Very understandable ! It's worth checking out a good documentary on the topic that shows the older footage. It really was a horrible, tragic event. I remember being curious every day as to how much people dropped dead after being exposed to this stuff. It really hit home just how toxic nuclear materials are. It makes one also think is it worth all that.. shouldn't we be far less depending on energy, live closer with nature and use energy only where really needed.
Take as much as time y’all need guys 😉 I laughed at 24:40 it sounded like Eric was gonna say Legolas as the characters name. Haha 😂 “For Frodo!” 🏹😅 Next episode is very easy on the emotions. Mostly just shock and infuriation at how all of this happened because of the disregard for safety all for the sake of personal ambition and wanting to look good for the bosses and how just that mentality alone gave rise to such incompetence and negligence. By comparison, emotionally episode five feels closer to how episode one felt. Episode 5 is really fun actually as we get the trial and it’s broken down how each failure and each bad decision compounded until finally the reactor exploding. The epilogue is nice as it tells who was real and who was just a representation, what happened to rhe key players as the years passed, and what the site looks like today.
Cinema's Best Telephone Call Freakouts, ranked: 1. Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, S06 2. Robert DeNiro as Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas 3. Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Scherbina in Chernobyl, E04
If it in any way helps, the way the animals were portrayed here was NOT what is was like in real life. From the actual logs of the liquidators assigned to animal control, the majority of the animals they euthanized were starving, diseased, and/or suffering from acute radiation sickness just as badly as the men you saw last episode. One haunting quote stated that they came across a hairless, boil-covered four legged monstrosity that looked like an alien. None of the team had any idea what it was, until it let out a pained meow. Trust me. In the majority of cases, what they did was a mercy killing.
This is what the deal was. Those poor animals were already dead or dying on their feet. It was a mercy to kill them quick. The radiation was almost for certain killing them. Once dead, non contaminated scavengers would then become contaminated and spread it further. It HAD to be done.
This series is full of falsehoods that Mazin wrote in. In fact if it wasn't for the superb costume and art department it would've been yet another mediocre American show trying to portray events they have no knowledge of.
@boskee I doubt that this was a falsehood that they deliberately perpetrated. Instead of "let's make the animals all look normal and healthy to make it that much more horrible", it was probably: "How much would it cost to cover a dozen or so animals in make up to simulate the effects of radiation poisoning, and how easy would it be to get the animals to perform while covered in several pounds of make up and prosthetics? Damn near impossible, you say? Ok. We'll just do without then."
A bit of correction on Ljudmilla's story: radiation isn't something you just pass on to others. In reality, her baby didn't absorb the radiation instead of her, they both got the same dose, and primarily from the two days she stayed in Pripyat until the evacuation, not from her husband. Ljudmilla probably even got more, since the baby was at least shielded from alpha radiation. She died because a fetus is much more sensitive to it. Radiation messes with the DNA sequences, causing cells to duplicate with wrong genetical information, or fail to duplicate at all (that's what happened to Vasily). Ljudmilla, as an adult, had enough "good" cells remaining to not get really sick at the time, because she didn't get a very high dose, but the baby was still only forming, so even this dose was enough to be fatal to her
that said its possible radioactive particles she breathed in or ingested prior to evac would also be a risk factor, but once in the bloodstream the baby having a high priority on resources would tend to take alot of potential radiation sources in so in a sense the baby probably did 'protect' her by having first shot at absorbing any radioactive particles and absorbing the bulk of them she did ingest acting like a filter,
@@WaywardVet I mean, to be fair this was 1986, people genuinely didn't know as much about how radiation effects the human body. Secrecy had nothing to do with it in this case. Only a year after Chernobyl, the Goiana contamination incident in Brazil led to 2000 people violently protesting against the funeral of a six year old girl that died of radiation sickness, as they were terrified her body would somehow kill the entire city, even with the poor kid receiving a Chernobyl style funeral.
I think the worst thing is that this happened in reality. I was alive when it happened. I lived in London in 1986 and saw the radioactive cloud pass over London. I was a university student at that time, but we didn’t know much then. I have learned over the last few years.
Many of the men who were sent on top of the roof, kept volunteering to go back up. Their thinking being, they've already been exposed and knew exactly what was waiting for them, better to risk their own lives than put it on someone else.
After this, series theres an HBO documentary called "The Cherynobyl tapes".. that features some amazing "boots on the ground" footage from the time of the disaster, as well as some of the people dramatized here... worth a look, it's really amazing to see actual footage of the time... really puts the show in better context.
This episode of the series is the very definition of "Moral Injury". The liquidators may not have suffered the acute radiation poisoning like the firefighters, but they were still severely damaged because of the explosion, just in a different way.
The shot of the soldiers standing around, smoking in the background, as the truck just UNLOADS countless animal carcasses in the foreground (but out of focus) is one of my favorite, albeit very upsetting, shots in the show.
Most of the power plant scenes were shot at the decommissioned Ignalina plant in Lithuania. It was the same RBMK reactor design as Chernobyl. Part of the deal for Lithuania joining the EU was shutting down Ignalina. The original graphite power surge incident that was documented in the report the KGB buried happened at Ignalina.
I always thought that in the library scene they had many titles in the list, so that the library boss could show their power by not giving any of the ones that were not relevant.
Poor Sarah! I just want to hug you! ❤ I'm a huge animal lover so anything that shows any type of animal being mistreated or hurt will instantly make me cry. Loving your reactions and can't wait for the last episode!
