"What Is The Cost Of Lies?" | CHERNOBYL | Episode 5 Reaction
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- Опубликовано: 30 сен 2024
- First Time Watching:
"Vichnaya Pamyat"
We can easily see why this series won awards. Bravo.
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Original Series: Chernobyl
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For me, the most emotional part is the tribute to real events with real footage at the end. Every time I watch it I admire the heroes who prevented even bigger consequences of this disaster.
I wish they had named the three divers, they should be remembered by name
Same. The whole show was super stressful. But it was the black and white footage that got me to tears.
Just like with Band of Brothers. The show being about real events makes the emotions hit a lot harder, but nothing makes me weep like the interviews at the end of each episode, especially the last one. Same thing here with Chernobyl
the part, where they mention that chodemchyks body is permanently entombed under the reactor, gets me every time. no one of the reactors seems to pay attention to that
@@vahdoomthey were named in the show, when they stand up to volunteer.
It should always be remembered that Chernobyl is not a problem fixed, it is a problem contained.
Very well said my friend.
The new containment building has a special crane installed that is designed to dismantle the entire reactor. This will take at least two decades.
One thing many are not aware of is that the Chernobyl site contained a total of four operational reactors, and two unfinished reactors. Three continued to operate even after the disaster at reactor 4. The last reactor was shut down in 2000, and all three had been de-fueled by 2013
All four reactors had experienced various malfunctions, including a partial meltdown of reactor 1 four years prior to the explosion at reactor 4. Reactors 3 and 4 also experienced structural instability three years prior tot eh explosion that could have led to catastrophic meltdown. Reactor 2 experienced a turbine fire five years after the explosion. Unclassified KGB documents labeled this reactor site as the most dangerous nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.
@@operator0Another thing many people don't know is that Legasov was a fan of molten salt reactors, which were still experimental at the time of his death, and more or less still are today despite that a few have now been built and are operational. It's looking more and more like he was prescient once again. Scientists are never perfect and would never claim to be, but Legasov was right more than half the time, which is a much better track record than most people can boast.
@@rivercitymudchina built one that’s operational that started a few weeks afo
Episode title "Vichnaya Pamyat" is Ukrainian for "eternal memory" and it's a funeral sermon in orthodox church. The exact sermon which is sung by a church choir at the end of episode.
Based.
it's literally russian
@@skipe94 хуюссиан
@@skipe94 it's Ukrainian language, not Russian. These are separate languages and I can understand their difference.
@mnemet you unironically spelled russian as "ruzzian" so I'm not even gonna take you seriously.
"That is how an RBMK Reactor explodes; lies." Just a great mic drop moment, one of the great lines.
Especially when same guy asked it to people twice and tried to prove a point with them not responding.
Boris Shcherbina also helped during rescue operation after Armenia earthquake. This earthquake was quite huge - 25 thousands people died, 140 thousand became disabled and half million lost their home. Boris was a talented organizer and leader, who organized and mobilized all resourses needed for helping people
There is actual monument of Scherbina erected in Armenia in memory of him.
@@juriskrumgolds5810I did not know this. That actually brought me to tears. He is definitely one that deserves a monument.
He also realised that they needed help and asked for and got aid from the rest of the world, from search and rescue teams to medical aid and emergency food and clothing. An amazing man.
It's still mindbogling how he managed to became a deputy chair of the cabinet of ministers. In soviet union. The only good and actually competent man among all obedient fools.
@@mariusrutkaus U dont get to that position without fucking ppl over and seing how Boris was in the beginning of the show he definatly hade screwed ppl over to get to where he was. Even Legasov hade screwed jewish scientists over by limiting there promotions earlier in hes life to gain favors with the higher ups. So no chans that Boris climbed that high without doing shady deals.
It all comes together in this episode. The explanation of how the explosion happened is done so well and the scene between Boris and Legasov is *chefs kiss*
"When the bullet hits your skull, what does it matter why!?"
That line gives him away. People like him don't see that this "why" makes all the difference in the world.
People like him are malignant sociopaths.
Would you explain what that line is supposed to mean? I'm not sure I fully understand.
@@jordanhenshaw Basically, nothing matters when you're dead.
@@johnl6176 And what he is forgetting is that death is the fate of all. Your demise is inevitable, so you may as well make it mean something.
While it's a very odd place to draw a quote in this context, Splinter in the first TMNT had a good answer; "Death comes to us all, but something much worse comes for you. For when you die, it will be without honor".
Communism dude...they don't care Why 😂
In Poland we had verry dark joke:
powerplant director go to minister and say: i have a good news and bad news.
good news are that we filled energy production plan for 10 years.
and bad news is that we did it in 1 second...
In east germany we had another dark joke or rhyme.
"Falls the farmer dead off the tracktor,
was near by a nuclear reactor!"
There is another dark joke I've heard. I can't explain where I heard the line. Because it was by a route so uniquely circuitous that I would have to spend paragraphs explaining it. But the line itself has stuck with me all this time since the late 1980s.
"What ails Poland is Fatal but not serious."
My dad at that time worked at the nuclear plant in Doel Belgium.... one day when they came in to work... alarms started going off from radiation.... they had to take showers to rinse off the radioactivity.. dad called home and ordered everybody to stay inside and close the windows.... a couple days later.... Chernobyl was in the news... A friend of my dad worked in pipe inspection, and because they take x-rays from pipes.. they have a geiger counter at hand... it went off when somebody had a cup of coffee.... there was contaminated milk from West Germany in it...
I live in Brussels. I was a teenager back then, and we heard these stories.
Same in sweden, that is how they knew that there was a leak, they first thought that it was their own leak, but then later understood that shit was coming from russia/ukraine. So even tho russia tried to keep it a secret the world knew
I was Born 1982 in West Germany and was a child when Chernobyl went down. I was not allowed to play outdoors and the schools and kindergardens had been closed down. I remember this still today. This HBO Series moves me and the Epilog / Tribute at the end of episode 5 breaks me every time again when I see it. People argued that the Bridge of Death is a Myth. Bullshit "The Bridge of Death" was something we learned about in school when we had Chernobyl as Topic. You can guess that even today 5-10% of all upcoming cancer in Central Europe still has its source in Chernobyl so many years back. Even in 100 years you can track down the red line towards chernobyl when investigating the inheritance of cancer.
