Did you already watch an English version of the miniseries “Chernobyl” produced by HBO and Sky when it aired in the United States? If not, many broadcasters (including the Ukrainian channel “1+1”) announced the translated versions.
The fictionalized version of the worst nuclear disaster wakes up many feelings: from denial of the most absurd scenes to a deep appreciation of many details about conditions of affected people, their surroundings and culture under Soviet regime. Some characters are impressive: an older woman is forced to evacuate from her rural home, so she must leave a cow. This character tells a soldier who challenges her tragic history of Ukraine just in a few sentences. She also mentions Holodomor (a human-made famine in USSR in 1932 and 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians) and explains the sufferings of her family at different times.
Miniseries offer insights into a system of decision-making that causes disasters. One of the major characters, the scientist Valery Legasov, concluded that the accident was the “apotheosis of all that was wrong in the management of the national economy and had been so for many decades” (extracts from his memoirs in Pravda). Secrecy, dysfunctional governance and its omnipotence, and lack of integrity destroyed the USSR. The creator of “Chernobyl,” Craig Mazin stressed, “The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.”
Don’t also underestimate the technical mistakes that could cost everyone more in the end. Watch and investigate a chain of events in the Chernobyl disaster. Mismanagement, errors in the design of the complex systems happen quite often.
There is an aerospace trick to describe how one-degree shifts make an active difference to a selected course. Precision is the queen. If a plane course is divergent by one degree, a pilot can miss his destination by 92 feet. The 1 in 60 rule in air navigation warns that flying every 60 miles after a course mistake of one degree will divert the pilot from a target by one mile. Being off course in a nuclear industry’s management has even worse consequences.
If the danger of radioactive contamination is not dangerously enough, how about cases from other industries? Look at most recent examples from aviation. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg called its handling of two 737 crashes a ‘mistake.’ “We now know that the recent Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft’s MCAS function.” Again, another chain of events, design issues, and lack of integrity. As a result, more than 400 pilots have joined a class action against Boeing, seeking damages in the millions over what they allege was the company’s “unprecedented cover-up” of the “known design flaws” of the latest edition of its top-selling jet, the 737 MAX.
This HBO miniseries helps to highlight these cover-ups. Greatly navigated the complexities of nuclear power, actors offer us added value in organizational management and governance, emotionally explaining human errors. This is why “Chernobyl” is an excellent work despite some doubtful scenes. Take them with a grain of salt and think outside of a TV box.
In some cases, pseudodocumentarism went too far. A few scenes from Kyiv were titled to be from Moscow. The producers also miscommunicated why the accident happened, the immediate health consequences of radioactive contamination (too much blood) and other things. It is one of the reasons not to watch the miniseries with your kids or grandchildren.
Do you know a parody of HBO’s slogan, “It’s not TV, it’s HBO?” Surprise! “It’s not porn! It’s HBO!” Some of you might be astonished to see such words in this context, but Craig Mazin, who created “Chernobyl” and Johan Renck, who directed it, leave a viewer almost no choice. In episode 3, Alex Ferns, former EastEnders star, plays miner’s supervisor Glukhov. Questioned by higher-ups, Glukhov defends naked appearance of his miners’ team. “You wouldn’t give us fans; it’s too hot for clothes, so we’re digging the old way.” To makes his statement even stronger, Glukhov says: “This is the way our fathers mined.”
As a son of a miner from Eastern Ukraine, I find the grim scene with such comments quite embarrassing. Jobs in mining are tough, but miners in Chernobyl still followed safety regulations. There were many issues with clean-up workers in Chernobyl, but not necessarily that naked kind of nature. These scenes are fiction that has nothing to do with the real heroism of first responders or military. As another episode shows, some draftees understood their risks. Among men, it was fashionable to agree with anecdotal folklore explaining dangerous consequences of radiation for fertility: “If you want to be a father, wrap the testicles with lead.”
Many creative liberties may disappoint some viewers, but the International Movie Data Base ranking of “Chernobyl” already ranks higher than Game of Thrones. Thirty-three years after the disaster, we discover many vital things about it. Such films could also help to wake interest in reading books about Chernobyl, attract tourists to the 30-km zone, and even promote science and studies of the consequences of radioactive contamination. Episode 2 is named “Please Remain Calm,” but it will be better to stop the spread false news about Chernobyl finally.
If you want to read the best recent account of Chernobyl, Adam Higginbotham just published the book Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster. It is a much better place to discover the truth.
