Chernobyl (HBO 5-part series)

[Dave (imported)]

I highly recommend this...

HBO and SKY created a 5-part miniseries about the 26 April 1986 disaster at the Russian Nuclear Plant.

I've told a few people - - If you think you've seen a horror movie? Well, you haven't.

This is true drama and I hope wins awards for telling a tough story.

Episode 1 titled: "1:23:45" - - begins with a scene 2 years and one minute after the exact time of the disaster as Jared Harris as Valery Legasov, Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy and part of the team who responded to the Chernobyl disaster. - - HANGS HIMSELF. The episode immediately goes back in time to the accident. The men in the control room didn't even know the reactor exploded. There is fire. There is chaos. The graphite moderator used to control the nuclear reaction is laying on the ground in pieces. It is death to touch. The Cherenkov radiation (that blue glow) is visible. The men who looked into the exploded reactor are all dead.

Chaos on top of chaos.

Episode 2 titled: "Please Remain Calm" - - The Soviet bureaucratic machine begins to come to terms with the full scale of the disaster, though the danger grows as new risks are identified. Valery Legasov they scientist, is thrown together with Stellan Skarsgård as Boris Shcherbina, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and head of the Bureau for Fuel and Energy. He is assigned by the Kremlin to lead the government commission on Chernobyl after the disaster occurred. There is a scene where a helicopter is told not to fly over the glowing blue reactor and does - it falls from the sky in pieces.

Episode 3 titled: "Open Wide, Oh Earth" continues the story and presents the tasks required to stop the reaction, evacuate the town or Pripyat and, prevent the contamination from spreading down the river system into the Black Sea. (That's not an exaggeration.) When the dead are buried in metal coffins and then the coffins encased in concrete for safety - that is horror.

The scientists begin piecing together what happened and what it will take not to occur again.

Episode 4 titled "The Happiness of All Mankind" - will be shown 5/27/2019

Episode 5 titled: "Vichnaya Pamyat" - will be shown 6/3/2019

The sets, the clothing, the trappings, the vehicles, the town are all amazingly authentic. And they actors don't use cheap-assed "pretend" Russian accents. The news reports presented are, however, in Russian with subtitles. That gives the story some authenticity because the actors focus on the drama and not their syllables.

The story is harrowing and more horrific with each episode. BTW - Episode one is difficult but worth it. It is chaotic and because no one at the time knew what happened and what the consequences could be or might be. This is the struggle of scientists to minimize the damage and the struggle of a bureaucracy to come to terms with near total disaster.

This isn't a "disaster movie" like volcanoes exploding or aliens attacking or meteors nearly hitting the earth - this is an actually disaster and its aftermath. Right now, a land area twice the size of the city of London is still a "forbidden zone" that is dangerous to anything living within it. It will be like that for 20,000 years.

[ambiguous (imported)]

I'm on it also.. good stuff.

[Wolf-Pup (imported)]

There is something so horrifying about the people who don't realize what is going on and what they are being exposed to. Add on the bureaucracy of the Soviet system and their initial decisions makes it even worse

Very intense and all the more terrible because it is history.

Great series

[Losethem (imported)]

Jared Harris must have some sort of autoerotic asphyxiation fetish, this is the second high-profile role he's taken where his character kills himself by hanging.

[Dave (imported)]

There is a scene in episode one where one of the townspeople asks Valery Legasov (Jared Harris' character) if things are safe and going to turn out OK. Legasov looks at her for a long beat and then answers "yes it is." That's a lie. He knows it's a lie but he joins the governmental authorities in pretending that the situation is going to be alright.

That's his turning point. THat's where he turns away from the truth. It's dramatic and for the audience, a horror... It's underplayed and unexplained but that's the horror of the story. A bad reactor design, poorly trained and inexperienced operators, bad plans, bureaucratic operating instructions writing by bureaucrats who knew nothing about the nuclear industry.

That's the reason that two years later, Valery Legasov hangs himself...

[Dave (imported)]

THere's another set of scenes in the story that present that startling a revelation...

In the first,

Stellan Skarsgård as Boris Shcherbina

is in a helicopter with Valery Legasov and demands the pilot fly over the reactor so that they could view and prove to themselves that thereafter core isn't bare and there is no graphite moderator lying on the ground. Legasov screams himself almost out of voice to Shcherbina and the pilot that to do that was death from the intensity of the radiation. The pilot turns away.

Within 24 hours, a fleet of helicopters is dropping water on the fire to put it out and while Shcherbina and Legasov watch, one disobeys orders and flies into the pillar of black cloud rising from the reactor fire. The helicopter literally falls from the sky into pieces. Thats Shcherbina's turning point where he realizes that the scientists are telling him the truth and that the disaster is beyond a factory fire but threatens millions of people and an area the size of several countries surrounding them.

I watched the screen in horror that no one understood the consequences of that much radiation after the joint disasters of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[rivianwarrior (imported)]

one of the few shows i would consider paying hbo to watch. i've been very interested in watching this one.

[Dave (imported)]

Episode 4 "The Happiness of All Mankind" -

Don't get me wrong, CHERNOBYL is excellent but it is realistic about the consequences of incompetently operated and poorly designed nuclear reactor that exploded are the stuff of nightmares and horrors. It is a harsh story but a necessary story to have documented in this fashion.

I just watched Episode 4 "The Happiness of All Mankind" and I never thought that the cop shows like Criminal Minds and their serial killers or L&O SVU (sex crimes) would be like comic relief from the sheer horror that CHERNOBYL shows.

There's a crew that's cutting contaminated trees.

There's a crew that's cutting digging up contaminated crops and earth.

There's a crew that doing animal control of mostly house pets left in the evacuation zone.

- - - Kill the house pets. Truck the carcasses to a pit. Bury under cement.

One roof has 1000 REM's. That kills in an hour (60 minutes).

Another roof has 12,000 REM's because of reactor debris. That's 3 minutes to a deadly exposure.

There are things I just can't relate in words.

OF course, the USSR and KGB at the time would have said nothing to the outside world - - - without a few people who made sure that the truth was made public.

[Slammr (imported)]

I'm with Dave: this is a true life horror show, and the real horror is that it could have been much worse than it was. Also, if I got it right, they exposed over 750,000 people to dangerous levels of radiation to clean up the place. I think this is one of the most important series that HBO has ever run.

[Dave (imported)]

Episode 5 - "Vichnaya Pamyat" is the final chapter of the story.

There is a good and understandable description of how the accident took place and what was going on in the control room of Chernobyl #4 Reactor. It is a somber story. The ending presents pictures and captions of the principle characters, their fate, and the fate of the "Exclusion Zone."

Valery Legasov as he gives his testimony in the trial of three of the plant operators including the leader who simply had to complete the test, asks "What is the price of lies?" - - - - the so many little lies that "fault analysis" uncovered and laid bare.