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canyonwalkerThe fourth episode of HBO's five-part miniseries Chernobyl introduces us to liquidators. That's the name used for the half-million-plus soldiers and conscripts who were sent to the Chernobyl exclusion zone to clean up the area after the nuclear fire at the exploded reactor was mostly put out. (The material in and around the open reactor was still highly radioactive, though.) I'm told the word has a less-sinister connotation in Russian, where it means something more like "clean up crew", versus the modern English euphemism for contract killers.
One narrative thread about the liquidators' work is told from the viewpoint Pavel, a young conscript (center in the picture below). Pavel's story comes from a real-life account in Svetlana Alexievich's book, Voices from Chernobyl.
Pavel arrives at a squalid camp near the exclusion zone with no idea what he'll be doing other than being a Chernobyl liquidator— whatever that means. When he finds his assigned group tent he meets Bacho (left, above), a tough soldier who served in the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
Bacho takes Pavel under his wing and quickly explains their crew's assignment. They comb through empty villages in the exclusion zone to kill all the abandoned pets. The animals are abandoned because when people were evacuated they were told to leave all pets behind. Now the animals are poisoned with radiation and must be killed for humanitarian reasons— and to prevent irradiated animals from spreading beyond the zone.
Bacho explains the tactics to Pavel with ruthless efficiency. Pets see humans as providers of food, so the liquidators don't need to go door-to-door looking for them in every single apartment. All they have to do it walk down the streets making noise, and the pets will come to them. Shoot them when they get close. Once animals hear gunshots, though, they may run in fright back to their homes. Then the liquidators follow them inside.
Pavel struggles with the morality of doing this. He's an 18 year old kid from the city, freshly conscripted. Bacho is a grizzled veteran of the brutal Soviet-Afghan war so he's not troubled by it. He does have a strong moral code, though: Don't let the animals suffer. Shoot to kill, when they're close. If one's not killed right away, shoot it again. He doesn't want anyone to let an animal to suffer. He threatens to shoot anyone who does.
Even so, Pavel struggles with the assignment. And as if shooting the animals weren't bad enough, these liquidators must also gather the bodies for burial. They have to chase the animals if they run, throw the corpses into the back of their truck, take them to a mass burial site, and dump them in. The pile of dead pets is then covered over with concrete.
Pavel discusses how to find peace with this assignment when the crew sits down for a field lunch at an abandoned civic center. The banner still hanging from the building proclaims, "Our Goal is the Happiness of All Mankind." This scene is created directly from accounts in Alexievich's book and helps frame the absurdity of the whole situation.
Next blog about Chernobyl: Liquidators, Robots, and Bio-Robots
One narrative thread about the liquidators' work is told from the viewpoint Pavel, a young conscript (center in the picture below). Pavel's story comes from a real-life account in Svetlana Alexievich's book, Voices from Chernobyl.
Pavel arrives at a squalid camp near the exclusion zone with no idea what he'll be doing other than being a Chernobyl liquidator— whatever that means. When he finds his assigned group tent he meets Bacho (left, above), a tough soldier who served in the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
Bacho takes Pavel under his wing and quickly explains their crew's assignment. They comb through empty villages in the exclusion zone to kill all the abandoned pets. The animals are abandoned because when people were evacuated they were told to leave all pets behind. Now the animals are poisoned with radiation and must be killed for humanitarian reasons— and to prevent irradiated animals from spreading beyond the zone.
Bacho explains the tactics to Pavel with ruthless efficiency. Pets see humans as providers of food, so the liquidators don't need to go door-to-door looking for them in every single apartment. All they have to do it walk down the streets making noise, and the pets will come to them. Shoot them when they get close. Once animals hear gunshots, though, they may run in fright back to their homes. Then the liquidators follow them inside.
Pavel struggles with the morality of doing this. He's an 18 year old kid from the city, freshly conscripted. Bacho is a grizzled veteran of the brutal Soviet-Afghan war so he's not troubled by it. He does have a strong moral code, though: Don't let the animals suffer. Shoot to kill, when they're close. If one's not killed right away, shoot it again. He doesn't want anyone to let an animal to suffer. He threatens to shoot anyone who does.
Even so, Pavel struggles with the assignment. And as if shooting the animals weren't bad enough, these liquidators must also gather the bodies for burial. They have to chase the animals if they run, throw the corpses into the back of their truck, take them to a mass burial site, and dump them in. The pile of dead pets is then covered over with concrete.
Pavel discusses how to find peace with this assignment when the crew sits down for a field lunch at an abandoned civic center. The banner still hanging from the building proclaims, "Our Goal is the Happiness of All Mankind." This scene is created directly from accounts in Alexievich's book and helps frame the absurdity of the whole situation.
Next blog about Chernobyl: Liquidators, Robots, and Bio-Robots
