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[Chernobyl] In Soviet Russia....
VishNub
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
HBO released a five part (of which four have currently aired) docudrama about the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, wherein the core of a nuclear power plant near the town of Pripyat in Ukraine.
The show deals with the incident itself, and the monumental effort and sacrifice required to contain the fallout and minimize the ecological and human disaster. It is, as best I can tell, roughly correct on the broad plot points (comparing the plot of the show to the wikipedia article, anyways), but in some places condenses the work of many people to a single character to simplify storytelling and increase the drama of the narrative.
There's also a podcast which talks about, I'm told, the production and some of the decisions about historical accuracy and other things. I haven't listened to this yet, but I intend to.
Anyways, the show is excellent. Like, really really good. Y'all should watch it. It's also really really really grim. Like, it's a show about the (second?) worst nuclear accident in history, so you know going in things aren't going to go well, and the show is very very good at highlighting that.
Some thoughts I have:
The makeup work in the first three episodes deserves all of the awards.
The theme of how the state and some character's need to keep up appearances and shift blame impairs efforts on the ground to improve the situation is interesting, and rather topical in the current world.
The state clearly doesn't care about its citizens, and yet the characters characters are willing to give their lives for the cause. This seems to be attributed to, for lack of a better word, some uniquely Russian fatalism. Is this a real thing? I've seen it as a premise of lots of works dealing with Russia, and I'm not quite sure if I should think of it as a myth, or something a little bit more real.
Anyways, probably open spoilers makes the most sense for a historical work like this. We should probably not devolve into a nuclear power in the current world discussion.
Seriously, though, this show is hard to watch, but it's really fucking good.
The show deals with the incident itself, and the monumental effort and sacrifice required to contain the fallout and minimize the ecological and human disaster. It is, as best I can tell, roughly correct on the broad plot points (comparing the plot of the show to the wikipedia article, anyways), but in some places condenses the work of many people to a single character to simplify storytelling and increase the drama of the narrative.
There's also a podcast which talks about, I'm told, the production and some of the decisions about historical accuracy and other things. I haven't listened to this yet, but I intend to.
Anyways, the show is excellent. Like, really really good. Y'all should watch it. It's also really really really grim. Like, it's a show about the (second?) worst nuclear accident in history, so you know going in things aren't going to go well, and the show is very very good at highlighting that.
Some thoughts I have:
The makeup work in the first three episodes deserves all of the awards.
The theme of how the state and some character's need to keep up appearances and shift blame impairs efforts on the ground to improve the situation is interesting, and rather topical in the current world.
The state clearly doesn't care about its citizens, and yet the characters characters are willing to give their lives for the cause. This seems to be attributed to, for lack of a better word, some uniquely Russian fatalism. Is this a real thing? I've seen it as a premise of lots of works dealing with Russia, and I'm not quite sure if I should think of it as a myth, or something a little bit more real.
Anyways, probably open spoilers makes the most sense for a historical work like this. We should probably not devolve into a nuclear power in the current world discussion.
Seriously, though, this show is hard to watch, but it's really fucking good.
+22
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Fukushima
Huh, in what sense is Fukushima thought to be worse? It seems like significantly less human harm resulted from it.
Also thanks for making this thread! I've been going down an industrial accident rabbit hole lately since that's a thing to do, and while they are all really interesting they all also super bum me out.
🏭🌅☢️🥵🤮
anyway, the sheer scale of chernobyl was completely lost on me. I had no idea how close they came to a catastrophic disaster that would have killed millions and left swathes of europe uninhabitable.
One thought I had was the scale of the disaster likely hastened the collapse the soviet union - they don't talk about the financial costs of anything, but it must have been staggeringly expensive
I'll probably never be able to watch it again, though.
Edit: Sorry, Disaster At Chernobyl not Seconds From Disaster (though there is one of those as well).
I've read that part may have been exaggerated, but that's also from people who would've needed it played down as a part of their part in the State.
