I love how the show is alternately bleak and frustrating, but also illustrates the courage and heroism of the average men and women who sacrificed their health to prevent it from getting worse. It isnt just a criticism of the event, it is also a display of selflessness

The face going red is ultimately the same process as that of a sunburn.

The courage of those men that knew they were going to die, but did it anyways is almost unthinkable. True definition of heroes.

"Oh, the poor animals!" *chuckles nervously in future episode*

There wasn't a lot of panic or refusal because the Soviet people were used to do as the State commanded. Besides, they were told they'd come back in a few days.

I did a research poster on Chernobyl recently as some physics work experience and learnt some horrific information about the Red Forest. The leaves there don’t decomposed as quickly as normal leaves so the Forest floor is full on dry contaminated leaves. These setting alight could be nearly as bad as the event itself… I got these facts from a scientific journal so trust they are right unfortunately

This is a top class miniseries! TV excellence! The end of the second episode was the most chilling cliffhanger I’ve ever watched on TV. The 3rd and 4th episode are the most heartbreaking. The last episode is a masterclass in presenting complicated exposition in a clear and interesting way.

Fun fact: you cant see a nuclear fire - cos its nuclear! It actually just appears like a blue haze. There are a few other liberties with the script. The 3 men who went into the basement werent volunteers. They were told to go in and they went in. Afterwards one of them said that it was that or lose his job, so he went. I wont tell you how many survived - that would be a spoiler.

This series for me is one of the best (if not the best) ever made. Too many times the word "hero" is watered down in terms of sports stars or media stars but the reality is they do not even come close to the ordinary men and women who battled to saves the lives of people they would never meet. A battle had they not won, would have laid waste to an entire continent. It truly boggles the mind.

I was one of the kids not being allowed to play outside in Germany. But you are doing well in keeping in mind that radioactivity was not a concept that was widespread common knowledge at the time. How can anything be so dangerous that you can’t see or smell or taste? So not being allowed outside lasted for about a week for me…

It was horrible for me to watch, especially as my father-in-law was the first journalist who was sent there... I talked with him after he watched it, and he told me even more horrible things than they had in the series... he was stationed for 6 months to report and he knew so many things he was not allowed to report...

Picked a good series. I remember watching video of people in Norway and Germany semi-rioting and throwing out the milk from the stores (the cows were producing contaminated milk). Good reaction! BTW, those fireman clothes they dumped in the hospital basement are still there. Too dangerous to move. General Pikalov (who took the high range dosimeter to the edge of the core) was in the battle of Stalingrad. A real bad ass.

The creation of the soundtrack is pretty interesting. Hildur Guðnadóttir is the composer, and she went to a decommissioned nuclear plant with a high frequency recorder. Then brought the sounds she recorded back to the studio listening to them at different speeds to see what 'notes' and 'music' she could find. She won an Emmy and other awards for it. Chernobyl won a lot of awards its year for the awards season. Its biggest competitor won a lot of awards that year also. "When They See Us" is another just amazingly well acted miniseries based on a true story as well. And is hard to watch as well. I think you might be interest in it because it involves 5 wrongfully convicted young men and what they went through in that. You might be interested in the failings of the legal process that led up to their arrest, and the process that overturned their convictions many years later.

This is one of the very best mini-series I have ever seen. Your reaction is exactly as it should be. I was alive and well when this happened, and I do remember the anxiety of not really knowing what happened. Please be aware that there is an accompanying podcast series, where they talk about which parts of the series are dramatized, and which were essentially as it happened. Highly recommended. As an example, the lady scientist from Minsk is representing a team of scientists in the series.

I lost it at: "The moment you realize how stupid you are if you look at really smart people" LOL

This is one of the best and most important television series of all time. It's painful, but everyone should watch it.

I was in my mid 20s when Chernobyl happened, and all I can remember from the news coverage at the time is that a group of exchange students who were in the area were decontaminated, dressed in new clothes (sweatpants and sweatshirts), and evacuated from the area. I knew the situation was "serious," but until I saw this series, I had no idea how terrible it was, and how much worse it could have been if very brave people had not stepped up to help.

