Another chilling episode here. Hildur Guðnadóttir is crushing this score too! What was your reaction? What did we miss? Badd Medicine Arcade channel ruclips.net/channel/UCHIstVk00GtduPIXlJLdC3A Early Drops & Full Reactions on YT Memberships & Patreon: www.patreon.com/baddmedicine Backup channel Subscribe here ruclips.net/channel/UC1CLUwA27dz-94o3FR0o3xg
The military general that strapped the dosimeter to a truck and drove the truck into the reactor compound is General Vladimir Pikalov. Amazing man!He had survived the WWII battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, and he became an expert in cleaning up hazardous waste. He actually handled the decommissioning of some WWI German gas weapons and he helped clean up a few toxic spills in Cuba over the years. When he arrived at Chernobyl, he made his young driver get out and stay behind while he drove himself the rest of the way in. He got there the afternoon after the explosion and knew it was BAD, despite what they were saying. He is recorded as telling his driver, “You have yet to become a father,” and that’s why he wouldn’t let the driver keep going. When it came to driving the truck, his officers organized two young soldiers to go with him, but he wouldn’t let them go, either. Pikalov was the man who mapped the more dangerous areas around Chernobyl, found most of the ejected core fragments, helped get the robots, etc. His officers went on record as saying he slept two hours every night and worked the rest of the time. He went partially blind from radiation exposure by the time he was finished. This is a horrific tragedy for so many, but it also shows us how heroic some people can be.
@thunderatigervideo Also Pikalov decided to go because as a Hero of the Soviet Union he knew nobody could doubt his word, even Gorbachev could not tell him he was lying.
The thing about the General Pikalov is two folded. One is that he did truly not want to sent one of his men do do something if he was not ready to do it himself. And the second one is that if he sent a normal soldier to do the reading the people in " charge" could claim that the soldier don't know what he was doing and then claim the reading as false. However nobody would dare to do that to a General of Pikalov's status.
@@marmichaud what is your definition of dangerous? For example 16 rem (equivalent of 1,600 chest x rays) increases your risk of cancer by 1%. Those clothes will not give you that dose unless you decided to camp their for a few days.
Fun fact: The composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir, incorporated sounds recorded from a nuclear reactor into the score. She won an Emmy and Golden Globe for Chernobyl. After this she composed the score for Joker which won her an Oscar, becoming the first Icelander to win an Oscar. She is set to return for the Joker sequel
for every snivelling communist bureaucrat there are people who step up and do the work and don't let BS get in the way of doing the right thing. they are heroes and they probably saved the world.This happened right before my 10'th birthday and I remember it being in the news even here in Canada, If the people like Pikalov hadn't done what they did my 10'th birthday would have been drastically different.
He was absolutely badass ,He took part in the Second World War, seeing combat with the Western, Don, Stalingrad, the Steppe and the 2nd Belorussian fronts, participating in the liberation of Kursk, Minsk, Poznań, and as well as the storming of Berlin. He was wounded three times. He fought in artillery as a platoon commander, battery commander, assistant chief of staff of artillery division on reconnaissance, adjutant of a senior artillery division, reconnaissance officer of the regiment. He was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union, for his role in the containment of the fallout from the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Plus, given his rank, they wouldn't be able to dismiss his findings. Like they would to a private or to the other people who worked for them. Good luck saying General Pikalov is mistaken or delusional.
@@kvoltti You say Canada but I was a lil kid in Italy when this happened. Europe would be a much different place if people did not step up and prevented a total meltdown.
They dramatized the immediate visible effects of radiation exposure, but I think it was a good call. Since the initial damage is usually invisible (except in the most extreme cases) it might have been hard for viewers to understand the damage that is occurring.
Yeah, it certainly conveys to the audience that it's bad, and there was severe damage in their bodies. I did read an article where a nurse that cared for some of the victims was interviewed and she said, in reference to the appearances of the bodies that it looked like the director just turned the art department loose, and that the people didn't look like that.
If I remember correcly it was reported that at least one dude who looked right into the core changed eye colour from the radiation. I think the core complaints about dramatization are from the "child absorbing radiation" and the "bridge of death" points which aren't that grounded in actual facts.
Something like this does not need "dramatization." They adapted it for tv, sure, but I'm also sure there were horrors in real life that were not included in the show.
About the evacuation: the people were told that the evacuation was temporary. They were told to grab some basic necessities and leave in an orderly fashion and that this was temporary and for their safety. That's why they left so calmly and left basically everything behind. The people of Pripyat expected to go back home soon, but they never did...
It occurred to me also that this was still the Cold War, though it was coming to an end. People in the Soviet Union had been on the watch for an attack from the US for decades; it might have been easier to just order them to board buses and leave because they'd always thought that some sort of attack could happen and they'd have to evacuate. The young guy at the nuclear research facility immediately wondered if the Americans had attacked when their radiation alarms went off. Similarly, one of the guys at Chernobyl in the immediate aftermath of the explosion - he was on the floor and when a co-worker came up to him he asked if they'd been bombed. So I can imagine how hard it would be to evacuate an American city if such a thing happened (especially if the gravity of the situation had been hidden from the people) but people in the Soviet Union might have been able to accept the situation more easily. I'm guessing they wouldn't let people take their own cars to leave because they'd been contaminated and had to be left within the danger zone.
@@Wanda711right plus it would’ve ended up like fukushima… had a friend there and they tried to leave but the traffic jammed to the point that there was no point…
I used to be a physicist, and now I’m a doctor. So you could say that I’m fairly knowledgeable about this type of situation. I have studied what happened at Chernobyl in quite a bit of detail. Radiation is a bit more complex than it is generally portrayed. The gun with bullets analogy is a good one, but it does not properly communicate the efffects of range and shielding. This is very relevant to decontamination. In this analogy, it is the radioactive material itself that is the gun. Decontamination removes radioactive material from your skin, clothing, hair, etc. If you have a radioactive isotope on your gloves. It’s firing bullets at your body from close range until you get that material or those gloves away from you. every hit is causing damage to your cells and DNA. You cannot decontaminate the damage that is already done. it is particularly problematic if the radio isotope gets inside the body. This is because your skin is a very effective shield against the most damaging types of radiation. But if you’ve breathed in particles of radioisotope or swallowed them they are just sitting there, blasting you from the inside. And there’s no way to get them out. this concept under lies the importance of iodine as a preventive measure. Your thyroid gland uses iodine to produce thyroid hormone. The chemical reactions that do this cannot distinguish radioactive iodine, which is found in nuclear reactors, from regular iodine that is safe to ingest. If you ingest, radioactive iodine, your thyroid gland will store large quantities of it. There it will sit,, blasting away at your cells, eventually causing thyroid cancer or other types of cancer. If you can flood the thyroid with non-radioactive iodine, the storage will max out and your body will hold onto far less radioactive iodine. This has an important effect, but it is very limited. It really only decreases your chances of getting thyroid cancer or leukemia in a few years. Iodine does not reduce any of the other damaging effects of radiation. And it has absolutely no effect on acute radiation illness. I think this also important to point out that a long half life actually makes the radioactive material less dangerous. An isotope with a short half life is a machine gun firing bullets like crazy until it runs out in a few days or weeks. A long half life isotope is firing far fewer bullets but over a long time. The former is much more dangerous. The latter is less dangerous, but can make an area unsafe for a very long time.
Jesus. Thank you for explaining in greater detail about the effects of exposure to high radiation. Speculation and tales of horror accomplish nothing, as the science is sound. Unfortunately Chernobyl became the example of what can happen with poor equipment and management. I'm still freaked out but giving facts helps to put everything in context. Cheers
To expand, iodine-131 is an important fission product, with a half-life of 8 days. Which makes it dangerous in the short term, but on the bright side the reactor is no longer making any more of it, so within a few months it'll be gone. During that period, the iodine pills keep your thyroid from absorbing whatever I-131 you ingest, so it goes in the body and quickly out again.
Very much correct all the 28 deaths from ARS besides Degatryenko and Kurguz had extremely low thyroid doses, but it didn’t matter when it came to their outcome.
Yup, I think the show is trying to present the story and events with the less knowledge we had about radiation at the time. Some people thought if you were exposed to radiation, you would become radioactive and contaminate others, which we now know is not true, if, as you explained, if was only surface contaminants and you have been properly decontaminated. The problem I've seen with this is, people watching it today, won't do any additional research, and believe some of the old incorrect assumptions.
I remember 1986 very well. "Where does the wind blow from?" "Is it blowing from the east?" "Stay inside." "Don't go out, if it rains! The rain is carrying fallout." "Keep the windows closed!" "Leave your shoes at the door - don't drag the fallout inside." The sand of kids' playgrounds being dug out, to later be replaced by uncontaminated sand. The vegetables and fruits of the gardens being harvested, only to get destroyed. “Don’t go hunting. If you are a professional hunter/forester and you have to hunt, then don’t eat what you hunt.” "Mushrooms store radioactive cesium. Don't pick them. Don't eat them." On the day, the news broke, students were initially held back at school _(while the teachers received their instructions),_ then got told to return home: "as quickly and directly as possible - no detours, no unnecessary stops. If someone gets picked up by their parents, ask them if they can take another _(schoolbussed)_ kid, who lives nearby, with them." Later on, students were kept inside during the breaks.
Not so fun fact: The clothes scene was quite accurate; in real life the firefighters clothes are still lying in the basement of Pripyat Hospital, long abandonded and still emitting radiation after decades.
