Is *CHERNOBYL* a Masterpiece?! Episode 1 | Reaction/Review 

7:57 “…the actual nuke has gone off.” I think we’re confusing a nuclear bomb with a nuclear reactor. Nuclear reactor aren’t housing nuclear bombs. Reactors produce energy and electricity. Hope this helps!

wow Actually, I did not expect to see your reaction to Chernobyl. I'm from Ukraine, and I want to explain things that are not spoilers. Soviet power is not so simple. Simply resigning, leaving, telling the information to everyone - you will not succeed. But about tragedies, large critical objects and other things. A lot is known about radiation, the operation of nuclear power plants and the risks - they happened thanks to the Chernobyl accident. This is probably the first such large and terrible man-made accident in the history of mankind, which was not widely heard of at that time. People who lived there think that it is just an accident and it is just a flame. And they will think like that for a long time. More information will be revealed in the next series. Just understand, these are different times, this is a different state, a different mentality. But the accident that affected almost everyone. On Netflix, there is a good documentary about the Cold War and nuclear weapons. It tells a good story about the times of the Soviet Union and the USSR. I will eagerly await your next reactions.

guys you might wanna search up what the ussr is... there is no resigning 💀

Chernobyl is goated. So is the netflix show 'Dark'. The definition of S Tier.

In Ireland, which is an island at the far western edge of Europe, there was a massive spike in babies being born with birth defects along the eastern coast after Chernobyl. So even an island off the western coast of Europe, over 1,800 miles from Pripyat, we still felt the effects of the Chernobyl disaster just to show the scale of the disaster.

21:35 the red forest, famously named that after most of the radiation got carried in that direction, still one of the most radiated places in Chernobyl to this day, not safe to walk into even tho the town is a tourist spot now and safe enough.

In USSR you don’t just simply walk away. You either cooperate with the state or end up dead.

12:34 "It's gonna be like 8.4!" 15:16 "Oh my gosh they gonna pull it out and it's something like 10 point..." ... LOL

I have to admit y'all's comments acting as if the average person in that country at the time had a choice to do other than what they were told is kinda funny because it shows how little is taught about what Governments like this are like and how the heirarchy works. You can't refuse. You can't run, you can't resign, and if you go against the grain in your words or actions, you end up dead or in jail

I am Estonian. When this disaster happened, we weren't allowed to pick berries and mushrooms for several years following, and going out during the rain was heavily discouraged. Fyi Estonia is around 1000km (600mi) away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Another tragic part was the generational aftermath. Since Estonia was under USSR occupation at the time, a lot of Estonian men were forcibly mobilized to clean up the zone. My neighbour was 19 years old at the time. He was sent to clean. A year later he had a baby with his wife, who was consequently born with deformed limbs most likely caused by radiation poisoning on the father's side.

It's always so funny to watch americans reaction to this show. They legitimately don't have capacity to understand what USSR was, how it was built, how people lived and what kind of people were soviets. It's not country who appreciates creativity or rebellious behavior. That is literally dictatorship guys. You don't "resign" from this life.

Chernobyl and Band of Brothers are the two best mini-series ever shown on television.

86 was a big year. Challenger, then Chernobyl, then I was born.😅 Today actually, 8/27/86. But I think this show is probably one of the most important pieces of media people can and absolutely should watch, especially for you cooking juicy goated rizzed up youngins or whatever it is you kids say.

Absolute masterpiece. Among the miniseries, I think that the podium is for Chernobyl, Band of Brothers and True Detective (season 1) and the order is interchangeable.

This will be a solid lesson for you guys and not only a history lesson. It will show you how USRR operated. It was a cruel oppressive system where personal liberties didn't exist. You could disappear without a trace for having a simple anti-government pamphlet with you. You didn't know who your friend was and who could denunciate you to the high authority, usually KGB. And you should remember that this oppressive mentality is still there, in modern-day Russia. KGB was never delegalized (the current Russian president is a former KGB agent) and it transformed into FSB - with the same methods, the same oppressive mentality. They mastered gaslighting way before it was in fashion.