Once I started watching, I binged the whole miniseries. I couldn't turn it off.

When the cloud of radioactive dust flew over europe the french governement decided to lie to it's people, telling everyone that the clouds would be stopped by the mountains. The wine from that year still shows minor radioactive levels.

Marijke, keep in mind that most of the info we learn about radiation in the show, we learn about almost immediately from experts like Legasov. The general public had no idea what was happening except on pirate radio. Large parts of the Kyiv population were sent out to celebrate May day (May 5th) Saying nothing was wrong it was just a regular factory accident. Heck, think about the doctor in the hospital asking, "Why do we need Iodine pills" ahh because you are working next to 3 nuclear power plants and you're a medical professional.

What a treat Mary , this is an epic show and very enlightening.

The General which went in with the dosimeter has an incredible story behind him, you should look him up!

I remember this time well. I was living in a small town in Georgia (USA) in 1982, there was no 24 hour news service. Just prior to this, Leonid Brezhnev kicked the bucket, for weeks the Soviet Government told the he had a cold, then they admitted he had croaked. Then Soviets' elected another premier because it was "his turn." Yuri Andropov came in for 13 months and then he dropped off, then they chose another creaking geezer, Konstantin Chernenko, and he dropped off too. Each time the Russians said their leader only had a cold for a week or so before admitting he'd died. Then the Soviets seemed to get a clue and installed the 50 something Mikhail Gorbachev, who was supposed to be a reformer. When the Chernobyl number 4 reactor blew in 1986, everyone knew something bad had happened, but it took a week at least for them to acknowledge it. The fallout from Chernobyl was monitored by the west as it spread, eventually, across Europe and all the way across the Atlantic to the North East US and Canada. The news here was interrupting shows to give updates with charts showing progress of the fallout as it moved westward. The entire time, the Soviets lied like a rug, it came to a point the truth had to come out, but the Soviet system caused the disaster to become much worse.

A simple example of what you mentioned about sociology/psychology is one person screaming “Fire!” Shout “Fire!” to one person and they’ll most likely look around and, possibly, depending on the situation, run toward the direction you might be pointing, to possibly help others or put it out. However, shout “Fire!” to a group of people and you’ll most likely cause a panic where people try to run away in all directions at once.

Finally! One of the best Docu-Drama Series ever! Reality is indeed scarier than any guts and gore movie - glad that you reacted to this one Mari! Can't wait for Part 2!

I live in midwestern America and on the day they told us that the very rarified Chernobyl cloud would pass over our location it just happened to rain. I collected a small bottle of rain. I still have it to this day.

It was my 18th Birthday. I’m in Scotland and I know the radiation is in the sky above me. The cloud had moved North and winds meant it was curling into the West of the country too. I pray for once there is no rain for other reasons than just a break in weather as the clouds above me will empty that radiation into the ground. The consequence for agriculture and farmyard animals is horrendous. My thoughts are with those in Ukraine, Belorussia and North, wishing the real high exposure zone for them can be safe. I did not celebrate my birthday as planned that night. It is a lost year to me compared to those suffering. Ultimately it took regular people to undertake the most extraordinary decisions to save so many whilst knowing the consequences for them. This is why one day they’ll throw a war and we will no longer allow our youth to show up for their greed and selfishness.

Uh-oh, a sensitive soul is about to enter the Chernobyl Hell. This will get more and more horrific as the episodes unfold. This tale "leaves a mark" on the soul of viewers because this is a (slightly) fictionalized account of real events of not long ago. (And this viewer is/was just slightly to the West of Pripyat.)

We had to wait a week between episodes. I can't imagine how people don't just watch this in 5 hours once they watch the first episode.

I think I watched all the episodes back to back, I couldn't stop.

