Chernobyl

 

The series has been out for more than a year and I’m sure others have commented competently about it. But I’ve just finished the final episode, and I want to throw in my two cents.

It’s a remarkable account. Excusing a bit of excessive but very effective gore, it’s an excellent program. I remember the incident, having lived through it and long been interested in nuclear technology, but am not particularly familiar with the political details. I am, however, familiar with the science, with the accumulation of xenon gas and the peculiar structure of the control rods that led to the catastrophe when the “scram” button was pressed. In that one particular of scientific verisimilitude, the series goes far beyond what I expected and hoped, and offers a compelling technical account of the evolving disaster.

But what I often wondered, as I watched the five episodes, was how America would have handled a similar situation. Accepting that such a catastrophe could occur here (and it’s by no means obvious that it could, given our concern for safety and the Soviet disregard for same), how would a mobilization on the scale of the Chernobyl mitigation and containment have been managed here? How would information have been managed; what attention would have been given to saving prestige on the international stage? Our technology is better, our communication is better; we are a more honest and forthright people; we put a vastly greater value on human life. How would the Chernobyl story have played out had we made a similarly catastrophic mistake?

And how is my sense of that colored by the handling and mishandling of the recent epidemic, by state governments, government-sponsored organizations, and their facilitators in the press that, like the old Soviet Union, seem to place more emphasis on political expediency and an advantageous presentation of carefully culled facts than on openness and honesty?

Had I watched it a year ago, it would have seemed a different movie, an account of institutional incompetence peculiar to the communist empire. But today, amidst the carnage of New York City nursing homes and against the backdrop of a World Health Organization complicit in Chinese treachery and a feckless CDC, with cowardly municipalities surrendering their streets to delinquent thugs and uncountable arbitrary technocratic excesses inexplicably curtailing our rights, the conceit of Soviet pride seems less than unique. Governments, and institutions public and private, have been exposed, and found wanting.

We are experiencing a civic meltdown. Let’s see how we regain control.

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  1. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    It’s by no means theoretical. People tend to compare Chernobyl 1986 with Three Mile Island in 1979, but the reasons for the failures, and the magnitude of the two plant disasters are different. Three Mile Island had weak management and some tech problems that were already in the process of being worked out, like critical alarm systems that could only be read behind the control panel. Chernobyl was a bureaucratic nightmare several layers thick. 

    Could it happen here? That same spring the Challenger blew up on takeoff, seemingly one of those tragic, random risks of mankind venturing into space. Reagan handled the public role brilliantly and behind the scenes, he appointed a surprisingly tough review panel. As the year went by, NASA looked worse and worse. It turned out that the faulty join between solid rocket stages had been a known problem almost since the beginning of the program. but it was such a fundamental part of the shuttle system that its safety was reluctantly waved through. Nobody wanted to tell the American people that the shuttle wasn’t going to be the low cost airline to orbit that aerospace contrctors had promised at the dawn of the ’70s. The brakes were marginal. The thermal tiles were fragile. Launch costs were thirty times what had been projected only five years before. But NASA wanted to keep flying, so no one said, “We were wrong. This isn’t the DC-3 of space. It isn’t even the DC-2. It’s a valuable, dangerous experimental craft and always will be”. But no one was about to end their careers and say that. 

    If any contractor had said anything like that, iron institutional discipline would have been applied. That was the final revelation, the last straw for the supportive American public: rocket engineers fought for hours over the speakerphone the night before the launch, trying to postpone it. Their managers didn’t want to buck the system and get fired. So their underlings knuckled under. The launch proceeded and killed the crew. 

    • #1
  2. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    Well, we’ve seen the CDC and FDA exposed as completely incompetent and political creatures.

    We’ve had spokesman like the Surgeon General and Dr Fauci flat out lying to the American public about wearing masks because we got caught with out pants at our ankles.  Formerly respected organizations like NEJM flat out lying about clinical trials. 

    Both sides have waged a political battle and politicized an epidemic resulting in a complete loss of credibility.

    We’ve handled the pandemic worse then the Soviet Union handled Chernobyl.  They at least managed at great cost to contain the disaster.  We’ve managed to get the worst of all possible outcomes at this point.   Great sacrifice for nothing. 