Yeah. Although the general areas have seen a great reduction in radioactivity over the years, the hospital basement is still off limits to visitors to this day. It remains one of the only places where exposure for a short amount of time is fatal.
Despite that, some of them were stolen, including a helmet. Lots of bloggers made videos there illegally, harming themselves and slightly spreading the contamination. That's why Ukraine sealed off that basement 3-4 years ago.
My mom's parents had a vegetable garden in the east of the Netherlands, 1600km's from Chernobyl. Had to all be cleared off and thrown away after this happend.
My country was part of the USSR back then, the people here were only told to wash the vegetables and fruits thoroughly. Thats it... So they ate these vegetables and fruits...
There was a LOT of mushrooms during summer and autumn of that year due to the accident. Czechs are prolific mushroom gatherers so naturally they didn't give an F and went ham on collecting. That's the only thing my parents ever talked about regarding Chernobyl lol.
and my country was in under communist regime in eastern europe and no one told us anything for months. Not only that, the government organized mandatory marches on the streets just to prove that everything is alright...
@@vjtheowl6091 My mum told me once the news got out to Czech Republic that they were send home from school and being told to have something to cover their head, if they ever want to get pregnant.
My family is from Wales and they only dropped the last restrictions on the movement of sheep in Snowdonia a decade or two ago, the mountains are some of the wettest regions of the UK so those clouds carrying contamination got dumped on the mountainsides.
Keep in mind, yes some of the finer details are dramatized but this is largely the incident that destroyed the soviet union so it's far from being fiction. At the time, once other countries found out about the exposure it became everyone's business because there was a real risk the entire continent could be affected, so it's safe to say a lot of information was gathered. A lot of the people survived the incident also to tell their story later. In any case, the series will clarify a few of the dramatized elements at the end.
THANK GOD I am from the baltic countries and us being under soviet union was us being occupied for a long f**in time ....maybe seeing this show makes americans understand why NATO support is SO IMPORTANT to us , we dont want to live under Russian terror ever again...my grandparents still say that the day soviet union collapsed was the happiest day in their lives
While Chernobyl did destroy the soviet union, their were plenty in power in denial. All that changed, when the Armenian earthquake in 1988 made even the deniers recognise it was done.
Maybe I missed you all taking about it, but the actor who plays the main scientist is Jared Harris- the son of Richard Harris, the original Dumbledore’s son.
My Polish mother told me that people behind the Iron Curtain were scared at the same time, but on the other hand, they didn't know what was happening; there were no details. She told me that at her school, the nurse kept giving them iodine, which caused many children to vomit. My dad was doing his military service at the time and said he didn't even remember this situation because they hid everything from them; he only found out about it after he was on leave.
You got it wrong at the start. Minsk is in Belarus and Chernobly is in Ukraine and what you seen in the last episode was Prypiat the city near Chernobyl. Minsk is 342 km (242 miles) far from Chernobyl
Another thing reacters miss is that it is 8 MILLI-roentgen - 8 one thousandths of a roentgen, but their equipment is that sensitive since they work around radioactivity.
The moment the 3 plant workers volunteer is the first scene that makes me cry(the dog running after the bus makes my eyes water), that is bravery, for bravery is not the absence of fear but deciding that something else is more important and acting anyway. I aspire to be like that, if I were ever in a situation that required that much bravery, I hope I’ll be able to rise to the occasion. This show made me cry many times and I can already see the effect it is having on Oak.
Fortunately it turned out to not be so bad down there and in reality these 3 men survived, with 2 of them still being alive (or at least they were as of 2019, it's hard to find more up to date info on them) and the third one passing away in 2005. They used their real names in the show so you can look them up yourself.
@@tocaamerillo431 Yes! I knew that already when I first saw the show, it is not the idea they could die that made me tear up, but rather the courage portrayed. The willingness to sacrifice oneself for others.
My mom was born and raised in the northern part of Romania, few kilometers away from the border with Ukraine. She developed problems with her thyroid gland around the same time Chernobyl happened. Never discussed this with her, but I always assumed it was because of this.
I was a kid in the 80s all the way down to Italy. Lots of my female friends have problems with their thyroids today and have to take meds for it. Docs believe it's related to Chernobyl since the cases of thyroids problems is much lower in later generations.
Anybody watching the show for the first time should know that they have a companion podcast where the lead writer explains plot and decisions made to tell the story for each episode. Highly recommend if you're interested in more context and history while watching the show.
You were wondering about the part where they removed the firefighters clothes and dumped them in the basement. That was accurate. The pile of clothes is still there in the hospital basement, and they're still too radioactive to be handled. From what I understand, because Pripyat is a popular vlogger destination, they had to seal off all but one staircase to the hospital, accessible only via official tours for pre-approved visitors (like scientists). People were illegally and dangerously breaking into the hospital to get viral footage, and someone stole one of the firemen's boot. Yup. Some people work hard to get their Darwin Award.
It's sad to say, but the current situation in Ukraine probably saved a lot of lives, without a steady string of morons continually stealing radioactive items from the site.
do mind that at the start they said 8 milliroentgen, not roentgen so the reading was 0.008 roentgen, but it's still concerning that they were able to detect anything at all
I worked as a Nurse in the Shetland Isles off the north coast of Scotland in the late nineties. They were building a new cancer clinic to cope with the spike of cases 11 years after Chernobyl.
Potential spoiler about people going in at the end. . . . . . . What is very interesting is that although they thought they were certainly going to die, those 3 men who went inside to open the valves survived. Two of them are still alive. It turned out that water was a great isolator against the radiation.
The scientist Ulana, that woman that shows up, is a character they created for the show. She represents a huge group of scientists that they obviously couldn't fit in the show, so they made them into one character
The reading at the research institute at the beginning was 8 MILLI-roentgen, not 8 roentgen. That is 0.008 roentgen, and that was enough to set off their alarms and get them to begin taking iodine. The first power plant that Ulana called was concerned about their own reading of 4 milli-roentgen (0.004 roentgen). Pikalov's reading of 15,000 roentgen would be 15,000,000 milli-roentgen.
I remember this back when I was in school in East Germany. The word learned about the incident almost one week later. So the nucelar cloud reached a few countries in Europe by then. We were not allowed to drink milk or eat vegatables or fruits from our garden. And many had to get Iodine pills. (me too) It was scary. I was 15 at the time.
Amazing fact those 3 people outlived a week and had healthy lives ahead Borys Baranov died in 2005, while Valery Bespalov and Oleksiy Ananenko, both chief engineers of one of the reactor sections, are still alive and live in the capital, Kiev.
Usually people spoil this fact after the 3rd episode (which btw. turns out from the epilogue). Congratulations for beating the record and spoiling even the next episode.
it gives an insight to just how many lives a small amount of people connected to this disaster saved. To think those who went into the water to drain the tanks saved millions of lives each. No matter the country you come from or the countries involved. Rarely have more nobile act been made by anyone than those workers & miners who saved large parts of Europe from the toxic impact of Chernobyl.
Hold your horses and don’t get too anxious… all your questions, particularly of how much dramatisation and elaboration has been used will be - pretty much - completely answered in episode #5. After you’ve seen the whole series you should check out some of the RUclips videos on doctors’ and nuclear physicists’ assessments of the actuality of the series. Perhaps do an ‘end-of-series reaction’ to some of these videos.
It happened when I was 7. We live in a neighbouring country. I still remember tv news saying "Don't sit on the grass, outside" and for a while they gave us iodine pills in school. I didn't know what it was for back then, but my parents were provided with gas masks and probably most of the people did. My mom just got pregnant and she said she was so worried. Of course, in our country, we were told about the explosion much later.
That feeling when you were born in 2001 270 kilometers from this tragedy. And you even have a "Child who suffered from the Chernobyl disaster" certificate. Thanks guys for your honest reactions.
Exactly. Most people miss that. Radiation didn't take down the helicopter. It hit the cable on the crane. It took three days to evacuate Pripyat but up to months to get all the people out in rural areas.
Interesting…it looked like the radiation was blasting up so hard, that it literally ate through the metal propeller. The cables seemed to be too far away from the chopper to interfere…
The lady scientist in the series is a representation of a whole group of scientists. They just condense their actions and contributions into this fictional character. Thanks for the content!
There is a podcast with the producer that was released by HBO with one for each episode. Pretty sure they are on youtube, you guys would have a listen after each episode before the next one, you won’t believe the amount if stuff they had to leave out because it was too much or it didn’t seem believable. Some truly disturbing details that couldn’t be put in the episodes because it was just too much for tv
The look on Boris Shcherbina's face when it hits him gets me every time. Also when Shcherbina states about being detected in Sweden. That HITS because if I remember correctly Stellan Skarsgård was IN Sweden at the time. He remembers some of this from that perspective.
I live in Denmark, and I was 10 when this happened. The cloud of radiation didn't travel over Denmark, but I remember my parents being really worried about that happening. And there was a lot about being careful when playing outside, especially when it was raining, and being very conscious about where your vegetables were grown for a few years after... Countries affected by the cloud had it worse, but it was still pretty scary. Watching this episode made me nauseous imagening how much worse it could have been. I didn't know about that part.
Important to note just because it’s so bizarre to think about now, but before this Craig Mazin was only known for writing spoof movies. Him pulling this masterpiece out of the bag came out of nowhere
A lot of creative people have accomplished something where everything just comes together in a way they never did before in their careers - oftentimes this never repeats again in their career and this one particular accomplishment becomes their master epos. A lot of people in the music industry become one-hit wonders. They make this one song which is amazing, and the rest of their catalogue is just...meh, at best.
