those vodka bottles at the start are famous/infamous; they were state owned and once you opened one the top couldn't be re-sealed so you had to finish it

I think it's important we watch things like this. Even fictionalized, we shouldn't let ourselves look away from the horrible things other people went through. It's the only way most of us can honour their memory, in my opinion.

There was a deleted scene involving the soldiers when Pavel first arrived in the camp. Each of the soldiers was given a card that indicated how many roentgen (radiation units) they absorbed. If the number reached 24, the soldier was sent home. If the number went over 24, the soldier's commanding officer was shot for negligence. Bacho then told Pavel that his number was 23. Garo's number was 23. Every soldier that Pavel saw walking in the camp was 23. They would be always be 23. The scene was cut because it was considered "too callous." But it certainly did display the Soviet disregard for their conscripts, and how willing they were to disobey their own rules in order to avoid any kind of personal responsibility. Even in the face of the disaster.

"Heck the KGB!" "Hey!" "Maybe I shouldn't have said that. What if we get murdered?" - That was reaction gold!!!!!

That line "Don't let them suffer" gets me every time. Also have to commend the veteran for sparing the young guy from the burden of ending the puppies.

This came out at the same time as the disastrous final season of Game of Thrones, and someone mentioned that the rubble on the roof was a better villain than the Night King. So true.

The song that the Russian commander of those in charge of rounding up the animals was singing adds some real dark context to where his mind is at during this. The song is called Chorniy Voron and tells the tale of a dying soldier watching a Black Raven which are circling above him, awaiting his death. A part of him knows that they are not sadistic or actively wishing him harm but merely existing, yet he he cannot accept this situation and defaults to hate it, and to fight back with all he has left to deny the Raven it's meal. It's about the last of his fighting spirit, recalling his life, wishing for the prosperity of the family he left behind, then finally facing death and accepting becoming the Black Raven's prey as well as his own demise. Kinda similar to how they are accepting what radiation is doing and in turn is trying to convince himself that he is like the Raven when he takes the lives of the animals, merely acting as nature should, and not the monster that the dying soldier makes the Raven out to be at first.

As heartbreaking as this episode is, maybe it will please you to know they were never able to cull all the animals in the exclusion zone. Now, a few hundred dogs live there and are taken care of by the Clean Futures Fund. They are also studied, which offers unique insight into how generations of mammals can survive and adapt in areas of low-level, ionizing radiation, a study that hasn't ever really been done before. If you'd like to know more about these beautiful dogs, check out the video "Chernobyl Created the World's Rarest Dogs" from Kyle Hill for some sweet puppies and happy tears.

The roof guys were supposed to only go up once, but many of them lied and went up multiple times so that others wouldn’t have to

3 and 4 were the hardest to watch. 5 is absolutely wonderful. It’s still sad, but it gives understanding.

A famous story about why the animal control was so important. A group of men came a cross a small animal that they first thought was a lizard that was stuck against a rock, its skin had almost complete melted off and sort of fused it with the rock. Right before they shot it, it meowed at them. They couldnt even recognize it as a cat anymore

The soldiers had a choice. Or a tour in Afghanistan, or 2 minutes on that roof, most took the roof. I remember on the day that it happened that the sirens went off and we had to go inside. ( me 11 my brother 10) and we couldnt play outside for a month. And no ground bound vegetables for a year( potatoes, spinach etc)

An incredible story about the Chernobyl area happened just last year. You know the forest that turned red in the first episode. That is simply called the Red Forest. It's still highly radioactive. Normally when you visit the area you are not allowed to stop when driving on the road past the Red Forest because of the radiation,. But when the Russians invaded Ukraine last year they took over the Chernobyl area and the soldiers dug trenches and fortifications in the actual Red Forest. They later just abandoned the position when allegedly there were reports that soldiers were showing symptoms of radiation sickness. How stupid can you get.

