I don't know what someone dying from radiation poisoning looks like, but what they showed this episode was absolutely terrifying. They looked like they were liquefying from the inside out. Also, the description itself was super unsettling. How crazy is it that energy can literally make your cells break apart?
Each episode I watch makes want to learn more and more about the true story. As a scientist myself, I find it so interesting and compelling. And I can't help wondering what we could do differently if something like this happened tomorrow. Would we act quicker? Is there a better way of containing a nuclear disaster? Everything considered, and if what they've presented in the show so far is true, the Chernobyl accident wasn't nearly as devastating as it could have been.
When you have a political system and society built on the absolute control of information, and the projection of being all powerful and always infallible, then, when something disastrous happens, the first inclination is denial, then a cover-up, and finally finger pointing, deflection and blame storming with the various people having any sort of authority or power trying to save their own asses. The fact that the party bosses and ministers were "Apparatchik's", the Soviet equivalent of bureaucratic hacks, who had been gifted their appointments with minimal or even no knowledge of the actual workings of the bureaucracies they oversaw, poured gasoline and threw a match on an already untenable situation. It's easy to strut around in a cheap suit and impress the peasantry, especially when you can have anyone who calls you out on your BS sent to the Gulag's or even worse. It gets a bit trickier when peoples hands and faces start melting off, and they're detecting abnormally high radiation 1000 miles away.
I feel worse for the civvies, whose naive faith and trust caused them to believe the lies and half truth's they were being fed, and kept them from not only questioning the official story, but, willingly living and working in such close proximity to a disaster waiting to happen, and, thinking it was a privilege to do so. They had no idea of the dangers lurking near them, and, like Lyudmilla, who even when warned not to get too close or stay too long, hugs, caresses, and even places her irradiated husbands hand on her growing womb, thinking he just has some severe burns, because no one has the courage to speak the truth, even at the cost of thousands of lives.
Granted, it really didn't matter after the fact, because the battle now was to keep from decimating the ENTIRE Soviet Union and most of eastern Europe, so, what's 10 or 20 thousand dead if it means saving the country? So, if the neighborhood cheap suit pulls your name from a hat at the point of an AK-47, you tend to cooperate and not ask too many questions. Unless you're a coal miner extra enough to work butt nekkid in a radioactive hole with no hope of survival, and no thanks or glory. I tip my hat to them. Hero's all, even if Moscow never acknowledged them.
The pace slows down, to let us linger in the many consequences and increasingly paranoid atmospehre. And those consequences, especially in the hospital scenes, are horrific and sobering in details enough to stand with the first two episodes' rush of dealing with the immediate aftermaths. The make-up and prosthetics of radiation's brutal effects on the bodies...no word. And that last scene just gutted me.
Also, I thought for a good minute that the minister of coal was played by Ben Mendelsohn.
With only 2 episodes left I doubt this show can manage to nosedive into cr@pness. It's truly a gem. Subtle and powerful. One of the most impressive shows I've ever seen.
Many brave men gave their lives for a system that wouldn't even recognize their sacrifices just so that it could uphold the image of being unfailable.
"Our power comes from the perception of our power"
They couldn't even understand that said perception already had gaping holes for the world to look through.
Brilliant show that couldn't do a better job showing the tragic outcome of the Chernobyl disaster. The scene at the end was gut wrenching.
This series continues to be nothing short of amazing. The scenes with the firefighters and plant workers being quickly consumed by radiation is one of the most horrifying and grotesque things I've ever watched. And from what I've heard the writer say, they steered clear of going the distance with their depictions of these men burning up from the inside out. This really affected me and I'm someone who watches a lot of Horror movies and TV. I thought I'd been desensitized from seeing so much of that genre, but after watching this episode of "Chernobyl", all I required was a shot of realism.
About a decade ago, I read quite a bit about this accident and I think this series has been very accurate in its dramatization. Including the effects of radiation on those in close proximity to the reactor. Let that sink in.
Now you look like a minister of coal
Worst than an horror movie as this actually happened, it is real !
What a horrendous way to end your final hours and die. The courageous firefighters who have their lives. The miners who have probably that same fate awaiting them; who cares if they want to be nude!
When it is the people who save the situation at the cost of their lives
Manages to portrait the horrifying effects of radiation poisoning and the heroism in people that helped contain the nuclear disaster. The final scene is heartbreaking.
Jesus, that makeup. It would have been much kinder to euthanse them. Doctors should be able to do this today.
This was the best so far, the only thing that annoys me is when at times they shoot themselves in the foot by reminding us this is an American show, like with the whole Russian, not American saying (really? Was that necessary?) or the intense speeches. I cringe when this kind of shows are so self-aware of what they're telling, and love when they go for sobriety instead. This is a great one but sometimes it just gives in. I wonder if the naked miners did happen, looking forward to listening to the companion podcast, but wouldn't be surprised it did.
Shout by FranciscoBlockedParent2019-05-21T03:10:24Z
I can't even begin to put into words here but the prosthetic and makeup division is not only good, it is groundbreaking. The bodies on the later stages of radiation poisoning were absolutely terrifying, it literally gave me chills in the spine, when it shows the firefighter and the wife inside the plastic.