They needed someone with intimate knowledge of the plant. They couldn't just recruit some guy off the streets.
.
- Thread starter Nittany Ned2
- Start date
I know. I’m just speaking generally. If you’re going to go soon, go out with a bang.
Bump. Who saw the 3rd Ep? Brutal.
Poor Vasily looked like he was skinned alive. Incredible what radiation can do. I got interested and read about a poor Japanese plant worker who got a fatal dose. He lived (they kept him alive) for 83 days. Should have euthanized him immediately. Awful
Poor Vasily looked like he was skinned alive. Incredible what radiation can do. I got interested and read about a poor Japanese plant worker who got a fatal dose. He lived (they kept him alive) for 83 days. Should have euthanized him immediately. Awful
The firefighter’s wife wasn’t too bright...kind of deserves anything she gets.
Yeah, but the poor fetus has no choice.
The mining Chief was hilarious.
“Are they all like that?”
“Yeah, they’re all like that”
This one was kinda a bummer with all the sick people. I did feel bad for the fetus, but the fetus never gets a choice in our society. The miners were pretty awesome though! I feel like the each episode hasn't been as good as the previous. Still hooked and can't wait to see how it ends... hope HBO doesn't give it the old Paterno treatment and change history.
(paraphrasing) That went surprisingly well. You came across as a naive idiot. Naive idiots aren't dangerous.
That entire "trust but verify" scene was really good. "Of course there are people following you, and there are people following them too. See those two over there, they are following me."
I watched the third episode last night. Agree the minors stole the show. Great that they recognized they were needed more than they needed the party. At that time, the party was so corrupt their ministers didn't even know what they were in charge of.
The woman who was arrested by KGB didn't exist. her characters is supposed to be an amalgamation of scientists that came together, sometimes in opposition to the party, to save the day. I don't know details of the KGB, but know that my passport was often taken from me at various venues (hotel, when we were in our rooms...we had to call down ahead of time is we were going to leave to get it back for our travel in Moscow...nobody cared in Kaliningrad). This was after the soviet union fell though.
The woman who was arrested by KGB didn't exist. her characters is supposed to be an amalgamation of scientists that came together, sometimes in opposition to the party, to save the day. I don't know details of the KGB, but know that my passport was often taken from me at various venues (hotel, when we were in our rooms...we had to call down ahead of time is we were going to leave to get it back for our travel in Moscow...nobody cared in Kaliningrad). This was after the soviet union fell though.
An OpEd from thehill.com on the problem of letting nuclear technology die in US: https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/445550-national-security-stakes-of-us-nuclear-energy
No, no, no, no. She’s a victim of the Soviet communist mindset, not being stupid. If you think she’s stupid, then you’re falling into the same trap the soviets did.
The party elite thought their people would be too stupid to understand and it wasn’t their role to understand how nuclear energy and radiation worked, so they kept them in the dark. Watch that episode carefully...not a single person explains to her what acute radiation poisoning is, what it’s going to do to him, and why he’s dangerous to her UNTIL the scientist does...and then that gets the scientist arrested.
All she ever got was quick “don’t stay in there long” and “you’re not pregnant are you?” comments that gave her 0 information. And then the doctors/nurses didn’t even hold her to it. All she knew was she loved her husband and wanted to be by his side in his dying moments.
Why would anyone touch someone who’s skin was falling off them...doesn’t take a nuclear scientist to figure that out. And she lied about being pregnant because she knew if she said yes, she wouldn’t get to see her husband so she had to know it was bad and dangerous to her child, otherwise she wouldn’t have lied. They were adamant she shouldn’t go into the covered area yet she did...that’s not being uneducated, that’s being stupid. I love my wife, but if she even had a rash on her arm I wouldn’t touch her until it cleared up...if her skin was falling off I’d be behind the plastic.
Oh I absolutely agree watching from behind my tv screen. Ew! Don’t touch that! At the very least, it’s gross. The thing is, you love someone you don’t want to let them go.
People have knowingly put themselves in danger for people they love. She didn’t know how much danger.
And once again, a brilliant episode. This is going to go down as one of the all-time greatest tv shows.
No. Not when that amount of radiation is bouncing about and coming at you from 360 degrees.
Next week's is the last one. I binge watched the first 3 on Sunday and caught last night's (disturbing) episode, but I agree that this one of the best miniseries I've seen in years.
There is a Russian writer who now lives in the US who is tweeting on the series. Its very interesting to me and thought it might be for you as well. If you are on twitter, he is @SlavaMalamud
New conversation
New conversation
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
First of all, it is almost inconceivable that a Western TV show would go to this amount of detail authentically portraying Soviet life in that era, knowing full well that its target audience (Western viewers) would never appreciate the effort or indeed even understand it...
28 replies333 retweets4,405 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
Trust me, I try very hard to find inaccuracies, however minor. The Americans, a show with similar fetish-like obsession with authenticity, had plenty of small and big Soviet errata to be entertained with. Improperly fastened military shoulder bars, that sort of thing... Not here.
14 replies188 retweets3,352 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
Everything, and I mean everything so far has been incredibly authentic. The typical provincial babushkas talking outside, the kitchen supplies and utensils, the white "celebratory" uniforms of school children (the tragedy occurred just before May Day), the shoes, the hair...
15 replies275 retweets4,144 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
Even the little buckets used by Soviet citizens to take out the trash. They even found that crap somewhere! But I'm impressed by much more than the mere minutiae of Soviet everyday life. Yes, in this regard, Chernobyl is much more true to life than any Western show about Russia..