In response to your question at the start of the video over whether or not the soldiers were drafted or conscripted they were indeed conscripted. In the following months however the soldiers were given something of a fatalistic choice. They were told they could serve two years in Afghanistan, or 2 minutes at Chernobyl. An urban legend is that many of the soldiers chose to run headlong into a losing battle in Afghanistan rather than face the radiation.

„Poor animal, its so sad…!“ 3s later: „I LOVE SAUSAGE!“

I love how "Haylo" laughs when "Kiss" is freaking out on this and your other reactions. Not because you are laughing at her, but because you know her so well that you absolutely get what she's feeling and it's such a natural reaction.

This was the most heartbreaking episode. As a soldier, you're trained to eliminate your enemy. You're taught that your enemy will fight back against you and that you must defeat them before they defeat you. But when you're sent out to hunt down pets, well... that cant be easy.

Glad you two made it through! Episode 4 is the hardest of all of them and 5 is more light hearted. It will go into more detail about the accident but that's all i'll say about it. Here's some interesting tidbits about the episode: 1. When the general was explaining the job about going on the roof, that tv was playing actual footage from the cleanup. It's from a documentary you can find on KZfaq called 'Chernobyl 3828'. It's a very interesting documentary about the people who cleaned the roofs up and has a ton of real footage from it. 2. During the actual roof scene, if you time it from the time he sends them to out to the time the bell rings it actually is 90 seconds. It makes it feel much more intense, especially since it's just one long shot. Definitely my favorite scene of the series. 3. The 'Joker' robot was real and is still sitting in the boneyard with the other vehicles used during the cleanup to this day, and it looks exactly how it did in the show.

Ep. 5 will provide full explanation of what happened that led to the explosion. A must see. Among others, the reactions of Dyatlov, Fomin and Bryukhanov when they learn of the flaw.

“…that was you all along, you just didn’t know” Truest words ever spoken

As bad as what we saw (re: the pets) was, the reality was often worse. I'm not going to go into it, but it's a description burned into my brain. Hardened soldiers with no prior issues suffered extreme PTSD from that duty. I guess it was necessary, but shit, I really don't think I could have done it. If it helps at all, and it probably won't, they didn't show it in the series, but most of the animals were suffering from fatal radiation sickness.

The soldiers that were cleaning up the pieces of graphite on the roof are been told. They either spend 2 minutes on the roof, or they will have to go for 2 years war in Afghanistan...

I'm brand new to your channel. I've been blown away and so moved by your reaction to this incredible series. A new subscriber for sure and looking forward to more reactions. What I appreciate most is the pure honest emotion from you both. It's a heart wrenching story. We are all crying with you.

I hope this isn't a weird thing to say, but with all the misery in the world over the last week especially, seeing the empathy that the two of you have makes me feel a little better about humanity.

To sum it up in three words to describe the tragedy - It’s horrifying, it’s infuriating, and it’s above all, heartbreaking.

One of the actors (Ralph Ineson) is the voice actor from the Diablo IV: Book of Lorath video you guys did.

After this, the best true story series is "Band of Brothers", also from HBO, and staring every actor that you know in it's huge ensemble cast.

Expected this episode to shatter the two of you. You actually held up better than I expected. It is incredibly tragic and important to remember the cost to all living creatures. It's equally important to remember the actual causes of this tragedy which is not just "nuclear power is bad" but far more nuanced and complex. Most countries do not like being faced with their own failures and the USSR was no different than most in this respect. The choices they made created a situation where safety was secondary to appearance.

For reference at 21:35 when he looks over and the camera pans down... that is the reactor core. That is the exposed reactor with its lid on it's side with that mangled mass of piping that is the fuel rods and water channels from inside the reactor core. Remember the guys from Ep.1 that were ordered to go check on it and panicked and ran when they realized they just looked directly into the burning core. Now you have all these men that don't even realize what they are looking at staring over that edge at the core.

Imagine being an arrogant, overbearing Nuclear engineer and supervisor who is running a test, pushing your men to get the test done, knowing that no matter how severe you push the reactor, you still have that failsafe button on standby to end it all without incident. All bases are covered. I mean, it's not like the failsafe button could ever act like a detonator. (Nothing published supports that notion...)

