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Nov 1, 2017
8,061
One reason this succeeds is the details.

YVX8Om1.jpg


They really did an outstanding job recreating things.
 

Kin5290

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,390
Yeah, I don't think it's fair to say Lyudmilla was stupid. She was highly uninformed, just like the rest of the population was, and in huge emotional distress. It's easy in retrospect, with the knowledge that we have in 2019, to judge this character who's from 1986, but it really wouldn't be fair in the slightest. I expect her to have a very tragic story-line, it's gonna be absolutely heartbreaking when she'll fully realize the horror of the full extent of her actions.
This show is full of people forgoing basic safety measures out of ignorance, or duty, or futility. The miner foreman, who people think is awesome, chooses to subject his people to more dangerous conditions because it's easier to finish the job that way. Lyudmila does so out of love and that makes her the idiot?
 

Kitschy Kitty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
903
I wonder why this show is capturing the zeitgeist so hard. Is it the nature of acute radiation syndrome and how it destroys your DNA or is it cause the show is such an effective time capsule of the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
One of the ideas they put forward in the podcast and one of the reasons it may be in the zeitgeist is that it is about truth and the dangers of not accepting facts as, well, facts. In the current era where people seem more and more inclined to believe whatever fits their worldview, a show like Chernobyl shows the incredible damage that can cause and how people being commited to lies makes it very hard to properly manage these types of crises because reality does not care about the lies people construct. It's like a climate change analogy in many ways.
 

lacer

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,693
Actually how did Khomyuk know she was pregnant? I missed that?
you hear her puking in the bathroom in her first scene, which i took as a sign of morning sickness. that followed by her lovingly gazing at her sleeping husband was what made me think she was pregnant
 

More_Badass

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,623
Just caught up with the 3 episodes now; highly, highly enjoying this, very gripping indeed.

But, my god, the wife character, Pasha, is insufferably stupid.
Calling her action stupid seems really reductive and completely divorced from any emotion. She was given some vague rushed instructions. She had no knowledge of what the dangers were. Her husband seemed perfectly fine at first and then collapsed into horrific suffering. Anyone is going to be comforting their loved ones.

Everything she does makes completely sense from a human, emotional perspective. That's what makes it tragic. Trying to judge purely by logic and hindsight is ridiculous
 
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BocoDragon

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,207
Yeah, I don't think it's fair to say Lyudmilla was stupid. She was highly uninformed, just like the rest of the population was, and in huge emotional distress. It's easy in retrospect, with the knowledge that we have in 2019, to judge this character who's from 1986, but it really wouldn't be fair in the slightest. I expect her to have a very tragic story-line, it's gonna be absolutely heartbreaking when she'll fully realize the horror of the full extent of her actions.
I imagine it's less that she's from 1986 and more that she's in the Soviet Union. People in the west in 1986 sure knew about the danger of radiation. It was a stock horror movie plot point.

But it is possible that in the Soviet Union, it didn't serve the purposes of the state to keep people that informed about the danger of nuclear technology.
 

Delphine

Fen'Harel Enansal
Administrator
Mar 30, 2018
3,658
France
This show is full of people forgoing basic safety measures out of ignorance, or duty, or futility. The miner foreman, who people think is awesome, chooses to subject his people to more dangerous conditions because it's easier to finish the job that way. Lyudmila does so out of love and that makes her the idiot?

I feel like most protagonists in this show navigate absolutely amazing grey areas of morality, torn from various things like you said , and it's the beauty of it. I also had the thought of the miner foreman clearly knowing more than he led on about the dangers of this whole operation, yet keeping its workers in the dark, thus condemning them to certain death, because the task at hand had to be done no matter what as soon as possible, because it was about the lives of way too many people besides theirs, that were at stake. Does that make him a bad person? Not necessarily, it just makes him a human doing their best with the shitful of crap that was given to them. I feel like show is masterfully representing those moral grey areas, and Lyudmilla is also one of them. I wished people would see her more through that angle, instead of judging her intellect hastily.
 
Nov 1, 2017
8,061
The miners in the show have a good idea they're entirely fucked. They've already heard rumors of something going wrong at Chernobyl. It's why the miner guy says they dig coal not bodies in regards to where they would be going. They might not know exactly the effects of radiation but they know they'll pay a price. Again it's why the miner guy ask if his boys (the miners) will be looked after. They knew the effects of digging coal, it's partly why they got such a blunt attitude and outlook, it's also why they don't take shit because the USSR really needed people like them at the time. Miners had quite a bit of power, influence and respected in the USSR psyche. It's also why places like Chernobyl were constructed, to give said power to another group of people.