Guys, having some background will help you appreciate the show. This took place during the final phase of the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union which had been going on since the end of WWII in 1945. This was when the threat of nuclear war was hanging over every major crisis. When this happened even though nobody knew it at the time, these were the last days of Communism and the Soviet Union. Like Russia today, many internal conflicts and struggles were hidden from the outside world. But in 1989 it all came tumbling down, the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke apart. That is when Ukraine became a separate country. Chornobyl is located in Ukraine near its capital Kiev and very distant from the power center of Moscow. Believe me, they would have acted faster and more effectively if it had been in their backyard. In the Soviet Union, social controls were starting to ease up, in part as a way to stave off collapse by giving people a little more freedom, but there was no instant communication, no internet, or cell phones. Information traveled slowly and incompletely, and surveillance by the KGB was everywhere. Within living memory, the penalty for doing something that the state did not like would end up with you in a labor camp in Siberia, a dank and dangerous prison, or if you were unlucky on your knees with a bullet to the back of your head no questions asked. That's what you need to know to understand the motivations of these people. First, they are paranoid that they will be blamed which is why there is a lot of denial and trying to shift the blame. Second, they are afraid their phones are tapped, they are being followed, or otherwise under surveillance. That is the cause of the secretiveness. This paranoia went from the bottom all the way to top officials.Within living memory, under Stalin's control, many powerful officials were tried and executed in short order--Hero of the Republic or not. On a larger scale, the Kremlin was trying to avoid international embarrassment and condemnation. That is the reason it tried to keep things under wraps by not authorizing mass evacuations or otherwise calling attention to an enormous disaster that would show its weaknesses to the world. In fact, the outside world only found out when radiation levels suddenly started to rise in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe. That is when the whole world sat up and took notice. I hope this gives you enough context to sit back and enjoy this great show without second-guessing why people act as they do.

i gotta say, you guys have one of the most non-toxic audience for a reaction channel (in my experience) :) even if you are somehow uneducated on some topics in the shows you are watching, people are generally keen to explain calmly and provide some info in friendly way. (hope not to jinx it :D) just recently joined your Patreon and enjoyed the ride so far!

20:01 The face of defeat. I feel so bad for that guy.

this is one of those few shows that is literally 10/10 every episode

Chernobyl explosion happened a few months before I was born. I have always been fascinated.

as a post-Soviet citizen myself its always very interesting to watch how western people react to this...and our parents here directly witnessed this disaster

Up until the Chernobyl event, they genuinely did not think that a nuclear reactor could explode; it was a perfect storm of conditions. It made more sense to them that all the radiation detection equipment was faulty than the reactor exploding because that was unfathomable.

The sound scapes of this show blow me away to this day.

“That the nuke has gone off” 😅

They should definitely watch Dark Their predictions, and how they will get tuned in each episode and dial down every scene Its perfect for them

Sweden and Denmark found elevations in radiation, but the Sovjet kept denying anything was wrong.

Important Russian people: Peter the Great. Ivan the Terrible. And Dyatlov the Not Great, Not Terrible.

Prepare yourself boys. This show is brutal. There is no happy ending. This is a real life event. There is still an exclusion zone in Pripyat, Ukraine to this day. The show is excellent but doesn't explain how radiation and radiation sickness works. It doesn't work how most people think. There are different kinds of radiation, some can't even penetrate skin while others can go through lead walls. Even if it can't penetrate skin, if you breathe in contaminated material (such as ash), it is literally inside your body and doesn't need to penetrate the skin. It kills your white blood cells which are responsible for fighting infection, meaning even if you don't die from the radiation you would probably die from merely breathing the air or touching surfaces that haven't been disinfected. High doses can cause your skin to basically disintegrate. Without skin there's not a whole lot left to define a boundary between the "inside" and "outside" of your body. Can't go into too much detail but that's definitely a gruesome rabbit hole

9:17 The sight on Earth that likely comes closest to the fires of hell

Here on our little island of Anglesey in North Wales UK we had to cull sheep after the disaster as they had radiation our land was also peppered with doses of radiation

And this show was made by Craig Mazin, the showrunner of The Last of Us Many Americans aren’t aware of what happened in Chernobyl, but all Europe was aware and affected by it

Truly one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. So glad you guys are watching it! Pay attention to NAMES, it’s easy to get them confused because so many are being thrown around.

