do CGI stuff for TV so I felt they did a really good job at referencing the physics of the original crash. It's not always done so faithfully. The smoke was the only part that doesn't really match but usually the purposes for those kind of additions are referred to as "creative intent", and are made to help the audience a bit without going into long detail for a short scene.
@@3dCraddock эта реальные кадры, они есть в интернете и появились задолго до появления сериала. Возможно нестыковки с дымом связаны с несовершенством оборудования в 1986 году
Believe me or don't, but a bunch of Black Widow spiders suddenly migrated to Crimea around that time... turns out they were subconsciously evading the radiation.
This happened during my childhood and even in germany they told us to keep the children inside and not let them play outside for a while. They even changed the sand in parks ect.
I was a child too, I saw the newspapers saying that it could end the world
The military person who drove the truck was a veteran of WW2. He volunteered because he was old and because he knew his reports of the radiation would not be as easily dismissed compared to if regular soldiers did the test with the Dosimeter.
Radiation affects the ways cells work, it causes them to work badly. This is what cancer is. Cells that keep dividing whilst not doing their jobs effectively. Everyday we're losing cells and the rest are dividing and growing to fill the gaps. So radiation affects most badly the cells that divide and grow the fastest. Hair, for instance.
People affected by radiation sickness aren't 'infected' per say. They can't pass it on (which is something the show gets slightly wrong.) People are encouraged to stay away from Radiation-affected persons because the radiation destroys the immune system. A simple cold can kill a radiation-affected person because they lack an immune system. The amount of radiation released and absorbed by some of those affected, much more than their immune systems is affected.
One of the by-products of Uranium 235 decay, the element used to power the Nuclear reactor is Iodine 131. (Amongst others.)
They give out Iodine pills because the human body can only absorb so much Iodine. Give them 'good' Iodine, and they cannot absorb the 'bad' Iodine.
To use an analogy: Can't eat poison if you're full to bursting after a meal.
Well said.
You can't "infect" someone with the radiation. But if there is any contamination on you, you can pass it on to others. That's how the nurses who were throwing the firemen's clothes away got burned - there was radioactive contamination on the clothes that they touched.
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Vets are just killers and rightist republican dummys who need to be inprisoned
@@babalonkie Also in the case of the baby they still were wearing those clothes as seen in the previous episode, meaning all that radioactive ash would land in fabric, hair, etc. Nearly a direct path of radiation to surroundings.
@@babalonkie Another way is for radioactive material to become absorbed in your body when you eat contaminated food. Strontium-90 for example is so biochemically similar to calcium that the body will absorb and use it to build bone tissue. When this happens the bones end up with these tiny radioactive particles in them which constantly bombard the bone marrow and surrounding tissues with radiation. This leads cancers and leukemia.
Though strontium-90 is more of a hazard for children and younger adults who are still building their bone structure, not so much for older people.
15:50 No, look again, they didn’t see the crane and the rotor clipped it’s cable, there’s footage of the real event available.
"Not the dog, that's so sad" ... oh boy ... about that ...
Question on the radiation contamination. No, it's the immediacy. The clothes and their skin are contaminated with "fallout." Once the clothes are removed and the skin cleaned, they aren't "contagious." They took some liberties in this series with that for dramatic effect.
But I think that at the time people didn't know that or it wasn't something they could be sure about, so as a precaution, they isolated patients, wore protective gear, advised people not to touch them and all that because they thought that those who were exposed were radioactive.
Erm, no. contamination gets right into your body. Your body will stay radioactive till you die
remember that they were BREATHING in the radioactive dust ... which is in theyr lungs ...
so yes the firefighters and anyone not wearing breathing masks in close proximity to the reactor was actively radioactive even after removing clothes and wash.
every time they breathed in, every time they swallowed they deposited radioactive materials inside theyr bodies.
My mom actually went out and grabbed me from the sandbox when she heard the news on the radio. And we live in Sweden. It was actually a reactor in Sweden who first noticed it. Personell thought it was the reactor at first, but then realized it was from outside. We still notice the fallout from this in Sweden.
Great reaction! Thanks for the upload! 👍
Edit: And I totally feel you! You feel so "heavy" after watching this series. But it is so good.