Which makes the intrigue in the show even more... intriguing
I loved how they gave the West Germans the incorrect, propagandized rad numbers for the robot when trying to clean up the roof.
It did! The clean up was approximately 19 billion dollars or so, though naturally the full amount of costs for the clean up are difficult to get a clear picture on, given the Soviet Union's desire to cover it up and/or not talk about it all that much. However, it was definitely a strain on the overall economy of the Soviet Union and of the Ukraine/Belarus in particular.
https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/chernobyl-and-the-fall-of-the-soviet-union-gorbachevs-glasnost-allowed-the-nuclear-catastrophe-to-undermine-the-ussr.html
Gorbachev himself said it definitely contributed!
The first two episodes were horror movies with the reactor as the monster. But unlike any monster you can run and hide from its reach is miles long and invisible.
The third episode felt as if they were making progress. A war the Soviet Union knew how to fight. Use of men and bodies to stop a physical enemy. The fire is out. Crisis after crisis averted. And possible ones as well.
The forth we see the cost. In lives and humanity. That the monster never disappeared.
What is ones man's life verse that of the Soviet Union?
This show is stressful is the best way possible. And I am not sure I can ever watch it a second time.
This guy is a good follow for Chernobyl reactions / info.
Yup
Fares Fares
Could they have known that at the time though? Iirc was a % chance sort of thing.
Legasov said in the show it was 50/50.
And his smarter counterpart put it at 40% chance the meltdown would make it through the pad and then he says it doesn't matter, either way the answer is the same: Maybe.
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
I feel like this needs a qualification.
This is the deadliest nuclear disaster in terms of lives lost, ever, so I feel like calling it "overblown" is a strange choice.
As in, the constant implications of things being “suicide missions” or staying that they’ve effectively killed themselves by taking part in the cleanup. It’s dramatic but it’s not accurate
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
I mean
Someone saying going into a highly radioactive place is a "suicide mission" is not exactly some kind of stretch of the imagination.
Saying it was "not a suicide mission" on the other hand is really, really side-eyeable.
Well, they all lived, so... it wasn’t?
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Benefit of future sight. Are we subtracting points because people couldn't tell the future?
And the calculations of additional deaths due to cancers so far range from 4k to 10k, on top of the 54 who died of horrific acute radiation poisoning.
Even on the low end, 4k people is not a small amount for what amounts to an industrial accident.
it’s the degree of risk in several aspects that the show has overblown. Perhaps in the moment it is what they’ve believed, but it didn’t end up that way. It increases the drama though
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
The only thing that's been really fudged around for the sake of extra stakes is the helicopter crash at the beginning of the boron drop, which STILL happened and under the exact same circumstances (pilot got disoriented from the radiation and hit crane wires), but much later on during the construction of the sarcophagus. There's not a lot really overblown about it.
Clandestine meetings in abandoned buildings maybe.. MAYBE... but they are Soviets after all...
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
I see a lot of assessments that it could have been even worse, or just as bad as they were saying. And a few Russian statesmen who said it wouldn't have been that bad, really.
I never said it made the show worse. I said it overstates the danger (to the audience)
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
If that's what they thought at the time, do you expect the production crew to dial it back for... what? Entertainment purposes? Ideological?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I mean, this was a statement made presuming that there was no effort to extinguish the core, and that the reactor was never contained, and with no benefits of decades of hindsight and study of the problem.
So I don't really know what your problem is.
My gripe is mostly ideological. It’s never corrected, so much of the audience is just going to take it as scary, scary fact.
My original statement was, show is good, the risk is overblown. I stand by that.
Do I think the producers have a responsibility to make sure audiences come away with an accurate interpretation of the actual impact to health and life? That’s a different question entirely
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
The thing was if an explosion blew up the three remaining reactors that would cause a lot of fallout enough to render those areas uninhabitable. Like imagine it happened and the wind was just the right direction for long enough - probably not a false assumption.