Chernobyl HBO

[BearSchlong 8,144]

1 hour ago, Mileslong said:

What was his name?

for the life of me I cannot remember HER name.  I'm such a slut.

[Bosco 56]

This is interesting, review of a tour of the area today.

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/touring-chernobyl-disaster-zone/

[Goredho 17,525]

19 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

I don’t know that I have ever watched a show or movie that has made me feel actual frustration like this one does. I’ve watched stuff that’s made me feel tense or scared or anxious or sad or nervous but this - especially the first two episodes when everyone is in denial and won’t admit what’s going on - makes me feel like I’m waiting at the DMV or something.

<cloakroom>You realize this is what AOC wants to do to America, right?</cloakroom> .

*ducks and runs for cover* . JUST KIDDING.

Started watching and got caught up last night.  Fantastic show.  I just wish I could binge watch the whole thing.

I want to go on a bender with the miners.  "Now you look like the minister of coal!"

 

[Goredho 17,525]

17 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Those guys were puddles of goo. Good grief. 

Yeah, I was like, fuck, makes me wish I die of Ebola.

[Red Five 41,191]

Like Russian Martin Crane said at the beginning, “sounds like we got off light”.

[Deej 77,313]

I'm hoping we get to see Jared Harris beat the shit out of the Russian Pete Campbell before he hangs himself.

"You're  a grimy, little pimp, Comrade."

[TexasMan 11,286]

22 hours ago, McCroskey said:

This miniseries in intense shit so far...only thing to make it and others perfect would be for HBO to bring back this intro:

 

I need to make this my ringtone. 

[Deej 77,313]

I prefer this one...

 

[DDD Dad 14,437]

Like Russian Martin Crane said at the beginning, “sounds like we got off light”.

Eric and Billy’s dad.

[Buzzrock 15,033]

Counterpoint:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/04/25/chernobyl-truth-drowns-in-dramatized-movie/amp/?usqp=mq331AQCKAE%3D

[Bama Chick 28,596]

That article is very slanted and if you take a gander at the author’s Twitter feed and google him and you will discover he’s a pro nuclear power shill and has lobbied for nuclear energy groups in the past.

The show runner also commented on some of his tweets pimping the article you linked and pointed out things he got wrong and let people know the author hadn’t seen anything but the trailer for the show when he wrote the article.

The guy also has taken heat for pushing misleading information about the Fukushima meltdown and had to issue a retraction.

Not exactly the most unbiased source.

[PilotsError 2,338]

I was so excited to see the Nudity rating before the show. But then...

[mulletpelini 5,216]

On 5/20/2019 at 9:31 PM, Bama Chick said:

One of the stories is about the firefighter’s wife, Ludmilla.

Knowing how her story ends, every time she was onscreen I was muttering “Get out of his room!!!”.

The first scene that she enters the hospital and sees her husband, was that a dream sequence of what she expected him to be like?  Because he was functioning fine and they were playing cards and laughing.  Maybe I misunderstood it, but that's what I took it as, compared to what he turned into.  The cement at the burial, damn if they really watched that......holy fuck that's brutal.

Also, didn't we find out she was pregnant literally 30 seconds into the beginning of the first episode?

[PilotsError 2,338]

No it was real.  They explained on the podcast that the effects are delayed a bit, so you have a period of time where you feel fine.  

[Constant 6,817]

3 hours ago, mulletpelini said:

The first scene that she enters the hospital and sees her husband, was that a dream sequence of what she expected him to be like?  Because he was functioning fine and they were playing cards and laughing.  Maybe I misunderstood it, but that's what I took it as, compared to what he turned into.  The cement at the burial, damn if they really watched that......holy fuck that's brutal.

Also, didn't we find out she was pregnant literally 30 seconds into the beginning of the first episode?

The whole reason she was awake was to puke in the toilet. 

[Buzzrock 15,033]

No it was real.  They explained on the podcast that the effects are delayed a bit, so you have a period of time where you feel fine.  

They also specifically explained it in the conversation between Boris and Valery in the courtyard.

[Buzzrock 15,033]

That article is very slanted and if you take a gander at the author’s Twitter feed and google him and you will discover he’s a pro nuclear power shill and has lobbied for nuclear energy groups in the past.

The show runner also commented on some of his tweets pimping the article you linked and pointed out things he got wrong and let people know the author hadn’t seen anything but the trailer for the show when he wrote the article.

The guy also has taken heat for pushing misleading information about the Fukushima meltdown and had to issue a retraction.

Not exactly the most unbiased source.

He’s an advocate yes, but he showed his work. You know this show is historical fiction right? For instance Ulana wasn’t a real person. Doesn’t make it any less awesome, btw.

There’s no such thing as an unbiased source.

[Dolemite 143]

20 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

Why didn't they just put those guys out of their misery? Did they think they could cure them? 

Not cure. My guess is that they wanted to learn how the process worked in humans.  

Edited May 22, 2019 by Dolemite

[Eskimohorn 5,658]

He’s an advocate yes, but he showed his work. You know this show is historical fiction right? For instance Ulana wasn’t a real person. Doesn’t make it any less awesome, btw.

