i couldn't tell what happened after watching that sequence several times

I dont think you have room to talk seeing as how you couldn't get a tweet to display
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I didn't know any of the details about Chernobyl before this series, or I forgot them.

I thought the chopper went down somehow due to radiation. They should have done a better job showing it hitting a cable. After that episode, I started listening to the podcast and they admitted it gave off that impression and that wasn't their intention.
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Finally got to finishing episodes 4 and 5 last night. Didn’t disappoint.. my word they absolutely brought it home in episode 5.


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I got the impression more they couldnt see in the smoke than radiation causing it.... I dont think anyone watching it up to that point thought (even the real life person's involved) the impact of the radiation on the mechanical parts.
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I’ll give this series a 7/10. There was plenty to appreciate so I’ll just go with the items which prevented it from being a 10/10 in my wheel house:

They went out of their way to imitate 1980’s Ukrainian SSR (Soviet Union) and the bleakness of Communism to the point where the production was intentionally filmed in an drab, gray fashion. No high def, bright colors in this HBO series.

In turn they hit a home run on the visuals and atmosphere yet the actors had British and English accents while voicing "comrade". It was the equivalent of creating an ornate painting then proceeding to accent (no pun intended) it in a plastic Walmart frame.

I also found parts of the series unnecessarily trudged on at times. Episode 4 is a good example.

Why did they spend so much time on shoving the feral, infected animal hunting down the viewers throats when this overall story has so much depth and other subplots? There are other examples but that was the most prevalent to me. This is expected when a series like The Sopranos goes six seasons but not five episodes.

But the kicker was the way the production team handled the Valery tapes. Who found them? Was there an arrangement for them to be picked up by someone? How did they become public? If he planted them the way it was shown they could very well still be sitting in the same spot today.

It would have taken a two minute flashback to address these questions which were pretty vital to setting the tone for the entire series. The other criticisms can be debated as nitpicking but the gaping plot hole with the tapes was just poor execution. This factor alone is a 2 point deduction.

Overall a great series but it had some flaws and everyone from anonymous message board viewers such us to ‘professional’ critics conveniently ignore the tapes which basically set the tone for the series.
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If you liked the series and want to see something close to the subject, if you haven't seen The China Syndrome, it's excellent. What was so eerie was the studio execs thought the film was pure fiction and the public wouldn't go for it. In 1979 two weeks after it's release we had the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Pennsylvania and the film took off.



Jack Lemon and Michael Douglas are excellent, Jane Fonda was good.
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1) The animal hunter thing was an attempt to show what the conscripts went through. That was just some kid who was told what he has to go do. They were trying to put the viewer in the mindset of some poor sap who had to go kill pets and I thought they were pretty effective in so doing.

2) As far as I know, nobody is really sure exactly what Legasov did with those tapes or how they were found. They didn't give us additional detail there because I'm not sure anyone really has that answer.
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really?


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we haven’t exactly been truthful with the public either. In the mid 50’s we were exploding nuclear weapons above ground outside of a populated Las Vegas. There are plenty of pics with the mushroom cloud in the background and the city with the iconic Golden Nugget casino sign in the foreground. The government lied to them. Said it was perfectly safe. If you can see a mushroom cloud from where your standing, your too close.
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1) I thought the viewer was already provided with an adequate understanding of how the situation affected the civilians as well as the men drafted to salvage the disaster. I understand this one is personal preference.

2) After researching the tapes on my own I found out history does not have a clear understanding of how they wound up going public. The producers should have hit on that if not in the production itself, in an epilogue (most like a brief paragraph showing at the finale') after the tapes were used to build a foundation on the series in the premier.

Great series. Just two things I would have done different.
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Testament is on Prime right now. That movie is a soul crusher. It was made in 1983, and is set in suburban America before, during, and mostly after a nuclear war.

It shows how society and the family might break down. Radiation poisoning, hunger, etc. Heartbreaking.
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A mushroom cloud can rise to 30,000 feet in the high desert you can see hundred of miles to a mountain range. Exaggerate much ?
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Those firefighters were ingesting about two dozen isotopes that were not only particulates, but gasses with a spectrum of decay. Alphas and betas would be attenuated by the body from ingestion, but there would be a lot of higher energy gamma emissions that would have gone through Ignatenko and hit his wife. And micrograms would be far more than enough.

If you get I-131, which has a mixed decay scheme of two different betas and gamma, you're isolated from your family and children and must flush the toilet multiple times after each use.
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Not disputing you, just posting an interesting size comparison of mushroom clouds.


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Not disputing you, just posting an interesting size comparison of mushroom clouds.




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