I know there is a TV series thread but I think that this TV series deserves its own thread, for reasons I will go into below.
So this thread is for people to discuss the themes present in the TV series,
but also (as there is no dedicated Chernobyl thread and we have both scientists and citizens of ex Eastern Bloc countries on this forum) an opportunity to discuss the actual events of the disaster / tragedy and its repercussions.
It deserves its own thread because of the various themes present within it and because its a good TV series.
Why?
A list:
The production values are off the scale.
It views like a chilling horror movie.
Everything is dead pan and understated yet in both of the first episodes the sense of menace in the air is palpable.
Because of the chilling effects of radiation.
One minute characters are fine, the next they vomit as their stomach lining sloughs off and their skin burns. Its chilling even if it is just television.
The eerie, otherworldly nature of the threat they were facing.
Apparently before the reactor blew there was an loud, almost human moan emanating from the reactor. (presumably the steam escaping)
Those who saw the flames and the column of light ascending into the sky said it was the most beautiful thing that they had ever seen.
This is real footage of the first helicopter to attempt to put out the flames flying into a crane and falling down into the burning reactor.
The air the helicopter was flying in was measured at 180-200 centigrade. Who knows what the controls were doing as they flew directly over the reactor.
The TV show captures this tragedy observed from a distance well.
Even the robots that the Soviets sent on to the adjacent roof to bulldoze rubble began to fritz and malfunction. One drove itself straight off the roof to fall into the reactor.
And so the authorities decided, now that these robots were unreliable and killing themselves.. to send so-called "bio-robots" (men from the army) to shovel radioactive graphite and to expose themselves to incredible levels of radioactivity.
The bravery of ordinary men
the very average technicians in the control room went off to search for comrades and to turn off valves in the face of huge radiation. they didn't question their orders or even need ordering sometimes.
The barely adequate dosimeters that they had were capping out at 3.6 roentgens (400 chest x-rays)
a high level dosimeter later attached to a lead covered truck discovered that the real measure was almost dead on 15,000 roentgens.
Or 1 million, 666 thousand 666 point 666 recurring chest x-rays that the first responders were exposed to in minutes of arriving.
They described the taste of metal and the feeling of pins and needles on their face as they approached the blaze.
They took a long time to die horribly. Melting both inside and out. Supposedly some men were able to take the flesh off their own bodies with their fingers in liquid clumps.
But there was a 2nd explosion imminent
In dumping sand and boron on the blaze the fire had been put out.
But the radioactive matter was getting hotter and hotter, melting the sand and forming Corium - a radioactive lava that was melting down through the concrete.
Beneath the reactor lay a huge pool of contaminated water. If it contacted the corium then a second explosion would have included the material in the other 3 reactors and by most estimates, such a blast may have wiped out half of Europe, leaving it risky to live in for 500,000 years.
3 men were need to go into the radioactive water and operate the sluice gates.
Probable horrific death or millions die.
Crucially, they had to be from the existing plant workers - a small subsection of potential volunteers.
That 3 men volunteered so readily is a testament to the human courage of ordinary men.
Stellan Skarsgaards character as Scherbina in the show gives a gruff and emotion-less speech to explain what was at stake.
Fuck off you Slay! Queens! on Game of Thrones. That speech was very prosaic and matter of fact and yet it has ten times the impact of a Dany or a Sansa or a Jon Snow.
80's nostalgia/retro-chic. (but on the other side of the Iron curtain)
We already have an 80's thread .. but that is mainly to discuss the excess and decadence of the 80s in the West, especially the USA.
Whilst the USA had a go for it! culture, Europe really didn't.
In Britain .. yes we had Boy George and Adam and the Ants and Thatcher telling the poor families and communities in the North to "get on their bikes and come South!" but the 80s outside of some Kenny Everett/Freddie Mercury London bubble was fucking grim in the Uk.
The program is good at capturing the sheer fucking depressing feel and detail of it all.
The production crew were obviously dedicated to getting the look and feel of the mid-80's Soviet Union. You can see it in the way they dwell on the fashions, the haircuts, the style of buildings..
I think it was filmed in ex-Soviet Lithuania and there is clearly a lot of nostalgia and retro-chic being explored in the show.
The Eastern Bloc followed Western trends (just as Communist Asia did with its kipper ties and flares in the 70s) and at the same time had it some weird variations.. like Constructivism in architecture, the love affair with concrete, the love affair with 2ndary colour schemes - brown silver purple (just like Apartheid South Africa and North Korea)
They get so many things right, the cut of peoples suits, the reflective surfaces, including just how the spectacles people wore at the time used to catch the light
The effect of the Cold War on the 80s Zeitgeist.
There was another side to the bright and hair sprayed 80s especially in Europe.
David Bowie features in the Movie Christiane F. alot of people describe watching Bowie perform in West Berlin at that time as being kids in the presence of a future that was only Nuclear Winter and Fallout.
That feeling had its effects:
This was the decade of the bleak Goth and Heavy Metal scenes (as opposed to Hair Metal) even the New Romantics seemed a decadent rebellion against the meaninglessness and nihilism the Cold War engendered.
I can say that, personally, as a kid I was terrified of Nuclear War - a threat that was very high in the years 1984, 1985, 1986 and which European adults readily and regularly discussed around their children.
The world seemed a particularly bleak and terrifying place.