7:10 iirc that dude was injured by superheated steam from a burst pipe since he was so close to the pumps, his face isn't caused by the radiation. Though he did receive around 390-490 rem.

There is still radiation in the ground in northern Norway (my country) to this day from radiation downpour. Radiation can travel allot with the weather. It's suuuuuper scary. This show, and the actual events, were so frustrating as the soviet union would rather doom themselves then admit error or fault.

You guys need to watch DARK, won’t regret it and it is so fun to watch as group

For this only being 5 episodes, this is one of my favorite shows of all time. It is so well written and acted out

Hearing you guys talking about free will while watching a show about Soviet Russia is funny to me. "I would resign right there" No you wouldn't because you would be aware of the fact that resigning would lead to you dying right here right now (from a bullet not from radiation) and your entire family going to the Goulag on the following morning beacuse you were declared ennemy of the state (sometimes including family and friends along). That's why the answer of the comrade "Of course you will" makes sense. This show is not about nuclear power plants or the impact of nuclear radiations, it's about how much ideology can change a narrative despite the reality of things. It's about how far a state and all those who work for it can go when the truth doesn't benefit them. It is harsh for me watching grown and intelligent men discovering entirely Tchernobyl or Soviet Russia but i can't blame you guys for the incompetence of US education system. Anyway, I really like your channel and have not missed a single react for more than a year now, love from France 🇨🇵.

I know the comments are kinda "ripping" you guys for not knowing the realities of the USSR or what happened in Chernobyl, but I'm really glad you guys are going through this show to learn how the system kinda was back then. The Cold War, the USSR in general, the pitfalls of bureaucracy, the devastation that mismanagement creates...it's tragic man. It's horrifying and terrible, and we need to understand what the effects that the small decisions we make can have on the future.

Chernobyl is an example of what happens if everyone gets to pick whatever truth is most comfortable to themselves. It's sad that the school system doesn't teach about the largest nuclear disaster in history.

50 thousand people used to live here…. Now it’s a ghost town

First off, SO GLAD you boys are checking out Chernobyl. It's a ten ton show that cooks way more than 3.6 roentgen. *We gonna need a higher dosimeter!* 21:11 Brig zeroed in on it immediately -- The Soviet culture had/has been been like this for a very long time. There's a lot of self-interest, passing the blame, and over-valuing higher-end leadership over subordinates, overlooking truth in favor of propaganda, and it persists to this day. Honorable young men like yourselves will undoubtedly find some of these characters' personalities exceptionally frustrating to behold. You can see examples of it in real time with the current events playing out in the region with regard to Russia. Chernobyl & the still-abandoned city of Pripyat are in Ukraine, which gained its own independence from the Russian state in 1991 at the fall of the USSR. However, this culture of gaslighting, shifting accountability, and turning away from horrific behaviors in that regional culture is pervasive and very difficult to break away from and change (especially when its perpetuation mostly benefits those who have the ability to change it), which is evident in this current conflict. UA is literally in the middle of breaking free of that wheel in real time within their own layers of leadership and culture, while RU is both holding onto, and being broken by that (self-maintained) wheel still. This show is both shocking, terrifying, and extremely thought-provoking. The tension is doubly compelling because it was a real event, that we (the world) _did_ somehow make it through.

Does anybody else remember how the Russians tried to take Kyiv in Ukraine by rolling through the Chernobyl Exclusion zone? And does anyone remember how their soldiers were so stupid that they decided to dig trenches in the the heavily contaminated soil , with multiple people getting acute radiation sickness?

While the Historical accuracy in HBO Chernobyl isn't perfect, the culture of intense denial in the Soviet Union is absolutely accurate, and still exists in Russia today (often to its detriment).

Btw 3.6 roentgen , while dangerous, is still baby talk , compared to what you are gonna see in later episodes 😅

Fuck yeah! One of my favourite shows ever. Chernobyl is a fucking masterpiece. I can't wait for your reaction to the end of episode 2. Also, you're one of the few reactors to point out that they genuinely believed that RBMK reactors could not explode. The "2+2=5" comment really summarized it well.