On the subject of nuclear accidents, there’s a movie called The China Syndrome which is about a nuclear power plant in violation of government regulations and it shows what could happen in the event of a nuclear disaster. But the scariest part about it is it was released in March 1979, just a couple of weeks before the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania. Then in 1986 the nuclear apocalypse DID happen at Chernobyl. The experts say that the area within a radius of about 100 miles of Chernobyl will be permanently uninhabitable for decades or even centuries to come because the radiation levels are too high.

One very intresting thing is that the clothing from the firemen you see them throwing in the basement it is still there to this day and still very radioactive.

I was a kid when this happened and I knew all about it. But until this series came out, I never had any idea of the extent of how serious it was. Those men saved the world from countless years of fallout. I was in absolute awe when I saw this. I still am.

They pretty much needed to keep workers coming in cause while one reactor blew up the others were operational and needed to stay functional, as the power plant supplied the majority of electricity demand for the region. The last reactor got shut down in 2000.

They did a pretty amazing job recreating 1980s Ukraine, and for the most part the history is accurate, too. Amazing series. Very well done. My nurse at Boy Scout Camp when I was a kid was a guy named Boris who also worked as a nurse at the site of Chernobyl.. and I got to visit the site myself in 2016 just before they put the giant new radiation shield in place.

It's not denial, it's fear of punishment or death for going against the parties image of infallibility. And it's not sociology, he fears punishment or death for not keeping the secrets the party wants to keep.

On May 2, 1986, the radioactive cloud was located over the Netherlands. Fortunately, it did not rain like the day before in Bavaria, otherwise a large amount of radioactive isotopes would still be in the ground today.

You should really do the Tom Hanks-HBO mini series From The Earth To The Moon, a docu drama about the late 50s to early 1970s space age. I believe it's 10 episodes.

Yep, I watched the first 4 episodes in one night, the last one the following day, just a couple of weeks ago. Since then I've seen reaction after reaction to the show, almost like a coping mechanism I think, and yours is definitely one of my favourites. Well, so far, as I haven't seen part 2 yet. Subscribed.

I became emotionally invested in the cat napping in the background....

I think each episode deserves their own full 30 minute reaction. That will do every episode in this series justice and it's more content for us. So take your time watching this wonderful series Mary and savor it. :)

I watched it in real time. That week in between episodes was rough. It is so good that I would end up watching each episode multiple times waiting for the next one.

The firefighters clothes are still in the hospital basement and are still highly radioactive

The bridge where people were standing to watch was renamed the bridge of death because its thought everyone on there died tho this was never confirmed.

I was a kid when this happened and I remember the News talking about it. It was scary.

18:21 had me burst out laughing, cuz that's exactly what pops out of my minds when Mary made that noise. Well done editor, well done.

All this is horrible, I remember that our teacher in middle school said that we should stay indoors for the breaks between classes. If it rained we should wait in school until the rain stopped, before we walked home, since the wind blew radioactiv clouds over Scandinavia and Sweden. I was in school in Stockholm. Side note: (Yeah during the 1980s, 10-year olds walked themselves to and from school. Without any smartphones or maps or pick-ups from over curling parents. You just had to remember the way and keep away from the older kids that had knifes and wanted to beat you up. And this was Sweden! Love the 80's - so much freedom!) The Sovjet Union wanted this kind of "unstable" reactor to obtain Plutonium for Nuclear Bombs/Missiles. There are way safer ways to get energy from atomic power, but then you do not get Plutonium and can't build atomic bombs. Humanity at it's dumbest. So stupid, arms, different ideologies, beliefs everything... We are all humans - I don't get why some are totally power crazy? So, Johan Renck has actually made a masterpiece that works on many levels, it makes you think... Very good series - very good reaction. You should "chill out" with "The FIRM" or "A Few Good Men" ;-)

I've watched the entire series in one go, just a couple of days ago. I really did not want to watch it at first: I was 11 years old when Chernobyl exploded and I had nightmares about it at the time. As a result I've been afraid of radiation my entire life, even for such relatively minor things as an X-Ray. Surprisingly, watching the series as an adult has helped me come to grips with my fears: I've come to realize that human beings are much more resilient against radiation than I thought. For instance, these divers from the end of part 2 of the series? Two of them are still alive, the third one died not too long ago from heart failure.

