Answering my own question: confirmed 100% Hollywood sensationalism, as all the historical experts initially asserted. Very irresponsible of this otherwise very well researched show to double down on that pernicious rumor.
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HBO's Chernobyl |OT| Do you taste something metallic?
- Thread starter Wrexis
- Start date
I just finished the last episodes. The entire theme of it and the last sentences in particular gave me echoes of the Challenger Disaster or at the very least Feynman's half-of-a-book account of it.
There's a famous quote of his that is very fitting for this as well: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled "
There's a famous quote of his that is very fitting for this as well: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled "
I dont want this thread to devolve into memes but couldnt help myself:
Goddamn lol.
Superb series. Stellan Skarsgård deserves a Golden Globe. How he depicted his character's transition from staunch party apparatchik to skeptic and then soon-to-be dissident was riveting. Harris and Watson were amazing, as well. Hell, every actor did a remarkable job.
Graphite? You did not see graphite because it wasnt there.
I found episode 2 and 3 to be the scariest. The way they describe the destruction that would have happened is terrifying. It would have essentially destroyed the entire planet. Even those who weren't immediately vaporized would have died from the radiation poisoning that would have affected the entire world.
Those 3 men who went into the water saved the planet.
Saying it would have destroyed the entire planet is a huge misunderstanding of the text. The show tells you, it would have made vast portions of Ukraine and Byelorussia uninhabitable, and contaminated Europe. They said nothing about "destroying the planet". Also you misunderstand the nature of the explosion. It is not an atomic explosion that would have vaporized people. It was going to be a steam explosion that was going to destroy all four reactors of Chernobyl and spread around the radioactive material.
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I'm talking about the potential second explosion. They said it would have left most of europe uninhabitable, quote, "impact all of Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarusia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and most of East Germany." They then talk about global contamination and the problem extending beyond the immediate areas mentioned. It would have fucked up the entire planet, rendering most of europe uninhabitable would very obviously have global effects.
They clearly stated, Byelorussia and Ukraine was going to be uninhabitable, while eastern Europe would have major impact in terms of cancer and birth defect incidences for the second explosion, which was going to be a steam explosion that destroyed containment for all 4 reactors.
That first episode had me on the literal edge of my seat. I couldn't have relaxed if I wanted to. That shit made me so anxious. I hadn't experienced that kind of terror in recent memory. I just wasn't prepared for it. I was completely captivated and horrified.
Iiterally quoted the line from the show.
They talk about how the explosion would cause other similar explosions in a chain at other plants as well. They make the case very clearly that this would be a global disaster.
Yeah, impact, not uninhabitable, which they claimed for Ukraine and Byelorussia.
The other plants they were talking about were the other three reactors at Chernobyl. Chernobyl has four reactors. The one that exploded in episode one is reactor 4. What they feared was that the steam explosion would have blown up the rest of the containment of reactor 4 and blown up all the other three reactors.
They did not say it would be a global disaster, but I agree there would have had global knock on effects.
Here is the extracts from the script of that meeting with Gorbachev and co.
The second (technically third) explosion would have only made matters worse but the show uses the extreme upper end of incredibly unlikely overestimates from what we know today, and then stretches it even further, so it is a moot point anyway. Don't use the show as a source for what may have happened across Europe. Mazin is not a nuclear physicist.
Here is an attempt to calculate the realistic energy potential.
In any case the 3 workers are heroes regardless if the explosion would have been bad news for Kiev or a continent.
Here is an attempt to calculate the realistic energy potential.
In any case the 3 workers are heroes regardless if the explosion would have been bad news for Kiev or a continent.
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I didn't want my post to come across as downplaying what they did. Not a response to anything anyone said.
Just finished it. What an incredible show!! This has shot up to one of my favorites
Plz release on Blu Ray HBO!!
Plz release on Blu Ray HBO!!
I can't believe that 1. Chernobyl memes exists and 2. That they're actually pretty good.
And HBO please release this in 4k bluray soon.
And HBO please release this in 4k bluray soon.
Honestly the taste isn't my issue. Them being way out there or just plain not funny. They are so bad they could be in the funny picture thread.
Eh, it's okay. No one is mocking the victims, let people have their fun.
Umm, using scenes from this critically acclaimed drama about Chernobyl to create memes is kind of insensitive to the victims. I doubt the living relatives of the dead or displaced residents of the city who are still living would find any of them amusing.
It is kinda gross, but what can you do. Sometimes I do feel like internet culture breeds apathy.
Yeah it's gross. Memes about real life tragedies aren't encouraged here so I'm not sure why a TV show with the same subject is any different.
Because they're memes about a TV show, not the actual events. The memes aren't making fun of the tragedy; they're co-opting the dialogue/plot/characters of the show.
They aren't just discouraged, posts would be deleted and users banned.
I honestly thought era was better than this than reposting this crap (or worse creating them).
They're memes created off of content pulled from a serious and unironic dramatization of a real tragedy. There isn't a wide enough line that divides this mini series from a documentary of the event to excuse that kind of humor. Like someone said, it's gross and insulting.
It's a historical drama that turns the events into a horror movie/disaster movie/political thriller, shifting and combining characters and events to create an entertaining and compelling narrative
There's a pretty wide line between something like Band of Brothers and They Shall Not Grow Old, as there is between this and an actual documentary.
The memes aren't about the actual events or victims; they're drawing from the dialogue and characterizations of the show
Also this isn't a Downfall situation, where the memes are probably most people's only knowledge of the work.
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Jesus Christ! Just binged to whole thing. As bad as it was (it was absolutely catastrophic) it could have been a looooooooooot worse?! And they handled it with manual labor of 600,000 people, mass scale terraforming, an army on naked angry dudes, all the liquid nitrogen in Russia, and letting people just get straight blasted with radiation. Fuck!
I don't remember this at all, are you sure it happened? How would this chain reaction occur?
I mean, the horror and political theater was as true to the real events as the creators of the series were able to make it. It wasn't as if there was anything exploitative about their telling of what occurred. And I don't believe the composite characters provide any kind of cover to people using scenes from the series to create memes. They were characters whose depictions were the narrative sum of people who were actually involved in the crisis, some of them dying, others still suffering from the fallout. I don't think it matters if the memes were about the actual victims. They're still tacky attempts at drawing humor from a sobering dramatization of a catastrophe that killed thousands of people and is still affecting many more to this day. Downfall didn't tackle the Holocaust, so I don't think it's analogous.