I was a US military Rx operator when this happened. We were called into a conference room once word got out that the Soviets had an accident. No info was available as to specifics of the accident but we knew something serious had happened by the amount of fallout detected in other countries. Even though the cold war was in full swing this news was very alarming and upsetting to my colleagues because the nuclear power generation community is rather small even on a international scale. Our designs were PWR and theirs were boilers so different characteristics but the best guess we could come up with was that Chernobyl had some stuck control rods and had a reactivity addition accident during a cold start up. Ha - our guess never entertained the idea that anyone would operate a nuclear reactor outside of it's operational curves which are defined, documented, and policies put in place to ensure safe operation within those curves.

12:36 lmfao carter you have no idea brother.

I was shocked to find out the guy who held open the door to the reactor chamber survived this, it seemed heavily implied he died after that scene where he's smoking in the rubble.

Dyatlov is an interesting character. Many who knew him say this is a dramatized version of him, making him more of a villain than he actually was. Sure he was a very serious and demanding person, but apparently they went over the top with his cruelty.

Another goated hbo series.

All this video did was make me want to sit them down and go on a 30 minute history lesson about Chernobyl and the Soviet Union

It’s a nuclear reactor - not a nuclear bomb. This series is extraordinary! It was heartbreaking how they tried to cover how massive the danger was to the citizens and the rampant lies. The actors - all of them - in this series are phenomenal.

I grew up in Europe during this time. I remember that sandboxes in playgrounds were closed and we weren't supposed to go out when it rained. Certain foods from the ground were no longer sold and the windows were supposed to remain closed. It was scary and I get goosebumps when I remember it.

I have a relative who during the time in 1986, was conscripted , and worked with Geiger (radiation) counters, im from Czechia, so back then it was Czechoslovakia, and they did report increase at that time.

At the beginning "It's not really peaking my interest" - that's because you weren't alive when this crap happened - believe me, if you had been any age in 1986 you suddenly wanted to know what the heck was going on at Chernobyl... This show (whilst taking some liberties for the benefit of the viewer) is a true work of art. And as harrowing as it is - the best respect you can give the real heroes is to watch and learn from this... (actually - with what's going on in the world today, this whole thing has just become more relevant than ever - watch - learn! - this must NEVER be allowed to happen again)

radiation poisoning is so scary bro 😭 you're telling me that if I stand next to this pile of molten metal (elephant's foot), my DNA's gonna start to unravel like a zipper and my skin will melt off of me????? 😭😭😭😭 wtf

I live in Finland and this happened when i was 6 years old. Iwas getting prepeared that year summer and i had just got a new swimsuit and watermattress to play . then all of the sudden my mother ordered me and my twin brother inside and ordered not to swim that year and not to drink milk , eat berries, mushrooms and we had to take iodine pills several months . and i was pissed that my summer went badly that year that was because the radiation cloud came in top of us too. Today i can now understand better and understand that the people with Screbina and Legasov they did everything they got to stop the fires and clean the place up , i put the blame in Soviet Unions leaders and mamgment who tried to cover this up and make up all those lies.

Do they not know how microphonic that table is? lol, him sitting that cup down sounded like a kick drum on a metallic trac.

A masterpiece wouldn't have to take such wild liberties with the truth or slander dead people so horribly.

All those radiation in the sky caused it to rain 😂 ... Bro, it's radiation not water vapour 😂😂😂

Hey, I just realized this myself but that's Maester Luwin at 16:36 !

Good to see you watching. The drama is based on real events with some things simplified to make story telling easier. The show confuses the roles of dosimeters (measuring cumulative radiation dose) and Geiger Counters (measuring instantaneous radiation) to make it easier to follow. Lyudmilla, the firefighter's wife, her story is real as told in unflinching detail in *Voices of Chernobyl*. It's far more horrifying than they even portray here, but you haven't gotten that far. The reactor workers told their stories as well, as did Valerey, who hung himself. The tapes and suicide are real, although the tapes were not hidden. They were left in plain sight, like the documents he'd gathered on the table. The accident that happened is what's called an excursion, caused by prompt criticality. With the Soviet paranoia of secrecy, they really literally believed this couldn't happen. For a much smaller prompt criticality excursion, look up SL-1 in Idaho. It's pretty horrifying. Dylatov is calm because he managed a nuclear accident aboard a Soviet Navy sub. He truly believed that this couldn't happen. Dylatov was indeed an arrogant guy who was hard on his subordinates, but he did spend the last years of his life trying to clear the names of the other workers in the control room. The actual number of valves the other two had to open was over 1000. The RBMK reactor, this type, was notorious in the west for its design flaws. There were also people in the Soviet Navy that knew. This series gets more intense the further you go, and the Finale wraps things up well. Absolutely worth it.