Yeah here in Germany we still can't safely eat certain mushrooms we find in the forest . My dad also told me that he was not allowed to play outside at the time . There is a very interesting documentary called Chernobyl: Cloud over Germany
I hate to sound flippant but here in the USA, the jokes started immediately, making fun of how the soviets always lied & spread propaganda...nobody knew how bad it was, but the soviets said it was minor, but after the swedes detected it, U.S. satellites took pictures that revealed the true nature of the disaster. the "joke" was that soviet propaganda was working until everyone started noticing Swedes with blue hair & blond eyes.
We knew the Soviets were lying, but if ever a time for truth & openness was needed, it was then.
@@sophiecooper1824 I lived in Germany when it happened. They told us not go out in the rain our eat any mushrooms. My son was 2 at the time, was so scared for him
@@kerrythorn8575 Same. I'm from Germany too, I was about 15 at that time. And remember that was in the middle of the cold war, and also the start of the "green movement" with the "Atomkraft - nein danke (Atomic Power - no thanks)" slogan, so as a teenager you where probably more sensitized to the whole "nuclear danger"-topic than we are today.
However, it was real scary back than. For weeks you expected something even worse (that might very well had been possible, as we learn in this show) might pop up. In the worst case, half of Europe could have been "gone". Still unbelievable that this disaster wasn't even the worst possible case.
@@mrtveye6682 Agree 100%. Even though I was an adult at the time, I was quite naive and just getting on with my life, ignoring all the cold war talk as I had heard it so much I was desensitized, so it really had the opposite effect. This disaster opened my eyes to the lengths Russia would go to to hide their incompetence until they couldn't lie anymore and also, what the potential of mass destruction was if a nuclear war ever broke out. And now here we are again...too many damn psychopaths in governments around the world. I shall now get off my soap box and wish you a nice weekend!
18:45 the speakers are saying something along the lines of: "there's an emergency and we need to evacuate the town for a few hours" they weren't told why, and all thought they would be back shortly so packed barely anything.
"Seems like something you don't really hear about anymore."
It's interesting because I was born in 1989 in Romania and I remember how they gave us iodine pills in elementary school.
Yeah, I spent all my youth near polish-belarussian border, about 600 km from Chernobyl. Communist Poland.
They told us nothing. But they did give iodine pills.
It was a different world 40 years ago. Even as far away as Canada, everyone knew about this and it loomed large in our minds for a long time because we all still got our news from TV broadcasts and newspapers. If you were a kid, you heard the news your parents were watching and talking about, so it became general knowledge. It's difficult for me to believe that young people barely know about this anymore, and it's because news doesn't travel the way it used to.
30:20 the official answer to that is as quoted by the UCSF is: "There are types of radiation where human bodies could retain radioactive particles and remain radioactive over time, but this is not the type that was seen at Chernobyl. After gamma radiation has passed through the body, the person is no longer radioactive and can’t expose other people." However, since people pretty much dind't knew anything about the real events, doctors and nurses would isolate patients because they weren't sure what type of radiation contamination that was.
also while 'unlikely' it is possible microscopic particulates could have been inhaled, swallowed or get stuck in pores/hair etc, those could be sources of later radioactive emmissions, in terms of likelyhood and risk factor i wouldnt rate it as anything more than 'eh maybe i guess' but as with the they didnt know what they had been exposed to taking the paranoia approach is typically safest
There's also the fact that there were all types of radiation present. Not just gamma rays firing off, but also beta and gamma particles.
I was 3 when it happened and I remember the birds in my grandma's aviary dropping dead (except for one cockatoo who's still going strong), that I wasn't allowed to play in my sandpit and that we weren't allowed to eat vegetables grown above ground. And this was in Belgium... 1160 miles away.
Here's an interesting fun fact about Ulana Khomyuk. Craig Mazin, the show's creator, wanted to add a character who represented the various scientists and specialists who attempted to investigate and contain the disaster. While several real scientists were involved in the investigation, the show's makers chose to create a composite character to simplify the story and focus on the essential events and people involved.
Hospital #6 did (and does) specialize in radiation sickness. The two people in the hotel were doubtlessly KGB trying to see if Legasov would talk. The people who were evacuated were moved to Kyiv and surrounding towns. They had been told to being three days worth of clothes.
23:14 Got to love Boris and those three brave men.
Every man has a chance once in his life to be his own type of hero - Jack Crichton, Farscape
One of my favorite shows ever, I'm loving watching you guys react to it. Each episode will get tougher, but it's absolutely worth it. They will explain why it happened, so no worries.