     

     

    • #2
  3. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    I’ve not seen the HBO documentary but yesterday I learned that it exists. I watched this YouTube video by Sergei Sputnikoff, who was a 15-year-old in Kiev at the time it happened. He was impressed that the makers of the documentary got so many details about the setting just right, but added a few things they could have added to make it even more realistic.

    One was the music on the Soviet radios. Each time there was a big, tragic event the radio would switch to classical music programming, sometimes for hours before an announcer would come on and make an announcement, such as the death of Brezhnev, the death of Andropov, or the death of Chernenko. Sergei remembers that his first thought on hearing the music was that Gorbachev must have died, “And he was so young!”  

    And yes, he tells how the government lied. But lying is one of the main functions of government. That’s why we have them do health care.  

    I don’t expect  to watch the series, even though it sounds like it might be a notch better than the usual. But I am glad to have watched Sergei’s two videos about it. (There is at least one other.)

     

    • #3
  4. WillowSpring Member
    WillowSpring
    @WillowSpring

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    That was the final revelation, the last straw for the supportive American public: rocket engineers fought for hours over the speakerphone the night before the launch, trying to postpone it. Their managers didn’t want to buck the system and get fired. So their underlings knuckled under. The launch proceeded and killed the crew. 

    I have mentioned this before, but one of the most compelling examples in Edwin Tufte’s books on the display of information concerns how the engineers described their worries.  They were concerned about the effect of low temperatures on the flexibility and thus seal of the O-rings.  They presented a chart with the percentage of damage of the O-rings vs the launch number and there was no real pattern.

    Tufte shows that if the same data is plotted with the temperature at launch as the X axis instead of launch number, the dramatic relationship between low temperature (which was predicted) and damage is obvious.

    Back then, I think it was just an honest failure, but I agree with @kozak that this time, politics has played a major hand.

    • #4
  5. Architectus Coolidge
    Architectus
    @Architectus

    WillowSpring (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    That was the final revelation, the last straw for the supportive American public: rocket engineers fought for hours over the speakerphone the night before the launch, trying to postpone it. Their managers didn’t want to buck the system and get fired. So their underlings knuckled under. The launch proceeded and killed the crew.

    I have mentioned this before, but one of the most compelling examples in Edwin Tufte’s books on the display of information concerns how the engineers described their worries. They were concerned about the effect of low temperatures on the flexibility and thus seal of the O-rings. They presented a chart with the percentage of damage of the O-rings vs the launch number and there was no real pattern.

    Tufte shows that if the same data is plotted with the temperature at launch as the X axis instead of launch number, the dramatic relationship between low temperature (which was predicted) and damage is obvious.

    Back then, I think it was just an honest failure, but I agree with @kozak that this time, politics has played a major hand.

    Wow, you just wrote the response that I was about to write!  Tufte is brilliant, and his account has been an eye-opener to be applied across all fields where understanding the implications of information is critical.  Which is to say: everywhere.  

    While there was awareness of the O-ring problems, they wanted to believe they were manageable.  That was a bit of wishful thinking, like about the manageability of shuttle heat shield tiles, that was dangerous in an endeavor with such high stakes.  But I believe that had the data been presented in the fashion he described, not a single member of the team would have voted to launch. 

    • #5
  6. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    I thought that the Chernobyl show was well done.

    Did you notice the Wokeist element?  I did find it rather annoying.

    • #6
  7. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I thought that the Chernobyl show was well done.

    Did you notice the Wokeist element? I did find it rather annoying.

    I did not. (And I am beginning to suspect that you’re a hard man to please.)

    • #7
  8. Gene Killian Coolidge
    Gene Killian
    @GeneKillian

    It was an excellent series and shows what happens when the so-called “infallibility of the state” is enforced with an iron hand. Many great points have been raised in this thread, but here are two additional ones that come to mind. First, China’s lies about the coronavirus, and stifling of whistleblowers. The WHO was all too willing to buy the lies despite warnings by Taiwan, which is one of the primary reasons we are where we are. Second, there’s a great book called “1983” about a near nuclear launch against the US by the USSR, due to a computer system that had grossly misread our  intentions. The Soviet officer who stopped the launch, Stanislav Petrov, was initially praised by Soviet authorities, but ultimately criticized and sacked. If not for Lt. Col. Petrov, it’s very possible none of us would be here.