_"Why would we have iodine pills?"_ Take into account Pripyat was an _Atomgrad,_ a city especifically built to support a nuclear powerplant. It tells much how the denial was going strong in the USSR *way* before the incident.

Both "Band of Brothers" and "True Detective" are amazing television.

the point of the bird was that the building was open, wildlife and critters were wandering in.

I was in high school when this happened. It was all over the news for months.

i watched this one at a time, week by week, as it came out. it was brutal waiting.

our television channel here in east germany reported "2 injured" at the explosion night. you see the news channels here on youtube.

True Detective Season 1 & Westworld both on HBO are incredible

6:00 He's basically in total denial - there's no plumbing left for water to flow through. 12:45 This is a nuclear lab of some sort in Minsk, several hundred kilometers away from Chernobyl. The weather at the time put it downwind of Chernobyl, so the fallout from the reactor explosion is reaching them, and she's trying to figure out where it's coming from.

The Soviets were so deluded in their belief that their nuclear reactors are infallible that they remained in denial until they started dying from radiation-induced cancer.

This was a great miniseries but there were quite a few inaccuracies in it, many due to mistakes or misunderstandings. The bridge with the people standing on it was a real bridge, but the stories that there were people standing on it watching the fire are not necessarily true. It would have been the middle of the night during a work week and not the time that people would want to get up out of bed and go stand on a bridge to watch a fire. Dyatlov's character was also made a lot more villainous for this than he probably was in reality. He did apparently deny that the core exploded at first, but it is unlikely that he would have dismissed first hand accounts like this. This was overplayed to give the show a clear antagonist, in the same way as Legasov's actions were over-dramatized to make him more heroic. The helicopter crash didn't happen as shown here - it happened months after the disaster and was the result of a collision and not radiation.

Gothmog: What of the Movies with Mary? Witch-king of Chernobyl: I_will_break_her

Oh yeah!! Buckle up you guys, this is going to be one hell of a ride!! Haha. Count me in...

This is such a good series but so brutal at the same time. Just totally a no win situation, and way more heavy because it’s real.

The thing that really bad my blood boil was the fact that the Soviet union literally cover up an events several year before Chernobyl, a nuclear accident called the Mayak disaster. It affected an area as large as new jersey

The Soviet Union was the physical embodiment of the "This is Fine" meme

An awesome mini series that for the life of me cant understand why it isnt proposed at all is BBCs SHERLOCK with Benedict Cumberbatch

When a system cannot be questioned individuals must be found to blame.

This is the way I view everything in life: If someone is stating that something impossible has happened, you act accordingly. Evacuate a city. Empty a school. Lock down a hospital. Ground the flights. Believe what you are being told. If it turns out you are wrong, you will only be criticized for being overprotective. If you are correct, you can save lives. In this situation they tried investigating right after being told, by more than 6 employees, that something impossible occurred. They then delayed evacuation to the point of cancer exposure and many deaths. While there was a separate issue with the RBMK reactor that was eventually addressed, there was a HUGE issue with their response to this.

The Fargo TV series is one of the greatest ever made. Every season is it's own story too, so don't feel like you need to watch multiple seasons to get the full story. Season 1 and season 2 are amazing television! Hope you get around to watching them one of these days.

The perceived success of the Soviet Union was of the highest priority. I feel your frustration with the politicians, it's infuriating, but scarily its the most accurate aspect of the series. What's even more scary is that this "keeping up appearences" political approach is not unique to the Soviet Union or even to communism. Always eye your leaders with a degree of scepticism xx

I'm sorry, I just want to point out that "What was that?" translating into "Wat was dat?" is pretty hilarious.

Awe man.... As much as I want you to try The Expanse sometime... I can't argue with this. Great choice!!!

The residents were leaving calmly because they were told it’s just temporary.