Thank you for watching! I can't believe we've only watched two episodes-it's made such an impact already.
Well we have heard about Chernobyl recently as Russia has hit the Chernobyl area repeatedly with missiles. And also driving tanks through the area churning up the top layer and dragging radioactive dirt along the way. Just thank god Mikhail Gorbachev was the leader then. He wasn't the typical party line idiot.
HOW HAS THE MEDIA NOT TALKED ABOUT THIS? I SAID THIS MIGHT HAPPEN A YEAR AGO!
I fucking called this as soon as the war started.
That General was a veteran, and a hero.
The Chairman was the top leader of Soviet Russia; in this case Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union.
I were 7. Due to weirdness of geography and wind patterns a very small area around where I lived in Norway got hit exceptionally hard (I didn't know this was the case until years later). Schools closed, children weren't allowed to go outside for at least a week, may have been two, except for a quick trip to drink some iodine solution. There was a ban on picking berries and fruit, and warnings against going on hikes, especially they said to stay inside if it rained... and this place was near the top in amount of rain in Norway. And this was more than 2000 kilometers from Chernobyl.
My family moved to the south of Norway a few years later. We didn't turn radioactive or any such thing. But.. let's just say those friends of my parents up there that happened to be outdoorsy people.. a relatively large amount of them have died of cancer since. Of all the people we knew who has passed on up there, I don't think I'm lying if I'm saying cancer stood for more than 50%. There is nothing official supporting my statement. Why should there be? Not like they can do anything about it, but cause fear and sadness. There was a drop in birthrate in that area for a couple of years, but scientists say it is impossible to know how much of that was caused by radioactivity and how much was caused by people choosing not to risk it for a time.
Love the contrast between the cowardice of the people in charge vs the rare but sharp bravery of the general and the 3 volunteers. The music
also gives the radiation an aura of an unstoppable beast. It's incredible to think some of us were living our lives totally oblivious of literal annihilation ..
I despise Communism, but the Soviet people ? Hardened HEROS. They sacrificed in the face of TOTALITARIANISM. Let them never be forgotten ❤
7:12- "It's been less than 50 years. I feel like it's not something you ever hear about" Despite the nuclear bombs at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even as late as the 60s, Soviet scientists believed that radiation had hidden health benefits. Chernobyl is perhaps the singular reason we all know about the effects of radiation.
13:09 "it's not 3 roentgen..."
sh*t indeed.
My childhood friend was a “child of chernobyl” he was a bit older then me, born during the accident (in Lithuania) died in 2005 (quick, just like that, in 3 weeks) due to blood cancer. Doctors said it had something to do with Chernobyl and radiation, hence the name. Crazy.
I'm heartbroken to hear that. That is just horrible. :( My condolences, I'm sure you miss him very much. What a tragedy.
0:55 little popups are nice 👍🏼
Just a little context for the scene at 14:30 because i see a lot of people who are reacting and misunderstanding this scene. Those 2, the man and the woman at the bar that are asking Legasov : "Is there anything we should be worried about ?" are not ordinary people, they are KGB agents, informants and Legasov knew that, that's why he answered by not telling the truth, because Legasov knew they were testing him, so he answered the way they would have expected of him to answer just so as not to get in trouble. You'll see those 2 re-appear in a future episode. You have to always keep in mind when watching Chernobyl that it was a communist society, spying was everywhere, people deemed suspicious or who were handed an important task in the name of the state were ALWAYS spied by the KGB, by the secret police, they knew & needed to know everything and were able to find out ANYTHING about someone or something and this made a lot of people paranoid (this explains the coded language used for boron and sand during Khomyuk phone conversation scene at 16:10) because there were informants everywhere, phones were tapped, even kids were encouraged to rat on their parents.
*Anybody* could be KGB. So a person in that time and place had to be very cautious about who they talked to and what they said. At this point in the Legasov did not know but played it safe anyway. Nice explanation btw.
Yup, was just about to explain this as well.
Way to spoil the next part of the miniseries, bruh.
@@pedrolopez8057 "Anybody could be KGB."
Everyone was KGB. Some of the Hungarian state police documents from the time show how two friends were reporting on each other while they both were convinced they were the ones watching the other. It was a sociopathic system.
SPOILERS for anyone who hasn't seen the whole show.
You're right about Legasov being tested by the agents, but you're wrong about thinking he knew they were testing him as he even states in a later episode that he "saw these people before" when he notices that he and Sherbina are being followed by them when they're walking in the park which means that he didn't suspect them at first.