This series is very sad and distressing to watch, but it's also very eye-opening about events and people about whom we all should know more.

Poor Kiss :( I knew that this is a real hard episode for her :/ And cg on 25k subs! As one of your first subscribers im glad that your channel is growing and growing! You deserve it your reactions are wholesome!

As far as I know, Dyatlov in real life was not as big of an a**hole as he was depicted in the show. He was in denial only for a short while that night. Then he actually also tried to find and rescue poor Khodemchuk, whose body was sadly never retrieved. Though some do recall he was a quite difficult person to work with, sometimes a bully, but not as abusive as it was shown in Ep5.

15:40 Reactor: is having a meltdown Boris: hold my phone

23:46 - Legasov worked for the Kurchatov Institute, which designed this type of reactor.

The name of the roofs were named after the generals daughter .

Proud of you both for making it through this incredibly brutal episode! Also, mad props to Haylo for saying that she had appreciation for this episode to show the world of what some of the men had to go through.

I lived through this in real time.. Luckily hundreds of kilometers away in the "free world" but still we had restrictions regarding beeing outside and food due to the radioactive fallout that was coming up north from Chernobyl.. :P

In Soviet Union all males at the age 18 if they didn't enrolled in university and didn't have health problems were subjects to mandatory military conscription. 2 years for ground troops, 3 years for navy. After service they remained potential subjects to draft until 50. There were some volunteers, mainly qualified engineers and scientists, but overwhelming majority of liquidators had been drafted.

The happiness of all mankind may be the single most depressing hour of tv I’ve ever seen

Thank you Haylo & Kiss for your reactions so far to Chernobyl. I love your empathy and emotional connection to this story, hard though much of it is. The last episode isn't as tough to watch and provides a good explanation of how the disaster happened. It's very well done. I look forward to your reaction to it :)

21:56 - I remember I counted, that was really 90 seconds in the show, without stretching, one-shot. I like it.

A note about the baby, saw a video of a medical doctor watching this and she said that it doesn't work like that, the fetus soaking up the radiation to save the mother although fetuses are vulnerable to radiation. Furthermore, she wouldn't have been affected by being near her husband after he had been cleaned up. So in all likelihood, the baby was doomed before she even left Pripyat.

The opening moments of this episode are some of the most intense in the series. My mom's comment when we watched this episode was "none of the other soldiers shot your cow," which is exactly the point. The people living there have seen a lot and survived a lot, but what was coming from Chernobyl was more dangerous than all of it. Radiation poisons everything, *everything*, EVERYTHING.

The liquidators don’t get enough respect for marketing Chernobyl as safe as it is

"Black raven, black raven, Why do you circle over me? You won't have your prey, Black raven, I'm not yours!"

This story is something every American should hear. I was 21 when I listened to the news reporting about this in Finland together with my grandparents. When they started to exchange all the sand at playgrounds and telling people to keep rheir doors and windows shut at all times we inew things were pretty serious. None of it surprised us though since we knew that if a Moscovites lips move, he is telling lies. We felt terrible for the people though.

Well done Haylo and Kiss. You are through the worst of it - and both of you did better than I thought you would. Now you just have to watch the trial and find out the nitty gritty of how this came to happen. The summary of facts at the end after Legasov's haunting final words will leave you stunned.

There's a story from the companion podcast about how they started covering the pit with concrete when they realised one of the animals were still alive but they had used all their bullets. They thought that was too bleak to put in the show that people wouldn't believe it

The most terrifying sound in existence is a gieger counter going off. I remember doing NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) training in the military and our instructors spoke to us honestly and said that if you suffer enough exposure for ARS (acute radiation syndrome) you are better off not worrying about getting your protective gear sorted, you're better off using your service pistol and giving yourself a "9mm injection". After we we were told about what radiation can do and after seeing this series, I fully understand and agree with their advice.

The liquidators ‘only’ received 25 rem max from each shift, some did it 7 times, but radioactivity decreased with each time, at most 100 rem across a few months.

