Comment by egao1980 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by egao1980 | Hacker News Reader

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Presented in random order: - Helicopter fell after entangling the rotor blades 6 months after the events;

- Scuba divers knew the layout of the station, there were ankle high of water and 2 of them are still alive, third died of unrelated causes;

- Legasov was talking to Scherbina about failures of evacuation during https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident and not about how reactor works as it was common knowledge and Scherbina was experienced engineer who supervised energy sector in USSR;

- there were no forced labor neither for miner nor soldiers;

- miners knew and well respected Schadov, who was a miner himself. Needless to mention that he never came to any of the mines - there was a broadcast message that called for volonteers.

- Miners were enthusiastic and well compensated - they competed to go to the shaft. And they used proper tools. Documentary video exists.

- Vodka drinking in the middle of the harshest prohibition in Russian history. People could not get ANY alcohol for weddings still series shows vodka drinking on a high security object;

- Cherenkov radiation couldn't be visible in that situation;

- evacuation was swift and well organized;

- Legasov was not doing all the calculations alone he was a head of a whole institute;

- In helicopter scene Scherbina not only knew how reactor works but could not threaten Legasov as a) he can't order soldiers because chain of command b) Legasov has roughly the same political standing in USSR. Not to mention that Scherbina was quite nice person and was focussed on a problem at hand.

I can continue...

I agree about the bias and numerous inaccuracies and simplification but...

> evacuation was swift and well organized;

This could be argued.

It was not swift: It took 36 hours for Prypiat to be evacuated, with people sunbathing and attending (dry) wedding parties in the mean time... The most elementary instructions (stay home, shut the windows) were not given for fear of appearing as "too alarmist".

And it was not that well organized: For instance, the buses used for the evacuation came from Kiev and were used immediately after on their normal routes without prior decontamination.

I'm not even going to talk about the handling of the May 1st, Workers day celebration, unnecessarily maintained despite alarming contamination levels in the atmosphere.

Source: Serhii Plokhy's book "Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy" (2018)

> Miners were enthusiastic and well compensated

I think it's difficult to convey now the level of patriotism in the mind of the miners and soldiers. Maybe courage has declined so much that our societies can't comprehend it anymore. I've read that soldiers were promised big compensations but didn't receive anything though (or maybe inflation ate it up).

For me the biggest problem was the usual naive way scientists and science are presented in movies. The know it all, all rational super human hand-bound by obscurantist authorities.

First of all, there were emergency protocols in place and radiation levels were monitored. While there was hope that incident could be contained and radiation levels were low no evacuation were needed, but it was planned and prepared. Imagine moving 35000-50000 people while providing food and accommodation.

Moreover if you compare it to Three Mile Island incident this was done faste and was organized better.

It's not about patriotism. Similary to volonteers during COVID outbreak people knew the danger but felt that they need to do something to prevent graver harm to society and people. Please note that we're talking about 1980s and Soviet people were properly informed about radiation and its effects.

> While there was hope that incident could be contained and radiation levels were low no evacuation were needed

Excuse me, hope? Evacuation was not necessary because there was hope that things weren't as bad as they have turned out to be?

And honestly, as someone who has heard a billion Russian jokes about "volunteers" in the USSR, every time you use that word is jarring to me. I'd share the anecdotes with you, but I suspect you already know most of them.

Reasons for hope - no elevated radiation levels, still unknown scale of destruction to the core. As soon as things were getting known next stages of protocol were brought in action.

In this case we know for sure it was volonteers. First of all most of them are alive and USSR is long gone, so they'd already came up with their stories of forced participation. You just trying to diminish geunine heroism of people just because they lived in USSR.

The handling at Three Mile Island was pathetic.

The handling at Windscale was even worse. Even before the 1957 fire, the neighboring villages and countryside were getting contaminated daily without any authority doing anything about it.

But I think it's also well documented now that the Ukrainian communist local authorities could have handled the evacuation much better and much sooner. If only for having the tendency to wait for higher ranks from Moscow to take the difficult decisions for them.

This is all post-knowledge. You could have won the last year's lotteries given all the today's knowledge.

Emergency works on station began immediatly, specialists from Moscow were there in the early morning. There was no immediate need of evacuation at first according to dosimetry and prelimenary damage assessment. It took some time to realise the scale of destruction to the core zone and that triggered evacuation.

> 2 of them are still alive, third died of unrelated causes;

I’ve seen a number of different ends (continuations?) posited for these 3 guys. I tried to research and found about as much evidence that they lived happily ever after as they died immediately (i.e it’s a black hole of conjecture based on the particular writer’s feelings towards the Soviet Union).

Can you point me towards evidence?

Here's an inteview with one of them from 2019 [1], which would be pretty hard if he immediately died. I have never found any piece of evidence that they immediately died; most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO series as if it were a documentary.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOo3Rp7rCE

> most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO series as if it were a documentary

That would be strange, because the series didn't show them die. And one of the epilogue screens said: "It has been widely reported that the three divers who drained the bubbler tanks died as a result of their heroic actions. In fact, all three survived after hospitalization. Two are still alive today."

The show itself makes a big deal of the 'suicide mission' nature of the task. I'm not sure many viewers bothered watching the epilogue.

28 June 2019 - https://www.president.gov.ua/ru/news/volodimir-zelenskij-pri... Official document by Ukrainian president granting the divers the title of Heroes of Ukraine. Only one is mentioned posthumously - Boris Baranov.

Boris Baranov - died in 2005 of heart attack. https://24smi.org/celebrity/98385-boris-baranov.html

Ananenko Alexey - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5...

Bespalov Valeriy - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%91%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B0...

This sounds like pedantry of the type where some people complain that in some war movie there were 43 Tiger tanks instead of 41.

Adapting history always requires results in modifications and the target is authenticity instead of complete pedantic accuracy.

As someone from Eastern block I feel like Chernobyl captures live in those times with authenticity - it somehow manages to capture attitude of population and their leaders to the point that's eerie for anyone who lived though it.

Perhaps step back and try seeing what the story is trying to show/warn about instead of being lost in checklist pedantry.

We have a very well studied incident, with all the actions of all the people involved studied by the minute. We have all the protocols in English as well. Veryfied and cross verified. Many hours of video and audio recordings. Interviews and accounts of participants.

And yet these guys distort the facts to sqeeze in an anti-Soviet agenda.

People volonteered to die there knowing the danger because they were preventing greater harm to others. And these series just diminishes their heroism. Smears both professionals, soldiers, miners and all the Soviet people.

Because USSR is evil, gloomy, vodka drinking gulag with psychopats in any post higher than a janitor. That's the basic impression these series try to give you.

> - there were no forced labor neither for miner nor soldiers;

Yes, I remember that it was a call for volunteers across institutions and there were surprisingly many of them even among people who knew what exactly this will cost.

People were carrying pieces of undeveloped film to determine cumulative level of radiation after trips there. All sorts of things, it was really tough there but moral was quite high.

A similar thing happened after the Fukushima disaster. People are remarkably altruistic and cooperative in these scenarios. Often times when society is under stress social order doesn't breakdown but instead becomes more rigid.

>> People were carrying pieces of undeveloped film to determine cumulative level of radiation after trips there.

This is still a standard dosimetry measurement in the West (film has a very long integrating time so cumulative exposure over a week or two can be reliably tracked).

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