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Chernobyl HBO


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45 minutes ago, LonghornJudas said:

I still watch that every now and then. I find that 3 minutes after they all start getting out of their cars to still be pretty intense.

Only through the first episode, but as others have mentioned, the clear denial of the core exploding is just amazing.

“I walked around the exterior of building 4. I think there’s graphite on the ground, in the rubble”

”You didn’t see graphite.”

“I did.”

”You didn’t...YOU DIDN’T BECAUSE IT’S NOT THERE!”

 

 

Yeah that's some real Animal Farm shit. Amazing. 

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23 hours ago, RPM said:

I remember being scared shitless. First Three Mile Island, then this. I was calculating how far I was from the Comanche Peak kill zone.

But Three Mile Island’s reactor design (and other reactors in the US) wasn’t Soviet-era levels of idiocy . The safety systems and containment worked despite the workers making mistakes. People in the general vicinity of the plant got around 1.4 mrem of exposure. The average person gets around 300 mrem exposure from natural background radiation in a year. Hell, living in the Denver area means I get an extra 80 mrem or so of exposure in a year because of the elevation.

Edited by Schulz2.0
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2 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

But Three Mile Island’s reactor design (and other reactors in the US) wasn’t Soviet-era levels of idiocy .

Very true. If I remember correctly the only radiation from TMI was a short steam release to prevent a breach. But the panic level was at 11. That was the first time we heard about the China syndrome.

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40 minutes ago, RPM said:

Very true. If I remember correctly the only radiation from TMI was a short steam release to prevent a breach. But the panic level was at 11. That was the first time we heard about the China syndrome.

Followed shortly thereafter by the Pepsi Syndrome.

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Loving this so far.  Very well done.

Here's the scary part of The Day After.  I wasn't allowed to see it.  I think I was like 8 at the time.  I remember my friends talking about it.  I think I finally saw it in the 90's.  Another movie that hasn't been brought up - Miracle Mile.  Anthony Edwards and (I think) Ally Sheedy.  Pretty scary stuff.  Anyway, The Day After...

 

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"You ever spent time with miners?"

"No."

"My advice is tell the truth.  These men work in the dark, they see everything."

Fast forward 3 minutes.

"Are they all like that?"

"They're all like that."

 

Goddamn that was a good scene and good writing.

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After listening to the podcast and hearing the show runner mention the book “Voices of Chernobyl” a few times, I downloaded it and read it over the weekend.

One of the stories is about the firefighter’s wife, Ludmilla.

Knowing how her story ends, every time she was onscreen I was muttering “Get out of his room!!!”.

She didn’t hear me.

I don’t know that I have ever watched a show or movie that has made me feel actual frustration like this one does. I’ve watched stuff that’s made me feel tense or scared or anxious or sad or nervous but this - especially the first two episodes when everyone is in denial and won’t admit what’s going on - makes me feel like I’m waiting at the DMV or something.

I just want to scream at the people on the screen.

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Great show.

 

The Pripyat city scenes were shot in Soviet era apartment blocks in Lithuania. I lived in a similar building for a month in 1992 in Vilnius, so this brings back a lot of memories.

 

Everything Soviet - all the buildings- and the people - just had that "look" - I woke up in St Petersburg New Years Day 1992 in a hotel very similar to the one in the show, hungover as hell, (but in bed with a fellow traveler, a coed from Ole Miss) with nothing to drink but vodka and shitty bottled water with a khaki tinge.

 

Most of the English speaking Russians I knew do speak with slightly British accents, that's how they were taught at the university.

 

Gawd, those hospital scenes. . .I cant even imagine.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

Knowing how her story ends, every time she was onscreen I was muttering “Get out of his room!!!”.

I have no idea how her story ends, but I have a pretty good idea it ain't pretty. Surprised her lips weren't already falling off from repeatedly kissing his burns.

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This is a good show, but why did they have to throw in that laughable 2-4 megaton thermal explosion bit?  I mean, really?  Just say that it will cause a big explosion that would destroy the remaining reactors.  There is no need to throw something as absurd as "2-4 megatons" out there for the sake of creating additional suspense.  