I remember it not being that long ago where RUclipsrs and explorers woul go check out the basement where the nurse stored all the fireman's clothes and that is still highly radioactive to this day. Ukraine had to go back and seal the basement to prevent people from going.
great reaction to this episode, one of the best i've seen. very well edited.
Thank you so much! ☺️
I think I've said this at just about every reaction video I've seen. As far as the medical staff not wearing gloves, it wouldn't have mattered at all. The radiation coming from those contaminated clothes, would have gone right thru latex gloves as if they weren't wearing them in the first place.
For those who don't know boron glass or boron plus sand is how you make Pyrex glass which is the stuff you put in your oven to make casseroles and things
This show does two things incredibly well: showing the cost of lies and the heroism of people willing to step up.
Man oh man, I don't think I've ever seen such anguish on your faces like the end of this episode! But in contrast to that, I laughed so hard at Sarah's reaction to the dude saying "Where are scientists when you need them? When there's a disease that needs to be cured? " (9:45) That made me burst out laughing, out loud! In fact, I'm going go rewatch that part right now! lol. You guys do "infuriating" and gaslighting" really well! You've got to do "Rosemary's Baby" one day, since that has both in it! lol. (And when you want to hit super-classics: Kubrick's "Paths Of Glory" - which Chernobyl is very much a "Paths Of Glory" story - and the origin of "gaslighting": "Gaslight"! (two old versions, the 1944 version is the one I'd do, with Ingrid Bergman). But seriously, Sarah's face when that guy says "Where are scientists when you need them?" 🤣
Dude and dudette, you should make a short of that entire line; I know it's incomplete on this edit, that entire line is hilarious and obviously Sarah is reacting to every comma and nuance of that sentence!
I’m sure someone else has mentioned it already, but the firefighter’s gear is STILL in the basement of the hospital. There’s videos and photos of explorers finding it. Dangerous radiation but brief exposure is manageable.
The abandoned city is still abandoned. Plates were left on tables... They were told it was short term, but they were never allowed to return.
Frederick Pohl wrote a semi fictionalized account of what happened in his novel, Chernobyl. It was my primary source of understanding in the years after the event.
This series is pretty historically accurate. It does take some filmaker license of course. One of my friends who now lives here was living near there in the 80s. Since the Soviet nuclear industry was considered a state secret most people even the plant workers were kept in the dark about it, only those who really needed to know did.The KGB Soviet Secret Police watched everything. Thats what they tried to cover everything up until it was impossible to then atleast Gorbachev acted well.
The mentality of the Soviet Union was to do what you are told to do. If you object your arrested and sent to prison or shot. Thats why there wasnt that much of a panic by the general public.
The mayor of Kiev, which is the largest city like 25 miles away later shot himself when he found out that by not cancelling the May Day Celebrations (Russia biggest holiday) so many got sick and died.Atleast they managed to stop the explosion, if not you and I would not even be alive now.
The announcement made at evacuations was basically ""An unpleasant level of radiation has been detected at the plant so we must have a temporary evacuation. Take doucuments, medicine and like 3 days worth of food. Of course they never returned. Whats ""Unpleasant level"?
I enjoy your reactions. Get ready its 5 episodes and it will get much worse before it gets better. Come Episode 5 they will atleast show and explain what happened, why and how. Be sure to show and read the after show credits they are interesting. Well ok look forwards to your next show.
I was stationed in Germany at that time and we had measurable fallout. People were freaking out!
The fire and cloud went worldwide. Every baby born after 1986 has caesium-137 in their blood now. I'm sure its diluted more by now but it forever adjusted humanity as a whole.
It's a good series - dramatically and politically especially. I'd also recommend watching a few nuclear engineers' / physicists' reviews to get an idea of where the mini-series is really good and also where the science/medicine doesn't quite match.
As to your question about the people themselves becoming radioactive, the show portrays them as being radioactive themselves but that is one of the biggest complaints I've heard about the show from doctors that this is causing stigma on their patients unnecessarily.
20:45 "Oh no! Ohhh nooo. Oh."
oh, indeed
Please keep watching these. Great reaction!
We absolutely will!
9:02 "this guy is whack. what." 😆
25:00 The radiation was at a level that it damaged almost all electrical circuits.
