Chernobyl Miniseries (2019)

[millais]

I have been watching it via pirate stream here

Latest Episode Chernobyl - Season 1 | Solarmovie.to

In April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics becomes one of the world's worst man-made catastrophes.

solarmovie.to

For sure it's much more exciting than the actual documentary footage, which mostly consists of the same repetitive views of helicopters flying around and the liquidators running around on the roof to clear the graphite ahead of the sarcophagus construction.

Also why do British people pronounce "dosimeter" as "decimeter". Very confusing for the first two, three times they say it.

 

[The Cunting Death]

From the writer of The Hangover sequels and from the Director of James Gunns' first superhero project.

Not kidding, he did those.

 

[OB 946]

Has the miniseries been fairly accurate so far?

Yeah mostly. There are a few abstractions but everything of substance has been on the money.

 

[Jozef]

I've been watching this. I find the Chernobyl disaster fascinating, but this series has really helped to make it feel more personal. Reading about what the liquidators and their families had to go through is one thing, but seeing it re-enacted is a whole new level. It truly shows you how horrifying this disaster was, and how close we were to a much bigger disaster.

 

[Thought precriminal]

The show has me ambivalent. On the one hand everything is overly dramatised, on the other hand if we look at the facts, the show hasn't really inflated the death toll or the damage or any of the events. The Emily Watson character does almost ruin it for me, though. And those ridiculous radiation burns and ulcers in episode 1). I'm sure there are people who now believe if you touch a piece of radioactive graphite your hand will instantly begin to melt away...
On another note there have been scientists at Chernobyl these days doing research and investigating the radiation and other stuff. This radiation hunter, in particular is pretty crazy:

(This is more than 3.6 Roentgen/hour!)

 

[TungstenCarbide]

Thank you for the heads up, it's very good so far.

 

[Miller]

(This is more than 3.6 Roentgen/hour!)

"Not great, not terrible."

 

[OB 946]

So episode 4 is one of the bleakest things I've ever watched.

 

[Guardian G.I.]

Like radioactive fallout in April-May 1986, HBO's Chernobyl have been floating in top trends of Google here for the past week or two. Left-wingers here are triggered by the negative portrayal of Communist officials and bureaucrats. Right-wingers here are triggered by the existence of fictional Belarusian superscientist Ulana Khomyuk, because something something SJW propaganda. Both groups claim to be against the distortion of historical events, while barely hiding their overall asshurt. Pro-Western liberals like the series very much and say "Why can't our film studios make films about the Soviet Union as good as this?"
The release thread at Rutracker.org is just as stable as Reactor 4 - violent shitflinging over Western propaganda, the real/imagined greatness of Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalism, Jews... anything but the series itself.

Personally, I haven't got much time to watch it (only the first 10 minutes of the first episode), but the atmosphere is gripping and the acting is better than I thought it would be. I like how they use bits and pieces of real life media documents like the actual recording of Chernobyl NPP dispatch calling local fire brigades on the night of the disaster:

It makes everything feel more authentic.

 

[Zaragoza]

I remember when we covered this in depth in training, and the whole class was laughing out loud. Not because of the deaths or anything like that, but due to the clusterfuck of fuckups that led to the whole thing. It was like a clown car of fuckups. "Hey lets do this safety test by first circumventing or preventing any and all safety equipment from functioning! What could go wrong?"

Five minutes later...

"Shit. Let's hope nobody noticed that"

The whole idea of what radiation can do to your body is incredibly frightening, ever since I started watching Chernobyl, I began looking into articles relating to other major nuclear accidents, I eventually stumbled upon this Wikipedia article about a nuclear accident that happened in 1999 where these three workers were mixing a batch of uranium and some other nuclear things when it reached criticality (nuclear chain reaction) and released a bright blue radiation burst that literally whipped out one of the three workers DNA off.

For the next month this man whose DNA was destroyed would be subjected to the (imo) worst death imaginable where in the course of 80 something days his body began to fail on him with skin falling off and other gory details.

 

[Dreamland]

Like radioactive fallout in April-May 1986, HBO's Chernobyl have been floating in top trends of Google here for the past week or two. Left-wingers here are triggered by the negative portrayal of Communist officials and bureaucrats. Right-wingers here are triggered by the existence of fictional Belarusian superscientist Ulana Khomyuk, because something something SJW propaganda. Both groups claim to be against the distortion of historical events, while barely hiding their overall asshurt. Pro-Western liberals like the series very much and say "Why can't our film studios make films about the Soviet Union as good as this?"
The release thread at Rutracker.org is just as stable as Reactor 4 - violent shitflinging over Western propaganda, the real/imagined greatness of Soviet Union, Ukrainian nationalism, Jews... anything but the series itself.

Personally, I haven't got much time to watch it (only the first 10 minutes of the first episode), but the atmosphere is gripping and the acting is better than I thought it would be. I like how they use bits and pieces of real life media documents like the actual recording of Chernobyl NPP dispatch calling local fire brigades on the night of the disaster:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=jDxwweKsqzYIt makes everything feel more authentic.

She has been molded into a composite character to probably help speed the story along. Most likely there were dozens of engineers and scientists working different angles and solutions at the same time. Condensing that team into two characters probably made the most sense for keeping the story clear for the viewer.