@@MKev_Gaming knowing, that in the Western countries, far away from Chernobyl, it was prohibited for children to play outdoors, makes it much more ridiculous. Children in Ukraine and Belarus were celebrating Worker's Day on the 1st of the May, for example in Kyiv, only 100km away from Chernobyl power plant. Not mentioning other parts of Ukraine and Belarus.
And some people are asking why so much hate towards Soviet Union. Well, that's only one of the reason.
My family moved from London to a new city around this time. I remember my dad putting plastic over the windows and we thought it was to keep the heat in (we moved from a small little flat to a town house). But looking back on it me and my siblings now think he was probably trying to reduce the impact it would have on us if it turned out to be worse than was being reported. We had a lot of scare stories in the UK at the time. The government banned farming in certain regions, livestock had to be culled and milk had to be dumped, all because the radiation levels from Chernobyl were so high. There are allegedly still hot spots all over Europe, but thankfully nothing serious enough to cause major health concerns.
They made Dyatlov out to be the bad guy in the series, but in real life, he was shrewd and difficult to work with but not as arrogant or condescending as they made him out to be, he sent some of them home, he vouched for them and during one of the interviews with him you can see the remorse in his expression and his speech. He wasn’t a hero by any stretch but he was no villain. He took responsibility and died from illness as a result of the radiation.
The purpose of them making him out to be this way is to encourage emotion out of you/the viewer. It shows the stubbornness and the blind eye of the Soviets through the prism of Dyatlov
@@WingsBanquet more the cynical dog eat dog world of survival that authoritarian socialism creates despite its stated goals and mental gymnastics
He was being pressured from above by Brakonov,the real villain.
No promotions were coming for a test that was claimed to have been completed 3 years ago.
24:20 -- Did you see Legasov notice the drain in the floor? It was there to drain the water they used to hose down the room after KGB interrogations.
Means people were shot and after which it was cleaned up
Yes he did. Thats the point of the shot.
Drain for blood.
Your editing is excellent for me. In the limited time you hit the scenes that move me the most. You’re better at it than most. Well done and thanks. Incredible series and reaction.
the only thing i missed was the final sentence with the KGB chief, with the comment about printing it on their money.
Also don't understand why all the people ignore or don't include the recognition of Valeri Khodemchuk, whose body couldn't be recovered because he was buried under the reactor remnants
@@thenexus7070
not all...but most.
i guess its not as emotional as the rest.
So breaking down some things in this episode.
1. Dyatlov wasn't actually like how he was portrayed in the show. The show needed a "villain" and they decided to use him. He never screamed at anyone in the control room that night, threw binders, smacked the book out of Akimovs hands, or anything like that. He, just like everyone else in the control room were professionals, and reflected that in their work. They most likely did that because Dyatlov was known to be tougher and take less shit than the other bosses, so they decided to amplify it for the show.
2. The trial in the show never happened. In reality, there were dozens of trials, meetings, investigations etc. The footage of Dyatlov, Brukanov, and Fomin was taken from a trial that Legasov wasn't even a part of, but again for narrative purposes they decided to make it seem like the truth came out in this one trial when in reality it didn't.
3. The reason the "tips" of the rods are made of graphite is because it just has to do with the geometry of the reactor. Nuclear reactors are very complex and way the fuel and rods are positioned matters a lot. Also it wasn't really the tip of the rods so much as more of the bottom 1/3 of them, but tips just sounded better I guess. This wouldn't matter during normal operations since you would never fully remove almost all of the control rods in the first place.
And just to not scare anyone, an accident like Chernobyl can't happen again. They say this in the show but it's true, no one else in the world uses RBMK reactors, mainly because even in those times it was already known as a shit design, but the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union used them anyway. Them not having containment buildings is also true, and while a containment building wouldn't have completely prevented the roof from being blown apart, it definitely would've helped. Every other nuclear plant in the world except for the ones in the former Soviet Union have containment buildings around them.
The better reactor design already helps prevent another Chernobyl from happening, since with some of them it's physically impossible for such a reaction to take place due to the overall design of the reactor itself. Modern computers are also way better than they were in 80's, and nowadays if you even tried to do something like Chernobyl you wouldn't be able too because the computer physically wouldn't let you and automatically shut the reactor down long before you ever got to that point.
Chernobyl was a wake up call for the Soviets, and after the disaster they did modify all their RBMK reactors to prevent another Chernobyl from happening.
Glad you two enjoyed the series!
One wee caveat, British nuclear power plants don't have containment buildings because our reactors are cooled by carbon dioxide rather than water so the coolant can't produce steam or hydrogen, the two big explosion dangers. Incidentally our AGR reactors also look like bigger versions of RBMK reactors as you can walk across the top of them, you can't do that with BWR, PWR or CANDU reactors as CANDU reactors are vertical (they look like an AGR or RBMK built into a giant wall rather than a floor) while BWR and PWR reactors are encased in giant metal pressure vessels that need you to shut down the reactor for six months and then partially disassemble it in order to refuel it (while AGR, RBMK and CANDU reactors can be refuelled while they are in use).
After Chernoybl the Soviets also modified their government, though that took a little longer.
They only modified their RBMK reactors *after* Legasov's tapes were circulated and the cat was out of the bag.
@@christianfaux736
Now, imagine it wouldn't have been Gorbachev at the helm of the SU.
@@o.b.7217Stalin
"I would like you to record your command" was the correct thing to say. I was taught that in Army basic training. If an order is illegal, make them write it. (They never will, and they will flip out, but it's the polite way of saying "No")
I work at a Nuclear plant, and we would absolutely refuse to take further action on a "Commend" without it in writing if we disagreed with it or found it unsafe. It's a cover your ass move. The fact that he slapped the log book out of his hand means he knows he was giving a bad order and that he knows he was only trying to satisfy those above him
Cinematically-wise, it made perfect sense to have all those scientists represented by one character. It allows us to still experience their significant aid and effort while not being overwhelmed with having to keep track of numerous faces and names. I’m glad that HBO would clarify that, they still honored their trials and efforts without having them misrepresented or ignored.