    • #8
  9. Gene Killian Coolidge
    Gene Killian
    @GeneKillian

    Here’s a tangential point: Omaha Beach. The assault was bogged down, but US officers on the beach, used to thinking independently and not waiting for orders, reorganized the troops and broke through, at a time when Bradley was considering pulling them out.  I’ve often had my doubts about whether the military of any other country could’ve accomplished that.

    • #9
  10. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I thought that the Chernobyl show was well done.

    Did you notice the Wokeist element? I did find it rather annoying.

    I did not. (And I am beginning to suspect that you’re a hard man to please.)

    I want to know what he thinks that is too.

    • #10
  11. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I thought that the Chernobyl show was well done.

    Did you notice the Wokeist element? I did find it rather annoying.

    I did not. (And I am beginning to suspect that you’re a hard man to please.)

    I want to know what he thinks that is too.

    The female lead.  There was no such person.  I’m pretty sure that all of the other major characters were based on the actual people involved.  The female lead — I don’t recall her name, but then I don’t recall any of the names — was completely made up, and if I remember correctly, the explanations at the end called her a “composite” of many other scientists and technicians.

    I was expecting this, because she was presented as such a shallow character — unambiguously brilliant, never wrong, purely good.  No complexity at all.

    • #11
  12. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… (View Comment):

    I thought that the Chernobyl show was well done.

    Did you notice the Wokeist element? I did find it rather annoying.

    I did not. (And I am beginning to suspect that you’re a hard man to please.)

    I want to know what he thinks that is too.

    The female lead. There was no such person. I’m pretty sure that all of the other major characters were based on the actual people involved. The female lead — I don’t recall her name, but then I don’t recall any of the names — was completely made up, and if I remember correctly, the explanations at the end called her a “composite” of many other scientists and technicians.

    I was expecting this, because she was presented as such a shallow character — unambiguously brilliant, never wrong, purely good. No complexity at all.

    That was the only thing I could think of to which you might be referring. I thought it was a perfectly legitimate narrative compromise. It kept the number of viewpoint characters to a reasonable minimum without introducing a lot of exposition, something that would have been hard to do if trying to document several people collecting shards of information from these broken and dying men. Had they cast a man in the role the “woke” claim would have no teeth, and I didn’t find the casting of a woman objectionable.

    I found the widow more distracting, because I kept expecting her to play a role beyond tragic victim.

    The scenes on the bridge of children playing in the accumulating ash and the ash landing on the baby’s face were chilling. And I thought the large set pieces, the burning ruins and the smoke, were well done.

    • #12
  13. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason.  Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something.  Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    • #13
  14. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason. Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something. Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    This might strike some as irredeemably sexist, but I don’t care. If the shoe fits and all that.

    I think it’s probably easier to cast a woman in a second-tier role like that. If they’d cast a man in that role, it would have created a kind of tension that would have detracted from the male lead’s importance. That doesn’t work well when one of the characters is a composite, because you don’t want to elevate the composite to the role of a significant dramatic player.

    Casting a woman allowed the composite character to remain in the background, independent (as required by the story) without threatening to crowd the space of the two male leads. We naturally expect women to take a distinctly second-place role when cast beside male leads, so much so that we notice whenever they don’t and interpret the choice as messaging (which it usually is).

    Just the opinion of one confirmed sexist man, of course.

    • #14
  15. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason. Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something. Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    This might strike some as irredeemably sexist, but I don’t care. If the shoe fits and all that.

    I think it’s probably easier to cast a woman in a second-tier role like that. If they’d cast a man in that role, it would have created a kind of tension that would have detracted from the male lead’s importance. That doesn’t work well when one of the characters is a composite, because you don’t want to elevate the composite to the role of a significant dramatic player.

    Casting a woman allowed the composite character to remain in the background, independent (as required by the story) without threatening to crowd the space of the two male leads. We naturally expect women to take a distinctly second-place role when cast beside male leads, so much so that we notice whenever they don’t and interpret the choice as messaging (which it usually is).

    Just the opinion of one confirmed sexist man, of course.

    I can see that.  If multiple lower-tier people are made into one, that single character might end up appearing to have more importance than the original multiples actually did.  But turning that character into a female for that reason, seems to be the opposite of woke(ist).

    • #15
  16. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason. Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something. Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    This might strike some as irredeemably sexist, but I don’t care. If the shoe fits and all that.