Hey, thanks for this reaction series! I love this show, this particular episode is really sad and hard to watch, but it's on of my favourites. I had the opportunity to be in Pripyat and it was a life changing experience.

KGB, FSB.....the letters change, the organization stays the same....

You have made it through the toughest episode to watch. It's all closure from here. 😁

(our goal is the happiness of all mankind) You can imagine how the rulers see the happiness of mankind And Knowledge and science are considered a crime🙂

Never gets any easier to watch. Just going to leave a hug here in case anyone needs it.

The one reason I subscribed was to watch the next episode with you, let the tears begin👌

There’s a really good documentary called 3828. It’s the real footage of the REAL people who had to clean it up.

Poor Kiss, I wanted to hug her during the whole episode =( Gut wrenching, that's what it is. The sadness of it all. But at the same time, the importance to show it. To show how are we humans capable of the best and the worst deeds.

My first reaction was "Kiss is wearing eyeliner... oh no!..."

Ya'll are excellent commentators. I really enjoy listening to you !

Just FYI, at the end there...that is not how radiation works. They made it much more dramatic that it was in reality.

Been waiting for this episode all week

The show is mostly true, but there are A LOT of half-truths, caveats, etc. Its very good at capturing and evoking the emotions and trauma surrounding the event, but it gets some stuff wrong albeit for dramatic effect. It’s a dramatization not a documentary. But it’s still an incredible show with important points. There’s an HBO podcast that discusses the history of Chernobyl and production of the series (also available here on KZfaq). There is also a nuclear safety engineer whose channel is called “TheAtomicAge” he did a react to Chernobyl as well and he explains the science of each episode and how radiation works in real life and clears up a lot of the Hollywood stuff. Highly recommend! So together, the podcast and the nuclear safety engineer’s react, listening to both of those will clear up and set the record straight as far as what and how it ACTUALLY happened in reality vs the Hollywood version of events.

As sad as it is, they had to eliminate the animals. Not only for the fact they were contaminated, but they would have also died slow painful deaths from radiation poisoning.

This region of Europe has been through so much in the 1900s. Chernobyl, the current war and probably the worst which was the man made famine/genocide in the early 1930s. Its unfortunately not a part of history that's told much but people should really go read up on The Holodomor.

This is a really hard episode to watch but like you said they did a great job of showing all those unsung heroes who had to do those horrible jobs. The last episode is one of the best episodes ever in tv history.

I'm gonna love your reaction to the last episode. Looking forward to it.

Don't look away.

You're really going to enjoy the last episode. I think it's the best one.

one of the hardest but most important episodes of this series to watch. The next episode is just amazing to see and really is an incredible end cap to explain and show the magnitude of one of the worlds greatest man made disasters.

This was the hardest of the episodes. The answers you seek will be provided in Episode 5. Thank you for continuing. So sorry this was so heavy for you.

Imagine being in charge of clearing this roof, knowing another (enemy) country agreed to give you a top of the line robot that is supposed to be able to clear said roof. Everything works fine until the connection suddenly breaks down. And Boris immediately knows that his own people failed him because they didn't want to "embarrass" themselves. He loses half of his life expectancy, wants to save millions of lives and still just gets spat on his face while trying to do so. And just one second after his happens, he already knows what's up. That's a "just kill me already" moment.

They spare you most of the dogs being shot.

I'm sure they've mentioned it, but there were four reactors at that facility, and the other three just kept on running. I believe some of them continued to operate for decades.

Another point is that the "radiation suits" don't actually block any radiation, they just make it easy to clean off the radioactive dust from the workers. Think of how difficult it is to clean up glitter, now imagine each piece of glitter is a piece of radioactive graphite burning your cells. The suits just make sure none of it gets on your skin or worse inside your lungs where it will get stuck.

"It's annoying." Yes, authoritarian regimes such as the former USSR, China and North Korea can be quite... annoying.