Oh boy...episode 4...this is pretty much the toughest episode to watch for almost everyone...you will recover, I am positive. Something that does not often get mentioned is that many of the men who went out onto those incredibly radioactive roof sections actually volunteered to go back out more than once in order to save others from having to be "biorobots". Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up and did nothing to fix it, all the while lying to even the plant operators about the safety of the RBMK reactors, is something that could only happen in a totalitarian state like the USSR...where there is no free press or free scientific establishment for whistleblowers to talk to when they know about wrongdoing by the State.✌
"Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up" Yeah, that one didn't happen, the writers made that up. The graphite tips weren't a secret, they were, in fact, working as intended. Legasov "lying to the IAEA in Vienna" didn't happen either, he specifically addressed reactor flaws, as well as human error. And his dramatic reveal at the trial didn't happen either, because Legasov wasn't even there. Kind of bold to conclude the series with the line "what is the cost of lies", when they weren't all that concerned about the truth themselves...
@Legion *SPOILERS* The operators didn't know about the shutdown flaw. The real Dyatlov claimed "The accident was caused by completely inappropriate characteristics of the reactor, that weren't clear enough at that time. ... the reactor protection system designed to stop the fission in an emergency situation... played the role of the atomic bomb detonator" Legasov was very concerned about the lack of safety in Soviet reactors before the accident. He did explain the negative void cooefficient in Vienna but didn't explain the shutdown flaw and other problems. The real Legasov said afterward "I did not lie in Vienna... but I did not tell the full truth." Legion is only right on the final trial scene was largely fictitious. It was basically a show trial that entirely blamed operator error and didn't discuss reactor design flaws.
@@legion8915 You are not wrong...but the Soviets did cover up the issue with the AZ-5 causing massive power spikes when the reactor was in certain states, so I was just imprecise with my description. I will have to start using a more accurate description according to your input...thank you.
Mind you according to legend many animals were simply buried alive… Throughout the makers of the series toned down the horror a lot and yet it still remains an absolute nightmare
"And you realize that was you all along, you just didn't know." This series is so good it has the deepest most concise exploration of wartime trauma and it isn't even about a war.
I am just like Sarah, I can't deal with any type of animal suffering, but see, that's the point. Even though it's very hard to see the pets being put down, it's for their own good. They're alone, hungry and they would develop many types of disease anda mutations, it would be way more painfull for them. So try to see it as an act of kindness, cause they won't hurt anymore.
It was a mercy. One soldier, who was later interviewed, came upon a creature that he couldn't identify because its skin and fur was pretty much dripping off. He realized it was a cat only after it gave a pathetic meow.
Mother nature got sort of a last laugh on humanity. With a large swath of land cleared of human activity, the exclusion zone became an accidental nature preserve. Wild animals entered and bred in what became habitat reoccupation. Despite the radiation, the zone became a primordial forest.
The yellow german robot, is still in Ukraine, near the power plant with a bunch of trucks and whatnot that they used during the operation. It's still incredibly radioactive, and will remain dangerous for decades to come. You can even see it in some youtube videos, where people visited chernobyl before the russia-Ukraine war.
There was a folk belief that drinking vodka would help prevent your body absorbing radiation. So aside from the stress that’s why everyone is drinking so much. It should probably be said that the concept that the baby “absorbed” all the radiation and saved the mother is not true. The show put it in because it was how people talked about radiation at the time, but we know now that’s not how it works. And radiation damage when it’s not acute radiation syndrome (like the firefighters had) is often more subtle looking. They won’t necessarily LOOK like they’ve had decades taken off their life or they’re a time bomb for cancer.
It’s a really rough chunk of media to get through, but at the same time, it’s so well made…the acting, the sets, costumes, cinematography…the music! It does such a good job of putting you there.
I live in the southwest of Germany. Less than ten kilometers away from a nuclear power plant. At worst, that distance - as sarcastic as it sounds - would be more of a blessing than a curse. Because nothing would survive in such a radius. Everything would be over in a moment. Why the animals? Because Tschenobyl was a unique event up until then. All those responsible were hopelessly overwhelmed with the attempt to contain it, or even the attempt to limit the damage. Radioactively contaminated pets that would eventually become feral and eventually leave their homes to spread that contamination out into the world seemed like an unnecessary risk. We'll never know if it did anything. We should be happy about that. But frankly, I'm not able to feel any joy in connection with this disaster. I was five years old when it happened and had it not been for the sacrifice of numerous brave local souls, the world would be a radiant wasteland today. The radiation would have been pushed back and forth across the planet by the winds and air currents until there was nothing left alive.
"Do they need to do this?" Unfortunately yes, contaminated animals run around uncontrolled, mate with healthy animals, get eaten and passing radionucludes to the predator, or die, decompose and releasing radioactive stuff to the soil. Basically, that's the only way to reduce risks.
I am (slowly) reading a book called "Meltdown: Stories of Nuclear Disaster and the Human Cost of Going Critical" by Joel Levy. There was an accident in which nuclear waste was spread over a large area when a storage tank got very hot because the cooling machinery broke down, and the contents of the tank erupted like a volcano. This accident happened well before Chernobyl, and when the inhabitants were relocated forcibly, soldiers were sent to their former homes and farms to kill all the animals these people had so they would not have a reason to return. The sad events in this episode had been done before Chernobyl.
great reaction. wonderful show of emotion. very well edited. your reaction to this series has been one of the best i've seen, and i'm very much looking forward to your reaction to the finale.
