History Fridge / Chernobyl

* "Why did ''I'' see graphite?" Shcherbina asks this because he knows that if he asks why ''Legasov'' saw graphite, Bryukhanov and Fomin will just continue to discredit him and not come with an explanation. While Shcherbina did ask for a very rudimentary rundown of how a nuclear power plant works, the main takeaway was that "graphite is only in the core, you should not see any graphite under any circumstance outside that or a pencil", which makes it very easy to spot bullshitting by Fomin.
* One from the script, but not the show as the scene was cut: When Shcherbina tells Legasov about Fomin's suicide attempt, he speculates that he may have tried to send a message instead of just avoiding punishment. You can almost hear Legasov deciding to seize this idea for himself.

** Imprisonment was extremely unlikely. Akimov is afraid of being drummed out of the nuclear profession by a vindictive boss and upset Party Secretary as that means he could get reassigned to a much less nice profession and place in the Soviet Union. Plus, even if he is not reassigned to a different part of the country, the nuclear profession carried with it access to special shops and nicer, more modern apartments. What he is being threatened with is perpetual poverty. That is enough to make almost anyone, even in free societies

** Taking it a step further, Vladimir Pikalov was a veteran of WWII who earned a degree in chemical engineering after the war, and by the time of the Chernobyl disaster had been commanding the Soviet Army's Chemical Troops detachment for almost 20 years. His status as a war hero with a proven track record of cleaning up disasters like this one meant bureaucrats like Fomin and Bryukhanov would have zero chance of sidelining him or threatening him into repeating their BS 3.6 roentgen radiation reading, like they did to Sitnikov and Legasov. When a man like Pikalov says the dosimeter shows 15,000 roentgen, ''it's 15,000'', and no amount of cajoling or gaslighting would change that.

** Taking it a step further, Vladimir Pikalov was a veteran of WWII who earned a degree in chemical engineering after the war, and by the time of the Chernobyl disaster had been commanding the Soviet Army's Chemical Troops detachment for almost 20 years. His status as a war hero with a proven track record of cleaning up disasters like this one meant bureaucrats like Fomin and Bryukhanov would have zero chance of sidelining him or threatening him into repeating their BS 3.6 roentgen radiation reading, like they did to Sitnikov and Legasov. When a man like Pikalov says the dosimeter shows 15,000 roentgen, ''it's 15,000'', and no amount of cajoling would change that.

* Chernobyl will not be safe for ''twenty thousand years.'' To put this in perspective: if you were to be born in the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs, and still were alive today, you'd still have to wait ''three times'' your current lifetime to make it to 20,000 years.
** Oh, it gets worse. Damascus, according to scholars, is one of the oldest cities on Earth (by our definition of 'city') and it was founded in the year '''10,000 BC'''. In other words, the entire history of humanity from 10,000 BC to today, as I type this...doubled.

** Oh, it gets worse. Damascus, according to scholars, is one of the oldest cities on Earth (by our definition of 'city') and it was founded in the year '''10,000 BC''' In other words, the entire history of humanity from 10,000 BC to today, as I type this...doubled.

* Being in Akimov's shoes: he's knowledgeable enough to know the potential danger, but also all too-aware, as this is 1980s Soviet Union, he ''absolutely positively'' must do as ordered by a superior. Being fired and drummed out of the nuclear profession (as Dyatlov threatens) is actually '''the more lenient''' outcome for this kind of defiance, the other outcome being imprisonment, which was all too common.

* In real life, Shcherbina was born to the family of a railroad worker. A slab track is a piece of rail fastened to a concrete foundation, and concrete itself is used in constructing tunnels and stations. So of course he would be familiar with what concrete looks like, burned or not. Chances are he himself worked on several construction sites for the rail company, or pretty regularly visited them with his parents.
** As an adult, he was also involved with constructing a number of hydroelectric power plants, which also use concrete.
* At the end of Episode 4, a pair of liquidators rush up to the top of the cooling tower and plant the Soviet flag. What is the most famous occasion of planting a Soviet flag? [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/14/Reichstag_flag_original.jpg Raising it on the Reichstag at the end of the Battle of Berlin.]] This symbolizes the Soviet "victory" over the disaster and regaining control over the plant.
** Except in RealLife, it was plain red cloth on a pole, not a Soviet flag, but the symbolism is still there.