I remember when this happened, growing up in Sweden. I was too young to understand exactly what was going on, but I do remember not being allowed to be outside any more than necessary, and that we couldn't eat wild game meat or freshly picked mushrooms and so on. My mom's vegetable plot, our plum tree... it all had to go. Looking back, it feels so bizarre that I was alive when this shit went down.
I remember reading ppl's comments about óh, that's not real, that's fictional, that's just being dramatized, etc' without necessary context and it kinda distracting. So I decided to listen to the Chernobyl podcast by Craig Mazin to really get the full context. And I'm glad I did. Bear in mind, Craig said that it is a show about the PEOPLE who have gone through this disaster. About their bravery & sacrifice. Dramatization sometimes needed due to technical reasons or to better deliver the message to the audience. It shouldn't restrict how you react to it (like MQ said basically). Also, pls note that when they create a scene or character that might not be real, usually it is done to deliver the essence of real accounts from real ppl. For instance, Craig said he was really moved by the acts of the plant workers. Once they realized what's going on (they know enough to understand the risks) there's a worker who decided to go home, get some sleep, then go back to work to do whatever they can. And I think we can see that from scenes like how the workers still try to find their colleagues or do something, and how Ulana drive to Chernobyl. I had chills listening to the podcast, and I love listening Craig's explanation on how he build the structure of the story and why. Looking forward to the rest of the reactions!
The Ukrainian government actualy had to block the entrance to the hospital basement with cement around 2017 because it's radioactive AF and people kept going in to "check if it's true" - and getting sick.
Pls make sure to check out the Chernobyl real footage vs TV show comparison after you finished watching the episodes. It has some very interesting stuff and shows how good they were in keeping it looking authentic.
This show is so well done that people have created side by side videos of show footage vs. real footage released MANY years later and it’s as impressive as it is chilling.
My junior school teacher told us a story of how she and her classmates were forced to attend a Labor Day parade in Kyiv (just 51 miles away from Chornobyl) on the 5th day after catastrophe. 2000 people were forced to march through Khreshchatyk street where background radiation exceeded the norm in 500 times for 1,5 hours because the party needed their propaganda parade.
The really sad part is that this isn't a cautionary tale of nuclear power (which is actually really safe), but rather what happens when a government values power more than its people.
I would say it's less about a government wanting power and a government system which values control and obedience to uniformity over truth and competency. The Soviet Union's Marxist society promoted party loyalists over skill. And they had spies throughout the population to make sure no one got out of line with the party message. It's a faulty system that will inevitably lead to disaster. We are beginning to see the signs of this ideology in US universities now. We live in a "post-truth" society in America where saying what everyone agrees you are supposed to say will get you rewarded while saying facts will get your career destroyed. That's how you end up with Dyatlov and those two party hacks who tried to find someone to blame instead of finding the truth.
Nuclear power is really safe...if humans were infallible. Sadly, we are not. Complacency always creeps in sooner or later. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. Mistakes were made. In design. In training. In interpreting events. And in decision making. Humans are fallible, and nuclear can be unforgiving.
@@dereka5017 it is safe but in Chernobyl’s case the flaw was in manufacturing of the reactor not what any employees did. The test they did is a test done all the time but that night it failed because of a defect when the reactor was built. And the delusion from many higher ups didn’t help the situation either.
I love your reactions and commentary on this incredible series. Regarding which characters in the show are based on real people, the majority of the main featured characters definitely are all real people. At the end of the final episode there is a montage of real footage of the real people involved and what happened to them. It is very moving. The main character that isn't based on a real life person is Ulana Khomyuk, the scientist played by played by Emily Watson,. Her character represents all the many scientists who investigated the accident, many risking their own lives in the process by doing so. She is a tribute to all those brave scientists who were determined to get to the truth. It's explained about her character in the montage at the end . I was living with my mother in Devon in South-West England in 1986 when the disaster happened. I remember in the following weeks and months hearing all the news about how the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl were being carried by the winds right across Europe. In particular I remember one morning going with my mother into our garden and being shocked when we looked at our pond. There was a layer of almost luminous looking greyish-white dust on the surface of the water! It looked so strange and we immediately wondered if it could be radioactive dust from Chernobyl and it was confirmed a short while later that it was indeed just that. Lots of other people saw the same thing on their garden ponds and other surfaces. This is in England, over a thousand miles from Chernobyl and we were receiving the radioactive dust from there! That's how far it spread. I can only imagine how bad it was the closer you got to Chernobyl. Austria got it particularly bad. The wind carried a lot of radiation over Austria which was then brought to the ground by some very heavy rainfall they were having at the time. No food crops could be eaten. Mum and I went on holiday to Austria later that year and we were surprised that wherever we ate, whether it was in the hotel or in any cafes or restaurants no vegetables were served with any meals, anywhere, being they'd all been contaminated from the radiation! WE didn't realise how badly they'd been affected there! And now the area around Chernobyl is more radioactive again because of the Russian soldiers who temporarily invaded and took over the place during the early days of the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Soldiers were basically setting up camp and digging trenches in the soil, even in the so-called "Red Forest," which is the most radioactive area of the Exclusion Zone. As a result a lot of these soldiers have had radiation poisoning, that's how radioactive the area still is! Belarus has it's own Exclusion Zone as, despite Chernobyl being in Ukraine, it's right near the border with Belarus and during the immediate aftermath of the accident the winds carried the intense radiation Northwards right across Belarus, much more than in other directions so Belarus got the worst of it! Poor people. Anyway, I can't wait for your reactions to the following 3 episodes.
i remember, back then we watched the weather news at evening if we need to go to school at next day. Everyone talked about the cloud is on way to west. But the wind pushed it north - west. We in Switzerland had to go at school. In Germany north from us didnt. Als Child i didnt understand why we had to go. later i was shocked as we learn the true behind this. My Parents protected us not be in panic and i think they didnt know how it will end. What they wanna say to us. We stayed in, only out for school. Few years later the german wall falls.. the 80s. Look back with the show was a journey . Great see your reactions.. your memorys about it. Greetings from Switzerland
Once he realizes what’s going on, Scherbina becomes such an amazing character. When he turned around and started questioning the two original idiots I was so damn excited
I can't remember which science show I was watching, but it was one of those "nuclear scientist reacts" to this series. He said one of the biggest dramatizations was the immediate red burns we have seen on the hands and faces of infected people wouldn't be that fast -- they would know there was something wrong, but it wouldn't be that visible that fast. Same for a lot of the immediate injuries, they would happen eventually but it wasn't within seconds. He otherwise gave it a pass for the majority of the information shown.
The one thing I don't like in the show is making it seem like the fireman, after being washed and given clean clothes, is still a danger to anyone around him. People like those evacuated from Fukushima face enough fear as it is.
Im Born in Berlin ( Germany ) at the same year my mom told me that the confinement didnt happen only in Frankfurt but in all Germany everything eatable and animals cows, chickens, pigs everything got removed and killed. The confinement was really long and it was horrible my mom told me that the Germans even worked on a project with them but it failed because at that time there were not as advanced as we are today… I love this series and I’m gonna look it up with my mom eventually soon. thx for your reaction content about this!!! 🤘🏻👩🏻🚀🤘🏻
The ending of this episode is the only tv show or movie thats ever given me a panic attack watching it. The water, dosimeter screaming, the heavy breathing and then the lights go out 😱😱😱 😂🤣😂 Fantastic show!!! 😊
Keep an eye out for the young Pavel. The actor caught my eye in one movie prior to this and on seeing this tipped him to be a future power house, Hardy/Murphy/Poulter. He has not disappointed and glad to see all the praise he has got in the last few years.
After getting home from work around 10pm and meant to watch the first episode before bed, but it was so gripping and intriguing I had to watch the next one, then I felt like that after the next and ended up binging the entire series in one night and got to bed around 4am lol.
I went to Prypjat couple of years ago on a tour..and even today it is scary as fck...If you want to have a town from a horror movie..this is about it..the silence and the abandoned buildings and the fact that you know there are areas that will outright kill you and you cannot see it coming is REALLY scary..so the episode covers that quite well
I always loved the nobility of the Soviet general who volunteered to do the testing. If you research him, you'll find that he also survived the Battle of Stalingrad.
I don’t want to spoil the show for you guys but the helicopter scene is real. A chopper crashed because they got too close to the smoke and crashed into the crane. After episode 5 stay for the credits all your questions will be answered.
Good catch about the numbers on the buildings!! I hadn't noticed that. I think, too, the nature of the USSR was so top-down and totalitarian and had been that way for 50, 60 years at that point - hell, the Czarist times were the same way - and that stretched back centuries, and so the relationship to the government is just different. Obedience has been trained/drilled into you. A soldier shows up, tells you to come with, you go. so when you need to herd people onto busses - or you need to draft them into service - it's a much simpler process than in more democratic individualistic systems. It's been really amazing watching the show along with you guys. I always love your thoughtful reactions and was really excited you all decided to try this one.
I live in Scotland. Two months after the explosion, radiation levels in topsoil in the south-west of the country were discovered to be 4,000 times higher than normal, To this day there are still some agricultural policies in place because of radiation levels caused by Chernobyl. Also, a research study showed a huge spike in unexplained infant mortality in Britain in the three years following the Chernobyl disaster. Studies in Scotland and Wales found links between the Chernobyl accident and increases in infant leukaemia
Same story here, parents are from Wales and I remember growing up being told about the restrictions, I think the last restrictions for lamb for human consumption got lifted only a decade ago.