Also Amazing Fact: the third diver who died was Baranov, and he died of heart disease, no radiation-related whatsoever.
Yeah, that's something that I love. The fact that they all seemingly got to go on with their lives without the radiation affecting them directly. They're probably the ones who got off the best out of all the rest
Water is fantastic at blocking radiation, same reason spent fuel is kept it pools of water, with it being totally safe being next to it.
"This is a real life horror movie" I think this sums up the story of Chernobyl extremely well. Even if it is 5 hours long and split into 5 acts.
I think this describes what mankind is, and always will be.
Utter splendid beauty in heroism and sacrifice, and complete horrid ugliness in lies and deceit, all happening at the same time.
An eternal dance of light versus dark, with each and every one of us capable of both.
Great reaction, ty!
Beautifully put
Tack! Yes, hoppas på en riktigt bra fight.
Ha det!@@kingwacky184
@@kingwacky184 Detsamma!
german here:
You still cant collect and eat mushrooms in south germany because of the radiation, thats how far it went.
Yup, same in Austria.
That is absolutely not true
@@pablovonclausewitz doch ist es du vogel
yes it is you fool.
the mushrooms are all still contaminated with ceaseium
Great series, great reaction.
31:55 To be fair, the Soviet Union stopped existing in 1991, not many years after the disaster. Many think the disaster played a role in the fall of USSR.
Gorbachev himself said that it was one of the main reasons the USSR failed.
The Russian Federation is the legal successor of the Soviet Union and could therefore change the numbers. They won't .... but legally they could.
@@Annonymous0283745 No, the Soviet Union was already experiencing an economic crisis in the early 80s, and perestroika completely destroyed it.
tho horrible, chernobyl did one good thing, help end the soviet union...nowadays, more militancy is being destroyed...in similar region
But, the Russian government took up the USSR's responsibilities as their successor, and yet they still haven't changed it. That is the argument that is made.
But, that number is supposed to be representative of those who died in the immediate aftermath, from the blast and radiation poisoning in the weeks after, mostly the plant workers and firefighters. What should be included as part of the death toll is being debated to this day.
Soviet law required the trial to be held in the same jurisdiction as the crime. Afterword: Dyatlov really was like that, according to his surviving colleagues. Not always, but enough. He threatened people's jobs. He claimed to his dying day that he'd been out of the room at the time. The show made Lyudmilla a celeb. She had to move out of Kyiv to keep people from showingt up on her doorstep. She wanted to move on and turned down five offers to come on as a consultant. The dialog about "I told you I'd show you Moscow" plays like Hollywood, but it happened.
Bryukhanov found himself virtually unemployable and ended up a paper pusher in the Ukranian Ministry of Trade. Fomin broke his glasses and cut his wrists awaiting trial. He was released early for mental instability. He was let go of his job at Kalinin for the same reason. The show stuck very close to real events. The biggest rewriting was that Legasov wasn't at the trial. But the results were the same. His colleagues shunned him. He was voted down for Director of the Kirchatov, which he'd expected to get. It broke him. The second biggest is that there was no document with two pages redacted. The designers were aware of the flaw but--planned economy--ran out of time and money to fix it. So they documented it and wrote instructions for the operators. The KGB deemed those--which showed a design flaw--so sensitive that they never made it to Priypat.
The Soviet number is so low because immediately after the accident, they made it illegal to attribute death to radiation sickness.
10 out of 10 for your reactions to this great series. You started with very little background on the actual story and it was really rewarding to see you learn the history and react so perceptively and empathetically to it. Beautiful work. (And cheers for picking up on the little detail about the sunflower seeds... I never noticed that in three viewings!)
So, fun fact about the trial in real life. Legasov and Scherbina weren't there - fair enough, they're the main characters, they *should* be at the climax. But the actual expert witnesses presented stuck pretty firmly to the "it was all operator error" line. They guy who *actually* hammered away at the "it was a shitty design, covered up! graphite tips on the control rods!" thing, in real life, was... Anatoly Dyatlov. Both because it was pretty much his only possible defense, and because, really, what did he have to *lose* at that point? And also because the real-life person (who was kind of a jerk and a bad boss, but not quite so one-dimensionally awful as in the show) was genuinely appalled at what had happened and thought that if he'd been told beforehand, he might have been able to make different decisions.
I can see why the writers did it the way they did, but it might at least have been interesting to have Dyatlov, after four and a half episodes of him being a deep-in-denial bullying asshole, now be on the same side as the heroes (even if it's for somewhat selfish reasons).
That sounds a bit odd though. When did Dyatlov get aware of this and how?? It must be after the incident and before the trial, because otherwize it would make no sense that he pressed AZ5, knowing that this would lead to explosion, because of that flaw! But if he got aware of this in this time between, wherefrom would he got that classified information? And why would anybody tell this to him, the accused person??
@@heiko3169why? The alternative is to not lower the control rods? Then it still would have exploded.
@heiko3169 The show is simplifying heavily for time and also for theme. The graphite tips were public knowledge (well, if you were an RBMK reactor engineer at least) and the fact that they could increase power under some circumstances wasn't a state secret, it was in the much more boring category of "theoretical issues that engineers aren't informed about because they will never come up in real life". By a few months after the disaster, the people running the plant operations and the cleanup (including the trial defendants) more or less knew what had happened, even if the details weren't publicized.
In the hypothetical other version of the show, presumably Legasov could get him the paper, and then get arrested by the KGB afterwards just the same, etc.
@@SuperSpecies Yeah, but he argued that he wouldn't have put it in such an unstable state to begin with. Which may or may not be true - everybody did cut corners, and he really wanted the test done - but that was his defense, at any rate.
@@SuperSpecies at that point, yes, you may be right. The route to disaster was already set when he decided to raise the power by removing the cooling.