* "Why did '''I''' see graphite?" Shcherbina asks this because he knows that if he asks why ''Legasov'' saw graphite, Bryukhanov and Fomin will just continue to discredit him and not come with an explanation.
** Not only that, but while Shcherbina did ask for a very rudimentary rundown of how a nuclear power plant works, the main takeaway was that "graphite is only in the core, you should not see any graphite under any circumstance outside that or a pencil", which makes it very easy to spot bullshitting by Fomin.

** Perhaps unintentionally, but milk from irradiated animals is an extreme risk: strontium-90 is one of the decay products of the reactor's uranium-235 and it bioaccumulates by replacing calcium, especially in bones. Consuming radioactive milk with strontium-90 in it is a quick way to make ''yourself'' radioactive, with all the health risks that entails, especially since there's no way to prevent its uptake like there is with iodine-131. The old woman may very well have died of old age before radiation-based cancer set in, but if she'd have regularly drank that cow's milk she'd have chronic radiation poisoning ''from her own skeleton'' in short order.

* Dyatlov didn't give a crap about the test's veracity. He ran it under invalid conditions, figuring the results made no difference whatsoever, as long as he'd completed it and he therefore would be put in Fomin's good graces.
** He also thought if things really went awry they could just shut the reactor down anyway. He was wrong.
** It was worse in real life. Operators thought that, as long as they follow test's algorithm, everything would be okay. But they underestimated the influence from the surplus of xenon-135 and decided to move all the control rods from the reactor (violating the instruction they had to follow).
* For that matter, the trio of Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov eventually deciding to do the test anyway after they get the order that if they do it they have to wait 10 hours. As Legasov put it, the sensible option when hearing they have to produce energy would have been to raise the output back up to normal which would have burned away the surplus xenon with no issue[[note]]You could either wait for a day or two for the Xenon 135 to decay in to caesium 135, or gradually turn up the reactor power over the course of hours to "burn" if off and turn it into Xenon 136 (which isn't a reactor poison) at a rate proportional with the neutron flux; if the reactor power had been increased, reactor poisoning would have been far less of a factor, thus it would have both been more stable and the control rods would not have needed to be completely removed.[[/note]].
* Being in Akimov's shoes: he's knowledgeable enough to know the potential danger, but also all too-aware, as this is 1980s Soviet Union, he ''absolutely positively'' must do as ordered by a superior.
** To clarify, being fired and drummed out of the nuclear profession (as Dyatlov threatens) is actually '''the more lenient''' outcome for this kind of defiance, the other outcome being imprisonment, which was all too common.
* ''Everything'' about ARS. Your DNA gets destroyed and your cells lose their ability to replicate. From then on, it's just a countdown to death as your cells die without being replaced. First gone are the cells with the shortest turnover period, the white cells, so you lose your immune system; then the skin cells, so besides the pain you lose your first line of defense and are completely exposed to infection. But the worst is not the cells you lose, it's the cells you ''don't'': cardiac cells have turnover periods of several years, so your heart keeps pumping blood even as your blood vessels break down causing bleeding and necrotization [[note]] to the point that ''morphine is useless'', because when injected ''it leaks out of the bloodstream before reaching the brain'' [[/note]], and neurons are seldomly replaced if at all, so you keep your nervous system and consciousness [[AndIMustScream intact]] as you rot away alive.
** The fact that the show actually downplayed this so it would not come as pointlessly exploitative. Of 31 official victims of the disaster, we only saw three wither away like this, and one (Akimov) actually got a GoryDiscretionShot.
** One effect the show doesn't touch at all ([[NauseaFuel for good reason]]) is the [[PottyFailure constant diarrhea]] of the afflicted caused by their intestinal epithelium dying and falling off, which also caused internal bleeding and inability to digest food.

* Remember the sarcophagus that was placed over the reactor? [[https://www.foxnews.com/science/chernobyls-sarcophagus-dismantled-collapse It’s currently being dismantled]] due to a ''very high'' [[OhCrap probability of collapse]] because of water leaking into it and causing damage.
** Somewhat subverted in that the radiation won’t leak into the air this time and Ukraine is intending an operation to decontaminate remaining radioactivity in the area as they construct a new structure. Only problem is it’s estimated to last until 2065 if it goes forward.

* That firefighter gear is still in the Pripyat Hospital basement today. If you were to grab a jacket and put it on right now [[note]] Granted, you have to be TooDumbToLive to even attempt to do this [[/note]] -- over thirty years later -- you would get a fatal dose of radiation in under a minute. That pile of clothing is the second most radioactive object in the entire world after the "{{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant%27s_Foot_(Chernobyl) Elephant's Foot}}."