So this thread is for people to discuss the themes present in the TV series,
but also (as there is no dedicated Chernobyl thread and we have both scientists and citizens of ex Eastern Bloc countries on this forum) an opportunity to discuss the actual events of the disaster / tragedy and its repercussions.
It deserves its own thread because of the various themes present within it and because its a good TV series.
Why?
A list:
The production values are off the scale.
It views like a chilling horror movie.
Everything is dead pan and understated yet in both of the first episodes the sense of menace in the air is palpable.
Because of the chilling effects of radiation.
One minute characters are fine, the next they vomit as their stomach lining sloughs off and their skin burns. Its chilling even if it is just television.
The eerie, otherworldly nature of the threat they were facing.
Apparently before the reactor blew there was an loud, almost human moan emanating from the reactor. (presumably the steam escaping)
Those who saw the flames and the column of light ascending into the sky said it was the most beautiful thing that they had ever seen.
This is real footage of the first helicopter to attempt to put out the flames flying into a crane and falling down into the burning reactor.
The air the helicopter was flying in was measured at 180-200 centigrade. Who knows what the controls were doing as they flew directly over the reactor.
The TV show captures this tragedy observed from a distance well.
Even the robots that the Soviets sent on to the adjacent roof to bulldoze rubble began to fritz and malfunction. One drove itself straight off the roof to fall into the reactor.
And so the authorities decided, now that these robots were unreliable and killing themselves.. to send so-called "bio-robots" (men from the army) to shovel radioactive graphite and to expose themselves to incredible levels of radioactivity.
The bravery of ordinary men
the very average technicians in the control room went off to search for comrades and to turn off valves in the face of huge radiation. they didn't question their orders or even need ordering sometimes.
The barely adequate dosimeters that they had were capping out at 3.6 roentgens (400 chest x-rays)
a high level dosimeter later attached to a lead covered truck discovered that the real measure was almost dead on 15,000 roentgens.
Or 1 million, 666 thousand 666 point 666 recurring chest x-rays that the first responders were exposed to in minutes of arriving.
They described the taste of metal and the feeling of pins and needles on their face as they approached the blaze.
They took a long time to die horribly. Melting both inside and out. Supposedly some men were able to take the flesh off their own bodies with their fingers in liquid clumps.
But there was a 2nd explosion imminent
In dumping sand and boron on the blaze the fire had been put out.
But the radioactive matter was getting hotter and hotter, melting the sand and forming Corium - a radioactive lava that was melting down through the concrete.
Beneath the reactor lay a huge pool of contaminated water. If it contacted the corium then a second explosion would have included the material in the other 3 reactors and by most estimates, such a blast may have wiped out half of Europe, leaving it risky to live in for 500,000 years.
3 men were need to go into the radioactive water and operate the sluice gates.
Probable horrific death or millions die.
Crucially, they had to be from the existing plant workers - a small subsection of potential volunteers.
That 3 men volunteered so readily is a testament to the human courage of ordinary men.
Stellan Skarsgaards character as Scherbina in the show gives a gruff and emotion-less speech to explain what was at stake.
Fuck off you Slay! Queens! on Game of Thrones. That speech was very prosaic and matter of fact and yet it has ten times the impact of a Dany or a Sansa or a Jon Snow.
80's nostalgia/retro-chic. (but on the other side of the Iron curtain)
We already have an 80's thread .. but that is mainly to discuss the excess and decadence of the 80s in the West, especially the USA.
Whilst the USA had a go for it! culture, Europe really didn't.
In Britain .. yes we had Boy George and Adam and the Ants and Thatcher telling the poor families and communities in the North to "get on their bikes and come South!" but the 80s outside of some Kenny Everett/Freddie Mercury London bubble was fucking grim in the Uk.
The program is good at capturing the sheer fucking depressing feel and detail of it all.
The production crew were obviously dedicated to getting the look and feel of the mid-80's Soviet Union. You can see it in the way they dwell on the fashions, the haircuts, the style of buildings..
I think it was filmed in ex-Soviet Lithuania and there is clearly a lot of nostalgia and retro-chic being explored in the show.
The Eastern Bloc followed Western trends (just as Communist Asia did with its kipper ties and flares in the 70s) and at the same time had it some weird variations.. like Constructivism in architecture, the love affair with concrete, the love affair with 2ndary colour schemes - brown silver purple (just like Apartheid South Africa and North Korea)
They get so many things right, the cut of peoples suits, the reflective surfaces, including just how the spectacles people wore at the time used to catch the light
The effect of the Cold War on the 80s Zeitgeist.
There was another side to the bright and hair sprayed 80s especially in Europe.
David Bowie features in the Movie Christiane F. alot of people describe watching Bowie perform in West Berlin at that time as being kids in the presence of a future that was only Nuclear Winter and Fallout.
That feeling had its effects:
This was the decade of the bleak Goth and Heavy Metal scenes (as opposed to Hair Metal) even the New Romantics seemed a decadent rebellion against the meaninglessness and nihilism the Cold War engendered.
I can say that, personally, as a kid I was terrified of Nuclear War - a threat that was very high in the years 1984, 1985, 1986 and which European adults readily and regularly discussed around their children.
The world seemed a particularly bleak and terrifying place.
![[Image: 4a0f9963-ea82-4806-9e7d-a51d749523c7.jpg]](http://www.exostispress.gr/Images/Blog/4a0f9963-ea82-4806-9e7d-a51d749523c7.jpg)