Thank you so much! As rough as it's been, I'm glad this is the first show we watched on the channel. Thanks for sticking around for the whole thing ☺️ - Sarah
I'm going to come in from a different direction, but adding to the stress on the kid we kinda focus on is the rifle he's issued. The Mosin-Nagant, in various models, was the standard Russian/Soviet battle rifle in both World Wars. It's a solid, accurate rifle, but it hits about as hard as the hammer on the Soviet flag, and isn't something I'd call particularly beginning friendly. So you've got a kid who said he's never hunted (and looks like he's never handled a weapon at all) before, who now has the mental/emotional stress of the job he's going through, and add to that the physical stress from his shoulder probably being bruised and aching from the damn steel butt plate on that rifle slamming into his shoulder over and over. No wonder he was a wreck.
Great comment Jordan! Also, I've grown partial to Bacho - seems like a great NCO, looking after his crew, esp. the green new kid. When he tells Pavel to go outside when Pavel's found that litter........ugh.... Such a great series, amazing production and performances.
He's a soviet kid, they got basic firearms training with the young Pioneers and sometimes through schools. theres a bit of difference between punching paper with a kid friendly .22 and an antique battle rifle that has been sitting in the anti-invasion reserve for 40 years.
@@voiceofraisin3778 yeah, there's a difference between inserting a detachable magazine and trying to figure out how to shove a stripper clip into an internal magazine.
@@voiceofraisin3778I'm a city kid from the Philippines, so the only firearms training I've had to do is with 9mm handguns. Can't imagine jumping to a mosin from that.
This series serves like a truth serum.. If you can make it through the entire series without crying just once.. you must be a psychopath or so... And i'm a full grown man, 49yrs old.
@@boi3987 lol, yeah it's cuz i don't know of any other type that has no emotions... it's a cliché i know. Anywayz .. psychopaths are not necessarily bad people !
First, not the russians but the ukrainians, some russian engineers probably have worked on it, but it's the Ukraine's project. Second, it's the new confinement, the first one was built in november 1986.
Dyatlov's survival is something of a mystery. This was his second atomic accident, and the first one killed his family yet he himself survived. 18:21 It took thousands of men. The idea was that 90 seconds was the maximum dose of radiation an average adult male could safely withstand. For their entire lives. But...some older men insisted on doing in more than once, to take the place of younger men who did not yet have families. Heroes. Thousands and thousands and thousands of heroes to braved horrible death and soul-shredding tasks for years. 20:58 This is scientific nonsense. Designed to make it sound even worse than the truth. Very dramatic. You have very good and great hearts. Bravo. IMHO this was the most brutal episode.
There's a lot of overlap with the actors in this and The Terror (first season), the atmosphere is similarly bleak with more overt supernatural horror. The acting is great as well.
About the animals - yes they had to be destroyed. Apparently the dogs were a lot skinnier than what they showed in the series - they were skin and bone. They were underfed and killing each other, while suffering from the effects of radiation as well. Killing them was the humane thing to do, as much as that process is terrible to think about.
Well you made it!!😄So in the last episode Id suggest you make it in Part1 and Part2, so you can include most of it.There are some suprises, make sure to get in all the ending creditsl👌
Compare the shot of the men on the roof to the actual real footage of it on UA-cam. They did a good job in the series to keep it real. And I feel you. You feel drained after each episode. 😞 But who knew some people had to go kill pets because of a nuclear disaster. So many people were affected by this tragedy...
Fomin was the chief engineer above Dyatlov. Fomin was the worst and he suffered the least after prison. Bruchanov ( the guy with the deep voice and the black curly hair) was treated badly by this show. He was a good engineer and he was made out the villain. Dyatlov had seen a nuclear accident when he was the engineer on the nuclear submarine project. Fomin was the one that pushed for the test and was the main villain.
there are still hundreds of dogs in the exclusion zone. the workers at the other 3 reactors feed them, there is also an organization that feeds them, gives them medical help and has a spay and neutering progam. alot of the dogs when they are washed have acceptable levels of radiation. some have even been sent to the United States for adoption.
For all you feeling bad that they were shooting the pets/animals. Trust me, that was a small mercy for most of them. Otherwise most would have suffered horribly painful and miserable death, or disease immediately followed by death. So while unpleasnt and sad, for sure, it was still an (unfortunate) mercy for most of them.
Great reaction guys!😍 I can't blame you for needing a few days to consider some life choices lol. Hope you're both well soon, maybe spend this Mother's Day weekend chilling out 😉 This is an awesome but very intense and harrowing series - this and the last episode were no cakewalks. So much sadness and frustration, excrutiating at times, but this series is so well done, it's absolutely riveting to watch. Everything is so good in this show, production, performances, soundtrack - amazing series.
Other then keeping the men happy, another reason for the vodka is to reduce DNA damage from the high radiation levels. As Ethanol was known to protects somewhat against some of the effects of radiation. Same reason Alot of Europeans were told to drink a glass of red wine a day during the crisis.
They told the west Germans that the nuclear radiation was 2000 roentgens when in fact the radiation was 10 times that. So Joker was never going to work 😮
Have you guys seen The Green Knight? I ask because the young dude terminating the dogs is in that film and anytime I see him I think about that masterpiece of filmmaking.