Idk if anyone mentioned this as yet, but Craig Mazin created a podcast for each episode to give behind the scenes info regarding dramatization and what documents/books he used for evidence. I think it’s really helpful to accompany after each watch and would answer some of your guys’ questions:)
Thank you for choosing to react to one of the greatest tv shows in my opinion, the most suspenseful at least. I also watched the series when it came out, so it's good to rewatch with you guys commenting on it, it's alway great to see different prespectives and takes. And yesss definitely want that comparison video! I think this series definitely deserve one
Yeah, I am from Poland, and back then Poland was under Soviet ocupation and we too was in the dark about this - thank God or Mother nature, that cloud pass over Poland at night, when most pople were at homes.
The radiation injuries were actually UNDERSTATED in the show as crazy as that it. There was one guy, a firefighter, who, all the skin from his waist down, "degloved" in the hospital. Fell down like a pair of pants when he was stood up so the doctors could change his hospital gown.
I’ve seen this before and don’t remember all of it but that shot that ends this episode when the lights go out will stay with me forever. Incredible show.
Absolutely love that you’re doing this show, been in my top 5 since it aired, its brilliant start to finish and a brilliant commentary on how people will always lie to cover their own back
The professor who joined them from the university, Professor Khomyuk, is a fictional character, but she was created to symbolize the many scientists who were helping Legasov and Shcherbina at Chernobyl. The filmmakers decided to condense them all into one character to avoid over complicating the scenes with dozens of scientists.
The decon bath/shower they give the vehicle and the general is to remove dust and other contaminants. It won't decon him from the radiation but it prevents radioactive contaminants being spread by him
The room where they're throwing all the firefighter turnout gear is an actual room that actually exists the equipment is still in there in the basement of that hospital
The evacuation: The directive was to pack for the weekend. The State basically controlled the narrative that it was just a precaution, so they certainly wouldn't have told people it was permanent.
Well said Mason Quinn and Oak, the series does a wonderful job at showing the heroism of so many people. Even though the show is dramatized, many of the events, actions and people shown are real. The "everyman stepping up" moments seen so frequently throughout this series never fail to move me, especially because they really happened. It's also incredible to see what could have been after the initial explosion (basically the end of Europe as we know it) and the steps the Soviets took to prevent it, gotta give them props for that.
Jared Harris (who played Professor Legasov) is an amazingly accomplished actor. You see him tell volumes just with his facial expressions and posture. Look at his performance here, and compare with his appearance in The Expanse - he's completely unrecognizable. A true actor's actor. Masterclass performances, both of them.
Don't know if you guys saw it or not, but one of the documentaries said that they did evacuate the town like in the show but since they didn't tell people what was happening, there was little to no panic. That they told everyone to pack for a few days, it was completely normal and routine, and not to bring pets. I'm watching it new along with you guys so I haven't seen the rest of the episodes yet so I'm not sure if this is addressed later. Apparently a government like USSR could only work if they conditioned people to have absolute faith in their government and that they were living in a utopia. So if officials said everything was fine, people largely didn't question it.
I think 'heavily dramatized' is a way to negate that this is an extremely good encapsulation of events. Some things are compressed or out of order, but this is absolutely no different than any other non-fiction series of this genre. It's just one of the best handled. I'll only point out one case of compressed info, because I think they actually cover most of it that you need to know at the end of the last episode: The helicopter breaking apart was actually something that happened, but wasn't because it went over the radiation. It hit the cable of a crane, the blades getting caught, and it just buckled (in the same way, as depicted in real footage) under the stress. Compressing it into the moment they did simply helped visualize the real danger of getting too close to the radiation in the helicopters. When you're done with the series, you should look up and react to side-by-side comparisons of scenes shot on the show, and real footage released of what happened during the cleanup efforts. It helps with understanding what might have been dramatized, and what was 100% legit. EDIT: I meant the second episode. lol also, it's worth noting now that these people in Pripyat were more aware of what the dangers were, even though they didn't know how bad the explosion itself was. Their children were being educated in nuclear power management, and those children today still manage Chernobyl.
im part of the Swiss NBC unit in the military, stationed at Spiez National Defence Laboratory. the door guard into the building is about 70 years old, he had been working there since the late 1970s and was at Spiez when Chernobyl happened. Western countries were scrambling to take air samples all over europe and Spiez was one of the Laboratories doing testings. he said every 2 minutes a helicopter would arrive with yellow boxes that they would dump at the helipad site. these boxes contained air samples from Switzerland and Austria. there were photographs of mountains of these boxes lined next to the building awaiting testing, this went on for several weeks. To give you an example just how bad Chernobyl was. it was illegal to pick mushrooms in Switzerland for 5 years after the disaster because they basically soak up radiation. Switzerland is 2200km (1300 miles) away from Chernobyl
Interesting fact : the 3 divers at the end of the episode actually survived . Only the third one, Boris Baranov, passed away in 2005 of a heart attack. You can read an article with the interview of Ananenko, one of the divers ,who explains what happened on that day.
About evacuation: I heard that people were told that they would be able to return to their homes soon. That probably prevented the delays in gathering everyone. People left the town with most essential belongings not knowing that they would never come back.
That whole sequence in the tunnels with the water, the ticking geigercounters and lights going out was the most claustrophobic thing I've ever seen in my life.
I love the contrast they made with the old man's character between the speech scene in the first episode and the evacuation in this one. In the first, the man rejected the soldier's help when he stood up, but in this episode he took the hand of the soldier to get in the bus. I think this character represented the old soviet nation and how this event showed its weakness and loss of power.
I still remember as a young kid we had to throw away all the vegetables that grew in the garden and turn everything over to be able to safely grow something in the soil again. to this day there are areas where i live in which you should not eat the mushrooms growing in the woods (where the upper soil is still the same) because of the radioactive isotopes in the ground. (Austria)
You can take a tour of parts of the city close to Chernobyl (named Pripyat), and in the basement of the hospital all the firefighters' clothing is still there. Geiger counters go crazy in that room.
The scen where medics put all cloths in basmen is a real look. Becouse here in Europe are many tour in Cherbonyl that you can go with big groups, and those cloths are still in this hospital basement but still with such a huge radiation that you can stay there only for seconds.
![[4K] Watch SpaceX Catch A Starship Rocket From Space!!! #IFT5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIKI7y3DTXk/mqdefault.jpg)
Another chilling episode here. Hildur Guðnadóttir is crushing this score too! What was your reaction? What did we miss?
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I was wondering why you used my cover of joker… I didn’t realise she did Chernobyl too 🤯
Hey bad medicine, want to correct you on saying season 1! there is only 5 episodes total, it not a season
@@EpicTrailerMusicUK it's for Hildur 😁🤙🤙 it was perfect timing for you to release that one 👍
Watch jawan pls!!!
Always funny watching RUclipsrs having seen the episode pretending like they forgot everything. Fair play for calling it out I bet most don’t.
The military general that strapped the dosimeter to a truck and drove the truck into the reactor compound is General Vladimir Pikalov. Amazing man!He had survived the WWII battles of Moscow and Stalingrad, and he became an expert in cleaning up hazardous waste. He actually handled the decommissioning of some WWI German gas weapons and he helped clean up a few toxic spills in Cuba over the years. When he arrived at Chernobyl, he made his young driver get out and stay behind while he drove himself the rest of the way in. He got there the afternoon after the explosion and knew it was BAD, despite what they were saying. He is recorded as telling his driver, “You have yet to become a father,” and that’s why he wouldn’t let the driver keep going. When it came to driving the truck, his officers organized two young soldiers to go with him, but he wouldn’t let them go, either.
Pikalov was the man who mapped the more dangerous areas around Chernobyl, found most of the ejected core fragments, helped get the robots, etc. His officers went on record as saying he slept two hours every night and worked the rest of the time. He went partially blind from radiation exposure by the time he was finished.
This is a horrific tragedy for so many, but it also shows us how heroic some people can be.
Thank you! I have always wondered what happened to him!
@thunderatigervideo Also Pikalov decided to go because as a Hero of the Soviet Union he knew nobody could doubt his word, even Gorbachev could not tell him he was lying.
@@isabelsilva62023 He was made Hero of the Soviet Union for his work at Chernobyl. He wasn't a HoSU when he made the reconnaissance.
@@bgdancer100 His reasoning was that politicians could reject the word of a private, but they would hear the voice of a general. ; )
Thanks for typing this out. Heroes should have their legends told.
Love watching reactors reacting to an exploded reactor
😂
xD
Reactception
Bro💀
Reacting to a reactor after it experienced uncontrolled reactions?
The thing about the General Pikalov is two folded. One is that he did truly not want to sent one of his men do do something if he was not ready to do it himself. And the second one is that if he sent a normal soldier to do the reading the people in " charge" could claim that the soldier don't know what he was doing and then claim the reading as false. However nobody would dare to do that to a General of Pikalov's status.
The firefighters clothes are still in that basement and dangerously radioactive to this day.
Not dangerous.
@@elric5371 Likely not mortal... but still dangerous. If you want a normal life.
@@marmichaud what is your definition of dangerous? For example 16 rem (equivalent of 1,600 chest x rays) increases your risk of cancer by 1%. Those clothes will not give you that dose unless you decided to camp their for a few days.