The miners do this job because they know they need to do so, sacrifice has been a big part of what made the USSR. For the betterment of all they put everything on the line.
 

RatskyWatsky

Are we human or are we dancer?
Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,931
Only for the head miner, i forget his name

It's how the pubes are positioned and the penis color is different; pubes don't look like that and they're covering up the seams for the prosthetic attachment

Penis skin is often a different/darker color than the rest of the body though, so that's not necessarily an indication of a fake.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,454
This show is full of people forgoing basic safety measures out of ignorance, or duty, or futility. The miner foreman, who people think is awesome, chooses to subject his people to more dangerous conditions because it's easier to finish the job that way. Lyudmila does so out of love and that makes her the idiot?
Could they even dig effectively at 50 degrees Celsius with their clothes on?
Legasov admitted that whatever clothes the miners were wearing wouldn't give them substantial protection anyway.
 

KarmaCow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,161
I watched the first episode and enjoyed the cosmic horror-esque depiction of extreme radiation but everything else feels so overwraught to the point of parody. I'm not sure how to properly articulate my problem but I mean specifically the moments like the speech in the bunker, where it was meant to be horrifying instead felt comical because it was so over the top. The first episode was dealing with the immediate reaction to an incomprehensible, potentially continent wide disaster so my question is does it come down from that intense drama in every scene?
 

KarmaCow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,161
This is the Soviet Union, you'd be surprised at how close to the truth these things are.

I don't doubt very similar things were said but I mean more how it was presented, like the old man tapping his cane to get attention or slow mo shots the dude kissing his baby in the radioactive ash. It feels a bit indulgent.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,454
I would be really interested in reading a good source on what the real Dyatlov did during the incident.
The show portraits him as someone who was in denial almost to a comical level.
 

Deleted member 1635

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,800
I don't doubt very similar things were said but I mean more how it was presented, like the old man tapping his cane to get attention or slow mo shots the dude kissing his baby in the radioactive ash. It feels a bit indulgent.

Really with the kissing baby part? I thought that was a great scene to show just how sad the situation was since people were fascinated by the color in the sky, but had no idea how deadly it all was.
 

Kin5290

Member
Oct 26, 2017
3,390
Could they even dig effectively at 50 degrees Celsius with their clothes on?
Legasov admitted that whatever clothes the miners were wearing wouldn't give them substantial protection anyway.
I'm talking about the foreman deciding to dig at a depth of 6 meters rather than 12, which reduced their protection from radiation exposure.
 

Deleted member 8257

Oct 26, 2017
24,586
One of the ideas they put forward in the podcast and one of the reasons it may be in the zeitgeist is that it is about truth and the dangers of not accepting facts as, well, facts. In the current era where people seem more and more inclined to believe whatever fits their worldview, a show like Chernobyl shows the incredible damage that can cause and how people being commited to lies makes it very hard to properly manage these types of crises because reality does not care about the lies people construct. It's like a climate change analogy in many ways.
Or the Trump administration that doles out lies by the dozen every waking moment.
 
Oct 25, 2017
2,454
I'm talking about the foreman deciding to dig at a depth of 6 meters rather than 12, which reduced their protection from radiation exposure.
The foreman explained why he decided that.
They were on a time limit and going 12 meters deep wouldn't have really protected them since the surface area where the tunnel would start was contaminated anyway.
Pretty much everyone that walked inside the plant after the accident knew he was fucked.
 
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KarmaCow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,161
Really with the kissing baby part? I thought that was a great scene to show just how sad the situation was since people were fascinated by the color in the sky, but had no idea how deadly it all was.

I liked that idea of that scene, the slowmo was just a bit much on top of everything else.
 

UsoEwin

Banned
Jul 14, 2018
2,063
In Episode 3 how did Scientist lady know that Wife was pregnant? Did I miss interaction between them somewhere before?
 
Nov 1, 2017
8,061
I didn't find it as intense as the previous episodes, but I was expecting certain things to happen that didn't. One of the robots they used got fried by the radiation so bad it went off the roof. Hence my sucide remark earlier. That and does anyone believe all the bio robots made it? I remember when I was young I watched a documentary about the clean up. Of men going up to the roof and not all coming back. One thing always stuck with me, one talking about how men were falling apart. Imagine that. Falling apart. Men. Perhaps it's my memory is wrong...........but it's not a thing I ever doubted remember seeing/hearing.
 

TaySan

SayTan
Member
Dec 10, 2018
31,469
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Finished episode 3 and that scene with the husband final moments with his wife was so hard to watch. At that point, I would want someone to put a bullet in me and put an end to my suffering from that point. Fantastic series.