The scene where they're clearing the rooftop with the sound of the geiger counter going nuts in the background was edge of your seat, white knuckle shit.
Can't wait for the finale. This has a chance to go down as one of the greatest things ever put on television. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
that was brutal. But, I’m sure that’s a realistic depiction of how it was done.
Yeah, bad business. Pretty prevalent in Al Anbar several years ago. A short story captured the impact on a guy with his own sick dog when he got home in the book “Redeployment.” Tough duty.
Originally Posted by Chief Northman:
So do you think anyone in society today would volunteer for a radioactive roof cleanup?
FML.
So I've been trying to figure out a way to make this point without ending up getting DC'd. But the bottom line is that this kind if disaster could probably only have happened in the Soviet Union and this kind of response could definitely have only happened int he Soviet Union.
And you really have to have a lot of historical context to get there, but it goes back to a fanatic devotion to the state dating all the way back to the Revolution. You look at how the Soviet citizens and soldiers dealt with WWII and Operation Barbarossa in particular. Any other government/state at any other point in history would've folded there but the fanaticism on display from the soldiers and citizens of the Soviet Union is simply beyond comprehension. They would've literally fought the Germans to the last friggen man. Now it's partially because they would've had their own soldiers pointing guns at them telling them to do so, but again - I'm not talking about the means here - simply the ends. The Russian willingness to sacrifice himself and his tolerance for atrocious conditions is beyond Western understanding.
The indoctrination (often at gunpoint) of state over self took them decades but by God, it took.
As poorly as Communism worked for them, it would work even more poorly for the West because the United States doesn't have the mass numbers of people willing to make those kind of sacrifices; not at those ratios. That willingness to sacrifice was the only glue the USSR had to hold it together. And you saw it in spades here with the willingness of so many people to flat out !@#$ing die in horrible ways because they felt it was their duty. We pity the firefighters because they didn't know what they were getting into - but I doubt it would've made a difference. If they were told to go in there and spray that reactor, they'd have done it.
Most of the Soviet citizenry really did believe in the collective good and the concept of State over self. Which is what makes you realize just how doomed to failure that mode of government is - if THEY couldn't make it work despite a population that simply saw little value in their own lives and had no understanding of just how hard their existence was, it damn sure won't work here.
I dunno if I'm getting what I want said very well, but Chernobyl is, to me, another data point that speaks to how unique and almost admirable the Soviet patriotism was during that era. To some degree, their baseline citizenry was as devoted to their country as our military is today. That love of country and capacity for self-sacrifice that exists in our armed services was pervasive across their entire society. That's remarkable. And dangerous. And just damn interesting. It's everything good and bad about Nationalism rolled into one experiment.
It would've been really interesting to see what could've happened there had Brezhnev just been...better. Hard to say - maybe he was just the guy at the wheel when the inevitable decline started, but some of this old school approaches seemed a lot like Stalin without the purges after Khrushchev seemed inclined towards modernizing Russia.
That all starts to get beyond my knowledge base pretty quickly, but it's a fascinating era to explore. [Reply]
Dj put it a lot more accurately than I could. Seemed they just always felt it was "their duty" to do whatever they were "told". Mostly, by fear of death I'd imagine, but the scene with the 3 big names in Pripyat at the end of the last episode was just awesome. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
So I've been trying to figure out a way to make this point without ending up getting DC'd. But the bottom line is that this kind if disaster could probably only have happened in the Soviet Union and this kind of response could definitely have only happened int he Soviet Union.
And you really have to have a lot of historical context to get there, but it goes back to a fanatic devotion to the state dating all the way back to the Revolution. You look at how the Soviet citizens and soldiers dealt with WWII and Operation Barbarossa in particular. Any other government/state at any other point in history would've folded there but the fanaticism on display from the soldiers and citizens of the Soviet Union is simply beyond comprehension. They would've literally fought the Germans to the last friggen man. Now it's partially because they would've had their own soldiers pointing guns at them telling them to do so, but again - I'm not talking about the means here - simply the ends. The Russian willingness to sacrifice himself and his tolerance for atrocious conditions is beyond Western understanding.
The indoctrination (often at gunpoint) of state over self took them decades but by God, it took.
As poorly as Communism worked for them, it would work even more poorly for the West because the United States doesn't have the mass numbers of people willing to make those kind of sacrifices; not at those ratios. That willingness to sacrifice was the only glue the USSR had to hold it together. And you saw it in spades here with the willingness of so many people to flat out !@#$ing die in horrible ways because they felt it was their duty. We pity the firefighters because they didn't know what they were getting into - but I doubt it would've made a difference. If they were told to go in there and spray that reactor, they'd have done it.
Most of the Soviet citizenry really did believe in the collective good and the concept of State over self. Which is what makes you realize just how doomed to failure that mode of government is - if THEY couldn't make it work despite a population that simply saw little value in their own lives and had no understanding of just how hard their existence was, it damn sure won't work here.
I dunno if I'm getting what I want said very well, but Chernobyl is, to me, another data point that speaks to how unique and almost admirable the Soviet patriotism was during that era. To some degree, their baseline citizenry was as devoted to their country as our military is today. That love of country and capacity for self-sacrifice that exists in our armed services was pervasive across their entire society. That's remarkable. And dangerous. And just damn interesting. It's everything good and bad about Nationalism rolled into one experiment.
It would've been really interesting to see what could've happened there had Brezhnev just been...better. Hard to say - maybe he was just the guy at the wheel when the inevitable decline started, but some of this old school approaches seemed a lot like Stalin without the purges after Khrushchev seemed inclined towards modernizing Russia.
That all starts to get beyond my knowledge base pretty quickly, but it's a fascinating era to explore.
Agreed. Scherbinas speech to try to get 3 guys to go in the water was interesting. His assertion that every generation has to endure their form of suffering is a mindset that is so foreign to us that it’s almost incomprehensible.
I think there is a fair argument that the citizens didn’t know the risks. But largely I don’t think it would have mattered. [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
Dj put it a lot more accurately than I could. Seemed they just always felt it was "their duty" to do whatever they were "told". Mostly, by fear of death I'd imagine, but the scene with the 3 big names in Pripyat at the end of the last episode was just awesome.
Yeah. That was damned compelling television. [Reply]
“Mother Russia” was a force that the Soviets used for their ends. It has been a powerful component of Russian society before and after the Soviet state but the great patriotic war threads were still around in 1986.
Originally Posted by Buehler445:
Yeah. That was damned compelling television.
man, I’m pissed that next week is the finale. Something this well done with a fascinating back story behind the events just doesn’t come along that often. It’s just not this site. Our reaction is being repeated all over the USA and in Europe. It’s a huge hit that no one saw coming.
The podcast talks about many events and stories they didn’t include or combined due to the limitations of the 5 story arc. There was a lot more material there to cover. [Reply]
I have just finished watching Episode 1 of Chernobyl on @HBO. My perspective is that of someone born and raised in the Soviet Union who has vivid memories of 1986, the catastrophe itself and how it was handled by the Soviet politicians and the state media...