*CHERNOBYL* Is Freaking Us Out | Episode 2 Reaction 

Chernobyl is really testing our emotions...such a sad story All 5 Episode Reactions are available 4 weeks EARLY and UNCUT over on Patreon! www.patreon.com/spartanandpudgey

It didn't surprise me at all that Stellan Skarsgård won a Golden Globe for this performance, he and Harris are outstanding.

The "Ill do it Myself" guy was General Pikalov. He was a veteran of WWII and had a stance of never asking his men to do anything he himself wouldnt do. So when he was told that driving the truck up may be a suicide mission he did as he had always done and didnt ask any of his men to do somthing he himself wouldnt.

Radiation just doesn’t destroy flesh, it disrupts circuits, batteries, plastics, effectively everything’s structure is hit by the speeding particles and wrecked on a sub-molecular level.

My father was one of the liquidators who helped clean up Chernobyl, he’s still kicking thank goodness.

29:30 I don't think Gorbachev is acting smug here. He's afraid and trying to keep his composure in front of his men. "All victories inevitably come at a cost" is his politician way of giving his O.K. The cost of saving the world is the lives of those 3 men.

I noticed Pudgey mention that they should be wearing gloves or radiation suits, but you guys' should be aware that radiation can pass through almost any material we know and is notoriously hard to contain. Radiation suits are generally designed to be used in environments with low to mid level radiation as a precaution, and often people will use robots or machinery to interact with high radiation areas as the suit will not be enough. Thats why they built a giant, thick metal dome over the site of Chernobyl in modern times. Even with that metal dome, it's not safe to approach the site. With this level of radiation, there isn't much protection that would make any difference. Remember how the fireman still got massive radiation burns on his hand, even though he was wearing a thick fireproof glove. Radiation particles are so small that they can pass through your whole body with little resistance, which explains on a basic level how Xrays work; they pass a light amount of Xray radiation through your body, and the rays are only slightly slowed by your skeleton, which leads to an imprint of your skeleton in any image made by collating the rays that have passed through.

Just so you know, graphite as such isn't dangerous at all. I mean, we all had pencils in schools, right? But when you have graphite in the nuclear reactor's core, it becomes radioactive. Because of other radioactive materials you have in the core, such as uranium-235.

The amount of immensely powerful lines in this show is unreal. In this episode alone... "It's not 3 roentgen, its 15,000", "We're asking for your permission to kill three men", "Go into that water because it must be done". Also the individual heroics, the General driving the dosimeter up to the plant himself to protect his men, the volunteers who went into the plant, Legasov and Khomyuk going there already knowing what it will do to them.

Evacuation was not the "simple" answer... not if the reactor was left to continue burning. They HAD to put it out, or try evacuate the entire continent of Europe. And yes, those 3 men did go into the water, and did lose their torches to radiation.... no spoilers, so I won't tell you what happens next.

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you dont understand it yourself." Albert Einstein said that. I think this show explains very complicated things in a way that your average person can get. Just top notch writing.

It still gives me chills that this came out a year before the pandemic hit and how accurate the parallels with the slow response and gaslighting were.

It blows my mind that the Chernobyl disaster doesn't get more attention in schools. It was a BIG DEAL when it happened, almost wiped out a large chunk of Europe. The USSR was such a mess in terms of arse covering BS by its leadership but there were many good people involved that literally saved millions through their actions and bravery. The show is pretty bloody accurate in broad strokes, so enjoy the history lesson! :) While that exact reactor design was not in play in other western countries, the disaster and the fear of nuclear power it generated effectively killed nuclear power as an option in many countries and it's partly why the topic of nuclear power is still being kicked around in such a messy way here in Australia to this day.

People forgot that Chornobyl was times more impactful for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union than the 9/11 attacks were for the USA. The deaths in 10 years span surpassed the 4000 but the cost was so huge that was one of two main reasons (the other one was the war costs) that brought the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years later.

"Chernobyl" is one of its kind. It's one of the best according to me

The unit is called Röntgen and is named after the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, who discovered X-rays.