There’s no such thing as an unbiased source.

But there are degrees of bias.

[Schulz2.0 29,070]

5 hours ago, Buzzrock said:

 

He’s an advocate yes, but he showed his work. You know this show is historical fiction right? For instance Ulana wasn’t a real person. Doesn’t make it any less awesome, btw.

There’s no such thing as an unbiased source.

 

I’m pretty pro-nuclear power and even I think he dismisses a lot of issues.

[kevwun 15,971]

If he's a lobbyist, that's pretty much his main job function.

Edited May 22, 2019 by kevwun

[ChickenSandwich 9,862]

On 5/21/2019 at 10:02 AM, Fozzz said:

There is no way that a "thermal explosion" could release anything approaching that much energy.  I know there was some speculation about a potential nuclear detonation, but if you have read anything about how those devices work, you would realize that an exploded nuclear reactor turning into an atomic bomb is extremely far fetched.  That kind of reaction is very difficult to bring about.

Well they also thought there was no way for the reactor to blow, “impossible!”  

Not a stretch to think their math was off at the time and that is what they believed and said. 

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Being biased is one thing.

Deliberately pushing a spun narrative and being forced to retract it because you get called out for being full of shit - IE his “articles” on Fukushima - is a whole other kettle of fish.

And that entire article pushes a narrative onto the show that he has just flat made up. He claims that the overwhelming death toll from Chernobyl has been exaggerated and that more people have died of “fear of Chernobyl” than from the aftermath.

Putting aside the specious “fear of Chernobyl” argument, let’s say he’s right. So what? He’s arguing against a position and using this show as it’s champion and he hadn’t even seen the show. And from what we’ve seen on the show, it’s not exaggerating the death toll at all.

He has a biased viewpoint and he’s using a popular television show as jumping off point to be contrarian to push his view all while claiming he’s arguing against a narrative the show isn’t even pushing.

TL:DR - the article starts from a place of bad faith and takes a swan dive into biased advocacy.

[Mileslong 4,754]

This is one of those shows that I really look forward to watching yet at the same time I almost dread it because it makes you feel so bad for the people sacrificing themselves and the horrible ramifications of something like this happening again...

[Zepol87 9,263]

11 minutes ago, Mileslong said:

This is one of those shows that I really look forward to watching yet at the same time I almost dread it because it makes you feel so bad for the people sacrificing themselves and the horrible ramifications of something like this happening again...

Also makes me feel like a pussy cause I don't know if I would do the same

[Eskimohorn 5,658]

Also makes me feel like a pussy cause I don't know if I would do the same

The divers nutted up, but would have died had no one stepped up. Someone would have been forced to do it.

The miners didn’t have a choice, or would have had to kill a Party official and then hide.

Still, to do your job under those circumstances is impressive.

[mulletpelini 5,216]

I think from the standpoint of a parent, which a lot of these volunteers probably were, you're thinking, "'I've got to do whatever I can to save not only my kids, but their kids generations from a real catastrophe here."  So it's not as much bravery as it is, just preserving a way of life for your family.

I don't consider myself that brave of a person, but when it comes to my kids, I'm jumping in front of a bullet without hesitation.

 

[RPM 26,435]

Telling them there were millions of lives at stake had some bearing, too.

[Deej 77,313]

2 hours ago, mulletpelini said:

I think from the standpoint of a parent, which a lot of these volunteers probably were, you're thinking, "'I've got to do whatever I can to save not only my kids, but their kids generations from a real catastrophe here."  So it's not as much bravery as it is, just preserving a way of life for your family.

I don't consider myself that brave of a person, but when it comes to my kids, I'm jumping in front of a bullet without hesitation.

 

Soviet mindset had something to do with it, too. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Deej

[mbtex 683]

Actual footage of aftermath and cleanup.

 

[Mileslong 4,754]

Actual footage of aftermath and cleanup.
 

Jesus, just another normal day at work for the miners, taking in radiation that’s a million times higher than normal...

[kevwun 15,971]

Damn the costume people did a good job.  The people on the show look exactly like that video.  And those poor bastards who had to clean up the graphite.  The video says that 40 minutes was enough to kill them.  The firetrucks absorbed so much radiation that it's still not safe to get near them.

Edited May 23, 2019 by kevwun

[Nolacycling 893]

Great Post! Sent it to my daughter and she said she was afraid to watch.

[Kel Varnsen 8,630]

Watching this makes me worry so much about those 3rd world countries like NK that fuck around with nuclear stuff. Hell even us. I feel it’s something that humans weren’t meant to discover. 

[mulletpelini 5,216]

I feel the exact same way about herpes

[Burt Macklin 19,157]

On 5/12/2019 at 7:17 PM, TwiceHorn said:

Sort of a layman' explanation of the test.  Nuclear reactors boil water with their heat, which makes steam.  The steam is piped to turbines or turbogenerators to make electricity.

The electricity from the generators was also used to power cooling pumps to circulate cooling water to keep what happened from happening.