You watched this 3 months ago? Just some fun facts. Russia occupied Chernobyl area and occupied the plant itself during 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russian soldiers dug trenches in that area, and quite a few of them ended up in hospital with radiation exposure. Chernobyl is not the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. That's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It's occupied by Russians at the moment. Russians have blown up the dam which provides most water for cooling and allegedly mined the plant itself to be blown up in case they need to retreat.
I simply can't even, when it comes to animals...I can watch the other episodes, no problem-my coping mechanisms are sufficient for those, but animals ? Nope nope nope-so I look away & turn down volume during those scenes in this episode (can't skip entire ep. bc important plot stuff happens in other aspects of storyline). Despite all that, my feeling is that this was an excellent series-have watched it through four times now (not counting the parts in this one that I had to tune out). It's so important to learn about the event + the coverup (the catastrophe itself & the needless wasteful greater suffering inflicted by the subsequent attempt at denying & lying) yet it's so difficult to endure merely the vicarious experience all these decades later. Great show...though the agony is excruciating, not an easy watch that's for sure.
Guys, as animal lovers, what would you rather do? Shoot the pets and livestock or leave them and let them die slowly from radiation poisoning? Shooting them was the kindest thing possible.
The animals were flooded with radiation, and looked forward to a horrible sick diseased end. Shooting them would be heart breaking, but an act of mercy.
The Chernobyl series is horror for adults. It is truly the most harrowing television series of all time. The fantasy gore bullshit of The Walking Dead and the Saw film series can't hold a candle to Chernobyl.
Killing those animals was completely unnecessary, in my opinion. Yes, they are radioactive, but what harm can they do? I doubt they would spread radiation to somebody...
its called a food chain bud ... animal dies it get riddled with worms, worms turn into bugs, bugs get eaten by birds ... and thats just one of the possible ways for that radioactive material to be spread out of the zone secondly its MUCH better for those animals to get shot than to let them die in incredible pain from radiation sickness
There are actually rumors that a much more graphic version of this episode was shown to a test audience. they were so revolted and destroyed by it that they had to reshoot parts of it and cut this much more tame episode together.
Episode 4 and 5 are a bit shit, but the first 3 really hit it good. They didn't know how to end it. They added to much filler, but it was very well made none the less.
for people who wondering world still has no robot to have possibility to even come close to such radiation. evrything fries. we can place rover in space, but cant come to core. fukushima they send robot and core had water still japanese went to look inside in fukushima with submarine robot it worked less than 2 min. video was super bad as radiation bombardedwith bulets in cherno even today you would send men, fukushima also send men
What? No? It's just the point of the show that what they are left with are stories about what happened. No one knows for sure, because of all the lies and coverups. Doesn't mean it's "just" fiction?
@@abrahamdiaz3648 Shown in the series has very little to do with what actually happened. It is enough to read at least the first pages of the notes of Academician Legasov, which appear in the first series and allegedly were one of the sources of information, to understand how little truth there is in the series.
Most of the lies and cover-ups are in the minds of the show's creators. It is enough to watch the first series to understand that the authors misrepresented all the events, they understand little about the realities of the USSR of that time.
We still have not recovered from this episode 😭
If it helps, episode 5 is not nearly difficult as 3 and 4.
Very understandable ! It's worth checking out a good documentary on the topic that shows the older footage.
It really was a horrible, tragic event. I remember being curious every day as to how much people dropped dead after being exposed to this stuff. It really hit home just how toxic nuclear materials are. It makes one also think is it worth all that.. shouldn't we be far less depending on energy, live closer with nature and use energy only where really needed.
This was the worst of it.
Take as much as time y’all need guys 😉 I laughed at 24:40 it sounded like Eric was gonna say Legolas as the characters name. Haha 😂 “For Frodo!” 🏹😅
Next episode is very easy on the emotions. Mostly just shock and infuriation at how all of this happened because of the disregard for safety all for the sake of personal ambition and wanting to look good for the bosses and how just that mentality alone gave rise to such incompetence and negligence. By comparison, emotionally episode five feels closer to how episode one felt.
Episode 5 is really fun actually as we get the trial and it’s broken down how each failure and each bad decision compounded until finally the reactor exploding.
The epilogue is nice as it tells who was real and who was just a representation, what happened to rhe key players as the years passed, and what the site looks like today.
As soon as I saw Sarah's face in the thumbnail, I didn't have to read the title. I knew which video this had to be. This one is really, really hard.
Cinema's Best Telephone Call Freakouts, ranked:
1. Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul, S06
2. Robert DeNiro as Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas
3. Stellan Skarsgard as Boris Scherbina in Chernobyl, E04
Ralph Fiennes in bruges
Downfall, surely!?
4. Tom Cruise as Les Grossman Tropic Thunder
If it in any way helps, the way the animals were portrayed here was NOT what is was like in real life. From the actual logs of the liquidators assigned to animal control, the majority of the animals they euthanized were starving, diseased, and/or suffering from acute radiation sickness just as badly as the men you saw last episode.
One haunting quote stated that they came across a hairless, boil-covered four legged monstrosity that looked like an alien. None of the team had any idea what it was, until it let out a pained meow.
Trust me. In the majority of cases, what they did was a mercy killing.
This is what the deal was. Those poor animals were already dead or dying on their feet. It was a mercy to kill them quick. The radiation was almost for certain killing them. Once dead, non contaminated scavengers would then become contaminated and spread it further. It HAD to be done.