I love seeing young people like you watching this kind of movies, keeping history alive. We should nevder be allowed to forget these things.
I remember after the accident, that we got a warning (in Norway) about the radiation from the accident.
I am sure that if we then knew how serious it was, we would be more worried.
The Soviet Union placed a lid on it, so all we heard was assumptions of what had happened, and that it only had a small impact in the neighboring countries.
I know I said this earlier, but now that it's all wrapped up, I wanted to reiterate my earlier point. Both of you did such a fantastic job in this reaction video series. If more reaction channels were like you 2, I would be a much much happier person. Y'all had the perfect amount of reactions, proper conversations, and emotions. As I said previously, you both pay attention to what is going on, without getting caught up in unnecessary discourse. I am most definitely Subscribing to your channel. And one day, when I hopefully get a little more financially stable, I will become a Patreon viewer. This is the first and only thing I've watched on your channel, so far. If your other reactions are as half as good as this one was, I will be more than satisfied. Good job ladies.
If you want some more of Stellan Skarsgard, I can't recommend Andor enough. Incredible show.
He was also spectacular in the film Ronin with Robert Deniro and Jean Reno
Diatlov's personality is 'correct'. You never met an angry Russian. Also he is angry not because he is just 'angry' he has a backstory that perfectly explains why he is such a shit. Also, if you his backstory the sentence 'I have seen worse' from the very first episode sounds hauntingly scary.
You said, “It just makes you wonder how many other governments are hiding things.” As you get older and more experienced in life, you will find that the answer is: All of them.
Some more than others, of course. But generally speaking, it is a feature of government.
It makes me question Putin. As we speak Russia is fighting Ukraine over lies. Thanks for making this video. Tears show heart and empathy to others - something we need more of in our world.
Exactly. And they employ lies as a weapon and as a poison
ukraine lies too about russophones persecutions, both are bad
@@antoinebrg6299 no, there's no such persecutions ever, it's russian propaganda
@@PUARockstar yes, there's plenty of french, italian and german independant reports on that subject way before Russia's invasion, torturing people, linguistic persecutions through laws, churchs and schools, Odessas's events, bombing some civilian places in Donbass etc... Some ukrainian medias didn't hide it at all when it was happening, it was even a pride for them. Now you heard Zelensky himself telling children of separatists deserve to stay in caves while ukrainians ones go to school...
There always have been an old hatred between ukrainians nationalists and russians and USA used it to promote its agenda during Maïdan events and now in the war.
Now I'm not for Russia either, I'm against both governements and for a referendum in Donbass about the separation from Ukraine and negociations for peace and stop the atrocities from both camps.
@@antoinebrg6299 Ukrainian citizen and a russophone here. We're fine. Don't listen to Putin. He's just using Hitler's "I'm protecting my people" trick.
Chernobyl and the Three mile island are two of the incidents that make people afraid of nuclear power. The common thread of both of them is greed, wanting to cut corners to save money. Nuclear power is like anything, if you take it seriously and done things properly its safe... If you don't it creates trouble, and its regular people that pay the price. Regular people ALWAYS pay the price.
All people are regular people. Some of them just have an inflated opinion of themselves
@@jwnomadBy regular he probably meant people that don't have any powers to impact the masses. You don't expect a mailman to cause a nuclear meltdown now do you ?
@@oscaka0073 They probably meant what they said, which was that regular people pay the price for negligence. As if there is another group of people that are separate and above other people. But such concepts of class or hierarchy are only illusions designed to control other people and keep them subservient. You are as worthy, accountable and vulnerable as any naked emperor.
This is just not true. A director of a nuclear power plant has substantially more power to affect the world around him than a fire fighter on the front line. It's not about putting people down, it is a reference to how much sway they have to make things happen or not happen around them and also how far that change will carry. If a fire fighter doesnt put out a fire, the house burns down. If the head of a bank leads it into debt, he doesn't suffer the consequences when the bank closes, his customers that put money in the bank do.@@jwnomad
"Anything" doesn't have the power to make the world's breadbasket unusable for at least 5 times longer than written records of human civilization have existed.
Your fanboi deliberate ignorance of proper risk management makes you a big part of the problem.
What about Fukushima? No money to be saved in TEPCO's 30 years of ignoring the advice that keeping back-up generators in a basement in a tsunami zone is a bad idea, but they did it anyway, and nobody even faced charges as a result. Where's that fit in your convenient know-nothing stance on nuclear energy?
I love watching these videos because it's amazing the details you guys pick up on. at 18:55, the guy who asked for a cigarette while dying was actually trying to quit smoking because he was eating sunflower seeds. I would never in a million lifetimes have picked up on that lol
Thank you for your reaction , it really hits different when you see how someone else relives the tragedy even in a TV format. My father was one of those who went into exclusion zone when all this happened. In fact, some of the shots from a heli and some of miners' work were done by him back then. I consider this masterpiece to his tribute as well.
I was just a 1 year old when it happened and even back here in Poland my aunt, who was a doctor, advised my mum to give me iodine. Obviously, all media behind the Iron Curtain downplayed the accident.
This year in the US we had the Ohio train derailment. The official report was that the chemical burn off didn't reach any dangerous levels, but people in the area reported symptoms. We don't have to go far in distance or time to find smaller Chernobyls. Sometimes the cost of lies is merely the cost of doing business.
Thank you for your reaction. Not sure if you realize that Chernobyl is in Ukraine. So last year when Russia invaded Ukraine they pushed through Chernobyl toward Kiev. The invading Russians left a platoon of soldiers at the nuclear plant where they were ordered to dig defense trenches and bunkers for the tanks. Guess what happened , they exposed the buried radiation, I dont think there are any left of that platoon after a month of exposure to the high radiation. True story, Chernobyl kills again 28 years later...