@@elric5371 Anatoly Dyatlov, is that you? 🧐
@@benjamingrant3441 shame the show murdered Dyatlov, in reality Dyatlov was a much better person.
Fun fact: The composer, Hildur Guðnadóttir, incorporated sounds recorded from a nuclear reactor into the score. She won an Emmy and Golden Globe for Chernobyl. After this she composed the score for Joker which won her an Oscar, becoming the first Icelander to win an Oscar. She is set to return for the Joker sequel
Her score on the joker was fantastic
That's really cool, two projects in a row and you get the Triple Crown
Stoltur Íslendingur!
Yea it would’ve been kinda nice if we could’ve heard SOME of the music 🙄
"Then I'll do it myself..." - look up General Pikalov. Absolute legend from WW2 all the way until his eventual death.
for every snivelling communist bureaucrat there are people who step up and do the work and don't let BS get in the way of doing the right thing. they are heroes and they probably saved the world.This happened right before my 10'th birthday and I remember it being in the news even here in Canada, If the people like Pikalov hadn't done what they did my 10'th birthday would have been drastically different.
He was absolutely badass ,He took part in the Second World War, seeing combat with the Western, Don, Stalingrad, the Steppe and the 2nd Belorussian fronts, participating in the liberation of Kursk, Minsk, Poznań, and as well as the storming of Berlin. He was wounded three times. He fought in artillery as a platoon commander, battery commander, assistant chief of staff of artillery division on reconnaissance, adjutant of a senior artillery division, reconnaissance officer of the regiment. He was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union, for his role in the containment of the fallout from the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Plus, given his rank, they wouldn't be able to dismiss his findings. Like they would to a private or to the other people who worked for them. Good luck saying General Pikalov is mistaken or delusional.
Pikalov’s depiction is one of the things the series gets exactly right.
@@kvoltti You say Canada but I was a lil kid in Italy when this happened. Europe would be a much different place if people did not step up and prevented a total meltdown.
They dramatized the immediate visible effects of radiation exposure, but I think it was a good call. Since the initial damage is usually invisible (except in the most extreme cases) it might have been hard for viewers to understand the damage that is occurring.
I agree with this! It's a great visual aid to show how much damage is done right away, even if in reality it's not visible that fast.
Yeah, it certainly conveys to the audience that it's bad, and there was severe damage in their bodies. I did read an article where a nurse that cared for some of the victims was interviewed and she said, in reference to the appearances of the bodies that it looked like the director just turned the art department loose, and that the people didn't look like that.
If I remember correcly it was reported that at least one dude who looked right into the core changed eye colour from the radiation.
I think the core complaints about dramatization are from the "child absorbing radiation" and the "bridge of death" points which aren't that grounded in actual facts.
I seem to have heard testimonies from ancient firefighters talking about a rainbow-colored fire
Something like this does not need "dramatization." They adapted it for tv, sure, but I'm also sure there were horrors in real life that were not included in the show.
About the evacuation: the people were told that the evacuation was temporary. They were told to grab some basic necessities and leave in an orderly fashion and that this was temporary and for their safety. That's why they left so calmly and left basically everything behind. The people of Pripyat expected to go back home soon, but they never did...
It occurred to me also that this was still the Cold War, though it was coming to an end. People in the Soviet Union had been on the watch for an attack from the US for decades; it might have been easier to just order them to board buses and leave because they'd always thought that some sort of attack could happen and they'd have to evacuate. The young guy at the nuclear research facility immediately wondered if the Americans had attacked when their radiation alarms went off. Similarly, one of the guys at Chernobyl in the immediate aftermath of the explosion - he was on the floor and when a co-worker came up to him he asked if they'd been bombed. So I can imagine how hard it would be to evacuate an American city if such a thing happened (especially if the gravity of the situation had been hidden from the people) but people in the Soviet Union might have been able to accept the situation more easily.
I'm guessing they wouldn't let people take their own cars to leave because they'd been contaminated and had to be left within the danger zone.
@@Wanda711right plus it would’ve ended up like fukushima… had a friend there and they tried to leave but the traffic jammed to the point that there was no point…
@@Wanda711also, three mile island
I used to be a physicist, and now I’m a doctor. So you could say that I’m fairly knowledgeable about this type of situation. I have studied what happened at Chernobyl in quite a bit of detail. Radiation is a bit more complex than it is generally portrayed. The gun with bullets analogy is a good one, but it does not properly communicate the efffects of range and shielding. This is very relevant to decontamination. In this analogy, it is the radioactive material itself that is the gun. Decontamination removes radioactive material from your skin, clothing, hair, etc. If you have a radioactive isotope on your gloves. It’s firing bullets at your body from close range until you get that material or those gloves away from you. every hit is causing damage to your cells and DNA. You cannot decontaminate the damage that is already done. it is particularly problematic if the radio isotope gets inside the body. This is because your skin is a very effective shield against the most damaging types of radiation. But if you’ve breathed in particles of radioisotope or swallowed them they are just sitting there, blasting you from the inside. And there’s no way to get them out. this concept under lies the importance of iodine as a preventive measure. Your thyroid gland uses iodine to produce thyroid hormone. The chemical reactions that do this cannot distinguish radioactive iodine, which is found in nuclear reactors, from regular iodine that is safe to ingest. If you ingest, radioactive iodine, your thyroid gland will store large quantities of it. There it will sit,, blasting away at your cells, eventually causing thyroid cancer or other types of cancer. If you can flood the thyroid with non-radioactive iodine, the storage will max out and your body will hold onto far less radioactive iodine. This has an important effect, but it is very limited. It really only decreases your chances of getting thyroid cancer or leukemia in a few years. Iodine does not reduce any of the other damaging effects of radiation. And it has absolutely no effect on acute radiation illness. I think this also important to point out that a long half life actually makes the radioactive material less dangerous. An isotope with a short half life is a machine gun firing bullets like crazy until it runs out in a few days or weeks. A long half life isotope is firing far fewer bullets but over a long time. The former is much more dangerous. The latter is less dangerous, but can make an area unsafe for a very long time.
Jesus. Thank you for explaining in greater detail about the effects of exposure to high radiation. Speculation and tales of horror accomplish nothing, as the science is sound. Unfortunately Chernobyl became the example of what can happen with poor equipment and management. I'm still freaked out but giving facts helps to put everything in context. Cheers
I don't have to tell you, but you're still a physicist!! Lol ❤
To expand, iodine-131 is an important fission product, with a half-life of 8 days. Which makes it dangerous in the short term, but on the bright side the reactor is no longer making any more of it, so within a few months it'll be gone. During that period, the iodine pills keep your thyroid from absorbing whatever I-131 you ingest, so it goes in the body and quickly out again.
Very much correct all the 28 deaths from ARS besides Degatryenko and Kurguz had extremely low thyroid doses, but it didn’t matter when it came to their outcome.
Yup, I think the show is trying to present the story and events with the less knowledge we had about radiation at the time. Some people thought if you were exposed to radiation, you would become radioactive and contaminate others, which we now know is not true, if, as you explained, if was only surface contaminants and you have been properly decontaminated. The problem I've seen with this is, people watching it today, won't do any additional research, and believe some of the old incorrect assumptions.
I remember 1986 very well.
"Where does the wind blow from?"
"Is it blowing from the east?"
"Stay inside."
"Don't go out, if it rains! The rain is carrying fallout."
"Keep the windows closed!"
"Leave your shoes at the door - don't drag the fallout inside."
The sand of kids' playgrounds being dug out, to later be replaced by uncontaminated sand.
The vegetables and fruits of the gardens being harvested, only to get destroyed.
“Don’t go hunting. If you are a professional hunter/forester and you have to hunt, then don’t eat what you hunt.”
"Mushrooms store radioactive cesium. Don't pick them. Don't eat them."
On the day, the news broke, students were initially held back at school _(while the teachers received their instructions),_ then got told to return home: "as quickly and directly as possible - no detours, no unnecessary stops. If someone gets picked up by their parents, ask them if they can take another _(schoolbussed)_ kid, who lives nearby, with them."
Later on, students were kept inside during the breaks.
Not so fun fact: The clothes scene was quite accurate; in real life the firefighters clothes are still lying in the basement of Pripyat Hospital, long abandonded and still emitting radiation after decades.
Yeah. Although the general areas have seen a great reduction in radioactivity over the years, the hospital basement is still off limits to visitors to this day. It remains one of the only places where exposure for a short amount of time is fatal.
youtuber versitasium visited chernobyl and in that clothes room a few years ago and he measured the radiation and it was around 500 iirc
Despite that, some of them were stolen, including a helmet. Lots of bloggers made videos there illegally, harming themselves and slightly spreading the contamination. That's why Ukraine sealed off that basement 3-4 years ago.
Spoiling the end xD
That’s in the credits in episode 5 bro. Why comment it.
My mom's parents had a vegetable garden in the east of the Netherlands, 1600km's from Chernobyl. Had to all be cleared off and thrown away after this happend.
My country was part of the USSR back then, the people here were only told to wash the vegetables and fruits thoroughly. Thats it... So they ate these vegetables and fruits...
There was a LOT of mushrooms during summer and autumn of that year due to the accident. Czechs are prolific mushroom gatherers so naturally they didn't give an F and went ham on collecting. That's the only thing my parents ever talked about regarding Chernobyl lol.
and my country was in under communist regime in eastern europe and no one told us anything for months. Not only that, the government organized mandatory marches on the streets just to prove that everything is alright...