Well, that makes me feel a lot better
This series is full of falsehoods that Mazin wrote in. In fact if it wasn't for the superb costume and art department it would've been yet another mediocre American show trying to portray events they have no knowledge of.
@boskee I doubt that this was a falsehood that they deliberately perpetrated. Instead of "let's make the animals all look normal and healthy to make it that much more horrible", it was probably:
"How much would it cost to cover a dozen or so animals in make up to simulate the effects of radiation poisoning, and how easy would it be to get the animals to perform while covered in several pounds of make up and prosthetics?
Damn near impossible, you say?
Ok. We'll just do without then."
@@boskee Right. Because the Soviet Union & ruzzia are so forthcoming with truth🤣🤣🤣
A bit of correction on Ljudmilla's story: radiation isn't something you just pass on to others. In reality, her baby didn't absorb the radiation instead of her, they both got the same dose, and primarily from the two days she stayed in Pripyat until the evacuation, not from her husband. Ljudmilla probably even got more, since the baby was at least shielded from alpha radiation. She died because a fetus is much more sensitive to it. Radiation messes with the DNA sequences, causing cells to duplicate with wrong genetical information, or fail to duplicate at all (that's what happened to Vasily). Ljudmilla, as an adult, had enough "good" cells remaining to not get really sick at the time, because she didn't get a very high dose, but the baby was still only forming, so even this dose was enough to be fatal to her
Quite correct.
that said its possible radioactive particles she breathed in or ingested prior to evac would also be a risk factor, but once in the bloodstream the baby having a high priority on resources would tend to take alot of potential radiation sources in so in a sense the baby probably did 'protect' her by having first shot at absorbing any radioactive particles and absorbing the bulk of them she did ingest acting like a filter,
But again, the levels of secrecy. Nobody really knew. It was all conjecture.
@@WaywardVet I mean, to be fair this was 1986, people genuinely didn't know as much about how radiation effects the human body. Secrecy had nothing to do with it in this case. Only a year after Chernobyl, the Goiana contamination incident in Brazil led to 2000 people violently protesting against the funeral of a six year old girl that died of radiation sickness, as they were terrified her body would somehow kill the entire city, even with the poor kid receiving a Chernobyl style funeral.
Absolutely correct, though at the time they may have not realized that and told her the fetus had absorbed it from her.
17:57 "Don't look over. DON'T LOOK OVER!" 😮
"History is a bloodbath, with a slight undercurrent of hope" this show personifies that sentiment.
indeed...the opening scene with the old lady was a masterpiece.
I think the worst thing is that this happened in reality. I was alive when it happened. I lived in London in 1986 and saw the radioactive cloud pass over London. I was a university student at that time, but we didn’t know much then. I have learned over the last few years.
Aw Sarah, you're so compassionate. So hard to see you in tears, especially over something so close to your heart like this. ♥
Many of the men who were sent on top of the roof, kept volunteering to go back up. Their thinking being, they've already been exposed and knew exactly what was waiting for them, better to risk their own lives than put it on someone else.
As soon as Sarah said she doesn't do well with animal death, I was like oh no...
After this, series theres an HBO documentary called "The Cherynobyl tapes".. that features some amazing "boots on the ground" footage from the time of the disaster, as well as some of the people dramatized here... worth a look, it's really amazing to see actual footage of the time... really puts the show in better context.
This episode of the series is the very definition of "Moral Injury". The liquidators may not have suffered the acute radiation poisoning like the firefighters, but they were still severely damaged because of the explosion, just in a different way.
The shot of the soldiers standing around, smoking in the background, as the truck just UNLOADS countless animal carcasses in the foreground (but out of focus) is one of my favorite, albeit very upsetting, shots in the show.
Most of the power plant scenes were shot at the decommissioned Ignalina plant in Lithuania. It was the same RBMK reactor design as Chernobyl. Part of the deal for Lithuania joining the EU was shutting down Ignalina. The original graphite power surge incident that was documented in the report the KGB buried happened at Ignalina.
I always thought that in the library scene they had many titles in the list, so that the library boss could show their power by not giving any of the ones that were not relevant.
Poor Sarah! I just want to hug you! ❤ I'm a huge animal lover so anything that shows any type of animal being mistreated or hurt will instantly make me cry. Loving your reactions and can't wait for the last episode!
5:35 "oh no..." 😥
Oh boy...episode 4...this is pretty much the toughest episode to watch for almost everyone...you will recover, I am positive.
Something that does not often get mentioned is that many of the men who went out onto those incredibly radioactive roof sections actually volunteered to go back out more than once in order to save others from having to be "biorobots". Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up and did nothing to fix it, all the while lying to even the plant operators about the safety of the RBMK reactors, is something that could only happen in a totalitarian state like the USSR...where there is no free press or free scientific establishment for whistleblowers to talk to when they know about wrongdoing by the State.✌
"Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up"
Yeah, that one didn't happen, the writers made that up.
The graphite tips weren't a secret, they were, in fact, working as intended.
Legasov "lying to the IAEA in Vienna" didn't happen either, he specifically addressed reactor flaws, as well as human error.
And his dramatic reveal at the trial didn't happen either, because Legasov wasn't even there.
Kind of bold to conclude the series with the line "what is the cost of lies", when they weren't all that concerned about the truth themselves...