I live in Scotland, radiation was detected here also. I worked in an opticians for 14 years and every year we had kids from that area come over for free sight tests and medical help. Lots of them are suffering from birth defects and genetic changes, even still today, so sad 😢
The fireman and his wife's story is a real one and was taken from a documentary book of Svetlana Alexievich's book "Chernobyl Prayer" - a very good book to read if you want to know more what happened to the people there... and the book to cry on every page... The author basically spend years talking to people who survived the tragedy and wrote their storied down. She wrote amazing documentary books about soviet reality. Even got Nobel prize for it.
15:53 radiation isn’t actually hot enough to melt anything. The pilot was meant to have been blinded by the smoke and didn’t see the crane that his propellers collided with (typical soviet era pilot), in real life the crash happed upon the same circumstances but it was well after this point in time of the story
14:39 The smug way she asked that question, Legasov figured a likelihood that she was KGB. He later mentions it to Shcherbina that he recognized them spying on the two.
It truly is not an understatement to say those three men saved all of Eourope from a much greater disaster.
In this episode, there were a few things the makers of the show got wrong. For one thing, the character who said that they should close off the city in the first episode and is evacuated in this one, did not exist...he was added for dramatic purposes. Also, the helicopter crash did not happen so soon after the explosion...it really happened months later in October, 1986, and had nothing to do with radiation...it just got too close and hit a crane cable with its rotors and you can see that in the show if you watch carefully at 15:44 💯
As I mentioned in my comment to episode 1, once you are done with the series, the History vs Hollywood article on the show is a must read. ✌
7:25 "all right, let's just chill."
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
this was the episode that hooked me. i was mortified and morbidly curious to see how this panned out..
fast-forward to HBO announcing that Craig Mazin would be working with Neil Druckman on adapting The Last of Us 🤯
The helicopter crash was due to the rotor hitting the crane, in the show this was not made clear at all. Audiences were left thinking it weas the radiation that caused it, it was not.
Latex gloves wouldn't done anything against the radiation. So it wouldn't have mattered if they wore gloves or not. The hospital didn't even have iodine pills.
The radiation those nurses would of received wouldn’t of been enough to cause significant harm.
Great reaction, as always! This is easily one of, if not the, scariest shows I've ever seen, simply because it really happened!
This has to be the best shirt series I have ever seen, and one of the saddest and hardest to watch. A very important watch for all of us. ❤
15:43 on my first viewing, I too thought the radiation/heat somehow just obliterated the propeller, but if you look closely, you'll see that the propeller actually tears itself apart on the cable of a crane, and you'll see the hook at the end of the cable fall down after being sheared by the heli blades. In real life, this actually happened over 5 months after the events the show depicts, without the big plume of smoke. (In the show, the helicopter crashed due to the smoke, in real life, it's theorised to have been a simple distancing error on the pilot's part.) In fact, the construction of the sarcophagus that covers the reactor to this day was well underway.
I was 7 yo in Italy and I don’t remember what I ate for lunch today, but I perfectly remember the fear during those days. We couldn’t go out for some days and for weeks after the explosion a lot of contaminated kids came to Italy from Ukraine to breath a better air.
To the workers of the world
15:50 No the rotors hit the crane’s cable. Althought that crash didn’t happen during the sand and boron drop but i think later on during cleanup efforts.
You have to understand the Russian mentality at the time. The state is God and you cannot argue with it.
It's terrifying.
18:54 the information they were given was “pack 1 bag only, leave your pets behind, this will only be a short temporary trip so don’t pack too much”… No one has ever been back since 1986. That’s why the city is like a ghost town, people just stopped whatever they were doing and left and you can see still that when you go today
Guys I absolutely love y'all's reaction videos. You guys are the best. Love your channel and game playthrough channel as well. Keep up the awesome reactions.
If you really want to know what the speakers are saying on the evacuation it is the original recording playing and it is up on youtube with subtitels same as the newscast and the phonecall to the firestation from the first episode.
9:46 the look you both give! 😆
scientists and their silly science.
Chernobyl used RBMK reactor design, which had many issues. At that time, people were under the impression that the RBMK reactor can’t explode. When Unit 4 exploded, many people thought it was just a water tank explosion, because the “core can’t just explode”. The firefighters there never knew the tremendous amounts of radiation they were exposed to. They described having a metal taste in their mouth, because that is usually the first symptom of radiation poisoning. They never knew that, so many of them died. Had this information been known, much less deaths and more safer protocols would be in play.