Vichnaya Pamyat is a funeral phrase that can be tied to the church and all that but goes way deep than that. Its a saying that roughly translate to "dont forget" or "forever remembered" , is like the "in memory" but in a darker and nostalgic way. Dont forget their sacrifice, dont forget their lies, dont forget their faces, dont forget their betray, dont forget their words, dont forget our destroyed land. Ukraine suffered the brutality of the communist politburo stupidity with its land, sons and nature, because of that vichnaya pamya, moij brat.
A tidbit on the graphite "tipped"😏control rods, is that one third of each control rod was made of graphite not just the tip, and it was to help operate the reactor not to make the control rod cheaper. The reason being was to help increase reactivity in cold spots of the reactor. The reactor had such cold spots for a number of reasons but the two primary reasons requiring the graphite has two main parts. 1: The poorer fuel refinement level on top of it being inaccurately/unevenly manufactured. I don't remember the exact numbers but say this fuel rod was 60% pure and this rod was 50% and this other rod was 40%. 2: Rods with nearly spent fuel. When you get a cluster of rods with lower fuel content or spent and nearly used up fuel, this causes cold spots in the reactor and the easiest way to milk more heat and production out of these low or spent fuel rod clusters was, put some of the graphite rod into that area and increase reactivity. Another side effect that was caused by the low fuel purity is that it required these reactors cores to be uncommonly large. They needed a lot of fuel rods to heat enough water fast enough to generate the amounts of power they wanted. But this size in turn allowed for more chances of these cold spots appearing throughout the reactor. So having the control rods made with a third of graphite was built into the design to mitigate the problem.
They never saw this graphite as a major risk or problem that the rods could turn the reactor into a bomb as it wasn't viewed as feasible or possible under normal operation for things to go so badly so fast, and they were technically right. They expected, and more or less rightfully so, that the speed at which these would drop through the reactor during an actual accident that required a SCRAM during normal operation would never be able to cause a problem in them dropping through. That they couldn't heat things up and drive power up high enough fast enough before they passed through and that it should be impossible for the reactor to ever be in a state in which it could become a problem during normal operation...
Except these tests were not normal operation, they intentionally put the reactor into a terrible failing state with the huge addition of the Xenon buildup on top if it all with the days of half power operation poisoning it, making the whole setting even worse. Setting them up to literally forcibly put the reactor into a state that could and would go badly so instantaneously that the graphite rod ends would become the detonator like they did. From Valery's explanation in the show they took away every single method of control leaving the reactor to rapidly start to heat up and start to rapidly burn off the Xenon, and because of this the main reason the rods did what they did is because by the time the power began instantly spiking like it did it was already starting the core meltdown and was causing a number of the control rod tubes to be warped, melted, and or broken so that when the rods came down with the AZ-5 scram button, many of them literally stopped in the middle of the reactor from the damage being done to the rods tubes. That's when you see that already rapidly climbing power spike that was melting the core down inside, instantly go through the roof when the control rods get stuck in the already failing tubes.
Chernobyl nuclear reactor was a deeply flawed design, operated by people subject to a deeply flawed political system. It was the perfect storm. It suffered from a multitude of safety issues and potential hazards that modern reactors simply do not suffer from. Modern reactors are safe. Even the Fukushima disaster is a testament to that. Even though the Fukushima power plant is actually older than Chernobyl, it was built to better safety standards and retrofitted over the years to make it even safer. As a result, only one person died in the disaster, and no notable damage to the environment or people has occurred (despite what Chinese-run media would have you believe). But even that is nothing compared to reactors built after 1986, which is the vast majority of reactors currently in operation around the world. After the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear safety standards have been improved to the point it is literally impossible (save for an asteroid impact) for a nuclear disaster like Chernobyl to happen ever again. Of course, this relies on the idea that every nation interested in building nuclear reactors follows that standard and is subject to the IAEA checks. Which is why it's extremely important that we work with countries like Iran and the North Korea in their pursuit of nuclear energy. Because they will do it with or without us, but if they do it without us, the fate of millions of people could be at stake.
"That's a huge range" yeah, that's the thing about an invisible killer, it's hard to catch in the act. A man gets cancer 100 km away from chernobyl. Was Chernobyl the reason? Who knows? In general it's hard to count something like this in lives, because people die anyway. If someone dies at 88 rather than 89 because of what their body was subjected to 40 years ago in chernobyl, do we count that as a chernobyl death? In these instances it's not lives that are taken away as much as years.
On a happy note, the sister plant to Chernobyl is in captured Ukrainian territory and the Russians have set explosives and mines around it. Shelling has hit buildings nearby. That alone should keep is all up at night.
So I have a story for you both. My girlfriend is Ukrainian. During my first trip to Ukraine I wanted to visit Chernobyl as you can get guided tours there. When I told my girl that I wanted to see that place? She flew into a rage! She told me to never ever go there. This was in 2016. Since then I've been to Ukraine several times and never once visiting Pripyat. Then when this series came out in 2019, it really made me see why my girl didn't want me to visit this place. It just wasn't about the deaths, it was about what the USSR did to it's own people. A real life horror story. Oh and before you ask? Yes, I've asked her parents about this incident. Their stories and the stories from others are sad and amazing to hear.
Awesome series yes but it’s still a drama / series and not a documentary.
Dyatlov wasnt actually such a big villain in reality. He did fuck up but wasnt like in the show. His family was against his portrayal here.
I think there was also controversy involving the firefighter’s wife (Lyudmila Ignatenko)
Also the “bridge of death” isnt a thing. The show included that for dramatic effect.
Fun fact!
In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the russian army rigged the Chernobyl reactor with explosives and held the staff captive. This thing could have happened again.
The USSR might have dissapeared, but the same a55es that made it dysfunctional are still in russia. At the helm.
Удивительной доброты девушки!!
Я из России,во мнигих семьях были люди кто спасал чернобыль,большенство умерли не дожив до старости.Но эти девушки поразили меня своей мягкосердечностью.
I remember this very well even though I was only 11 at the time. Norway got affected most after Soviet union, and central European countries like Austria and Switzerland. The topography and weather cause a lot of rain after, and combined with the winds a lot of particles ended up there.
Due to this we couldn't eat meat and fish from many areas in Norway for a while.