The guy in your thumbnail (Barry Keoghan) IS The Joker. 😉👍✌️

Chernobyl the Severe Days was recorded by Vladimir Shevchenko. The flashes of light on that video are results of radiation affecting the film! Shevchenko later passed away from making the trip to Chernobyl, he went unprotected wearing only a face mask. The helicopter accident was likely due to flying into the sun and getting blinded by the light they ran the rotor blades into the crane. 3,828... that is the number of men who cleaned the roof of Chernobyl. 1,200 R is equivalent to 751 Gastro Intestinal Xrays

Those guys who just went around and liquidated the animals were actually offered more $ then what was initially offered to the 3 who went inside to turn on the water pumps. Many Russians were drafted either right after boot camp, or some who had already served in Afghanistan. They were told something like "You can serve 2 years in Afghanistan, or 2 months in Chernobyl" many chose the later option.

You guys made it, this is the hardest stretch of the series and you got over the last hurdle. I felt physically ill the first time I saw it and went to go hug my cat for the next hour.

The last episode is the Best! Good reaction 😎

Shcherbina's explosion was bigger than the one he had to clean up

In Russian, the words for "Robot" and "(human) Worker" are very similar робот (and) работник

The sad, haunting song being sung at the end of the animal control scene, Black Raven: Black raven, black raven, Why do you circle over me? You won't have your prey, Black raven, I'm not yours! Why do you spread wide your talons Over my head? If you hope for a game, Black raven, I'm not yours! I'll bind my deadly wound With a gifted handkerchief, And then speak to you Of one thing only. Fly to my home, Tell my mother, Tell my darling, That I fell for the Homeland. Take the bloody handkerchief To my lovely sweetheart. Tell her that she's free, To another I am wed. I took a bride who's quiet and modest, In an open field under a bush, The matchmaker was My sharp sabre. A tempered arrow wed us Amidst fateful battle. I see my death coming - Black raven, I'm all yours!

Thank you for watching this and sharing this with us.

3:10 The general here is played by Ralph Ineson, who did the narration on the Book of Lorath Diablo IV videos.

Let the pain continue...

The Russian Central Committee had disseminated information that vodka could slow or reduce the effects of radiation sickness. This is why all of the volunteers and conscripted men in the exclusion zone drink (also to numb themselves of the gruesome and taxing work). However, it has not been determined that vodka has any positive effects on radiation sickness.

Actually, one of the robot malfunctioned and drove itself off the roof into the pit in real life.

It's terribly sad, but very necessary. We all love animals, we love our pets. But those animals are covered in terrible radioactive waste. Imagine the damage just one of those animals could do if it was brought into a quarantine zone. Imagine if a child hugged one of those poor dogs.

K-19: The Widowmaker next pls.. 😉

if you dont cry watching this episode then you're not human 100%

The worse part of the momma dog and puppy killing scene is the tool that they gave them. The Mossin-Nagant rifle is a bolt action rifle, so that means everytime you fire a bullet you have to eject the spent cartridge manually and put another bullet in the chamber. It only holds five rounds so that means while the puppies are yelping in the room you're going to have to put five rounds individually, one by one 😢. Jesus Christ, just give them an AK74u as a secondery option.

26:01 for what it’s worth: That was what the doctors said, but is scientifically incorrect. While the baby did die, it was not due to her having contact with her husband

This show is amazing. Everything in this disaster, for me, has always come back to the line from Gorbachev in episode 2 "Our power comes from the perception of our power ". Obviously that's far too simplistic, there were many things that contributed. But that line always seemed like the thing that defined this whole disaster

You shouldn't look away. It's like the "why we fight" episode in band of brothers. You need to see the horrors we are capable of so we don't repeat them. I know it's hard, but you should force yourself to look. It will change your whole perspective on humankind and the damage we can do.

13:38 You didn't love sausages in the last episode though... Just (kinda) kidding, but your emotional reactions to this show have been a delight! Still, I think this is the saddest episode of the show. Got yourselves a sub! Can't wait for ep 5!

There is information at the end of episode 5 so please watch the episode even when it seems like it is over.

Oh, here we go...