It’s worth noting that this takes place in the Soviet Union, but specifically in Ukraine near the Belarus border. Fallout was carried by wind west across Europe and specifically away from Russia. Among other things, Chernobyl was one of the final straws for the USSR before dissolution. In doing so however Russia was able to leave the disaster for Ukraine to deal with. Along with Moscow benefiting largely off of Ukrainian industry without compensation for all of Soviet existence, the current hostilities are more than understandable.

Yayyy another goated series reaction. Next up, DARK!

Viktor, the injured guy in the beginning, was way worse off than that in reality. The door of the room he was in was one of those sealable doors you see on naval ships, so the bottom had this 6 inch lip that trapped the radioactive water from the equipment he was monitoring in the room along with the steam that burned him. He was pinned on the floor by a beam that had come down and crushed his spine. When he was found he was frothing blood from his lips and unresponsive. He died a few hours later

You guys should watch Dark and true detective season 1

I work at Rosatom's library, and it was the only tv-show that we had conversations about as colleagues from 20s to 70s in age. A boss of mine worked at Chernobyl in the 90s, and our superior, who saw videos of people with radiation sickness, said they made a great make-up.

Love this series so much and awesome to see you guys react to it!

Im from Czechia, and we learn about about the history of our nation (including Czechoslovakia) during the times of communist occupation. If you didnt satisfy the people above you, you could get fired or "disaapeared" , there was tons of corruption because of this and why many disasters(non-nuclear) happened, and finally the largest one, Chernobyl. It was all about denial. If theyve seen opposing evidence, they would try to deny it to the hardest level. I havent lived during the era if communism, but many stories, from my parents alone and teachers.. are not good. And yes, most things that are shown in the series are real. Some have been altered to fit this style of 'documentary'. But its all explained at the end of the 5th final episode.

Okay guys I just stumbled across this video and would like to make some suggestions for other series!! I enjoy watching younger people react to historical things so this should be very interesting!!! One of the best series for historical information and something that every generation should see is the series "Band of Brothers"!! 10 part series with an extra 11th"episode", so to speak, which is kind of a summary of the individuals involved!! Band of Brothers was produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg so you know it's top-notch with HBO money backing it so you guys will enjoy the subject and learn quite a bit!! Two other series that go along with B.o.B are "The Pacific" and "Masters of the Air", both deal with World War II content as does Band of Brothers!! "The Pacific" focuses on the fight against the Japanese!! And Masters focuses on the Army Air Force bombing missions over occupied Europe!!! Very educational and a must-see for gentleman of your age!!! PLEASE make them part of your agenda!!

You guys are going to love this, instantly in my top 5 show’s its just so perfectly executed

10) Here in Pripyat there was already a sense of alarm, we immediately drove up to the building of the city party committee, located on the central square of the city. In short, a hotel, quite decent, was nearby and here we were met by the heads of local authorities. MAYORES was already here, he had flown there earlier than the government commission. There was also a group of specialists who had arrived there in response to the initial alarm signal. The first meeting of the Government Commission was immediately arranged.

You guys need to do dune part 1 and 2 for a movie Saturday!

Idk if you guys are familiar with the real-life Chernobyl tragedy and the fallout from it for Nuclear Energy being our primary source of energy in our homes, but if you aren't, then I promise you that this miniseries is going to show you a whole bunch of incredible realities of bureaucratic failure on a lot of different levels.

in some parts in europe its still recommend not to eat mushrooms and animals like boar because of the radiation.