Hungarian here - my mother was worried that my brother is going to suffer brain damage, she was pregnant at the time and radiation is absorbed by the baby the most - it binds incredibly well like a mineral a growing fetus needs and wants.
Russia ks still like this today. When they invaded Ukraine, the russian solders occupied chernobyl and dug trenches in the radioactive spil because they had no idea the accident even happened
Not true. The soldiers were there to prevent anything from happening.
They knew what they were dealing with and followed strict protocol to avoid problems with radiation.
They all got decontaminated every time they got near, and so was every car and all material before leaving the site.
This is all recorded on video and circulating the internet. So it shouldn't be that hard to find.
Great and very humane reactions. Enjoyed your video series very much.
Michael Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet Union (as shown in the series) was quoted as saying that Chernobyl emphasized the faults of the Soviet system which ultimately led to its collapse in 1991.
And in the recent invasion of Ukraine, the Russian soldiers dug trenches in the forest near Chernobyl. The lies continue to this day and, because people aren't taught the truth, they are ignorant of the risks of that area. Does my head in.
In Ukraine every 26th of April in school we held a minute of silence to honor the heroes and the victims of the disaster.
I guess in Russia it wasn't a big deal.
I'm gonna say Dyatlov - in real life- is a hero. At the trial, he fought tooth and nail for the truth - about horribly unsafe design of RBMK reactor, the faults that were kept from him and the operators. Please watch his last and only interview.
HBO had to make him the evil one.
I'm glad to see someone bring this up. Almost all of the absurd behavior by Dyatlov in the show was either completely fictional or actually done by Bryukhanov, such as dismissing irrefutable evidence that the core had exploded until the sunrise made it impossible to continue denying. He had also been the supervisor of the construction of the facility, making him twice guilty because it was under his watch that flammable roofing material was used instead of the inflammable materials that Soviet safety code called for. These flammable roofing materials were heavily responsible for how widely spread the contamination became. Bryukhanov deserved a firing squad instead of a meager 5 years in prison.
I truly fear that after all she has gone through, I want Lyudmilla and her son to be safe. In Kiev. During war today.
Came to say the same thing. People need to go read a bit more about Dyatlov, his background and his dedication to the field of work. There is a lot of evidence that he was a very rigorous man man general, which makes a lot of how he was portraited quite implausible.
Personally i dont think anyone was at fault. It was a very unlikely chain of events that lead to the accident.
As for the soviet state, remember this was during the cold war. If this happened in the USA, the attitudes wouldve been exactly the same. Both sides were like 2 boxers trying to find a breach, so its understandable why the coverup.
3 mile island incident was kinda dealt in the same way, but luckly the event itself was way less impactful to the point of not even being remembered by the general public.
Plus, a lot of the plot was twisted without true evidence. You gotta keep in mind there arent any recordings of what was said inside the control room and there werent one strong woman finding a book with pages cut out. Those things have a lot of impact in the story, but they arent factual.
The legend of the Bridge of Death isnt real. Its a myth and im quite surprised it was stated as fact at the ending.
The show is incredible, but factually, it should be taken with a pinch of salt. It is though an homage to the heroes that sacrificed themselves for millions to live.
@@gavinrad1 Mate, the reports from his former colleagues show that he indeed was a pretty unlikeable person. Harsh and unlikeable, and he was by no means any true hero. He fucked up and he found out.
He ignored safety protocols to finish the test and hide the lie that it was completed to get a promotion
He is the one who created the situation that caused the explosion
What he did after was to save himself
Not so fun fact: Some of the fighting that's been going on in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine has been near the Chernobyl site. It is believed that some Russian troops were ordered to establish defensive position, positions that required digging, within the exclusion zone. There have been reports (to the best of my knowledge, unconfirmed at this time) that some of the Russian troops that were in the exclusion zone reported signs of radiation sickness.
Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the largest nuclear plant in Europe (and *not* an RBMK reactor, if you were wondering), is currently under Russian control. Since the Russian takeover, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been on site to inspect conditions at least once, and documented various safety and security threats due to damage from the war and the presence of occupying troops.
And now nato is giving missiles to ukraine and telling them to fire deep into Russia, provoking wwiii.
awesome job girls.. even had me in tears
I only want to point out most of those people were from Ukraine and Belarus they were not russians they were occupied and oppressed by Russia and things have not changed much.
Yet non-Russians were very disproportionately represented among the Bolsheviks who founded the Soviet Union.
Should be noted that this episode (while brilliant) veers pretty far off from the historical reality. Not the sciencey bits though.
6:22 So the reason they are holding the trail in the city of Chernobyl is because of old Russian law that has never got out of style, even today, that the trail needs to be held in the city, if not the province, where the crime happened to quote on quote “give closure for the people and community affected by the crime”
Show is great, but they did take a lot of liberties:
The divers all lived, people on the bridge did survive (you can read interviews with them), there was NEVER a possibility of a nuclear explosion. The show used that term multiple times, but it isn’t possible with what was present. The explosions were non- nuclear thermal explosions (steam, Hydrogen). An actual weapon requires highly enriched uranium (90%+) and the plant fuel was in the low single digits which cannot lead to a nuclear detonation. Let alone all the other myriad of factors that have to be present for one to occur.
"They still don't acknowledge how bad it was?"
Well ... 'They' as in: "The Soviet Union" doesn't exist anymore... so 'they' can't change their mind 😅
Я Украинец и живу в 100 километров от Запорожской атомной станцией которая в 16 раз больше и которую захватили Русские после акупации и постоянно угрожают подривом. так что все еще может повториться
First time viewer here, picked a good one to start, obviously new sub here.
Kiss is a character, don't change
As a Latvian American with family still living in Latvia, which is right across the border from the corner of Ukraine where Chernobyl is. In Latvia to this day sometimes you have to shoot cows. Because the cows eat the grass, and there are still patches of radiation in Latvia from the explosion at Chernobyl. Chernobyl and the exclusion zone will be uninhabitable for another 200 years. The reactor itself will be dangerous for another 100,000 years. The new containment unit will only last 100 before it has to replaced again. That of course is a job for the next generation. Anyone that tells you that Nuclear Reactors are safe. They're insane. Just one blowing its lid will leave 1/4 of the USA as radioactive as that corner of Ukraine.