@@vjtheowl6091 My mum told me once the news got out to Czech Republic that they were send home from school and being told to have something to cover their head, if they ever want to get pregnant.
My family is from Wales and they only dropped the last restrictions on the movement of sheep in Snowdonia a decade or two ago, the mountains are some of the wettest regions of the UK so those clouds carrying contamination got dumped on the mountainsides.
Keep in mind, yes some of the finer details are dramatized but this is largely the incident that destroyed the soviet union so it's far from being fiction. At the time, once other countries found out about the exposure it became everyone's business because there was a real risk the entire continent could be affected, so it's safe to say a lot of information was gathered. A lot of the people survived the incident also to tell their story later. In any case, the series will clarify a few of the dramatized elements at the end.
THANK GOD I am from the baltic countries and us being under soviet union was us being occupied for a long f**in time ....maybe seeing this show makes americans understand why NATO support is SO IMPORTANT to us , we dont want to live under Russian terror ever again...my grandparents still say that the day soviet union collapsed was the happiest day in their lives
While Chernobyl did destroy the soviet union, their were plenty in power in denial.
All that changed, when the Armenian earthquake in 1988 made even the deniers recognise it was done.
Maybe I missed you all taking about it, but the actor who plays the main scientist is Jared Harris- the son of Richard Harris, the original Dumbledore’s son.
I knew him from Fringe first... underrated actor for sure
He is also fantastic in *The Expanse.*
he's also great in The Terror
He’s also in “Foundation”
And one version of “tinker tailor solider spy” (I think)
I knew him from The Crown. Excellent actor
My Polish mother told me that people behind the Iron Curtain were scared at the same time, but on the other hand, they didn't know what was happening; there were no details. She told me that at her school, the nurse kept giving them iodine, which caused many children to vomit. My dad was doing his military service at the time and said he didn't even remember this situation because they hid everything from them; he only found out about it after he was on leave.
My mum told me the same exact thing. The information was so curt they didn't know anything about what was going on
You got it wrong at the start. Minsk is in Belarus and Chernobly is in Ukraine and what you seen in the last episode was Prypiat the city near Chernobyl. Minsk is 342 km (242 miles) far from Chernobyl
Another thing reacters miss is that it is 8 MILLI-roentgen - 8 one thousandths of a roentgen, but their equipment is that sensitive since they work around radioactivity.
That was definitely an American moment... lol
The moment the 3 plant workers volunteer is the first scene that makes me cry(the dog running after the bus makes my eyes water), that is bravery, for bravery is not the absence of fear but deciding that something else is more important and acting anyway. I aspire to be like that, if I were ever in a situation that required that much bravery, I hope I’ll be able to rise to the occasion.
This show made me cry many times and I can already see the effect it is having on Oak.
Fortunately it turned out to not be so bad down there and in reality these 3 men survived, with 2 of them still being alive (or at least they were as of 2019, it's hard to find more up to date info on them) and the third one passing away in 2005. They used their real names in the show so you can look them up yourself.
@@tocaamerillo431 Yes! I knew that already when I first saw the show, it is not the idea they could die that made me tear up, but rather the courage portrayed. The willingness to sacrifice oneself for others.
My mom was born and raised in the northern part of Romania, few kilometers away from the border with Ukraine. She developed problems with her thyroid gland around the same time Chernobyl happened. Never discussed this with her, but I always assumed it was because of this.
I was a kid in the 80s all the way down to Italy. Lots of my female friends have problems with their thyroids today and have to take meds for it. Docs believe it's related to Chernobyl since the cases of thyroids problems is much lower in later generations.
Anybody watching the show for the first time should know that they have a companion podcast where the lead writer explains plot and decisions made to tell the story for each episode. Highly recommend if you're interested in more context and history while watching the show.
You were wondering about the part where they removed the firefighters clothes and dumped them in the basement. That was accurate. The pile of clothes is still there in the hospital basement, and they're still too radioactive to be handled.
From what I understand, because Pripyat is a popular vlogger destination, they had to seal off all but one staircase to the hospital, accessible only via official tours for pre-approved visitors (like scientists). People were illegally and dangerously breaking into the hospital to get viral footage, and someone stole one of the firemen's boot.
Yup. Some people work hard to get their Darwin Award.
Good comment, all true
It's sad to say, but the current situation in Ukraine probably saved a lot of lives, without a steady string of morons continually stealing radioactive items from the site.
If they were only endangering themself it would be one thing. But just imagine some idiot carrying that boot on a plane...
@@fipse or selling it on eBay as a "Collectable"
@@fipse I was terrified of that when I first heard of it. I don't know if airport x-ray machines get set off by things like that?
do mind that at the start they said 8 milliroentgen, not roentgen
so the reading was 0.008 roentgen, but it's still concerning that they were able to detect anything at all
When he kept saying it I was getting pissed off
The scene's not shown here but when Legasov said "We are dealing with something that has never occurred on this planet before", chills, every time.
I worked as a Nurse in the Shetland Isles off the north coast of Scotland in the late nineties. They were building a new cancer clinic to cope with the spike of cases 11 years after Chernobyl.
Potential spoiler about people going in at the end.
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What is very interesting is that although they thought they were certainly going to die, those 3 men who went inside to open the valves survived. Two of them are still alive. It turned out that water was a great isolator against the radiation.
wow ty for this fact! it's really interesting
Most of the Fallout wasn’t at the Reactor site, mainly just the roof and surrounding fields
I read that one of the surviving divers, Alexei Ananenko was displaced from his home in Kyiv due to the war and missed life-saving surgery.
Wow! Great spoiler 👍
Spoiling wtf :')
The scientist Ulana, that woman that shows up, is a character they created for the show. She represents a huge group of scientists that they obviously couldn't fit in the show, so they made them into one character
We on episode 2, why tell everyone, as it tells you all this at the end ?.
Iodine tablets are given so that the thyroid is basically full of iodine and doesn’t absorb any available Radioactive Iodine.
The reading at the research institute at the beginning was 8 MILLI-roentgen, not 8 roentgen. That is 0.008 roentgen, and that was enough to set off their alarms and get them to begin taking iodine. The first power plant that Ulana called was concerned about their own reading of 4 milli-roentgen (0.004 roentgen). Pikalov's reading of 15,000 roentgen would be 15,000,000 milli-roentgen.
I remember this back when I was in school in East Germany. The word learned about the incident almost one week later. So the nucelar cloud reached a few countries in Europe by then. We were not allowed to drink milk or eat vegatables or fruits from our garden. And many had to get Iodine pills. (me too)
It was scary. I was 15 at the time.
Amazing fact
those 3 people outlived a week and had healthy lives ahead
Borys Baranov died in 2005, while Valery Bespalov and Oleksiy Ananenko, both chief engineers of one of the reactor sections, are still alive and live in the capital, Kiev.
Kyiv*
Usually people spoil this fact after the 3rd episode (which btw. turns out from the epilogue). Congratulations for beating the record and spoiling even the next episode.
@koszeggy not really a spoiler. It's never brought up in the story and isn't relevant to the rest of the show.
it gives an insight to just how many lives a small amount of people connected to this disaster saved. To think those who went into the water to drain the tanks saved millions of lives each. No matter the country you come from or the countries involved. Rarely have more nobile act been made by anyone than those workers & miners who saved large parts of Europe from the toxic impact of Chernobyl.
Hold your horses and don’t get too anxious… all your questions, particularly of how much dramatisation and elaboration has been used will be - pretty much - completely answered in episode #5. After you’ve seen the whole series you should check out some of the RUclips videos on doctors’ and nuclear physicists’ assessments of the actuality of the series. Perhaps do an ‘end-of-series reaction’ to some of these videos.
It happened when I was 7. We live in a neighbouring country. I still remember tv news saying "Don't sit on the grass, outside" and for a while they gave us iodine pills in school. I didn't know what it was for back then, but my parents were provided with gas masks and probably most of the people did. My mom just got pregnant and she said she was so worried. Of course, in our country, we were told about the explosion much later.
That feeling when you were born in 2001 270 kilometers from this tragedy. And you even have a "Child who suffered from the Chernobyl disaster" certificate. Thanks guys for your honest reactions.
Loving your reaction, was waiting for it, watching you since your Bond reaction. Cheers from Ukraine, from a son of Chornobyl liquidator
Exactly. Most people miss that. Radiation didn't take down the helicopter. It hit the cable on the crane. It took three days to evacuate Pripyat but up to months to get all the people out in rural areas.
But all eletronic did not work close to the reactor.
That also happened months later, not when they first started dropping the product.
Interesting…it looked like the radiation was blasting up so hard, that it literally ate through the metal propeller. The cables seemed to be too far away from the chopper to interfere…
The lady scientist in the series is a representation of a whole group of scientists. They just condense their actions and contributions into this fictional character.
Thanks for the content!
There is a podcast with the producer that was released by HBO with one for each episode. Pretty sure they are on youtube, you guys would have a listen after each episode before the next one, you won’t believe the amount if stuff they had to leave out because it was too much or it didn’t seem believable. Some truly disturbing details that couldn’t be put in the episodes because it was just too much for tv
The look on Boris Shcherbina's face when it hits him gets me every time. Also when Shcherbina states about being detected in Sweden. That HITS because if I remember correctly Stellan Skarsgård was IN Sweden at the time. He remembers some of this from that perspective.
I live in Denmark, and I was 10 when this happened. The cloud of radiation didn't travel over Denmark, but I remember my parents being really worried about that happening. And there was a lot about being careful when playing outside, especially when it was raining, and being very conscious about where your vegetables were grown for a few years after...