15) On the roofs of the machine room, on the site of the territory, there were pieces of graphite blocks, either whole or destroyed. Quite large elements of fuel assemblies were visible. A white column of combustion products, apparently graphite, was constantly flowing out of the reactor mouth, several hundred meters long. Inside the reactor space, a powerful crimson glow was visible in separate large spots. At the same time, it was difficult to say for sure what was the cause of this glow. It was clear that quite a lot of activity had come out of the 4th block, but the first question that worried us all was whether the reactor or part of it was working or not, i.e. whether the process of producing short-lived radioactive isotopes was continuing. Since it was necessary to establish this quickly and accurately, the first attempt was made by a military armored personnel carrier belonging to the chemical forces, sensors were mounted that had both gamma and neutron measurement channels. The first measurement with a neutron channel showed that there was supposedly powerful neutron radiation. In order to figure this out, I had to go to the reactor myself in this armored personnel carrier and figure out that under the conditions of those powerful gamma fields that existed at the facility, the neutron measurement channel, as a neutron channel, of course, does not work, because it senses those powerful gamma fields in which this neutron channel as a measuring device is simply inoperative.

First episode actually cooked I’m ngl

You guys should Watch Dark afyer this it is amazing ❤

Let's go for 5 episodes of pain and suffering, you guys just started a MASTERPIECE

The blue light is Cherenkov radiation.

It’s crazy to me how many young people don’t know that Chernobyl actually happened that this is all real

Chernobyl happened in 1986, it only took days for the info to get out to the rest of the world.Yes, Russia would rather let their own die, than admit a mistake and seem weak to their enemies.Which is why they tried so hard to deny and cover up this disaster.

Severance is one of the best shows i have ever seen in my life. CHERNOBYL is really good too. But severance is insane. 2nd season drops in jan so good time to watch it.

so excited you're reacting to this MASTERPIECE

Fantastic show, glad you’re watching it 💯

6) At Vnukovo I learned that the Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Boris Evdokimovich Shcherbina, Chairman of the Bureau for the Fuel and Energy Complex, had been approved as the head of the Government Commission. He was outside Moscow, at that time in one of the regions of the country, conducting a party and economic activity there.

5) Moreover, one died from mechanical injuries under the rubble of the collapsed structures, and the second died from thermal burns, that is, from a fire. Nothing was reported about radiation injuries and there was little understanding in this information. But it still brought some peace of mind. Having taken all the necessary technical documents and received from comrade KALUGIN some idea of the structure of the station, about 3 possible troubles that could be there, I dropped by my home. At this time, the driver brought my wife, as we agreed, from her work, we were supposed to meet there, somehow solve some of our family problems, which, of course, turned out to be unresolved. I briefly threw to her that I was leaving on a business trip, the situation was unclear, I did not know how long I was going and flew to Vnukovo.

16) Therefore, the most reliable information about the reactor condition was obtained by us from the ratio of short- and long-lived isotopes of iodine 134 and 131 and, by means of radiochemical measurements, we were able to quickly verify that short-lived isotopes of iodine were not being produced and, therefore, the reactor was not operating and was in a subcritical state. Subsequently, over the course of several days, repeated corresponding analysis of gas components showed the absence of short-lived isotopes escaping. And this was the main evidence for us of the subcriticality of the fuel mass that remained after the reactor was destroyed. Having made these initial assessments that the reactor was not operating, we then began to worry about the following questions. This is the fate of the city's population, the number of personnel that should be at the station and who should serve it, even in this state - the first questions. Predicting the possible behavior of the fuel mass that remained after the reactor was destroyed, determining the geometric dimensions and all possible situations and choosing a method of action. By the evening of the 26th, all possible methods of flooding the active zone had been tried, but they had produced nothing except a fairly high rate of steam generation and the spread of water along various transport corridors in the neighboring unit. It was clear that the firefighters, having eliminated the fires and fire sources in the turbine hall on the very first night, had done so very quickly and accurately.

The guy who plays Viserys Targeryn is one of the guys in the control room.

Well I can definitely also recommend "Homeland". A masterpiece I must say (IMDB approved)

How have they not started peaky blinders yet such a great show

Watch Band of Brothers!

You guys are gonna love this series. I actually remember when this happened. The truth wouldn't be known, and this world would be looking a lot different if it wasn't for some really brave people. Surprised you didn't recognize Maester Luwin from GOT lol. There are others, so be on the lookout.