The bottom line with the USSR at that time was, saving face. Which meant lying to the world so as not to appear weak or incompetent, and the same goes for many governments , but especially the communist ones. Not towing the party line meant you disappeared, and they seem to be going back to that.
Even if you accept the high death toll of 93,000, the nuclear industry including atomic weapons have killed less people then fossil fuels do in a year from pollution.
Hahaha the soviets don't exist anymore. they can't change the 'official' number of deaths.
Also, in regards to the divers, water is actually extremely good at diffusing radiation. it doesn't really get radioactive like other materials do. so it actually makes a lot of sense they would survive their ordeal mostly unscathed
The Russian Federation is NOT, I repeat, NOT, the USSR. Peace and love ❤
Vichnaya Pamyat - In honor of all the people who sacrificed everything.
You two are my favorite reaction channel. Left girl is an emotional adorable mess and you (I assume you take care of YT and tech stuff) are really smart and savy, and equally beautiful ofc. You make a great team. Keep it up!
Have you two ever seen Apollo 13? Another real life story about heroism and determination in the face of disaster.
Chernobyl show very far from real story.
@@Velanteg You're right. Chernobyl took a lot of liberties. But there were heroes, and the events did happen, more or less.
@@fakecubed Show changed story to paint USSR in black color, not to show heroes.
Americans discover what USSR and Russia today is actually like, 2023, not colorized
ohh I have been awaiting this, checking in on the channel multiple times to make sure I just didn't miss it.
Just remember this show strived to tell the stories that went down from mouth of word and the stories people told happen, not what is scientificly correct. There was ofc some licenses to change up stories to make it more of a follow along and extra interesting as we go threw the show. it is after all a dramatisation.
The producer said when ever they had two different stories of how anything went down they always went with the one that was the least extreme, they feared people wouldn't belive it as it was, so they where sure to play it on the safe side.
The event it self is so terrible but so many wonderfull unsigned heroes stepped forward, not only what was shown here in this show but also "older" men taking the shifts of some of the younger mens when it came to the roof top, so that the youth could go on.
Goverments have to look at the bigger picture and so they sure come across as evil, and sometimes they surley are, but people are amazing when given the chance!.
Ty for an amazing series, a most watch for everyone imo even how sad and horrible it is and makes you feel it is one of those things imo that we as humans can never afford to forget
This is why socialism/communism must never be allowed to take root in our society.
21:01 Important plot point--at this moment, Boris is the single highest ranking person in that room. People WILL obey him. Alas, there are a chunk of people more important outside.
29:54 That is an urban legend. There is ZERO evidence of any such thing.
31:17 A containment unit WAS built immediately after the disaster, but it was built too quickly (for obvious reasons). The new one is much, much better and is designed to be upgraded. By 2117 we will presumably be able to make an even better one. Maybe we'll be able to de-contaminate the site by then.
Of course Chernobyl is in Ukraine. Which is now the sight of a very ugly WAR with no end in sight.
Kudos for taking all this seriously, for your honesty, and also for keeping track of so much!!!
The Sarcophagus and New Safe Confinement were/are not containment buildings as there's not really ever going to be anything to contain now the reactor is dead. These shelters were built to keep the elements out, not to keep harmful gases or steam pressure in.
@@krashd But they were/are to help contain the radioactivity.
My mom got thyroid cancer just few years after explosion (I am from Chernihiv that is 80 km away from Chernobyl). Of course there is no way to know if it's related but I believe it is as few of her friends, one of which was forced out of Pripyat did suffer same fate (all of them are alive, just have thyroid completely removed)
Thank you so so much for doing this series.
The scene in the garden with Boris and Valeri always hits me right in the feels
The series is a must watch for everyone. My only beef with it is the fantasy parts - like how they showed radiation sickens, that baby "absorbed the radiation" or bridge of death at the end (it's an urban myth and it was named such because of traffic accident). Show would hit just as hard if they didn't make those up.
Not so much fantasy as outdated incorrect information. They believed that about the baby absorbing the radiation back then. It's only in recent years that we realized it's not true.
I can believe that people, including medics, thought or said that about the baby, though. Many old wive's tales in medicine then (still too many now).
I think they included that stuff because the people at the time thought that was real.....but maybe i am wrong
@@Ordog213 actually general public at the time (at least in Poland and i assume eastern block) was more aware of the effects that currently,. Mostly because of portrayals like this
The Skarsgård clan is top of the line actors! Stellan (father) and the sons Alexander, Gustaf, Bill and Valter
He have kids so there must be more
@@hakandelabiarritz6750 6 kids two are not actors!
I guess it is pretty hard for younger people to grasp how secretive and paranoid the Soviet Union was back then, but you have to keep in mind that this was the time of the Cold War and in the eighties, the Eastern Bloc was already in decline, so the hardliners were even more pressing to not show any sign of weakness to the "enemy". That's why they covered it up and downplayed it as much as possible - as Legassov sumed it up, it was part of their mentality so that they themselves couldn't tell a lie from the truth anymore. I studies the subject in politics and I call tell you, there was a lot of crazy stuff going on there during that time. If you actually want to know more about what your government had to hide back then, I'd recommend "The men who stare at goats". Definitely more lighthearted than this one one, but I assure you "more of this is true than you would believe", indeed.
well they havent change, from sovjet to russia... stil the same..
Going from LAC to Global control is turning it from manually controlled rods only to activating the automatic controlled rods, around the reactor were several groups of rods run by computer control hooked to reaction sensors inside the reactor. These are normally on all the time to keep the reaction rate steady from minor variations faster than a human could. Due to the power reduction they had been disabled. They hoped by reactivating them the 12 groups of automated control rods pulling out would raise the power. That's why he said he didn't understand it should have been impossible for the reaction to drop faster with those rods removed.
