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Chernobyl episode 3 - 4 - 5 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-02-15 21:16:12
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Hi peeps!

I feel like this show left me speechless, so it's really hard to even write a description here. I hope the reaction speaks for itself and you loved the show as much as I did. Enjoy!

EPISODE 3

Full link EU: https://youtu.be/_6wKR6lNPxE

Full link US/other (96% speed): https://youtu.be/sPllVl4omqk

EPISODE 4

Full link EU: https://youtu.be/iY1UC98PdHQ

Full link US/other (96% speed): https://youtu.be/doBU06bWihQ

EPISODE 5

Full link EU: https://youtu.be/19AIeuCnp4A

Full link US/other (96% speed): https://youtu.be/C3PDF0_4Hqw

Files

Previews only

Comments

PapaXan

I've been excitedly waiting on this.

David Lonewolf Wright

I still had synch issues with all of these episodes. It wasn't a big deal as I just had to just quickly pause your video a handful of times (I am glad that you have the blurred out version playing instead of just the time code as that makes it easy to resync). This was an amazing show and I was watching it as it was released... one agonizing episode at a time. It is amazing to think how bad things went and how much worse it could have gone. There are a lot of good information and videos out there about Chernobyl, I would recommend checking out Kyle Hill's youtube video about the Elephant's Foot.