The conversations in the helicopter on the way to the reactor is a good insight the minds of the Party.
Amazingly, all three of the volunteers who drained the tanks survived, and two are still alive today.
7:18...I'm afraid not hearing about Chernobyl might be an American thing. In Europe we still occasionally get documentaries on tv telling us what happened, what the ecological impact was and what was done afterwards to contain the problem.
This is dramatised a bit. The 3 men who went in survived, although one died of cancer later and the other two had controllable medical issues and as of February 2022 were still alive. They didn’t volunteer - they were told they had to go so they did.
As of February 2022 ukraine was paying disability pensions to 300,00 people affected by the Chernobyl disaster.
The remaining reactors continued operating into the 2000s, when they were shut down in stages. The site is now no longer operative and is a restricted zone (i wont spoil this by telling you what was done with the exploded reactor).
Wildlife in the area around Chernobyl continues to be monitored. Many bizarrely mutated creatures have been found, from deer to rats and frogs.
In early 2022 soviet military forces surrounded Chernobyl and dug trenches in ground in the restricted area. International and ukrainian nuclear authorities issued repeated warnings to the Russians about staying in the area and about disturbing the soil, which were largely ignored. Those russian forces later abruptly pulled out and returned to russia amid reports that many of the russian soldiers were experiencing symptoms of radiation sickness.
There is a similar exclusion area around the nuclear power plant at Fukushima, japan. No one is allowed in except for authorised purposes for specific tasks. Some old people have sneaked back to their homes and japanese authorities do their best to ignore that. Those old people live off the grid. The agricultural land around Fukushima is a no-go zone. Children of parents from the area continue to be monitored for health reasons. Unlike Chernobyl, fukushima’s evacuation area includes one of the world’s biggest cities - Tokyo.
Boron is a neutron absorber. Sand is used to cover the radiation from escaping into the atmosphere. The problem is the mass of these substances won’t necessarily stop the reactor and can cause the meltdown to drop into the earth and poison the ground water.
The Chairman is Mikhail Gorbechev, known for his port wine stain birthmark on his head. He was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991, He was instrumental in Perestroika. He is totally google worthy.
Died recently too. Really if he had not been in charge it would have gone VERY differently.
15:42 The radiation likely messed with the electronics and comms, but the rotors were destroyed when they came in contact with the crane cables
It did happen in real life, but months later, not on the day after.
It's important to point out that, while some downplayed what was going on despite knowing the truth, some weren't responding with enough urgency because they didn't have accurate information.
Always love ur reaction ❤great one
3:54 Now that's a legendary spot in Chernobyl history.
This show is divided in: the accident, how to fix it, and the consequences. You guys need to prepare yourselves emotionally, because the consequences part is coming.
That woman in the bar asking "are you here because of the fire?" was KGB. If he said there was a big problem he would be arrested and silenced, and he probably knew that already so he said no.
The first responders and plant workers were selected, during April 26 news reached Moscow, and hospital number 6 was located near a university and specialised in radiology and burns. Dr Angelina Guskova sent representatives to Pripyat, they selected people to be treated in Moscow including vasily ignatenko. In total 299 people were taken to Moscow. 89 were discharged and 210 treated, with Acute radiation sickness being confirmed in 134. 27 Died in the following weeks including vasily, Akimov, Sitnikov, Toptunov etc. several dozen were taken to a hospital in Kiev and 1 died there- Lelechenko.
Oral iodine pills help keep your thyroid from absorbing radiation. It is very important for preventing and treating Acute Radiation Sickness. The sooner you get it, the better your chances. That is why the nurse asked for it in the first episode.
The most amazing but depressing piece of TV ever made. God this show was fantastic but it's just gut punch after gut punch.
20:31 deer in the headlights 😲
Sad show but its so good! Love the reactions, keep it up!
Why vere they calm during the evac? Because they WEREN´T told what exactly is happening, only that there is a problem and they need to leave for a while. People vere only allowed to bring with them just the neccessities - important documents, ID´s, medications, and the like. Of course the reason was that all the things were irradiated, but they didn´t told them that. Pets also were forbidden to bring.
Plus, they were told it´s just for a few days, so they were kinda OK with that - most pets CAN survive day or two without their humans, if they have enough food and water.