7:51 Pudgey when she first met Spartan

Not sure if anybody said so in the comments already. But if you were to visit Chernobyl today and go to that hospital, one of the most radiated areas in the whole hospital is the pile of the firefighters clothes which are still down in the basement.

6:21 It's our favorite Master of Whispers, Larys "Clubfoot" Strong 😅

i'm form Italy. I was 10 years old when the disaster of Chernobyl Happened. I clearly remember the fear that we had for The rain transporting radiation over northern Italy. "Acid rain " was called. Beautiful reaction keep it up guys!

You guys didn't disappoint with the reveal of the 15,000 reading. There's so much buildup to it at that point in the show, it hits like a bulldozer and you didn't disappoint.

Evacuate where? He said the whole continent would die. Meaning europe and large parts of Asia. In the bar when the woman asked if there is nothing to be worried about, he had to say no. Soviet spies were everywhere and he would have been killed for saying anything else. Oh yeah forgot to mention under the last episode you did: in Finland we are recommended to keep iodine tablets just in case at home. And I do. To be taken if something like this happens again.

It was a bit dramatized, but those divers are really dived in. There is even a monument in Chernobyl called "to Those Who Saved the World," and it's not just for those divers, but also for the firefighters and all other liquidators!

Note: When Khomyuk was listing the countries that would be impacted she only listed Soviet states, because that's all the regime considered relevant. The reality is that it would have destroyed most of Europe. Also, interesting fact: When the West discovered what was happening Radio Free Europe (which broadcast from free countries into Soviet states to try to counter Soviet propaganda and educate the people) started informing the Soviet citizens on the dangers. Most citizens inside the Soviet Union were being told it was a minor problem and not to worry, so RFE started broadcasting instructions to keep windows and doors closed, to seal air vents, not eat homegrown vegetables, stock up on water, take iodine pills if they could etc. Despite the Soviet authorities banning access to Western media and only allowing people to have radios and TVs that were mechanically limited to only access Soviet channels a lot of people had illegal radios and they listened to RFE to enjoy Western music. Instead of hearing Michael Jackson they started hearing instructions on how to avoid exposure. No one knows how many lives were saved by that but it's probably many hundreds of thousands. Another interesting anecdote: Schools in the Soviet Union started getting mysterious calls telling them to keep children inside. This has been reported by numerous people who spoke to this mysterious caller but some say it was more than one caller. To this day no one knows who it was, but several of the people who reported it said it sounded like someone who had learned Russian in the West, the accent didn't sound native. Some of them thought it was "western spies" and they reported this to the Soviet authorities. Others who were slightly smarter worked out that it was someone (or an agency) in the West trying to warn them about how bad it really was. Again, we don't know how many lives that saved, but it's probably quite a few.

One of my first childhood memories: I was two and a half years old, when I was desperately looking for a doll that I loved to play with. She was part of a pair of two girl dolls, the one I was missing had a blue dress (the other had a red dress). So I asked my mom "Where is the blue Anna [my name for the doll]?" and I remember she said, she had to throw it away, because I played with it outside the other day. I thought it was because it was dirty, as I had played in the sand box (I really loved that doll and took her everywhere.) Some time later, don't recall how old I was then, I was tidying my room and found the doll with the red dress (which I only ever played with inside) and I quite angrily asked my mom, why she threw away my blue Anna, just because it was dirty? My mom answered: "Not because it was dirty. But because it was outside when Chernobyl happened. We also threw away all your sand toys, remember?" I was too young to fully grasp the meaning of this, only later when I was older and learned more about Chernobyl. By the way: We used to live just a few km south of Frankfurt, Germany. And May 1st (5 days after the explosion) is a national holiday in Germany. Many people had some days off and spent time outside (unknowing of what happened, as the Sovjets kept it secret first). Luckily, the area we lived was too far away for any dangerous radiation, however, the fall out was a real thing (radioactive particles in the air raining down). Again, to our luck, the contaminated rain fell down further to the south of Germany, where they had to throw away all the crops and for many decades it was recommended not to eat wild animals (wild boar, venison) from certain areas in Bavaria. EDIT, 'cuz some troll answering nonsense below and it might be generally relevant for others: Radiation is often mixed up with radioactive contamination. There was very little (not fatal) radiation from Chernobyl coming to Germany. However, with the explosion a lot of radioactive material was blown up into the air, carried by wind, etc. How severely this affects your health his highly dependent on the dose you take in for how much time. Wind also spreads the particles far apart, the concentration is lower, the farther you are away and so on. Anyway: Radiation can get through walls and fabric and so on. Things growing, living, lying outside on the other hand can get radioactively contaminated from the fall out. This posed a greater threat to south Germany than radiation, which was measured to be only 0,01 mSv (Millisievert) per year. The show, btw, also dramatizes quite a bit reg. touching people suffering from radiation disease. They are contaminated, yes, but they themselves don't radiate. The issue is with the radioactive material on their clothes, skin, hair. When you get in touch with that = really bad. You touch a person with radiation disease = not so much of an issue (if the person has been washed and treated medically).