Countries affected by the cloud had it worse, but it was still pretty scary. Watching this episode made me nauseous imagening how much worse it could have been. I didn't know about that part.
Important to note just because it’s so bizarre to think about now, but before this Craig Mazin was only known for writing spoof movies.
Him pulling this masterpiece out of the bag came out of nowhere
Maybe the satire thing helped him portray the Russian government response to the disaster. Because it was pretty absurd.
A lot of creative people have accomplished something where everything just comes together in a way they never did before in their careers - oftentimes this never repeats again in their career and this one particular accomplishment becomes their master epos.
A lot of people in the music industry become one-hit wonders. They make this one song which is amazing, and the rest of their catalogue is just...meh, at best.
@@lennyvalentin6485 He also wrote and was producer on The Last of Us. I haven't seen it but have heard it's also good.
Same as with Peter Jackson. Before he went out there to make the Lord of the Rings movies, he did low budget slasher movies lol
Yep his big break into highend entertainment. He also wrote the Last of Us.
I remember when this happened, growing up in Sweden. I was too young to understand exactly what was going on, but I do remember not being allowed to be outside any more than necessary, and that we couldn't eat wild game meat or freshly picked mushrooms and so on. My mom's vegetable plot, our plum tree... it all had to go.
Looking back, it feels so bizarre that I was alive when this shit went down.
I remember reading ppl's comments about óh, that's not real, that's fictional, that's just being dramatized, etc' without necessary context and it kinda distracting. So I decided to listen to the Chernobyl podcast by Craig Mazin to really get the full context. And I'm glad I did. Bear in mind, Craig said that it is a show about the PEOPLE who have gone through this disaster. About their bravery & sacrifice. Dramatization sometimes needed due to technical reasons or to better deliver the message to the audience. It shouldn't restrict how you react to it (like MQ said basically).
Also, pls note that when they create a scene or character that might not be real, usually it is done to deliver the essence of real accounts from real ppl. For instance, Craig said he was really moved by the acts of the plant workers. Once they realized what's going on (they know enough to understand the risks) there's a worker who decided to go home, get some sleep, then go back to work to do whatever they can. And I think we can see that from scenes like how the workers still try to find their colleagues or do something, and how Ulana drive to Chernobyl. I had chills listening to the podcast, and I love listening Craig's explanation on how he build the structure of the story and why.
Looking forward to the rest of the reactions!
such a great podcast
@4:00 some things may be dramatized... but by all accounts, those cloths are still in the basement of that hospital... highly radioactive.
The Ukrainian government actualy had to block the entrance to the hospital basement with cement around 2017 because it's radioactive AF and people kept going in to "check if it's true" - and getting sick.
Pls make sure to check out the Chernobyl real footage vs TV show comparison after you finished watching the episodes. It has some very interesting stuff and shows how good they were in keeping it looking authentic.
This show is so well done that people have created side by side videos of show footage vs. real footage released MANY years later and it’s as impressive as it is chilling.
My junior school teacher told us a story of how she and her classmates were forced to attend a Labor Day parade in Kyiv (just 51 miles away from Chornobyl) on the 5th day after catastrophe. 2000 people were forced to march through Khreshchatyk street where background radiation exceeded the norm in 500 times for 1,5 hours because the party needed their propaganda parade.
Just hearing the panic in their breathing makes me hold my breath for them!!
The really sad part is that this isn't a cautionary tale of nuclear power (which is actually really safe), but rather what happens when a government values power more than its people.
Gorbachev says it. Their power comes from the perception of their power.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault it was a freak accident. But the delusion of many of the people involved made this whole situation worse.
I would say it's less about a government wanting power and a government system which values control and obedience to uniformity over truth and competency. The Soviet Union's Marxist society promoted party loyalists over skill. And they had spies throughout the population to make sure no one got out of line with the party message. It's a faulty system that will inevitably lead to disaster. We are beginning to see the signs of this ideology in US universities now. We live in a "post-truth" society in America where saying what everyone agrees you are supposed to say will get you rewarded while saying facts will get your career destroyed. That's how you end up with Dyatlov and those two party hacks who tried to find someone to blame instead of finding the truth.
Nuclear power is really safe...if humans were infallible. Sadly, we are not. Complacency always creeps in sooner or later. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. Mistakes were made. In design. In training. In interpreting events. And in decision making. Humans are fallible, and nuclear can be unforgiving.
@@dereka5017 it is safe but in Chernobyl’s case the flaw was in manufacturing of the reactor not what any employees did. The test they did is a test done all the time but that night it failed because of a defect when the reactor was built. And the delusion from many higher ups didn’t help the situation either.
I saw a very apt description of watching this series - "creeping dread".
I love your reactions and commentary on this incredible series. Regarding which characters in the show are based on real people, the majority of the main featured characters definitely are all real people. At the end of the final episode there is a montage of real footage of the real people involved and what happened to them. It is very moving. The main character that isn't based on a real life person is Ulana Khomyuk, the scientist played by played by Emily Watson,. Her character represents all the many scientists who investigated the accident, many risking their own lives in the process by doing so. She is a tribute to all those brave scientists who were determined to get to the truth. It's explained about her character in the montage at the end . I was living with my mother in Devon in South-West England in 1986 when the disaster happened. I remember in the following weeks and months hearing all the news about how the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl were being carried by the winds right across Europe. In particular I remember one morning going with my mother into our garden and being shocked when we looked at our pond. There was a layer of almost luminous looking greyish-white dust on the surface of the water! It looked so strange and we immediately wondered if it could be radioactive dust from Chernobyl and it was confirmed a short while later that it was indeed just that. Lots of other people saw the same thing on their garden ponds and other surfaces. This is in England, over a thousand miles from Chernobyl and we were receiving the radioactive dust from there! That's how far it spread. I can only imagine how bad it was the closer you got to Chernobyl. Austria got it particularly bad. The wind carried a lot of radiation over Austria which was then brought to the ground by some very heavy rainfall they were having at the time. No food crops could be eaten. Mum and I went on holiday to Austria later that year and we were surprised that wherever we ate, whether it was in the hotel or in any cafes or restaurants no vegetables were served with any meals, anywhere, being they'd all been contaminated from the radiation! WE didn't realise how badly they'd been affected there! And now the area around Chernobyl is more radioactive again because of the Russian soldiers who temporarily invaded and took over the place during the early days of the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Soldiers were basically setting up camp and digging trenches in the soil, even in the so-called "Red Forest," which is the most radioactive area of the Exclusion Zone. As a result a lot of these soldiers have had radiation poisoning, that's how radioactive the area still is! Belarus has it's own Exclusion Zone as, despite Chernobyl being in Ukraine, it's right near the border with Belarus and during the immediate aftermath of the accident the winds carried the intense radiation Northwards right across Belarus, much more than in other directions so Belarus got the worst of it! Poor people. Anyway, I can't wait for your reactions to the following 3 episodes.
Well if you keep telling them whats about to happen, it's hardly a reaction lol
i remember, back then we watched the weather news at evening if we need to go to school at next day. Everyone talked about the cloud is on way to west.
But the wind pushed it north - west. We in Switzerland had to go at school. In Germany north from us didnt. Als Child i didnt understand why we had to go. later i was shocked as we learn the true behind this. My Parents protected us not be in panic and i think they didnt know how it will end. What they wanna say to us. We stayed in, only out for school. Few years later the german wall falls.. the 80s. Look back with the show was a journey . Great see your reactions.. your memorys about it.
Greetings from Switzerland
Can NOT wait for them to get to episode 5... so good
Once he realizes what’s going on, Scherbina becomes such an amazing character. When he turned around and started questioning the two original idiots I was so damn excited
Hi from Minsk! Love you, guys.
I can't remember which science show I was watching, but it was one of those "nuclear scientist reacts" to this series. He said one of the biggest dramatizations was the immediate red burns we have seen on the hands and faces of infected people wouldn't be that fast -- they would know there was something wrong, but it wouldn't be that visible that fast. Same for a lot of the immediate injuries, they would happen eventually but it wasn't within seconds. He otherwise gave it a pass for the majority of the information shown.
The one thing I don't like in the show is making it seem like the fireman, after being washed and given clean clothes, is still a danger to anyone around him. People like those evacuated from Fukushima face enough fear as it is.
Im Born in Berlin ( Germany ) at the same year my mom told me that the confinement didnt happen only in Frankfurt but in all Germany everything eatable and animals cows, chickens, pigs everything got removed and killed. The confinement was really long and it was horrible my mom told me that the Germans even worked on a project with them but it failed because at that time there were not as advanced as we are today… I love this series and I’m gonna look it up with my mom eventually soon. thx for your reaction content about this!!! 🤘🏻👩🏻🚀🤘🏻
The ending of this episode is the only tv show or movie thats ever given me a panic attack watching it.
The water, dosimeter screaming, the heavy breathing and then the lights go out 😱😱😱 😂🤣😂
Fantastic show!!! 😊
Keep an eye out for the young Pavel. The actor caught my eye in one movie prior to this and on seeing this tipped him to be a future power house, Hardy/Murphy/Poulter.
He has not disappointed and glad to see all the praise he has got in the last few years.
After getting home from work around 10pm and meant to watch the first episode before bed, but it was so gripping and intriguing I had to watch the next one, then I felt like that after the next and ended up binging the entire series in one night and got to bed around 4am lol.