As a backup, they had diesel generators to make electricity to power the cooling punps.  But, it took so long to get the diesel generators going that there was danger of the reactor overheating.  Oddly, because of the reactor design, the overheating danger was highest at lower power output.

So they had this idea that maybe the turbines spinning down (they don't just stop) would provide adequate electrical power to run the coolling pumps until the diesel backups could be brought on line.  They were going to test this theory by cutting steam to the turbines, letting them spin down, and see if the residual power was sufficient to power the cooling pumps for that period before the diesel backups could be brought online.

So, among a comedy of errors, they started the test with the reactor at low power and when the cooling ability dropped off, it began to overheat quickly, as the RBMK design is wont to do.  And this type of overheating happens so fast that it generates a lot of superheated (T>>212F) steam, which is dangerous, "explosive" stuff.  It was the expanding superheated steam that blew up the reactor core, and, because there was no containment, big fucking mess.

[Native Horn 3,524]

All caught up now, and man, this series is both depressing and captivating.  Episode 3 was really well done.  Love the miners and their zero f's given attitudes.

[Deej 77,313]

I have two friends who served on submarines in the Russian navy. The miners really remind me of them. Zero fucks given, precisely.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Deej

[Pato del Muerto 52,995]

Watched the 3 episodes today, couldn’t wait any longer. 

All I’m thinking is why aren’t they killing the heavily doses instead of letting the radiation liquify them?

[troph 24,929]

A bit of a Chernobyl geek but not enough to know it all. Read a few books mostly fiction. Not an amateur historian by any stretch. My current critique is I wish it was subtitled. It has the art film style with the dark drab color hues but it loses me on the English spoken. I am curious how accurate the misinformation and denial is. I know it’s historical fiction as some characters are an amalgamation, so it’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s artistic license.

[TwiceHorn 31,707]

9 minutes ago, troph said:

A bit of a Chernobyl geek but not enough to know it all. Read a few books mostly fiction. Not an amateur historian by any stretch. My current critique is I wish it was subtitled. It has the art film style with the dark drab color hues but it loses me on the English spoken. I am curious how accurate the misinformation and denial is. I know it’s historical fiction as some characters are an amalgamation, so it’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s artistic license.

Some time ago, provoked by watching some British/Irish shows, I had to turn on closed-captioning to understand.  Now its a way of life for me. I have to turn it off for sports, and that's it.  Wife scoffed at me at first, now she's down with the sickness too.

[Goredho 17,525]

For those posing bigger picture questions about whether man should be harnessing nuclear forces at all, NOVA’s “The Nuclear Option” is worth a watch.  You can catch it on Netflix.

 

[Goredho 17,525]

Also good for similar reasons is BBCs “Hiroshima” from 2005 which does a pretty good job of looking at the bomb from a lot of different perspectives without really telling you how you should feel about it.  Also streamable on Netflix.  Trailer below.

https://m.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi3760522009

Edited May 26, 2019 by Goredho

[troph 24,929]

The comparison of current nuclear technology in terms of a factor Times Hiroshima can be quite shocking.

[Telegraph_it 3,374]

1 hour ago, troph said:

A bit of a Chernobyl geek but not enough to know it all. Read a few books mostly fiction. Not an amateur historian by any stretch. My current critique is I wish it was subtitled. It has the art film style with the dark drab color hues but it loses me on the English spoken. I am curious how accurate the misinformation and denial is. I know it’s historical fiction as some characters are an amalgamation, so it’s hard to know what’s fact and what’s artistic license.

Read this thread. Increases my appreciation for the show. Also, as other posts have mentioned, I recommend listening to the podcast that follows the episodes. 

[troph 24,929]

Read this thread. Increases my appreciation for the show. Also, as other posts have mentioned, I recommend listening to the podcast that follows the episodes. 

Wow. That’s awesome! I’ll check out the podcast. In a perfect world I’d want Russian born actors speaking Russian but based on her critique or lack of one really I’d say pass given. I do think the cinematography might be in more drab colors than actual life, but I could be wrong.

[RPM 26,435]

24 minutes ago, troph said:

I do think the cinematography might be in more drab colors than actual life, but I could be wrong.

The Soviet Union wasn't known for their flair. It looks like what I'd expect to see in communist government buildings. The Kremlin is a magnificent palace. Hospital No. 6, not so much.

[Deej 77,313]

3 minutes ago, RPM said:

It looks like what I'd expect to see in College Station.

fify

[DDD Dad 14,437]

That thread and the related reviews are excellent. He even got a response from one of her producers of the show on some of the very few errors that he noted through the first 3 episodes.

 

Amazingly two of the suicide squad guys are still alive today (the third lived to 2005)!

 

[wutang75 455]

Some time ago, provoked by watching some British/Irish shows, I had to turn on closed-captioning to understand.  Now its a way of life for me. I have to turn it off for sports, and that's it.  Wife scoffed at me at first, now she's down with the sickness too.

My family has had CC on for years (I actually thought most people did this). I will say it takes away from the story because you get to the point you are just staring at the bottom of the screen. Love it for most things - but for certain movies we definitely turn it off.


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