Suggestions "Arrival" - "The Right Stuff" - "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"
You think them holding the trial there was bad... the 3 other nuclear reactors at Chernobyl also remained in operation after the accident - for YEARS!!
Reactor 2 was taken offline in 1991 after a fire broke out in the turbine building. Reactor 1 was taken offline in 1996 (part of a deal between Ukraine & the IAEA) and the last one, reactor 3 was taken offline in 2000 which marked the official closure of the power station as a whole.
No matter how many times I've seen reactions to this phenomenal series, no matter what day of the week or at what time of day I start watching episode 1,
every single time I just have to watch them all back to back.
You girls were amazing, thank you!
I know it wasn’t the easiest thing to watch, but rly glad u girls did this series.
Those events were so meaningful, and so often we oversimplify in our memories what happened back then. It really deserves thinking about more than reading a paragraph in a schoolbook and moving on, and this series is a really moving and dramatic representation of the events
( Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid),
Hopefully you watch the epilogue and real man vs actress to see the difference between them and know the real events accurately
Haylo and Kiss. Interesting fact:- During the initial invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022, for a few months the Russian military occupied Chernobyl and the surrounding area. Based on orders given by their command, Russian troops entrenched themselves around the Chernobyl reactor complex, digging and then living in trenches all around the reactor complex. In the process, they dug-up and unearthed the highly radioactive soil than had been buried under the top-soil layer during the clean-up a few decades ago. They were told they would be safe and that there no longer was any radiation. They were wrong, their command lied to them ignoring the risk. When the Russian troops eventually retreated, many of those troops showed clear signs of radiation poisoning:- black lesions, loss of hair, weight loss and nausea. They were all dead men walking.
The best was reasoning from battalion command (in RU tv interview, google) - "in the exact same positions the Red Army dug trenches safely in 1944 so there is no problem"...
@@petrhanak862 That type of thinking got his men likely killed (from radiation poisoning). That is what comes from having little to no regard for the lives of others.
Such was life in the Soviet Union and like now in Putin's Russia.
The lies that led to the Chernobyl accident didn't go away with the end of the Soviet Union. Russia just continued in this "tradition". And that is probably also the reason why a campaign that was meant to last 3 days now is well in the third year of the Russian-Ukranian war with about a million casualties on both sides so far...
In the end, it's a story about hope. How a flawed social structure allowed and worsened a disaster, and how a gathering of brave souls traded their futures for the sake of the entire world.
Really enjoyed this series, you both had such genuine reactions
Your reaction was probably the most emotional I've ever seen on RUclips. It’s like I'm experiencing this series again, with you...
I know several people who lived near Chernobyl, and they confirm that everything was like that: no one said anything to anyone, people were sent to street demonstrations on May 1 (5 days after the explosion) in Kyiv and Minsk to show that supposedly nothing terrible happened.
Some of these people refuse to watch this show because they don't want to go through the whole thing again. Some people are still angry at the Soviet government for all this.
Thank you for this reaction.
another EXCELLENT mini series, would be Band of Brothers, really high quality production, excellent story full of emotion, character development and filled with true stories, it's also an HBO production if I am not mistaken.
Real life horror story indeed.
Not sure if anyone mentioned, you put up Episode 3 as the title card for this video ;)
Excellent work on great reaction videos for the series, including spot-on editing to capture the meaning of the show’s episodes.
Sadly, the brilliant actor Paul Ritter, who portrayed Dyatlov so perfectly, died two years after production of a brain tumor at the age of 54.
Ladies, this is one of the best reactions to this series I've seen and I've watched quite a few. The both of you are also quite beautiful. Great job.
Thank you for reacting to this miniseries. Wonderful reactions, i think best reactions to this series i have seen in youtube.
The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same. - Marjane Satrapi
The actor who played Dyatlov was also a great comic actor, check him in the UK sitcom Friday Night Dinner if you need some light relief after this ;)
Shit on it!
There's a lot of complication, like the Soviet death toll couldnt possibly change since the Soviet Union doesnt exist anymore.
Boris Scherbina did some good things, and he was portrayed positively in this documentary/series, but he also was one of the drivers behind the Soviet law that made it illegal for Soviet doctors to list radiation as the reason for cancer/death after Chernobyl.
You also notice Scherbina was a relatively high ranking official in the Soviet Union, but they portrayed him as also afraid of the KGB. Thats quite accurate. At the start of the USSR the central committee and the council of ministers etc had a pretty strong control over the various secret police and security groups. Thats why they had so many different names and were constantly changed. Cheka, GPU, OGPU, NKVD etc and all the subgroups under them. They were constantly being reorganized or dissolved. But the KGB was the version that finally stuck. And by the 1980's the KGB in many ways were the ones running things..
The Central Committee made the political decisions, but they knew they boundaries and to watch there backs because they were no longer fully in command of the KGB. It had become its own power center intertwined with but also separate from the Kremlin.
This show is just a masterpiece in storytelling. It fairly accurately presents both the scientific facts of this disaster and also shows the human elements and impacts it had on the people involved. Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgård are spectacular as Legasov and Scherbina.
HBO has a great trackrecord of their miniseries and this one ranks very highly for me, only eclipsed by Band of Brothers which is a WW2 series that i would also highly recommend for you to watch.
I loved following your reactions to this show!
Indeed. I'd like to laud Paul Ritter (Dyatlov) for his performance in the show as well.
Some say that you can tell if this guy's a good actor if he can invoke emotions naturally and effectively. I've never known anyone who wasn't pissed off by Dyatlov in the show.
Indeed if you ask me Chernobyl and Band of Brothers are by far the best mini series ever created. Nothing else comes close to them
“Citizen X” is another movie you should do a reaction to.
It's crazy I was born in 87'. If these heroes didn't stop it. I would have been born in a very different world.
the horrible thing is, those other reactors are stil not made safe.
I am disabled and so my parents always encouraged me to watch the Paralympics as a child, for inspiration, I guess. There was a stretch of time in the early 2000s where a significant number of athletes were exactly the same age, from exactly the same place. They had all been in the womb during the Chernobyl disaster =(