I went to Prypjat couple of years ago on a tour..and even today it is scary as fck...If you want to have a town from a horror movie..this is about it..the silence and the abandoned buildings and the fact that you know there are areas that will outright kill you and you cannot see it coming is REALLY scary..so the episode covers that quite well
I always loved the nobility of the Soviet general who volunteered to do the testing. If you research him, you'll find that he also survived the Battle of Stalingrad.
The room in the basement of the hospital where they put all the equipment from the firefighters is considered to be the most radiated place there is!
I don’t want to spoil the show for you guys but the helicopter scene is real. A chopper crashed because they got too close to the smoke and crashed into the crane. After episode 5 stay for the credits all your questions will be answered.
Good catch about the numbers on the buildings!! I hadn't noticed that. I think, too, the nature of the USSR was so top-down and totalitarian and had been that way for 50, 60 years at that point - hell, the Czarist times were the same way - and that stretched back centuries, and so the relationship to the government is just different. Obedience has been trained/drilled into you. A soldier shows up, tells you to come with, you go. so when you need to herd people onto busses - or you need to draft them into service - it's a much simpler process than in more democratic individualistic systems. It's been really amazing watching the show along with you guys. I always love your thoughtful reactions and was really excited you all decided to try this one.
I live in Scotland. Two months after the explosion, radiation levels in topsoil in the south-west of the country were discovered to be 4,000 times higher than normal, To this day there are still some agricultural policies in place because of radiation levels caused by Chernobyl. Also, a research study showed a huge spike in unexplained infant mortality in Britain in the three years following the Chernobyl disaster. Studies in Scotland and Wales found links between the Chernobyl accident and increases in infant leukaemia
😢
Same story here, parents are from Wales and I remember growing up being told about the restrictions, I think the last restrictions for lamb for human consumption got lifted only a decade ago.
Idk if anyone mentioned this as yet, but Craig Mazin created a podcast for each episode to give behind the scenes info regarding dramatization and what documents/books he used for evidence. I think it’s really helpful to accompany after each watch and would answer some of your guys’ questions:)
Thank you for choosing to react to one of the greatest tv shows in my opinion, the most suspenseful at least. I also watched the series when it came out, so it's good to rewatch with you guys commenting on it, it's alway great to see different prespectives and takes. And yesss definitely want that comparison video! I think this series definitely deserve one
Yeah, I am from Poland, and back then Poland was under Soviet ocupation and we too was in the dark about this - thank God or Mother nature, that cloud pass over Poland at night, when most pople were at homes.
Comrades were building utopia while capitalists were building dystopia.
The radiation injuries were actually UNDERSTATED in the show as crazy as that it. There was one guy, a firefighter, who, all the skin from his waist down, "degloved" in the hospital. Fell down like a pair of pants when he was stood up so the doctors could change his hospital gown.
I’ve seen this before and don’t remember all of it but that shot that ends this episode when the lights go out will stay with me forever. Incredible show.
he also played moriarty. i think he has an oldman quality into falling deep into roles.
Absolutely love that you’re doing this show, been in my top 5 since it aired, its brilliant start to finish and a brilliant commentary on how people will always lie to cover their own back
I absolutely love Scherbina’s speech at the end. It managed to be inspiring while letting them know it was not a choice; someone is going in.
Ngl. The ending of this episode had me STRESSED the first time watching. Great video guys!
The professor who joined them from the university, Professor Khomyuk, is a fictional character, but she was created to symbolize the many scientists who were helping Legasov and Shcherbina at Chernobyl. The filmmakers decided to condense them all into one character to avoid over complicating the scenes with dozens of scientists.
Really enjoying watching y’all’s reactions to this show.
One of the best reaction channels on RUclips!
The decon bath/shower they give the vehicle and the general is to remove dust and other contaminants. It won't decon him from the radiation but it prevents radioactive contaminants being spread by him
I love how Oak’s Gryphondor scarf is just casually in front of him. I remember the Harry Potter days
Just to clarify, the reading of 8 in Minsk is not roentgen but milliroentgen
Yes but 8 thousandths of a roetgen is probably still significant.
@@gladiater56yes it’s significant because it’s not supposed to be there. He’s his pointing out it’s 1000 times less.
@@gladiater56Well, the people at the other power plant were at 4 milliroentgen and were already panicking.
The speech Sherbina gives about going into the water is so powerful
The room where they're throwing all the firefighter turnout gear is an actual room that actually exists the equipment is still in there in the basement of that hospital
All the basement in that hospital as been filled in with cement.
The evacuation: The directive was to pack for the weekend. The State basically controlled the narrative that it was just a precaution, so they certainly wouldn't have told people it was permanent.
It gets worse from here guys! A hard watch but so important and necessary imo. Thanks for reacting to this powerful masterpiece❤
Well said Mason Quinn and Oak, the series does a wonderful job at showing the heroism of so many people. Even though the show is dramatized, many of the events, actions and people shown are real. The "everyman stepping up" moments seen so frequently throughout this series never fail to move me, especially because they really happened.
It's also incredible to see what could have been after the initial explosion (basically the end of Europe as we know it) and the steps the Soviets took to prevent it, gotta give them props for that.
Jared Harris (who played Professor Legasov) is an amazingly accomplished actor. You see him tell volumes just with his facial expressions and posture. Look at his performance here, and compare with his appearance in The Expanse - he's completely unrecognizable.
A true actor's actor. Masterclass performances, both of them.
Just as great as his father was, Richard Harris!
Don't know if you guys saw it or not, but one of the documentaries said that they did evacuate the town like in the show but since they didn't tell people what was happening, there was little to no panic. That they told everyone to pack for a few days, it was completely normal and routine, and not to bring pets. I'm watching it new along with you guys so I haven't seen the rest of the episodes yet so I'm not sure if this is addressed later. Apparently a government like USSR could only work if they conditioned people to have absolute faith in their government and that they were living in a utopia. So if officials said everything was fine, people largely didn't question it.
I think 'heavily dramatized' is a way to negate that this is an extremely good encapsulation of events. Some things are compressed or out of order, but this is absolutely no different than any other non-fiction series of this genre. It's just one of the best handled. I'll only point out one case of compressed info, because I think they actually cover most of it that you need to know at the end of the last episode:
The helicopter breaking apart was actually something that happened, but wasn't because it went over the radiation. It hit the cable of a crane, the blades getting caught, and it just buckled (in the same way, as depicted in real footage) under the stress. Compressing it into the moment they did simply helped visualize the real danger of getting too close to the radiation in the helicopters.
When you're done with the series, you should look up and react to side-by-side comparisons of scenes shot on the show, and real footage released of what happened during the cleanup efforts. It helps with understanding what might have been dramatized, and what was 100% legit.
EDIT: I meant the second episode. lol also, it's worth noting now that these people in Pripyat were more aware of what the dangers were, even though they didn't know how bad the explosion itself was. Their children were being educated in nuclear power management, and those children today still manage Chernobyl.
8:26 I like how the sun is in the same direction as the exposed core, so it can be imagined that the bright light being cast is from Cherbobyl itself.
im part of the Swiss NBC unit in the military, stationed at Spiez National Defence Laboratory. the door guard into the building is about 70 years old, he had been working there since the late 1970s and was at Spiez when Chernobyl happened. Western countries were scrambling to take air samples all over europe and Spiez was one of the Laboratories doing testings. he said every 2 minutes a helicopter would arrive with yellow boxes that they would dump at the helipad site. these boxes contained air samples from Switzerland and Austria. there were photographs of mountains of these boxes lined next to the building awaiting testing, this went on for several weeks.
To give you an example just how bad Chernobyl was. it was illegal to pick mushrooms in Switzerland for 5 years after the disaster because they basically soak up radiation. Switzerland is 2200km (1300 miles) away from Chernobyl
Interesting fact : the 3 divers at the end of the episode actually survived . Only the third one, Boris Baranov, passed away in 2005 of a heart attack. You can read an article with the interview of Ananenko, one of the divers ,who explains what happened on that day.
About evacuation: I heard that people were told that they would be able to return to their homes soon. That probably prevented the delays in gathering everyone. People left the town with most essential belongings not knowing that they would never come back.
I watched someone who went back into Pripyat and the fireman’s clothing in the basement still sets the meter off the chart!
That whole sequence in the tunnels with the water, the ticking geigercounters and lights going out was the most claustrophobic thing I've ever seen in my life.
I love the contrast they made with the old man's character between the speech scene in the first episode and the evacuation in this one. In the first, the man rejected the soldier's help when he stood up, but in this episode he took the hand of the soldier to get in the bus.
I think this character represented the old soviet nation and how this event showed its weakness and loss of power.
Hey, I just started watching this, too! Guess I’ll need to finish it so I can see your reactions!!
I still remember as a young kid we had to throw away all the vegetables that grew in the garden and turn everything over to be able to safely grow something in the soil again. to this day there are areas where i live in which you should not eat the mushrooms growing in the woods (where the upper soil is still the same) because of the radioactive isotopes in the ground. (Austria)
You can take a tour of parts of the city close to Chernobyl (named Pripyat), and in the basement of the hospital all the firefighters' clothing is still there. Geiger counters go crazy in that room.
The scen where medics put all cloths in basmen is a real look. Becouse here in Europe are many tour in Cherbonyl that you can go with big groups, and those cloths are still in this hospital basement but still with such a huge radiation that you can stay there only for seconds.
I live in Italy and i was 15 in 1986… i still remember the mood during those terrible days….