What people need to realize is how close we came to a situation where we all would not be able to write anything here regarding this series..half of us would either be dead or never have been born...yes it was THAT close..and that is scary as fck

17:39 Boris became my favorite character. He is gruff and abrasive but his heart is in the right place. 18:08, next to this Colonel who would rather go himself than risk the life of one of his men. Got to love this guy!

Yes the three divers going into the water is 100% true. I think Dyatlov's character represents a person who understands the strange reality of life in the Soviet Union in the 80s. Historian Alexei Yurchak coined the term 'Hypernormalisation' to describe this feeling. He describes that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, knew that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. Dyaltlov knows this and understands this, that truth only exists as what the state wants the truth to be - even though everyone knows this isn't true and the state knows everyone knows. Dyatlov understands this and uses it for his own advancement, like the party bosses looting the system. 'They lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.'

Also a little trivia: When a team was sent to see what became of the core itself. The team was expecting to find a molten ball of sand and boron, but found that virtually non of the sand and boron they threw in ever reached the core. The core eventaully put it self out, seeping through concrete, piping, and whatever else it came into contact with, eventually making corium (which is material only made in a core meltdown). A huge blob of this corium is famouisly known as the "elephant's foot". To answer Pudey's question of where the residents went. They were told only to bring vital papers, since they'd only be gone for a few days. They were taken to surrounding towns and cities never to return to Chernobyl. I think they wre given vouchers by the government to re settle to other areas later on.

8 milliroentgen, .008 roentgen, in Minsk, not eight roentgen. Details are important in technical matters. Thanks for getting your Ep. 2 reaction up so quickly. Gen. Vladimir Pikalov, the one who drove the truck, was a GOAT, worth looking up.

"This snake" getting on the bus, played Maester Luwin in Game of Thrones (maester for the Starks). Remember? :D

8:20 as you'll soon find out, gloves would have done nothing

I think that couple in the hotel bar that asked him were the KGB that followed them out, glad he didn't tell them the truth.

one of the central themes to this series is how corrosive lies can be, and how the very repressive Soviet government created the atmosphere where lying and covering up was standard practice. Disagreeing with the official government propaganda could get you a long prison sentence or even death.

Latex gloves wouldn't have helped the nurses. The level of radiation on the clothes was far too high and they didn't have anything specifically for radiation. They were stuffed either way.

“You know the clothes are contaminated! Gloves, simple!” Oh pudgey. This ain’t your suburban neighbourhood where you can rock on down to the corner store and get radiation proof gloves.

Important difference at the beginning, the Scientists in Minsk said 8 MILLIroentgen, not 8 roentgen. Also, I would say, be careful with your language, calling the Pilots retarded is a bit harsh. "We are dealing with something that has never occured on this Planet before", I hardly think the common soldier would understand why he can't fly over, to his eyes, a building fire.

"It's not 3 roentgun it's 15000" "It's another faulty meter, you're wasting our time"

If I remember correctly, a lot of the things we know about the effects of radiation today, we learned because of Chernobyl. So things that seem logic to us ("why don't they wear protective gear, why do they willingly do this or that" ) they DIDN'T know. And they didnt have the gear. Some of the reason for that was that they were "under-geared" and didn't have the gear that they ought to have, but some of it was because a thing like this had never happened before, and NO ONE at this point had the right equipment for a situation like this! Or a protocol for what to do ...