I feel the show is a little vague about how radiation works for dramatic effect so I'll do a rough, simplified explanation. Atoms are made of subatomic particles: protons and neutrons make up the nucleus (core); and electrons "orbit" the nucleus to neutralise the charge. A radioactive element like Uranium has a very big nucleus which is unstable, and it will randomly decay based on a number of factors. A decay is when the atomic nucleus splits into smaller nuclei, releasing energy and particles. In any lump of a radioactive material there will be an insane number of individual atoms, so this random decay is very predictable and emits radiation at a steady rate. When people say "half-life", it refers to the amount of time needed for half of the radioactive atoms to decay Radiation comes in three kinds: alpha, beta, gamma. In that order, they get less dangerous but are able to travel further before being stopped, and need denser materials to block them in a short distance (alpha radiation can be stopped by paper but gamma needs metres of concrete). Radiation is dangerous because it ionises atoms, changing their charge and how they interact chemically, among other things. When this happens a lot in cells, the cells can die or stop working properly, and if it effects things like DNA cancer risks increase. Alpha and beta radiation are pretty safe so long as you have a barrier of about a metre of air. The problem can come though if you have a nuclear core burning like you see in the show. Small chunks of Uranium get thrown into the atmosphere and scattered. Even though the ash contains very little Uranium, it's still trillions of Uranium atoms, decaying consistently. When this gets on clothes or other things, the object itself isn't radioactive, but is instead coated in a radioactive material. That's why, clothes, vehicles, and people will be washed after being exposed to radioactive materials: it removes the radioactive thing from the material or person, preventing further damage. However, if the Uranium stays on the skin or is inhaled or ingested, it will continue to emit radiation and do damage. If consumed, the body will absorb radioactive atoms into the body, often spreading it throughout various organs and the blood stream. Once in the blood, you can't really get it out. The Uranium will keep emitting radiation, doing damage, and the you will be emitting radiation from your body as well as into it. That's why proper shielding and keeping your distance from someone with radiation poisoning is important: ionising radiation is going to be coming out of their skin.

13) Evgeny Ivanovich VOROBYEV's group was assigned to deal with the patients and the entire range of medical measures. When we were already approaching the city of Pripyat, the sky, about eighty kilometers from Pripyat, was striking. A crimson, or rather raspberry-colored, glow stood over the station, which made it look nothing like a nuclear power plant. It immediately became clear that the management of the nuclear power plant and the management of the Ministry of Energy, which was present there, were behaving inconsistently. On the one hand, most of the personnel, the plant managers, the management of the Ministry of Energy, who arrived at the scene, acted boldly, were ready for any action. For example, the operators of the first and second units did not leave their posts. The operators and all those working on the third unit did not leave their posts, and the third unit was in the same building as the fourth unit. Various services of this station were in readiness, i.e. it was possible to find any person, it was possible to give any command, any assignment ...

What a great show. Y'all should look into watching Rome, it was like GoT before GoT. Only two seasons and is insanely good. I actually watched Rome, then The Terror, then Chernobyl (back to back to back) there are a lot of actor crossover. The main guy who we see hang himself at the beginning as well as the main firefighter were both in The Terror. There was also two actors in Rome that are in The Terror (one of which is in GoT). The Terror is another phenomenal show (can only vouch for S1, S2 is a completely new unconnected story). The Terror is another great work of historical fiction. Like Chernobyl The Terror can best be summed up as the feeling of dread personified.

what’s the Nevada St. George thing?

2) Around 12 o'clock a break was announced, I went up to the second floor to the room of the scientific secretary Nikolai Sergeyevich BABAY, but in order to discuss the main points of the report during the break. Alexander Grigorievich MESHKOV, the First Deputy Minister, immediately looked into this room and said that a Government Commission on the Chernobyl accident had been created, that I was also included in it and that the Government Commission should meet at Vnukovo Airport by four o'clock in the afternoon. I immediately left the activists, got into the car and drove to my Institute. I tried to find one of the reactor workers there.

Oh nonono they will learn dark stuff from this show and I look forward to the other reactions! Amazing show, 10/10. Needs to be watched for many reasons.

I’m so glad you guys are reacting to Chernobyl !!!