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A week ago Hawk and I binged the HBO miniseries Chernobyl from 2019. We watched 5 hour-long episodes in a single sitting. That was more than we expected... because the show was more engrossing than we expected. But why even watch it at all? For both of us a big part of the reason was that this enormous accident happened during our lifetimes— yet we didn't know much about it.
I was a teenager when the accident occurred in April 1986, finishing up my freshman year of high school. I was old enough (and precocious enough) that I was following national and international news and forming opinions about it. Hawk was a couple years younger than me and also paying attention to things. And yet.... And yet, all we remember about Chernobyl is the very broadest strokes: A bad accident happened. The Soviets lied about how serious it was, until they couldn't. Then they cleaned it up. They built a concrete "sarcophagus" built around the ruins of the reactor and created an exclusion zone 60km across.
As a scientifically educated person I knew a bit more about the accident— but I learned those things only years after it, only by choosing to read about it when 99.9% of the world had moved on from caring about it, and had to struggle through excessively technical and poorly written descriptions to reach an understanding. I looked to the miniseries as an opportunity to better understand something that shaped the world I grew up in— and nearly did way worse than "shape" it. 😨
After watching the 5 episodes of the miniseries I started watching some of the extras. Showrunner Craig Mazin did a series of podcasts, radio style interviews with NPR host Peter Sagal. In the podcast for episode 1 Mazin described how he started this project... and the reason he created it is the same reason I watched it!
In the podcast Mazin describes that the Chernobyl accident happened when he was about 15. He was aware of it at the time, but only in the broad strokes: a nuclear power plant accident occurred, Soviets lied about how bad it was until evidence made it undeniable, then they cleaned it up, then there was a sarcophagus and an exclusion zone. That's basically the same recollection I had, from a similar age!
Mazin also, like me, looked into details many years later. But Mazin looked at it with a filmmaker's eye rather than an engineer's eye. Meaning, he saw irony and drama. The irony was that technicians at the plant were running a safety test when the reactor core exploded. "It's like you're testing the brakes on your car," he explained (paraphrased), "But instead of slowing down your car zooms forward, catches fire, and crashes!" He knew there had to be a gripping story there.
And there is. Start with 1:23:45.
And keep reading after this: Chernobyl has serious horror movie energy.
I was a teenager when the accident occurred in April 1986, finishing up my freshman year of high school. I was old enough (and precocious enough) that I was following national and international news and forming opinions about it. Hawk was a couple years younger than me and also paying attention to things. And yet.... And yet, all we remember about Chernobyl is the very broadest strokes: A bad accident happened. The Soviets lied about how serious it was, until they couldn't. Then they cleaned it up. They built a concrete "sarcophagus" built around the ruins of the reactor and created an exclusion zone 60km across.
As a scientifically educated person I knew a bit more about the accident— but I learned those things only years after it, only by choosing to read about it when 99.9% of the world had moved on from caring about it, and had to struggle through excessively technical and poorly written descriptions to reach an understanding. I looked to the miniseries as an opportunity to better understand something that shaped the world I grew up in— and nearly did way worse than "shape" it. 😨
After watching the 5 episodes of the miniseries I started watching some of the extras. Showrunner Craig Mazin did a series of podcasts, radio style interviews with NPR host Peter Sagal. In the podcast for episode 1 Mazin described how he started this project... and the reason he created it is the same reason I watched it!
In the podcast Mazin describes that the Chernobyl accident happened when he was about 15. He was aware of it at the time, but only in the broad strokes: a nuclear power plant accident occurred, Soviets lied about how bad it was until evidence made it undeniable, then they cleaned it up, then there was a sarcophagus and an exclusion zone. That's basically the same recollection I had, from a similar age!
Mazin also, like me, looked into details many years later. But Mazin looked at it with a filmmaker's eye rather than an engineer's eye. Meaning, he saw irony and drama. The irony was that technicians at the plant were running a safety test when the reactor core exploded. "It's like you're testing the brakes on your car," he explained (paraphrased), "But instead of slowing down your car zooms forward, catches fire, and crashes!" He knew there had to be a gripping story there.
And there is. Start with 1:23:45.
And keep reading after this: Chernobyl has serious horror movie energy.