During the Chernobyl disasters I was 5 years old and I went to kindergarten (Warsaw, Poland), I remember that we had to drink the so-called Lugola liquid, a concentrated dose of iodine which protected the thyroid gland from the absorption of this radioactive.

They were getting 8 mili (0,008) Röntgens in the begining of the episode. In the first episode they were talking about 3,6 Röntgens. Also, I'm not sure if you noticed but the actor playing Boris, Stellan Skarsgård, was also in the Dune movies as the Baron.

Yes, you can indeed google the names ;) I guess you shouldnt yet to avoid spoilers. But you can at the end!!! 200% Those 3 guys are very real! By the way, the firefighters are very real too, as is the wife who is a main character. She is very real too. The only fake main character is the lady scientist. She represents what were in reality a couple different people. Because there were more real life experts who did contribute and tried to help once they were called in. And of course experts would have a very drastic and real view on what the consequences would be so they were ready to face the regime if need be. Some more vs others. But there were many true heroes. You can google most of the names and you will get results. This show is remarkably on point with what happened. Scary as it is.......and its maybe even scarier to realize most of this did really happen.

This is what radiation really does. Not turn you into a superhero like in the comics. The people that risked their lives are the real heroes. You guys are most likely done watching this series already but you guys are looking at the soviet union from a modern perspective which is understandable. Its both funny and annoying at the same time . Like the man said , this is something that has never happened on the planet before. Im sure it was hard for them to even wrap their heads around it. Telling someone 13 or 15,000 is jyst numbers to people who don't understand. Calling them clowns and stupid is a bit, idk, immature? Short sighted? Or perhaps "clownish"

Ananenko. Bezpalov. Baranov. I'll never forget how much I bawled after that scene the first time I watched it. Immediately searched about their fate online too.

Kinda wish they'd do a tiny bit of research after the first episode so they can somewhat understand how the Soviets did things back then and what would happen if you defy them.

Miraculously, The Three who went into the valve room *survived!* _Alexei Ananenko_ and _Valeri Bespalov_ are believed to be both *still alive* as of 2024, while _Boris Baranov_ died in 2005 from an unrelated illness (heart disease). This is believed to be due to the circumstances of their involvement. The entire basement was flooded and they were submerged in water for the entire duration of the mission. Water is one of the best _radiation shields_ due to it's density and the ionizing radiation's interaction with water. This is believed to be the reason they received far less radiation compared to most people working at the site.

FYI, the creator and writer of this show, Craig Mazin, also wrote for The Last of Us series. Brilliant guy. He also wrote the Hangover movie sequels by the way 😅

Fun fact the 2 people in the bar who asked legasov if they should be worried were KGB agents. They were testing legasov, if he had told them the truth he would've been arrested.

As a resident of Ukraine, a former supporter of Russia. I can say that this series conveys the political side of even MODERN Russia quite well. All this slavery, fear, this whole atmosphere. Somewhere in this show there is an exaggeration and somewhere, on the contrary, an understatement of this Soviet trash in the government and people's heads.

The translation is ""there has been an unpleasant level of radiation detected. Take documents, medicines and foods needed for a week"" So the people were told they would be back, but as you know never did. Be aware the next episode is even worse. At Episode 5 BE SURE YOU PLAY ALL TH ENDING CREDITS

Fun fact: 2024 in Germany (1500km away) Wild boar are persistently radioactively contaminated with caesium-137. The half-life of caesium-137 is 30 years, and the substance remains biologically available in the forest ecosystem for a long time. In the data available to us alone, values of up to 27,000 Bq/kg can be found.