 

[neverendingmidi]

The whole idea of what radiation can do to your body is incredibly frightening, ever since I started watching Chernobyl, I began looking into articles relating to other major nuclear accidents, I eventually stumbled upon this Wikipedia article about a nuclear accident that happened in 1999 where these three workers were mixing a batch of uranium and some other nuclear things when it reached criticality (nuclear chain reaction) and released a bright blue radiation burst that literally whipped out one of the three workers DNA off.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZSKtZb7k
For the next month this man whose DNA was destroyed would be subjected to the (imo) worst death imaginable where in the course of 80 something days his body began to fail on him with skin falling off and other gory details.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2Y-I5BbjwNI

Jesus. I read the wiki article you linked. The dumb motherfuckers were using a bucket, a fucking bucket to pour directly into the tank! A tank designed to use a buffer tank and slowly add the stuff in at 2.4 kg increments, not 17kg straight in! Holy fuck.

And people acted like Three Mile was a disaster (no deaths linked to it)when it released a tiny bit of gas in comparison. Shit if that had happened in the US they'd probably still consider the town an exclusion area.

 

[Zaragoza]

Jesus. I read the wiki article you linked. The dumb motherfuckers were using a bucket, a fucking bucket to pour directly into the tank! A tank designed to use a buffer tank and slowly add the stuff in at 2.4 kg increments, not 17kg straight in! Holy fuck.

And people acted like Three Mile was a disaster (no deaths linked to it)when it released a tiny bit of gas in comparison. Shit if that had happened in the US they'd probably still consider the town an exclusion area.

I found the entire documentary concerning the last 83 days of the guy who got his entire DNA whipped out, it's a really good documentary and fortunately has English subtitles.

東海村臨界事故 — Tokaimura Nuclear Accident (with English subtitles) - 動画 Dailymotion

1999年の東海村臨界事故で大量被ばくした大内久さんの治療に関するドキュメンタリー番組です。

www.dailymotion.com

 

[Foltest]

Episode 4 was really depressing. Nice to see Fares Fares again but for any doglovers out there, this was a bleak episode.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

IMHO the most fucked up incidents are the ones caused by a cavalier attitude toward nuclear elements, ignorance and stupidity. Like these.

Episode 4 was really depressing. Nice to see Fares Fares again but for any doglovers out there, this was a bleak episode.

Agreed. Those poor pets. And the scene on the rooftop was anxiety-inducing.

 

[Zaragoza]

IMHO the most fucked up incidents are the ones caused by a cavalier attitude toward nuclear elements, ignorance and stupidity. Like these.

Nice catch, there was a movie that I saw not too long ago about the Manhattan Project where it featured a death of a character inspired by that accident.

 

[Recoil]

I'm very excited about getting into something good after the loathsome final season of GOT. Thanks for putting this on my radar, @Crippled Eagle

I have been watching it via pirate stream here

Thanks for that.

 

[OB 946]

She has been molded into a composite character to probably help speed the story along. Most likely there were dozens of engineers and scientists working different angles and solutions at the same time. Condensing that team into two characters probably made the most sense for keeping the story clear for the viewer.

Yeah the "real" portrayal would be conferences of literally hundreds of scientists all talking in complex jargon for hours. It would make for awful television. She's a composite but she isn't as bad as most people think. There was an overwhelming number of scientists that were ready and willing to blow the USSR reputation to shit and were actively encouraging Legasov to do just that at Vienna. Legasov was specifically chosen by the Party to represent them at Vienna because, before this, he was well known as a party hardliner. The event totally shattered his worldview, leading to his suicide. Many of these scientists actually were interfered with by the KGB because of their desire to spread the news to the outside.

So yes, she is a composite, but all the things she does were done by the characters she represents.

 

[Muttnik]

So in the midst of the bleakness of the fourth episode with the dogs here's some interesting news:

Hundreds of dogs went on to live in the wilderness following the evacuation. The ones that weren't killed managed to survive and reproduce. They usually tend to live 4 to 6 years but it's more from the coldness of winter than the radiation killing them.

Recently, as of 2018, the puppy descendants of the Chernobyl dogs are starting to go up for adoption following a strict cleaning and decontamination process. The pups appear healthy barring some lingering toxic shit in their fur that, like I said, supposedly gets cleaned. They're on a different social level than regular house dogs though since they've grown up in a non-human zone and they don't really even know how to play with toys. But hey, even in Chernobyl, all surviving doggos are good boys.

 

[OB 946]

So in the midst of the bleakness of the fourth episode with the dogs here's some interesting news:

Hundreds of dogs went on to live in the wilderness following the evacuation. The ones that weren't killed managed to survive and reproduce. They usually tend to live 4 to 6 years but it's more from the coldness of winter than the radiation killing them.

Recently, as of 2018, the puppy descendants of the Chernobyl dogs are starting to go up for adoption following a strict cleaning and decontamination process. The pups appear healthy barring some lingering toxic shit in their fur that, like I said, supposedly gets cleaned. They're on a different social level than regular house dogs though since they've grown up in a non-human zone and they don't really even know how to play with toys. But hey, even in Chernobyl, all surviving doggos are good boys.

Don't fall too hard for the "The Zone is a nature preserve" meme. There are a number of endangered species that have rebounded in the zone but there's something really fucked with the ecosystem that you can't see.

The level of microscopic life, specifically fungi and bacteria responsible for breaking down detritus is about 80% lower than areas outside the zone. What that means is that there's years of undecomposed leaves and shit on the forest floor that periodically cause massive, hugely destructive forest fires, among other issues that we haven't even begun to really study yet.