I watched this a few weeks ago and liked it a lot. Jared Harris is excellent and I hope his Emmy nomination turns into a win. I don't recall seeing him in much other than Mad Men and The Expanse, but he's turned into one of my favorite actors. A good reminder of just how fucked up the Soviet Union was.
And you're not allowed to drink it because of a tax issue. You know, it'd be a perfect post-apocalyptic moment to have the stuff as part of a drinking game, while watching the TV series, as a global pandemic rages outside.
Didn't even have to wait 1 year, never mind 30. Look forward to the Docu-drama in the future that's all about how politicians denied the evidence to insist the pandemic wasn't a problem because they didn't want to deal with the reality of it.
Yup. I just watched the first episode last night and was immediately struck how it was applicable to not only the pandemic, but the Challenger and Columbia disasters. In particular, the scene where Valery Legasov (Harris) is in the meeting with Gorbachev for the first time. They hear that the levels from the accident were only 3.6 roentgen and think that everything's okay. It takes Legasov, basically risking his life, to stand up and point out that the detectors used could only go up that high, so the odds of the radiation being that low were non-existent and the levels were probably much higher. That's a brilliant illustration of how ass-covering in highly politicized environments works. You give people data, but don't provide them with certain specifics, so that if shit goes south, the people giving the data can say that they faithfully reported the information that they had, while the folks above can say that the data didn't give the complete story and they acted on the data that they had, so they're not to blame, either. Legasov blew all that up by ensuring that folks understood not only the data but the context surrounding the data. Like when Richard Feynman did his talk about the shuttle O-rings. And this scene: Made me think of how, thanks to Trump, pillow salesmen were seen as computer experts by a bunch of people. Oh, and here's a response from one of the people who treated the victims of the disaster, about the series.
Something else worth mentioning is that the composer of the soundtrack was heavily influenced by Brian Eno and Philip Glass.
This is the book the series was based on, BTW. I got it and I'm only about 3 chapters in, and it's apparent that the folks behind the series really wanted to make sure that they told the stories faithfully. The first chapter is the story of Lyudmilla Ignatenko (widow of one of the firefighters) and almost everything she talks about made it into the series. The things she describes that didn't make it into the series feels like the producers left them out because they wanted to protect her from reliving some of the trauma, not that they wanted to protect the viewers or didn't think that it would make good TV. Lyudmilla talks about the conversations she had with the people preparing her husband's body for burial. They explain to her that because his body is so swollen from the radiation that they can't get the clothes she wanted him to be buried in to fit, without cutting them. They also say that even though they cut his shoes in half, they weren't able to get them on his feet. Lyudmilla is absolutely torn up about this. The other part of her story that they left out is what happened on the day her husband was buried. The only reason she knew it was happening was that an official woke her up at like 6 AM and told her to get in a car so she could go to the burial. They then spent hours driving around Moscow, to evade the media, before pulling into the cemetery, and having a quick graveside service.
Just found out that there's a Swedish documentary about Lyudmilla Ignatenko (no idea if there's a version with English subtitles or not) that was made in 2001.
In the wake of the recent rail accidents in the US, I decided to rewatch this. I hope that whatever species replaces us is able to learn from history. Because we sure haven’t.
I just learned this little tidbit today, and it makes me think his experience as Ted’s roommate uniquely prepared him to write this series.
Oof. No One Knows What Happened To The Mercedes-Benz Truck Trapped In Chernobyl TL;DR the truck was loaded with very important technical gear needed to check the turbines, and was the only known truck in the Soviet Union. When the reactor blew, instead of GTFO, the techs stayed with the truck, and at least two of them died of radiation poisoning a few months later. What is not mentioned in the article (but is somewhat mentioned in the embedded video) is that the reason the Soviets had a truck like that, to begin with, is that they decided it was better to build cheaper turbine blades and periodically check them for balance issues using the gear in the truck, instead of making the blades out of more expensive materials. And this is one of the few times that I wish @Marso was still posting here, since he knows more about this stuff than I do. You see, all turbines have to be checked for balance issues, regardless of what they're made out of. You spin metal around at high speeds like that for long periods of time, with high heat, and it'll stretch. It stretches too much and the turbine will blow apart, which is really bad. Let me try and put this into terms most people can understand. Imagine taking a Ford Pinto to one of those countries where drivers frequently view sidewalks as an open lane to drive on and the only modifications you've done to the Pinto is you've installed a collision alarm on the car. That's kinda what we're talking about here. You've theoretically made the car safer than when it left the factory floor, but in reality, all you've done is made sure that the people inside have gotten advanced warning that they're going to die. Right, so you already have to worry about even the best-made turbines shredding themselves, and in an area where you really don't want to have something go wrong, you opt for the "Grade-B" turbines, instead of the "Grade-A" ones? That's a recipe for disaster. Oh, and as the video mentions, the computer gear in that truck was probably the best in the Soviet Union. Nobody knows what happened to that truck or the equipment in it. Did the Soviets decontaminate it? (HTF do you decontaminate computer gear, when you've got to worry about not getting it wet?) Did the West secretly give them replacement gear? Did the Soviets steal the gear?