I was 14 My dad was an officer in army intelligence We lives in eastern United states My parents didn't let us go outside The day radiation was discovered in Scandinavia and stayed indoors almost 2 weeks

soviets, at the time, lived in a society where there was only one truth, which was the state was infallible and to question it meant a visit from kgb, a trip to the gulag, or death. so, to suggest that a nuclear power plant built and governed by the state had failed catastrophically was an extreme challenge to their power and that is why the more indoctrinated sycophants like dyatlov would never dare admit the core couldve blown up, even though he looked at the graphite on the roof. to admit that was to admit the states fallability, which was not allowed.

To this day, those firefighter clothes are there, in that hospital room, giving off more radiation than you could live standing next to for an hour.

"there's a bunch of sneaky snakes in here" Should be the show's tagline.

I'm surprised you guys didn't recognize Larys "Clubfoot" Strong from House of the Dragon - he was the assistant that opened the window at the start of the episode. So many recognizable actors in this show!

I can remember the time in Germany. I was 14 Years old when Chernobyl happend. We could go outside but it was not advised. People refused to drink milk or eat Mushrooms

"Then I'll do it myself." **cue boss music**

you need to understand how communism works. questioning the position of the (perfect utopian) state can be monumentally bad. you say "no way I'd do that" but if you don't comply you will get jail or execution, your family members could lose their jobs or get arrested as well or get relocated. your kids won't be allowed in school, they'll lose privileges, you think it they'll do it. you need to understand just how oppressive that society was. think of cancel culture on steroids. I was in Italy visiting family when this happened. you weren't allowed outside, you couldn't eat fruit off trees or drink the water. no local produce was allowed for consumption, no dairy, no meat, vegetables nothing. everything had to be imported. it affected all of Europe

You missed spotting Maester Luwin. He was the government official that wanted to keep everything quiet, but was first on the bus to evacuate. Also, while maybe some people are having a power trip, I think many are hamstrung due to bureaucracy. Their bosses do not want to hear bad news, so they don't tell them. And the ones who have played the game long enough, not only do they not tell their bosses bad news, but they refuse to hear it themselves. It's a terrible way to survive at your job, when you don't know how to do your job (because you were appointed as a bribe due to the pay), but such a setup of governing officials leads to the government exacerbating the issue rather than helping.

It is so freaky that those firefighter clothes are still there today full with radiation!

This is such a well done show, I love it! As for why everyone seemed to be dragging their feet or in denial, this had NEVER happened before and was thought impossible, and they were instructed that it WAS impossible. And yet, it happened

I was 7 when this happened and I can still remember how we were told not to pick berries and mushrooms in forests, reindeer meat was not recommended to be eaten and sand in sandboxes had to be mixed from time to time.

This series is so good, not just because of the attention to detail, acting, music etc.. it's the way that by the end of it, you will understand exactly what happened. It's so terrifying to think this really occured, so much scarier than any fictional horror. Bear with it guys, questions will be answered if you don't quite understand everything now. Top tier show

Just a cool fact that the decimeter they used that read 15,000 actually maxed out at that number so it was still probably much higher There's also real footage of them trying to drop boron and sand on the reactor and the helicopter clipping the crane and going down

I was eight years old, when Chernobyl happened and remember very well what it was like in (East) Germany back then. First of all, we didn't hear anything from the state-controlled media for days. Actually, we learned about Chernobyl from western media which you could receive in the GDR, but you had to be careful when watching. When it was acknowledged by state media, we were not allowed to play outside and anything growing outside was banned for human consumption, at least for a time of if tested and below certain threshholds. We had a garden and - more or less - lost this year's harvest (1986). A very rarely known fact is that there are still regions in (now unified) Germany where things are still tested today for Caesium contamination, like wild boar and venison (like every hunted animal), before it is allowed to enter the market for human consumption.

21:24 The screenplay mentions that the wind changed direction and blew the smoke directly at the helicopter negating their visiblity, which is why they drifted closer into the perimeter.

Chernobyl, Andor... Stellan Skarsgård can deliver really epic and moving speeches.

There were idiots running things, but there were heroes as well that would give their lives to save millions.