Gen X Brit here. I remember it fairly clearly. As a generation of teenagers during the Cold War our senses were heightened to the threat of radiation. Fortunately for us, the radiation didn't affect the UK much but quite a bit of Eastern Europe including Turkey was to some degree. Ukraine suffered most. Back then I didn't know the difference between Ukraine and Russia. It was all the USSR.
These 3 men at the end actually fared better than pretty much everyone else we've seen, for reasons I don't understand. I think 2 of them are still alive. The end showed their flashlights burning out. They were able to do it in the dark because they knew the rooms so well.
18:20 kiev
18:25 the fact that the Soviet government was able to force 50,000 people to evacuate without panic in 3.5 hours is overwhelming
18:32 If you panic the soldiers will handcuff you and throw you onto the bus. there's no point in panicking. the orders of the government were the most important in the Soviet Union
Yeah, radiation at that level can rip through the delicate circuitry of many machines. It does even worse things to living human tissue.
I hated Boris at first. Then, he turned around and focused on the real problems at hand. When he simply turned and did what he COULD do, getting tons of sand and boron. Then, he learned that by going there, he was going to die. Yet he then gave a truly fine and good reason to all those men--it MUST BE DONE, no one else CAN, millions of lives are at stake! By now I respect Boris a lot.
Anatoly Dyatlov is something of an anomoly. This was his second exposure to an atomic accident. For some reason he survived both! Despite getting bad radiation poisoning.
People are not radioactive and still alive. Ludmilla has already been exposed to radiation living in Pripyat in the wake of the disaster.
He went to Moscow because that is where the best hospitals are.
The people were being told this was a temporary evacuation. Of course it was not. Not at all.
Love your reaction, especially the visceral sense of enduring/experience this real piece of human horror.
The disaster at Chernobyl btw is ongoing, albeit managed far better.
26:09 oh dear... fasten your seat belt
The firefighters and people who were working at the plant who went anywhere near where the ruined reactor was received the highest doses of radiation. As someone else said in the comments, they're being sent to a hospital in Moscow that specialises in radiation. Here is what google tells me in the translation of the announcement over the PA system during the evacuation:
“For the attention of the residents of Pripyat! The City Council informs you that due to the accident at Chernobyl Power Station in the city of Pripyat the radioactive conditions in the vicinity are deteriorating. The Communist Party, its officials and the armed forces are taking necessary steps to combat this. Nevertheless, with the view to keep people as safe and healthy as possible, the children being top priority, we need to temporarily evacuate the citizens in the nearest towns of Kiev region. For these reasons, starting from 27 April 1986 2 pm each apartment block will be able to have a bus at its disposal, supervised by the police and the city officials. It is highly advisable to take your documents, some vital personal belongings and a certain amount of food, just in case, with you. The senior executives of public and industrial facilities of the city has decided on the list of employees needed to stay in Pripyat to maintain these facilities in a good working order. All the houses will be guarded by the police during the evacuation period. Comrades, leaving your residences temporarily please make sure you have turned off the lights, electrical equipment and water and shut the windows. Please keep calm and orderly in the process of this short-term evacuation.”
The Russian on the radio at the beginning is a poem about a soldier returning home from a war. Apparently, this kind of thing was played often on the radios in the Soviet Union to help with a sense of national pride or whatever.
15:40 radiation does not melt things. it can disturb and destroy signals and electricity.
this scene is the only one which is not exactly the truth. a helicopter crashed but it actually crashed coz it's wings got too close to some wires. and then it all went like a helicopter crash goes. how it is going down is actually pretty accurate again. but it was NOT the radiation. i think it is important to clear all of what happened. this helicopter crashed by accident, not coz of the radiation.
It's pretty hard to just "chill" at a time like this. I'd have told him off too, because I don't know the physicist at all, so you gotta keep people at arm's length. Trust isn't automatic; it's earned.
the end of this episode- scarier than any horror movie. just terrifying
Be ready for episode 4 guys...
Restrictions on farms were put in place in the UK which lasted up until quite recently, and fallout was detected in the Highlands of Scotland and Wales.
7:10 Yes, it was 1986. You don't hear about it much anymore. A new containment building was completed around the reactor building in 2019 to replace the original containment building that was constructed after the disaster. It's designed to last 100 years. Work is ongoing at the site to monitor for problems and continue decommission work. It will be an active recovery site for generations.
12:00 The officer who drove the truck with the high range dosimeter did it himself for more than just the danger. He knew people were trying to cover up the severity but he was a respected and decorated high ranking officer. People would think twice about questioning his word on the reading.