@@legion8915 Soviet apologist detected
@Legion *SPOILERS* The operators didn't know about the shutdown flaw. The real Dyatlov claimed "The accident was caused by completely inappropriate characteristics of the reactor, that weren't clear enough at that time. ... the reactor protection system designed to stop the fission in an emergency situation... played the role of the atomic bomb detonator" Legasov was very concerned about the lack of safety in Soviet reactors before the accident. He did explain the negative void cooefficient in Vienna but didn't explain the shutdown flaw and other problems. The real Legasov said afterward "I did not lie in Vienna... but I did not tell the full truth."
Legion is only right on the final trial scene was largely fictitious. It was basically a show trial that entirely blamed operator error and didn't discuss reactor design flaws.
@@legion8915 You are not wrong...but the Soviets did cover up the issue with the AZ-5 causing massive power spikes when the reactor was in certain states, so I was just imprecise with my description. I will have to start using a more accurate description according to your input...thank you.
Hello there.
Mind you according to legend many animals were simply buried alive…
Throughout the makers of the series toned down the horror a lot and yet it still remains an absolute nightmare
"And you realize that was you all along, you just didn't know."
This series is so good it has the deepest most concise exploration of wartime trauma and it isn't even about a war.
I am just like Sarah, I can't deal with any type of animal suffering, but see, that's the point. Even though it's very hard to see the pets being put down, it's for their own good. They're alone, hungry and they would develop many types of disease anda mutations, it would be way more painfull for them. So try to see it as an act of kindness, cause they won't hurt anymore.
It was a mercy. One soldier, who was later interviewed, came upon a creature that he couldn't identify because its skin and fur was pretty much dripping off. He realized it was a cat only after it gave a pathetic meow.
Mother nature got sort of a last laugh on humanity. With a large swath of land cleared of human activity, the exclusion zone became an accidental nature preserve. Wild animals entered and bred in what became habitat reoccupation. Despite the radiation, the zone became a primordial forest.
The yellow german robot, is still in Ukraine, near the power plant with a bunch of trucks and whatnot that they used during the operation. It's still incredibly radioactive, and will remain dangerous for decades to come.
You can even see it in some youtube videos, where people visited chernobyl before the russia-Ukraine war.
There was a folk belief that drinking vodka would help prevent your body absorbing radiation. So aside from the stress that’s why everyone is drinking so much.
It should probably be said that the concept that the baby “absorbed” all the radiation and saved the mother is not true. The show put it in because it was how people talked about radiation at the time, but we know now that’s not how it works. And radiation damage when it’s not acute radiation syndrome (like the firefighters had) is often more subtle looking. They won’t necessarily LOOK like they’ve had decades taken off their life or they’re a time bomb for cancer.
It’s a really rough chunk of media to get through, but at the same time, it’s so well made…the acting, the sets, costumes, cinematography…the music! It does such a good job of putting you there.
I live in the southwest of Germany. Less than ten kilometers away from a nuclear power plant. At worst, that distance - as sarcastic as it sounds - would be more of a blessing than a curse. Because nothing would survive in such a radius. Everything would be over in a moment. Why the animals? Because Tschenobyl was a unique event up until then. All those responsible were hopelessly overwhelmed with the attempt to contain it, or even the attempt to limit the damage. Radioactively contaminated pets that would eventually become feral and eventually leave their homes to spread that contamination out into the world seemed like an unnecessary risk. We'll never know if it did anything. We should be happy about that. But frankly, I'm not able to feel any joy in connection with this disaster. I was five years old when it happened and had it not been for the sacrifice of numerous brave local souls, the world would be a radiant wasteland today. The radiation would have been pushed back and forth across the planet by the winds and air currents until there was nothing left alive.
"Do they need to do this?"
Unfortunately yes, contaminated animals run around uncontrolled, mate with healthy animals, get eaten and passing radionucludes to the predator, or die, decompose and releasing radioactive stuff to the soil. Basically, that's the only way to reduce risks.
5 is my favorite, it has some great lines and scenes, it's worth pushing through four to get to five
5 is so good. It’s worth it to get there.
One of the most emotionally damaging episodes of TV I've ever seen. But a compliment to the acting/writing/production. It's such a well crafted show
Eric: I can't think what could be worse than the last episode?
Me: Like dead puppies???
I'm still not recovered 😂😭
- Sarah
I am (slowly) reading a book called "Meltdown: Stories of Nuclear Disaster and the Human Cost of Going Critical" by Joel Levy. There was an accident in which nuclear waste was spread over a large area when a storage tank got very hot because the cooling machinery broke down, and the contents of the tank erupted like a volcano. This accident happened well before Chernobyl, and when the inhabitants were relocated forcibly, soldiers were sent to their former homes and farms to kill all the animals these people had so they would not have a reason to return. The sad events in this episode had been done before Chernobyl.
Answers will come next episode
great reaction. wonderful show of emotion. very well edited. your reaction to this series has been one of the best i've seen, and i'm very much looking forward to your reaction to the finale.
Thank you so much! As rough as it's been, I'm glad this is the first show we watched on the channel. Thanks for sticking around for the whole thing ☺️
- Sarah
everytime i watch the doggos scene i feel like i was ran over by a truck A BUNCH OF TIMES
I'm going to come in from a different direction, but adding to the stress on the kid we kinda focus on is the rifle he's issued. The Mosin-Nagant, in various models, was the standard Russian/Soviet battle rifle in both World Wars. It's a solid, accurate rifle, but it hits about as hard as the hammer on the Soviet flag, and isn't something I'd call particularly beginning friendly.