17 replies260 retweets3,755 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
But, what is more impressive, is the characters, their actions, their thoughts, their motivation. The deep, ruthless drilling of the Soviet mind, what governed us, drove us and shackled us. Chernobyl pulls no punches and lays it all bare....
7 replies291 retweets3,586 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
And this is really the key to its magic, for me at least. Not only is Chernobyl more realistic than any Western show/film about Russia, it's more realistic than anything Russians would have ever made about themselves, at least on this topic. I am not hyperbolizing. Not at all.
14 replies586 retweets5,016 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
In fact, there have been several Russian films about Chernobyl, and only one, made in 1990, during final stages of Perestroika, does justice to the sheer brutality of this deplorable event. And even this one is more about a hero struggling against the odds, a melodramatic trope.
8 replies157 retweets2,639 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
As for the more modern product, there is a film about heroic KGB agents trying to stop a CIA saboteur, for example. Modern Russian cinema, unable to unshackle itself from political expediencies and the "glory of the Motherland", could never make a drama like this one.
5 replies134 retweets2,297 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
As an aside, I am particularly happy about the decision to have the characters speak normal British English, not mangled Russian or English with a corny "Russian" accent. Poor Matthew Rhys and Kerry Russel... Their tortured attempts to speak Russian almost ruined The Americans...
28 replies172 retweets3,258 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
In conclusion, yes, the nit-picky Russian viewer in me was utterly satisfied. The initial "Wait a minute, why are kids going to school on a Saturday?" response quickly gave way to "Shit, that's right! We didn't switch to the 5-day week until 1989!" Pure delight, I tell ya...
17 replies251 retweets4,935 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
But, far more importantly, the intellectual honesty in how the show treats an extremely traumatic event is more than impressive. It's important. Knowing how many fans HBO has in Russia, my hope is that it will elicit more than just knee-jerk defensive responses.
20 replies163 retweets3,158 likes
Slava Malamud@SlavaMalamud May 24
Also, my 17 year old son watched with me, and his first reaction was to immediately dive into the Google rabbit holes trying to research as much as possible about Chernobyl. I don't know about you, but to me this is as good a testimony of the shows greatness as anything
137 replies292 retweets6,216 likes
It did help, but didn't completely protect them. Talking specifically about the portion of their body they wanted to protect... The shield and their body would stop everything but gamma and neutron radiation from reaching that specific area. Where they were operating in Pripyat (far from the reactor), there wouldn't really be any neutron sources. A large portion of the radiation in those areas would be Alpha/Beta from the decay of fission products like CS-137. But the shield would be useless to gamma radiation, which could cause their junk to go incredible hulk.
The "miners" bothered me a bit. There they were loading unconsolidated sand into buggies. No expertise required, so why miners? I looked into it further and sure enough they were extracting sand. They also used subway workers and others. I'm surmising they wanted people who had experience in working in very confined areas.
The book, Midnight In Chernobyl is well worth the read as a follow up. One absurd tidbit: the army sent a group of radiometric personnel to measure and map radiation around Pripyat. One problem, the town architect had one, just one map of the city. Copies had to made by hand. Copiers were not available because they could be used as instruments against the state and were therefore under the jurisdiction of the KGB. Essentially they were illegal. I'm not making this up
Anyone check out The Hot Zone on National Geographic? It's another non-fiction drama airing on NatGeo. The woman from The Good Wife and some other famous actors are in the mini-series. I think it concludes tonight. 6 episodes in 3 days. Has to do with the potential Ebola cases found in monkeys in Virginia in the late 80s/early 90s. I didn't want to start a new thread, and figured those discussing Chernobyl might enjoy this show.
Except I would say that in capitalism, even though there can be high crests and low troughs, the long term trend is generally upward. I don't think that's the case for socialism/communism, even if the volatility is taken out of the economy.
One goes with the other. If safety wasn't a concern, in the end, there would be no profits.
Saddam Hussein outlawed maps of Baghdad when he took over. It became the subject of a great Travel Book by Tony Horwitz called “Baghdad without a Map”. He also wrote “Confederates in the Attic”
Finally finished the 4th episode. The clearing of the roof was just amazing. I can't imagine getting a lifetime dose in 90 seconds.
While every episode has been great, I felt that each episode was declining since the first. But the 4th has definitely started to ramp the series back up. The preview of the 5th made it look absolutely fantastic. Looks like a combo of control room flashbacks and courtroom scenes. Can't wait!
While every episode has been great, I felt that each episode was declining since the first. But the 4th has definitely started to ramp the series back up. The preview of the 5th made it look absolutely fantastic. Looks like a combo of control room flashbacks and courtroom scenes. Can't wait!
I watched it. They left a lot of stuff out from the beginning so I didn't like that but the rest was pretty good. Although they did go for some cheap thrills inside the monkey house that was not in the book.
There was a program on afterwards called "Going Viral, Beyond the Hot Zone" that was very good.
Duuuude come on cable. Interrupted the finale for an emergency alert system message....and apparently it’s going to keep playing the emergency alert for another hour!
Don’t assume that the life of someone with a terminal illness is worth less than someone in good health. None of us knows when he is going to die, whether due to an illness waiting around the corner, or due to some drunk driver running a light.
Last edited:
Good episode and series. I appreciated their commitment to getting the details as accurate as possible, and when they did make changes acknowledged where and why.