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I read about some of this in Atlantic a few years after it happened. The courage and the horror. This is a fantastic piece of work. 

I'm not sure that i get Fozzz' objection. Is it false that such an explosion could occur?

Also, I doubt most people know what a megaton is. I was amazed to learn that it's the equivalent of a million tons of TNT. A book said that a train loaded with that much TNT would stretch from Los Angeles to Chicago. Yikes.

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3 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:

I read about some of this in Atlantic a few years after it happened. The courage and the horror. This is a fantastic piece of work. 

I'm not sure that i get Fozzz' objection. Is it false that such an explosion could occur?

Also, I doubt most people know what a megaton is. I was amazed to learn that it's the equivalent of a million tons of TNT. A book said that a train loaded with that much TNT would stretch from Los Angeles to Chicago. Yikes.

There is no way that a "thermal explosion" could release anything approaching that much energy.  I know there was some speculation about a potential nuclear detonation, but if you have read anything about how those devices work, you would realize that an exploded nuclear reactor turning into an atomic bomb is extremely far fetched.  That kind of reaction is very difficult to bring about.

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13 hours ago, McCroskey said:

"You ever spent time with miners?"

"No."

"My advice is tell the truth.  These men work in the dark, they see everything."

Fast forward 3 minutes.

"Are they all like that?"

"They're all like that."

 

Goddamn that was a good scene and good writing.

 

Seriously great.

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Guest Lobo

From each according to his outer burn marks, to each according to their degenerative neurological functions.  

What a system.  What a country.  What a time to be (not) alive.  

Anybody else get the vibe that HBO actually tamed down the critique of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' role in all this?  

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We will see what happens in the remaining episodes, but the show so far has been far too kind to the engineers at the plant.

Quote

Seven years after the incident at Three Mile Island, on April 25, 1986, a crew of engineers with little background in reactor physics began an experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear station. They sought to determine how long the plant's turbines' inertia could provide power if the main electrical supply to the station was cut. Operators chose to deactivate automatic shutdown mechanisms to carry out their experiment.[9]

The four Chernobyl reactors were known to become unstable at low power settings,[10] and the engineers' experiment caused the reactors to become exactly that. When the operators cut power and switched to the energy from turbine inertia, the coolant pump system failed, causing heat and extreme steam pressure to build inside the reactor core. The reactor experienced a power surge and exploded, blowing off the cover lid of the reactor building, and spewed radioactive gasses and flames for nine days.

https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/three-mile-island-and-chernobyl-what-went-wrong-and-why-todays-reactors-are-safe#_ftn9

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58 minutes ago, Lobo said:

From each according to his outer burn marks, to each according to their degenerative neurological functions.  

What a system.  What a country.  What a time to be (not) alive.  

Anybody else get the vibe that HBO actually tamed down the critique of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' role in all this?  

Absolutely not. They don't need to shout "WOLVERINES!" from the rooftops into a megaphone. Sure, the Soviet Union was plenty evil into the 1980s but it was a much more subtle "the gears of the State just grind on" type of malevolence. By 1986, I think most Russian comrades had already begun to lose their confidence in the State, and the way they've portrayed its banal immorality so far seems spot on from my recollections.

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Great show.
 
The Pripyat city scenes were shot in Soviet era apartment blocks in Lithuania. I lived in a similar building for a month in 1992 in Vilnius, so this brings back a lot of memories.
 
Everything Soviet - all the buildings- and the people - just had that "look" - I woke up in St Petersburg New Years Day 1992 in a hotel very similar to the one in the show, hungover as hell, (but in bed with a fellow traveler, a coed from Ole Miss) with nothing to drink but vodka and shitty bottled water with a khaki tinge.
 
Most of the English speaking Russians I knew do speak with slightly British accents, that's how they were taught at the university.
 
Gawd, those hospital scenes. . .I cant even imagine.
 
 

What was his name?
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