Hi Mary, I watched the series all at once. It is absolutely horrifying. The series is more about the Soviet response to the disaster than the evils of nuclear power. Which is as it should be.

a cautionary tale about the dragons we create 🤠 love the reaction

Wonder what Robert Oppenheimer would think of this? Something like this happened near me in Pennsylvania, They call it Three Mile Island. It was a level 5 disaster. I liked your reaction Mary. It is always nice to see someone intelligent react to this!

True Detective is a must!

I think every pet owner cried at that bus scene 😭 that one killed me

So glad you're reacting to this!! Amazing show, the click of that Geiger Counter is more frightening than any monster in any film. In terms of other shows to react to, Bojack Horseman would be top of my list by a long way. It's SO funny, but also SO deep, has a phenomenal cast and touches on so many interesting topics/messages that I've never seen a show hit before. I'm really surprised to see how few reactors have reacted to it, would have thought it would be a very popular choice"

24:34 lol You are in for a ride. :D

4:26 No the bird came in through the massive holes blasted through the building. 5:16 Yes, he picked up that "thing" which is actually a piece of the interior of the reactor core and is super irradiated. Though his hand would not have had wounds upon it like that in reality so quickly, the fact of him picking it up would have made him vomit within minutes and then die within days. 5:55 No, he is delusional and refused to believe anything happened even up to his dying day he denied the core exploded. 6:50 thats a great point! that today would be plastered on the social media in seconds, but back then there was no internet yet, and it was soviet Russia where information was kept strictly controlled by the state, and so until it was seen by other countries via spy satellites for example, it was simply never talked about until they couldn't hide it any longer. 7:55 That is also a great question! If everyone there KNEW how bad it was would they have done anything differently? I'm willing to say yes in some ways and no in others. Yes, that people would have been much more reluctant to throw their lives into a fire to contain it. And so in many ways the situation would have possibly been even worse without the bodies to burn to fix it. And really there was nothing different they could have done, it was all necessary evil in order to limit the damage and contain the radiation. But perhaps they could have lied a lot less, and evacuated instantly and told the world the truth and dropped their pride and ego and asked for HELP. Things like that would have made this so much more better to dealing with it. 10:00 but acknowledge the disaster just happened would mean you take responsibility for it, you admit your liability and mistakes and then worry about a firing squad. These men have egos the size of planets and are total cowards. 13:20 The firemen's clothing is still in the hospital basement to this day, and it is still too radioactive to go near. It was covered with fuel particles and will remain highly contaminated for 1000s of years. 15:48 Hahahaha amazing! crying laughing. Well done. 21:50 So there is a lot to unpack about this scene. Firstly there was no plume of thick black smoke, just little wisps of light grey smoke close to the burning embers of the reactor core. Secondly the crane there and the helicopter flying into the cables happened months later, not during the sand dropping even we are watching now. Though it DID happen, but probably through pilot error and radiation fatigue syndrome. That crane shouldn't be there in this scene tbh. They just merged two different time periods together here for dramatic effect.

RE: RADIATION this always gets mixed up but it's an important distinction - the actual RAYS, the high energy light of x-rays and gamma rays and neutrons - these are just like light. except instead of stopping at skin they can slice right through and fuck up your DNA and cell structures. and just like light, you cannot be CONTAMINATED by light. if you get flashed by x-rays at the doc, you don't have to isolate yourself afterwards. there is nothing radioactive left on you. BUT - there are RADIOACTIVE ***MATERIALS***... so like the ashes on the "bridge of death" or the graphite dust or soot from burning plutonium, uranium, cesium.... this stuff constantly EMITS rays of high energy light. and the worst thing is that this CAN contaminate you and AS LONG AS IT IS ON OR (HEAVEN FORBID) IN YOU (you can eat it, it can get lodged in your lungs, etc), it will CONTINUE TO BOMBARD YOU WITH HIGH ENERGY LIGHT RAYS until it decays into something non radioactive which depending on the material can be days, months or years, or more! so that's what radiation suits do - they prevent you from getting radioactive materials on you or in you so that you don't become a big walking radioactive hazard yourself and contaminate your loved ones and communities. BUT those suits do jack shit for the high energy radioactive RAYS... you're gonna need YARDS of lead wall or hundreds of feet in order to be safe from the rays and neutrons. nothing that is wearable is going to do much of anything to block those rays.