    I think it’s probably easier to cast a woman in a second-tier role like that. If they’d cast a man in that role, it would have created a kind of tension that would have detracted from the male lead’s importance. That doesn’t work well when one of the characters is a composite, because you don’t want to elevate the composite to the role of a significant dramatic player.

    Casting a woman allowed the composite character to remain in the background, independent (as required by the story) without threatening to crowd the space of the two male leads. We naturally expect women to take a distinctly second-place role when cast beside male leads, so much so that we notice whenever they don’t and interpret the choice as messaging (which it usually is).

    Just the opinion of one confirmed sexist man, of course.

    I can see that. If multiple lower-tier people are made into one, that single character might end up appearing to have more importance than the original multiples actually did. But turning that character into a female for that reason, seems to be the opposite of woke(ist).

    That’s how I see it. I think it was a very unwoke move.

    • #16
  17. Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio… Member
    Jerry Giordano (Arizona Patrio…
    @ArizonaPatriot

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason. Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something. Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    This might strike some as irredeemably sexist, but I don’t care. If the shoe fits and all that.

    I think it’s probably easier to cast a woman in a second-tier role like that. If they’d cast a man in that role, it would have created a kind of tension that would have detracted from the male lead’s importance. That doesn’t work well when one of the characters is a composite, because you don’t want to elevate the composite to the role of a significant dramatic player.

    Casting a woman allowed the composite character to remain in the background, independent (as required by the story) without threatening to crowd the space of the two male leads. We naturally expect women to take a distinctly second-place role when cast beside male leads, so much so that we notice whenever they don’t and interpret the choice as messaging (which it usually is).

    Just the opinion of one confirmed sexist man, of course.

    I can see that. If multiple lower-tier people are made into one, that single character might end up appearing to have more importance than the original multiples actually did. But turning that character into a female for that reason, seems to be the opposite of woke(ist).

    My impression is that this fictional female character was the best and noblest person in the entire story.  I didn’t see any reason to make a composite character at all, male or female.  It looked to me like a transparent device to rewrite history to supposedly recognize the contributions of women, people of color, and other underrepresented minorities, none of whom played any significant part in the actual historical event.

    • #17
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Dramatizations of real events often use composite characters for that reason. Just making the character female doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless she was also shown wearing NARAL T-shirts or something. Although if the characters she was supposed to be a composite of were all actually male, that drops the accuracy score.

    This might strike some as irredeemably sexist, but I don’t care. If the shoe fits and all that.

    I think it’s probably easier to cast a woman in a second-tier role like that. If they’d cast a man in that role, it would have created a kind of tension that would have detracted from the male lead’s importance. That doesn’t work well when one of the characters is a composite, because you don’t want to elevate the composite to the role of a significant dramatic player.

    Casting a woman allowed the composite character to remain in the background, independent (as required by the story) without threatening to crowd the space of the two male leads. We naturally expect women to take a distinctly second-place role when cast beside male leads, so much so that we notice whenever they don’t and interpret the choice as messaging (which it usually is).

    Just the opinion of one confirmed sexist man, of course.

    I can see that. If multiple lower-tier people are made into one, that single character might end up appearing to have more importance than the original multiples actually did. But turning that character into a female for that reason, seems to be the opposite of woke(ist).

    That’s how I see it. I think it was a very unwoke move.

    But that’s thinking about it logically, which is completely un-left/un-woke.  To them it seems good enough to flip some male character(s) to female, even if those character(s) are awful.

    We can’t really be surprised, though.  If they were actual thinkers, they wouldn’t be left/woke.

    • #18
  19. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    The more I think about it, the less I buy the “woke” thesis. Nothing about the show suggests that it was pitched at a woke audience. It portrays the communists as obsessed with all the wrong things, and it dives far deeper than necessary, in entertainment terms, into the physics of the accident.

    I think it was a movie made by men, for men, and the decision to cast a woman was a practical one based on the realization that it’s easier to leave a minor character free to act if that character is a woman.

    I like the movie even more, now, than I did before. It’s almost a Ford v Ferrari for physics geeks. 

    • #19
  20. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    The more I think about it, the less I buy the “woke” thesis. Nothing about the show suggests that it was pitched at a woke audience.

    Being pitched at a woke audience has nothing to do with whether wokism is being pitched.

    • #20
  21. Henry Racette Member
    Henry Racette
    @HenryRacette

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    The more I think about it, the less I buy the “woke” thesis. Nothing about the show suggests that it was pitched at a woke audience.