So you've got a kid who said he's never hunted (and looks like he's never handled a weapon at all) before, who now has the mental/emotional stress of the job he's going through, and add to that the physical stress from his shoulder probably being bruised and aching from the damn steel butt plate on that rifle slamming into his shoulder over and over.
No wonder he was a wreck.
Great comment Jordan! Also, I've grown partial to Bacho - seems like a great NCO, looking after his crew, esp. the green new kid. When he tells Pavel to go outside when Pavel's found that litter........ugh.... Such a great series, amazing production and performances.
He's a soviet kid, they got basic firearms training with the young Pioneers and sometimes through schools.
theres a bit of difference between punching paper with a kid friendly .22 and an antique battle rifle that has been sitting in the anti-invasion reserve for 40 years.
@@voiceofraisin3778 yeah, there's a difference between inserting a detachable magazine and trying to figure out how to shove a stripper clip into an internal magazine.
@@voiceofraisin3778I'm a city kid from the Philippines, so the only firearms training I've had to do is with 9mm handguns. Can't imagine jumping to a mosin from that.
"do they even need to be doing this"
Sadly, yes
All things within the Exclusion Zone, from soil, to animals, had to be destroyed.
This series serves like a truth serum.. If you can make it through the entire series without crying just once.. you must be a psychopath or so... And i'm a full grown man, 49yrs old.
Heavy word to use when a lot of people cry from different things, but it is a good show.
@@boi3987 lol, yeah it's cuz i don't know of any other type that has no emotions... it's a cliché i know. Anywayz .. psychopaths are not necessarily bad people !
It should be noted that the Russians finally completed their Safe Confinement structure over the Chernobyl reactor... in 2019.
It's designed to last only 100 years, which mean we'll have to deal with it again in 60-80 years.
First, not the russians but the ukrainians, some russian engineers probably have worked on it, but it's the Ukraine's project. Second, it's the new confinement, the first one was built in november 1986.
What’s amazing about the roof scene is if you time it the moment they go out to the time the bell rings is actually 90 seconds
Dyatlov's survival is something of a mystery. This was his second atomic accident, and the first one killed his family yet he himself survived.
18:21 It took thousands of men. The idea was that 90 seconds was the maximum dose of radiation an average adult male could safely withstand. For their entire lives. But...some older men insisted on doing in more than once, to take the place of younger men who did not yet have families. Heroes. Thousands and thousands and thousands of heroes to braved horrible death and soul-shredding tasks for years.
20:58 This is scientific nonsense. Designed to make it sound even worse than the truth. Very dramatic.
You have very good and great hearts. Bravo. IMHO this was the most brutal episode.
My dear Sarah, you are not allowed to cry alone in my presence. You broke my heart. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.
Cheers.
There's a lot of overlap with the actors in this and The Terror (first season), the atmosphere is similarly bleak with more overt supernatural horror. The acting is great as well.
About the animals - yes they had to be destroyed. Apparently the dogs were a lot skinnier than what they showed in the series - they were skin and bone. They were underfed and killing each other, while suffering from the effects of radiation as well. Killing them was the humane thing to do, as much as that process is terrible to think about.
Well you made it!!😄So in the last episode Id suggest you make it in Part1 and Part2, so you can include most of it.There are some suprises, make sure to get in all the ending creditsl👌
There are still stray dogs in Chernobyl and Pripyat
Compare the shot of the men on the roof to the actual real footage of it on UA-cam. They did a good job in the series to keep it real.
And I feel you. You feel drained after each episode. 😞
But who knew some people had to go kill pets because of a nuclear disaster. So many people were affected by this tragedy...
Fomin was the chief engineer above Dyatlov. Fomin was the worst and he suffered the least after prison. Bruchanov ( the guy with the deep voice and the black curly hair) was treated badly by this show. He was a good engineer and he was made out the villain. Dyatlov had seen a nuclear accident when he was the engineer on the nuclear submarine project. Fomin was the one that pushed for the test and was the main villain.
there are still hundreds of dogs in the exclusion zone. the workers at the other 3 reactors feed them, there is also an organization that feeds them, gives them medical help and has a spay and neutering progam. alot of the dogs when they are washed have acceptable levels of radiation. some have even been sent to the United States for adoption.
21:13 the baby was pure fiction for dramatic effect so don't worry.
The last ep will be much more easy, you have succesfully passed the hard episodes, congratulation ^^
Unfortunately it was necessary to put down the animals to keep them from spreading the radiation and keep it contained
29:22 "Finally" 🤣🤣🤣
For all you feeling bad that they were shooting the pets/animals. Trust me, that was a small mercy for most of them. Otherwise most would have suffered horribly painful and miserable death, or disease immediately followed by death. So while unpleasnt and sad, for sure, it was still an (unfortunate) mercy for most of them.
Great reaction guys!😍 I can't blame you for needing a few days to consider some life choices lol. Hope you're both well soon, maybe spend this Mother's Day weekend chilling out 😉 This is an awesome but very intense and harrowing series - this and the last episode were no cakewalks. So much sadness and frustration, excrutiating at times, but this series is so well done, it's absolutely riveting to watch. Everything is so good in this show, production, performances, soundtrack - amazing series.