Many of your questions will be answered in the course of the series.
In Northern Norway, I was 3.5 years old. I remember well. I was not allowed to play outside in the sandbox. Also I could no longer eat my favorite dish "Fårikål" (sheep and cauliflower dish) - because sheep eat vegetation that absorbs radiation more (Bequerels). Same with reindeer meat. I remember watching the news and videos of the helicopters dropping sand. Even at that young age.
To help answer your question at 30:09... Radiation doesn't work in the same way as a disease so you're not "infected". There is a key difference between "radiation" and "radioactive material" to understand - radiation is what directly causes the damage; radioactive material emits radiation (and there are other ways to generate it without radioactive material).
If you are exposed to radiation - e.g. an x-ray machine is turned on - it will directly damage your cells. Then if you stop being exposed to the radiation - the x-ray machine is turned off - no more damage to your cells can be done and you cannot harm anyone else either - you can't "catch" or "spread" radiation.
However, if you get contaminated with radioactive material, such as uranium in nuclear fuel, which is constantly emitting radiation then it'll continually do damage to you and to others around you by emitting radiation.
In the case of Chernobyl, the risk of people being exposed to the radioactive material itself is quite high - the dust and smoke would contain it. If it gets on your clothes or skin it will continue to damage yourself and others, though far less than being exposed to the radiation emitted from the radioactive material remaining at the site of the explosion simply because there is far less radioactive material present on you to be emitting the radiation. If you inhaled any radioactive material then it would continue to damage your body from the inside out.
The trouble with radioactive material is there is no way to change its nature aside from nuclear reactions - it is radioactive, it will release radiation and you can't stop it. You can't kill it like a disease and you can't wash it away because that just moves the material into the water systems which people, animals and plants consume. The only ways to deal with it is to dilute it/spread it out enough so that there is less of it in one place or contain it in something which the radiation emitted cannot pass through, and then simply wait until it stops emitting which depends on the half-life of the radioactive material in question. The types of materials needed to block radiation depends on the type of radiation being emitted.
The iodine pills saturate your thyroid with iodine to prevent it absorbing radioactive iodine which is a by-product of uranium decay. It cannot stop the radioactive material you've been contaminated by from emitting radiation and cannot undo damage caused by the radiation. If you still have radioactive residue contaminating you, the pills do nothing to stop you depositing the contaminants on other people or objects. It simply prevents your body from storing radioactive iodine in your thyroid which specifically protects your thyroid from excessive damage.
This is like a horror movie, except it happened in real life.
The clothes of the firemen are still 1 of the most radiactive hazards in Pripyat. After a complete bozo actually stole a fireman helmet they decided to fully seal off the hospital basement permanently.
37 years. I was born in 86. 1 month after the challenger disaster.
Didn’t show my favorite part of the episode when president Gorbachev says to them in a deadpan voice “you’ve made lava” 😂
The helicopter crash scene was phenomenally recreated to the real crash which was filmed. Im not sure the cause was related to radiation, and more so related to lack of visibility in the smoke. The rotors struck the cable of the crane ahead of them. The radio distortion sort of sensationalized the radiation effect, but the true manner of this scene was to show the brash and desperate nature of this operation, with the following line "send the next one in." There was no time to just put their hands on their heads and say "omg, stop everything, we have a helicopter crash!". Instead, they continue the operation.
В сериале использовались реальные кадры падения вертолета.
Причина крушения - вертолет зацепился лопостями за стальной трос
@@ЕвгенийАрхипов-у8м I also realize in the real footage there was no smoke engulfing the helicopter, that was a false memory assumption on my part.
I do CGI stuff for TV so I felt they did a really good job at referencing the physics of the original crash. It's not always done so faithfully. The smoke was the only part that doesn't really match but usually the purposes for those kind of additions are referred to as "creative intent", and are made to help the audience a bit without going into long detail for a short scene.
@@3dCraddock эта реальные кадры, они есть в интернете и появились задолго до появления сериала.
Возможно нестыковки с дымом связаны с несовершенством оборудования в 1986 году
Believe me or don't, but a bunch of Black Widow spiders suddenly migrated to Crimea around that time... turns out they were subconsciously evading the radiation.
Regarding pronouncing names correctly I think the 'ch' in Chernobyl is pronounced the same as in church not as in Champagne