    Being pitched at a woke audience has nothing to do with whether wokism is being pitched.

    Sorry, I don’t buy it. Given that nothing else about the movie hints at a “woke”theme, and that the character was, as Jerry observed, an undeveloped caricature, and that they bothered to tell us that she was a piece of fiction (without mentioning any other characters who were also contrived, though I’m sure there were some), and that there’s a good, parsimonious explanation for the casting choice as I’ve proposed earlier — given all that, I think it had nothing to do with being woke.

    I mean, think about it: inventing a woman character and then telling us that she was invented? How does that possibly further a woke narrative?

    No, I think I called this right.

    • #21
  22. Charlotte Member
    Charlotte
    @Charlotte

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    I think it was a movie made by men, for men, and the decision to cast a woman was a practical one based on the realization that it’s easier to leave a minor character free to act if that character is a woman.

    Your unapologetic sexism always makes me both bristle and chuckle. As an unapologetic (female) misogynist myself, I usually have to admit you’re more right than wrong. And one data point to support your Chernobyl analysis…Mr. Charlotte loved it and I wasn’t interested. 😂

    (For the record, I know that sexist and misogynist are not synonymous. I used the correct word in both cases.)

    • #22
  23. LC Member
    LC
    @LidensCheng

    I was so hyped for this miniseries the moment I saw the trailer. After watching the first episode, I was constantly recommending it to people. I thought it was the best thing on TV last year. It was incredibly compelling from the beginning. The incompetence and inability to accept the truth as it’s happening in front of their eyes (the very obvious fact that the reactor core exploded) in the first episode was such an effective demonstration of the Soviet way. There were many chilling scenes throughout the show.

    The woke aspect mentioned earlier makes no sense to me. There are plenty of movies and shows that utilize fictional composite characters when telling a true story. It makes the story easier to follow. It happened in Black Hawk Down, it happened in Zero Dark Thirty. Didn’t bother me in those movies and it doesn’t bother me here. Of course her character has the moral high ground. She represents the scientific community that investigated the incident and were appalled by what happened.

    • #23
  24. Kozak Member
    Kozak
    @Kozak

    I was planning a trip to Kiev in April and had booked a 2 day tour of the Chernobyl plant and surrounding area.

    I’m hoping I can go in either September or October if things work out.

    • #24
  25. HeavyWater Inactive
    HeavyWater
    @HeavyWater

    I also thought Chernobyl was an excellent series.  Once I watched the first episode, I watched the other episodes until the conclusion.  

    • #25
  26. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Henry Racette (View Comment):
    I mean, think about it: inventing a woman character and then telling us that she was invented? How does that possibly further a woke narrative?

    The same way every other film and documentary since the 1950s has furthered it.

    • #26
  27. LC Member
    LC
    @LidensCheng

    To Henry’s actual question, it seems more and more likely that this level of incompetence can happen here. Or anywhere really. Bureaucracy can kill any civilization. 

    • #27
  28. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    The same way every other film and documentary since the 1950s has furthered it.

    Mind you, I’m not arguing about the casting in the documentary, but about your reasoning. I haven’t seen this documentary and don’t intend to see it.  But if you see one documentary film produced in the U.S., you’ve seen them all.

    • #28
  29. cirby Inactive
    cirby
    @cirby

    I took a business trip last year, and watched the first episode while on the plane on the first leg of the trip.

    For the return flight, I bought all of the rest of the series and watched it.

    Great series, and much more realistic than I ever thought it would be. They screwed up a few technical details, but it was shockingly accurate in many places.

    Now, if they want a prequel, there’s always the Kyshtym disaster in 1957 – which was, in many ways, worse. But not a lot of people know about that one.

     

    • #29
  30. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    The Reticulator (View Comment):
    The same way every other film and documentary since the 1950s has furthered it.

    Mind you, I’m not arguing about the casting in the documentary, but about your reasoning. I haven’t seen this documentary and don’t intend to see it. But if you see one documentary film produced in the U.S., you’ve seen them all.

    Although I’m opposed to letting my mind be polluted by documentaries or film, I wouldn’t mind some more reading about Chernobyl. It has been a while and there is probably a lot of new research since then. I see there are quite a few books to sort through.  I can probably figure out something good to read, but if any of you have recommendations it would be interesting to hear about them.

    • #30
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