Radioactive particles, particularly neutrons are like bullets as the show describes. And they hurt you by slamming into your DNA and shattering it. Your body is capable of repairing radiation damage but only up to a point.

Your talk at the end reminded me of another great mini-series I'd love to see you react to. Haunting of Hill House, a 10 ep Netflix completed miniseries. Its 'sequels' are unrelated stories, just the same production team. It had the same affect on me as Chernobyl in that watching it 99% I was emotionally upset. But 🤷🏻‍♀️ (sadism??) I didn't want to do anything else but continue watching

This is one of the hardest things to watch, but well worth it. So many lessons to be taken from it...

I was born in 1984 so I don't remember what happened, but I heard the stories from my parents multiple times how we couldn't play outside and how afraid they were that things would become much much worse while it happened. As we lived in Germany, not that far away from the DDR border where nuclear plants like that one in Chernobyl stood, it was really scary.

I love you are doing it in groups .. nice touch .. looking extra beautiful these days! Keep on being great 👍 also radiation is a type of energy. Is not a chemical... It's fascinating stuff!

It's still scary even the second time and watching with Mary and a cat :S Although i'm home alone and it's dark outside..

Great reaction as usual. You never disappoint with your emotional and thoughtful look at what you're watching.

19:08 - 19:30 Pikalov didn't love his subordinates. If you love, it's easy to decide who will take the damage. But if it's a moral thing, it's a different story.

Oh no the next two episodes are really gonna break poor Mary's heart 💔😢

A good news story about Pripyat and the surrounding areas is that the wildlife is flourishing without humans there. Species have returned that had disappeared for hundreds of years. You may ask how that can be, but it turns out that the radiation levels there are no longer a danger to small animals and birds, as they have such short lifespans, that the cancer doesn't have time to take root with tumors etc.

There wasn't "i don't wanna go" in Soviet Union.

Mary, you're such a cuuuutiee pieeeeee!!! ♥♥♥

4:08 Mostly not chemical in the high school sense of normal molecules splitting into individual atoms and recombining into different molecules . At first are talking the hard radiation of energized particles going thru individual cells, killing cells in the body as the body tries to flush the dead cells out. What you are thinking is radioactive Caesium and Strontium atoms binding to bones as calcium normally. So that happens too.

I took a class in nuclear engineering when I was in college, about two years after the Chernobyl accident, and we spent a fair amount of time discussing what happened and how. The fundamental risks of this type of reactor were well-known, which is why western nations went with a more stable, more expensive type. There were safety features included in the reactor design to compensate for this (Soviet engineers weren't stupid), but unfortunately a number of cost-saving shortcuts were taken during construction which pretty much made it an accident waiting to happen. The show has some technical inaccuracies that I don't like (for example, you can't get radiation poisoning from someone who has been exposed), but overall it's pretty good. Another good look into the craziness of Soviet politics is the movie The Death of Stalin (2017). It's a comedy, so less traumatic than this. Would make a fun reaction.

What are shows you'd love to see a reaction to? 🤩

The people acting as if they are in denial are mostly acting out of fear. They know that the truth doesn't matter in the Soviet Union and that bad news will be punished. They see telling the truth as futility and quite possibly dangerous. It's a learned response born out of self preservation.

I remember that even in the Netherlands we had to destroy crops because it was contaminated because of Chernobyl

This is Soviet Union, so 50,000 people evacuated in 3.5 hours. there is no time to fight them just hold you in place if you panic during evacuation and evacuate you using a prisoner truck

This is by far one of the best shows ever made in the last 20 years...I have been to the Chernobyl museum in Kyiv as well as the actual contamination zone..and they depict very well how fucking scary that is...and I mean scary..not haha scary

I think you would also love the Hannibal show