The explosion caused by the reactor melting into the water would have been in the tons not the mega-tons. So enough to damage/destroy the other reactors but not enough to wipe out the whole continent. Also, they were able to pump out most of the water before sending in the three men (Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bespalov and Boris Baranov) in. Fortunately, all of them survived and two are still alive today. Non the less, the bravery they showed is truly admirable. And their humble response to the whole affair "We're not heroes, we were just doing a job that had to be done" is also respectable.

29:11 Actually, all three divers survived; two of them are still alive today, and one died about ten years ago from a heart attack. The firefighters' clothing still lies in the basement of the Pripyat hospital and remains highly radioactive to this day.

This show is amazing. It’s scarier than any horror movie or slasher flick. After the show is done definitely do the research on Chernobyl. Most of the show is true except for some dramatic license. E.G. the miners & 3 volunteers to swim by the reactor to drain the tanks. Also there are interviews with Dyatlov who lived for some time afterwards. The two bureaucrats who totally underestimated the disaster got something like 10 year hard labor which wasn’t enough. The dangerous & corrupt thinking communism fosters permeated all of the Soviet Union which contributed to the disaster in a multitude of ways. Fascinating & horrifying at the same time. This shows you how brilliant & how vile man can be. You two are watching some of the best shows ever made: Shogun & Chernobyl.🤘🙂👍

Something's the dramatized but the people volunteering is true and if they hadn't a sacrifice their lives like you saw millions would have died. tens of millions. Imagine with the landscape of Europe would look like today if those people have let that lava hit the water tanks. They could have all saved themselves and just ran from the site and let whatever happened happen.

I live in the UK, it is said that radiation was detected in our country from this incident, so so far, this happened 1 month before I was born and I have those kind of conditions like Hayfever, photosensitivity, dermititis, terrible sense of smell and taste... Just the kind of things small bullets can destroy and trigger... Who knows, maybe my paranoid thoughts hold truth.

"Dmitri" - the male scientist in Belarus who only appears in this episode - is played by Matthew Needham, who Spartan & Pudgey will recognize as Lorys Clubfoot from House of the Dragon. Also, in that scene, they detect 8 milliroentgen, not 8 roentgen. So at that time the show is depicting as 0.008 roentgen in Belarus, which was still enough to be detected.

Episode Four: Pudgey does not make it through.

Supposedly a spoiler, though I'm not sure how it effects anything for the viewer knowing this trivial piece of information: Been a while since I did a deep dive into this, but I’m pretty sure the female scientist that comes to their aid is a personification of a whole board of scientists made specifically for the HBO show to simplify stuff for the viewer

1:22 "I thought that's all your brain would come up with" 😂😂😂

You have to understand that this was during the Sovjet Union when the state ruled and orders were obeyed under hierarchy. Most people knew the danger but stuck to order and could not act openly under the rule that prevailed in the Sovjet Union att the time.

The guys at the end are true, their torches dying may be a dramatisation.

Good, you started this very sad journey. Everybody should know about Chernobyl. I live in Germany and we did not allow children to play outside when this occured bc the radiation was contaminating whole of eastern and middle Europe.

No Spartan, it wasn't because they didn't want to evacuate that they had to put out the fire in the core and prevent it from melting down to the water table. They had to do that in order to prevent the disaster from getting much worse and spread further, so they still have to do that even after evacuating Pripyat. The three men who had to go into the basement are real and it was just as chaotic as depicted in the show (though without the dosimeters going crazy) but surprisingly, it didn't lead to their deaths. Two are still alive today and the third died of a heart attack in 2005.

30:23 Remember these 3 names. They are Heros! And deserve to be remembered and recognized!

My parents are both Dutch, and they remember when this happend. There was definitely a scare throughout all of Europe. And they also remember that a huge portion of Europe was unable to sell and consume food from farm lands all the way from Russia to Italy and Germany which in return made it so that there was a lot less food in Europe at that time. It was a crazy thing that happend, which I hope never happens again !

Dont worry what happened and what not, you will get your answers, in the end of the last episode (watch it until the total end).

The 3 men that were sent down to locate the valves is 100% true. They actually all survived and lived pretty long lives, which is insane considering what they were exposed to.

"They gave the number they had." This is also applicable to the military dosimeter. It was also maxed out.