* That firefighter gear is still in the Pripyat Hospital basement today. If you were to grab a jacket and put it on right now [[note]] Granted, you have to be TooDumbToLive to even attempt to do this [[/note]] -- over thirty years later -- you would get a fatal dose of radiation in under a minute.

* ''Everything'' about ARS. Your DNA gets destroyed and your cells lose their ability to replicate. From then on, it's just a countdown to death as your cells die without being replaced. First gone are the cells with the shortest turnover period, the white cells, so you lose your immune system; then the skin cells, so besides the pain you lose your first line of defense and are completely exposed to infection. But the worst is not the cells you lose, but the cells you ''don't'': cardiac cells have turnover periods of several years, so your heart keeps pumping blood even as your blood vessels break down causing bleeding and necrotization [[note]] to the point that ''morphine is useless'', because when injected ''it leaks out of the bloodstream before reaching the brain'' [[/note]], and neurons are seldomly ever replaced if at all, so you keep your nervous system and consciousness [[AndIMustScream intact]] as you rot away alive.

* Legasov's cutting final remark to Charkov, "Oh, that's perfect. They should put that on our money", is an even deeper condemnation that it appears at first glance. The Soviet Union was founded as a Communist system the lower classes would finally be respected and treated fairly, unlike the evil capitalistic west that only values money. Yet that same state needlessly sacrificed dozens, if not hundreds, of workers' lives by building cheap nuclear reactors with few safety measures. And Charkov, a leader of that state, doesn't even care. Why not advertise the fact that their workers' paradise cares less about safety than saving money by printing that fact on the currency they supposedly don't value?

%%** But you can't burn away the surplus xenon-135 by raising the power level of reactor. In order to do so, you have to shut down the reactor for 2-4 days and wait until the majority of xenon-135 will decay.

** To clarify, being fired and drummed out of the nuclear profession (as Dyatlov threatens) is actually '''the most lenient''' outcome for this kind of defiance. Imprisonment is likely, and even execution isn't out of the question.
%%*** What are you talking about? He would be probably fired from the station. In eighties you couldn't be executed in the Soviet Union if you were a civilian who disobeyed the order of your superior.
* ''Everything'' about ARS. Your DNA gets destroyed and your cells lose their ability to replicate. From then on, it's just a countdown to death as your cells die without being replaced. First gone are the cells with the shortest turnover period, the white cells, so you lose your immune system; then the skin cells, so besides the pain you lose your first line of defense and are completely exposed to infection. But the worst is not the cells you lose, but the cells you ''don't'': cardiac cells have turnover periods of several years, so your heart keeps pumping blood even as your blood vessels break down causing bleeding and necrotization, and neurons are seldomly ever replaced if at all, so you keep your nervous system and consciousness [[AndIMustScream intact]] as you rot away alive.

* That firefighter gear is still in the Pripyat Hospital basement today. If you were to grab a jacket and put it on right now -- over thirty years later -- you would get a fatal dose of radiation in under a minute.

* The series accurately depicts the high rate of [[TheSmokingSection cigarette smoking]] in the Eastern Bloc, often showing those who have been exposed to radiation or trying to manage the disaster eagerly lighting up. Intentional or not, it is definitely a commentary on the ultimate futility of managing radioactive contamination in order to prevent cancer deaths.
** One possible reason that Chernobyl related cancer deaths never matched the high initial predictions is that the former Soviet Union has such a low life expectancy from smoking, drinking, occupational hazards and general environmental contamination that Chernobyl deaths can't stand out.

* Boris' initial DeathGlare and attitude towards Valery during their flight to Chernobyl was more due to Valery unknowingly and unintentionally embarrassing him in front of Gorbachev during the meeting beforehand than it was the belief that Valery was contradicting the initial report by overexaggerating the radiation spewing into the atmosphere. It was only when they flew close by the plant itself that he begun to have an inkling that Valery was right, and was further cemented when the major reported radiation levels as high as *15,000* roentgen.
** The [[FacialDialogue look on Shcherbina's face]] when the helicopter that flew directly over the reactor crashes almost immediately speaks volumes. This was something he was ordering his own helicopter pilot to do hours before but he now knows that Legasov is not only entirely right but that he also owes him his life.

* Remember the sarcophagus that was placed over the reactor? [[https://www.foxnews.com/science/chernobyls-sarcophagus-dismantled-collapse It’s currently being dismantled]] due to a [[OhCrap “very high” probability of collapse]] because of water leaking into it and causing damage.