“Is that water” …. Vodka flavored water yes
Other then keeping the men happy, another reason for the vodka is to reduce DNA damage from the high radiation levels. As Ethanol was known to protects somewhat against some of the effects of radiation.
Same reason Alot of Europeans were told to drink a glass of red wine a day during the crisis.
Chernobyl Episode 4: John Wick, but MUCH worse and without the satisfaction of revenge-murder
you were warned 😭
Thank you for watching this
Dyatlov recovered so well, because he was already so corroded inside.
This episode broke many soft hearts…
I really didn't want her to reach the puppies scene!
“There was nothing sane about Chernobyl.”
The liquidators are heroes
They told the west Germans that the nuclear radiation was 2000 roentgens when in fact the radiation was 10 times that. So Joker was never going to work 😮
Have you guys seen The Green Knight? I ask because the young dude terminating the dogs is in that film and anytime I see him I think about that masterpiece of filmmaking.
I watched this episode once, and as a dog person I cannot watch it ever again. I have to skip and mute those parts of your reaction bc I just cannot 😣
Episode 5 is really amazing! I can't wait til you guys get to that one. :)
You've made it through the hardest part of the show, from now it should be easier (though equally as interesting)
This was rough !
You watched this 3 months ago? Just some fun facts. Russia occupied Chernobyl area and occupied the plant itself during 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Russian soldiers dug trenches in that area, and quite a few of them ended up in hospital with radiation exposure. Chernobyl is not the largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. That's Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. It's occupied by Russians at the moment. Russians have blown up the dam which provides most water for cooling and allegedly mined the plant itself to be blown up in case they need to retreat.
I simply can't even, when it comes to animals...I can watch the other episodes, no problem-my coping mechanisms are sufficient for those, but animals ? Nope nope nope-so I look away & turn down volume during those scenes in this episode (can't skip entire ep. bc important plot stuff happens in other aspects of storyline).
Despite all that, my feeling is that this was an excellent series-have watched it through four times now (not counting the parts in this one that I had to tune out).
It's so important to learn about the event + the coverup (the catastrophe itself & the needless wasteful greater suffering inflicted by the subsequent attempt at denying & lying) yet it's so difficult to endure merely the vicarious experience all these decades later. Great show...though the agony is excruciating, not an easy watch that's for sure.
12:07 probably the worst thing you could have said at this point.
5:20 "nobody effs with him"
i think the culture in russian military is hazing and grape.
Guys, as animal lovers, what would you rather do? Shoot the pets and livestock or leave them and let them die slowly from radiation poisoning? Shooting them was the kindest thing possible.
The animals were flooded with radiation, and looked forward to a horrible sick diseased end. Shooting them would be heart breaking, but an act of mercy.
The Chernobyl series is horror for adults. It is truly the most harrowing television series of all time. The fantasy gore bullshit of The Walking Dead and the Saw film series can't hold a candle to Chernobyl.
You survived the roughest episode!🎉. You want something light? Watch Bullet Train. It’s great.
Killing those animals was completely unnecessary, in my opinion. Yes, they are radioactive, but what harm can they do? I doubt they would spread radiation to somebody...
its called a food chain bud ... animal dies it get riddled with worms, worms turn into bugs, bugs get eaten by birds ... and thats just one of the possible ways for that radioactive material to be spread out of the zone
secondly its MUCH better for those animals to get shot than to let them die in incredible pain from radiation sickness
Best Series ever Period !
There are actually rumors that a much more graphic version of this episode was shown to a test audience. they were so revolted and destroyed by it that they had to reshoot parts of it and cut this much more tame episode together.
For us Russians...vodka is water...🤣
It does get easier doing those unfortunate things, I have put down horses and deer and other animals, not fun but things must be done
I beg of you, watch a comedy after this, I can't bear to watch Sarah cry again. 😢
react to the movie '' sound of freedom'' with Jim caviezel please.
I get the feeling that a lot of people had a shot of vodka after watching that episode
Episode 4 and 5 are a bit shit, but the first 3 really hit it good. They didn't know how to end it. They added to much filler, but it was very well made none the less.
for people who wondering world still has no robot to have possibility to even come close to such radiation. evrything fries. we can place rover in space, but cant come to core. fukushima they send robot and core had water still japanese went to look inside in fukushima with submarine robot it worked less than 2 min. video was super bad as radiation bombardedwith bulets in cherno even today you would send men, fukushima also send men
For a happier film watch The Green Mile
Worst, job...ever.
Do react to Anna (2019)
Complete opposite of an uplifting episode. My god.
#wrecked
737 Max
Humans are monsters.
Hi, monster 👋
Just don't take it seriously. This is not a real story, just fiction.
You must be joking, the events are totally true
What? No? It's just the point of the show that what they are left with are stories about what happened. No one knows for sure, because of all the lies and coverups. Doesn't mean it's "just" fiction?
@@abrahamdiaz3648
Shown in the series has very little to do with what actually happened. It is enough to read at least the first pages of the notes of Academician Legasov, which appear in the first series and allegedly were one of the sources of information, to understand how little truth there is in the series.
Most of the lies and cover-ups are in the minds of the show's creators. It is enough to watch the first series to understand that the authors misrepresented all the events, they understand little about the realities of the USSR of that time.
@@grustnyia2386 I will take a look, I disagree, but Im not 100%
my sight is the best thing about mw why are you showing me glasses birds???? GOT TO BIRD DOWN
8:59 come on girl you already forgot? they get better first and then way way way worse.