There are still areas in germany where you shouldnt collect mushrooms because they still have radiation from chernobyl

1) The three volunteers had no lights. the water in that area was luminescent due to the Cherenkov effect. 2) the helicopter crash occurred more than a month later

Spartan mentioned that the captain that volunteered to drive the truck was from outlander. The lady that was given the iodine pills is also from outlander, she's the fortune teller.

As a kid in Scotland, I remember being told not to play outside in the school playground when this was going on ("just in case"). Scotland is about 1500 miles from Chernobyl.

I am Ukrainian, and my father was one of the liquidators of the Chernobyl disaster, he voluntarily sacrificed his health to save the world. For me personally this series is an insult. So sad that too many people perceive this as some kind of a documentary. - Legasov never hid the tapes from evil KGB spies. He openly passed them on to his friends a year before he end his life due to his poor health. - At that moment in the series when they are only arguing that city needs to be evacuated - the real Chernobyl was already a completely evacuated a day ago. - The firefighters who gave their lives fighting the fire - were not buried in a hole in the ground and filled with concrete - they were buried in the memorial cemetery with all honors. - Dyatlov didn’t yell at anyone, didn’t threaten anyone, and never denied the reactor explosion - but hey, let’s make a scum and a bastard out of a real person, the series needs an antagonist. - Medics underwent training, including radiation accidents, once every six months and were fully prepared and equipped for such an event - but hey, let's show that medics are stupid and worthless, never miss the opportunity to show how bad communism was. - At the moment in the series where Legasov accuses evil KGB that they never began to fix reactors as they promised - in the real world more than half of the reactors had already been fixed, the rest were under repair - The Minister of the Coal Industry was a very famous and respected person who himself began his career as a simple miner - the miners knew him well and volunteered to go to Chernobyl, there were no soldiers or threats - another real person who was turned into a bastard in the series And so on, in almost every episode they lied about something. Some call it "overdramatization", others call it "propaganda", but the point is the same - it's a fictional story for an impressionable public who is not interested in the truth. Turning real people into idiots and bastards and calling it history is the key to a successful series about evil commies. What a sick joke that the main theme of the series is “the consequences of lies” - while the series itself is a one big lie.

I know it's already too late as episodes are prerecorded, but calling everyone a clown is a bit too much? Perhaps a look into a mirror would help to calm down?

Pretty sure Chernobyl is just the name of the nuke generator facility itself. Pripyat is the town where it is all happening.

18:08 - They tried to make a 'life-sized' statue of *General Vladimir Pikalov* as a tribute of his heroic bravery. But they found out that there was not enough steel, brass nor lead in the Soviet Union to properly represent the shear size of his balls. - The lead shielding wasn't meant to protect Pikalov from the reactor, it was meant to protect the reactor from *General Vladimir Pikalov.*

I like watching your reactions but in this series you come off so ignorant and rude. This was the first time in human history that nuclear reactor exploded. And USSR was a really different country, a police state. You couldn't say anything or do anything that would make the government look bad. (Sorry for my bad English)

Pudsey u dont know anything about chernobyl or soviet union so id stop applying your logic of today to this show . Your having hand held through the show this was in 80s nuclear fusion wasnt well known and under the iron curtain of communisim people dont talk back..

Unfortunately, gloves probably wouldn’t have made much difference for the nurses handling the firefighters’ clothes. Radiation is not a chemical, it exists on the subatomic level. It can easily penetrate fabric or leather or plastic. They’d need a lead-lined suit to be protected.

7:06 I never noticed him, it's Larys Strong from House of the dragon

You said "He is so cynical.." regarding "President" Gorbatjov.., but from what I`ve heard he was actually one of the guys who respected the Science and Natural Physics knowledge quite much already from the start here.. he is said to have been studying some Biology himself when he was young so he got the rough problems pretty fast I believe.. but ofcourse he sat in a really tough situation when trying to solve this, from a Soviet point of view I mean.. This for sure is a testament of some "Hard Core Politics" ! / Great reaction, Thanks for sharing..this is important stuff.. !!