W T

Good show. 8/10 for how entertaining it was, 3.6 for historical accuracy. It does a great job at portraying the overall atmosphere of the disaster and some of the late-soviet mechanisms... but it's also overplaying a whole lot of different aspects - I barely know where to start and am going to give a cliffs notes excerpt here: - Scapegoating for dramatic effect. Dyatlov wasn't exactly known to be pleasant, but there is also very little indication that he personally was as pushy or stubborn as the show made him out to be. Probably a prick, but not one that sacrificed everyone's well-being on a whim either. There is lots to this and lots of anecdotal and reliable data to sift through. - I think the Bridge of Death is considered entirely rumor. There is no data whatsoever confirming this as a big event. - Speaking of: The USSR is portrayed as completely tangled up in nonsensical bureaucracy and a sense of having the party succeed over humanity. Which is true to certain extents, but it's downright portrayed as a distilled dictatorship with people getting windowed for minor infractions everywhere. This is not how the KGB would have necessarily operated, even if the events weren't catapulted into drama world. Thinkable? Yes, and there is plenty of awful stuff happening during that time, clearly. It is highly debated that Legasov got asked to toe the party line or anything to that effect, among many things surrounding his character (he wasn't part of any trial asserting anything, so...) - In the same vein: all heads responsible were quick to admit the potential for disaster. Again, this show delves into fiction as far as, say, the allegedly ignored evacuation efforts are concerned - "fetus absorbing radiation" is completely esoteric and there is no reason to believe any of the claims, many of which are based on witness statements - we all know how that usually goes, especially with an ominous physical phenomenon that is as obscure to people as magic might be. If a pregnancy were to be confirmed, it would still be a multi-variate calculation where radiation exposure is surprisingly low on the list. Now thyroid cancers or maybe birth defects and disabilities? That's another matter, but you most certainly don't just pass on your radiation sickness (as portrayed per the show) to your unborn child. You just don't. Which leads me to... - Radiation sickness infecting others. This is also not a thing, not like this at least. Technically, yes, you would assume that they are now above baseline as far as radioactivity is concerned... but compared to even the initial exposure for her in the show, this is vaguely irrelevant. They got rid of the clothes, they got scrubbed - that's about it. Should have still been more cautious about it, but that was kind of the point being hammered home here, what with it being impossible to see or even feel. The timeline of acute radiation poisoning is also very much accelerated in the show or wrong: you don't turn into a gigantic, barely breathing lesion all of a sudden. - Tons of stuff about the reactors, including explosion claims and more. "The button" is misrepresented, as are many actual events - in essence, the HBO series decided to more or less adopt an alternative statement given that was later amended. There is no indication that Dyatlof bullied anyone into doing something that would seem overly obvious to otherwise skilled operators, and most of all, the USSR didn't just go ham on science and forbid retrofitting RBMKs. If anything, it was tackled pretty much immediately (well, close enough) and all the "we have to serve the state before we think of the people" is a good bunch of exaggeration. And yes, state press, the Politburo - you certainly got outward communication certainly trying to mitigate this PR disaster of an event. The science communicated to the audience on the other hand is decent, but also very much construing a biased picture around how it all works. The bullet analogy comes to mind, not that it is awfully far-fetched... but it does reflect the very panicky atmosphere across Europe back then. It WAS a huge event after all, if only for how unique it was, and people did, in fact, die as a direct consequence. The list goes on and on. As always with historical mini-series, you need a whopping ladle of salt to go with the dramatization. It very deliberately paints people as something they're not, likely because it makes for a neater ending or because it seems easier to emphasize with certain characters. The agonizing reality is that sometimes, you get a seriously bleak combination of everything going wrong, individual incompetence and just things not cleanly resolving themselves. This is not being apologetic towards Soviet Russia either, it's just pointing out that we're dealing with a highly stylized story that still somewhat aims to tie up loose ends... even though much of what we know about it is partially rooted in wonky testimonies by people injecting their own misconceptions into events (hence the "my kid absorbed the radiation"-line being used as a huge tearjerker when the person leveraging that bit of info was portrayed as skewing towards science and facts so much - probably my biggest gripe about this portrayal). I understand the thought behind it all, but it also left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth considering how much the show harps on misinformation being the other big unseen evil here, and how much it plays up some of the (post-) stalinistic idiosyncrasies of truth and all the looming threats that just weren't quite there or at least not reliably reported as such. Now mind you, there was plenty of sanitization going on, without a doubt. Redacted documents and worse - it's not like none of this happened. Just not the way it was shown here. I guess I would have liked the creators being a bit more upfront about the artistic liberty taken here, as someone who grew up with this, in quite near vicinity too, I really would have loved it to be accurate and true to what happened. Instead, I treat it as alternative fiction, a reality with different physical axioms that happened to play out this way. Last point I'd like to make: Causation is virtually impossible to determine for cancer. Even a rise of cancers for a given time window across this big a population would have to be considered difficult data. Saying 4000 people might have gotten thyroid cancer as a consequence is about as vague as claiming 90000; well possible this is the case, but we don't really know, and all there is for us to do is to amend flaws in reactor designs and operation procedure. It only gets worse once you realize some rather unintuitive things about this scenario, like the responders not getting a massive deadly dose actually having been below baseline estimates (commonly attributed to radiation) or the fact that increased screening efforts also might have helped with early detection of thyroid cancer and such - it's a multi-faceted problem with no clear answer and anyone calling out explicit numbers is likely misrepresenting the confidence (incredibly low for predicting cancer from a singular event with this much ambiguity surrounding it, in a time where record-keeping is as silly as it was back then) or the numbers themselves. As for the image of nuclear energy in the wake of Chernobyl: it has gotten a bad rep in parts because it is so difficult to educate people about it, all intuitions clearly fail us, both in terms of effects on human anatomy and the precise details of dosimetry. Pair that with the imagery that tends to go along with it (mutations, now shooting animals) and it automatically embeds itself as such an intense event when we are doing much worse with coal emissions on a per-head basis - before we're even talking about the secondary effects of pumping our atmosphere full of greenhouse gases of any kind. Chernobyl certainly was a catalyst for the global falling out (get it? get it?) with nuclear anything, and plenty of families have internalized the trauma and fear to quite some degree. People across Europe still carry around the notion of venison being highly contaminated or foraging for mushrooms being problematic, and not entirely without reason either. The thresholds are usually ridiculously low, but there are regulations in place stipulating how to deal with, say, wild animals with regard to radiation exposure. Something something about lies incurring a debt to the truth - but I still liked it a lot, the atmosphere painted is amazing and very much might reflect Europe's mindset at the time. Could have done with less embellishing for a show that is so big on highlighting the truth in its narrative, but at least it's great to look at - and at least as far as enjoyment is concerned, I would assume not going super hard on scientific and historic accuracy might be the better choice, as much as it bothers me at times. Myth and exaggeration is its own part of the narrative surrounding Chernobyl, one might say.

Patrick Reynolds

Mary, Thank you so much for sharing your reaction to this important show. Indeed, I binge watched it with you and I appreciate that you did. You are awesome. This is at least the 4th time that I have watched this mini-series. I believe that this story should be told in one sitting. The acting, directing, writing, and cinematography was extraordinary as evidenced by it's reception and 10 Emmy Awards. The lesson is not that people do foolish things, and make mistakes but that they tell lies to themselves before and after doing these foolish things. This often leads to more lies in the future and more tragedy that people will suffer for. Hopefully, we will learn to avoid this, but memories are short in human time scales. I fear that the greater lessons of Chernobyl are already being forgotten. But hopefully, we will still have brave women and men to save us from our human weakness in the future.

shaneth138

Amazing reaction as always! This was the first time that I have watched something for the first time myself while watching along with you. I probably wouldn't have watched this incredible series if not for your channel. So thank you for that! As far as recommendations go I would love to see you react to Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind and Arrival. The music composer of this series is actually worked on the music for Arrival as well. She's by far my favorite music composer. A great show that I would love to see you react to is Breaking Bad. It's the best show of all time in my opinion. Anyway, thanks again!