Ep4 is a hard watch for sure.. but necessary. Ep5 is a good change of pace, and the best of the entire show imo. Truly a finale.

20:10 the Geiger counter soundtrack ups the tension to max in these scenes.

13:00

I like how he explains to him that's there no shame in it. But also let's him know that he had it all along in him.

Even talks about his first time and how he went through. So  he knows what that young kid is feeling like.

It was 90 seconds per person for ever. It was a strict, once-in-a-lifetime shift for each worker.

I spoke to a vet once, friend of a friend, I asked if he ever felt bad or got depressed having to put down sick pets and he told me, "Not really, because I've seen the alternative." Taking out those dogs would be a hard thing to do for sure, but it has to be done.

13:48 Not really a random title drop...he was reading the banner on the side of the building behind them....which I believe is based on an actual slogan/banner seen in the actual Chernobyl exclusion zone.

30:15 Pavel...the young man who got assigned to shoot the pets and other animals left behind...was 100 percent a civilian...the motor pool was just his first job after being recruited to be a liquidator at Chernobyl, before he got reassigned to the animal control group. The Soviets used over 600k people in the cleanup after the disaster, both military and civilian...if you remember, we see Pavel being recruited as a civilian to be a liquidator at the very end of episode 3, and he actually tells the other men on his team that he was not in the military before coming to Chernobyl earlier on in this episode.

At first glance it seems the guy who was like "she can have that one" was protecting state secrets, but then if you think about it the one document she was granted turned out to be one with the details about the reactor design flaw (albeit redacted) maybe looking back we're supposed to wonder if he actually helped her

The 90 seconds was a lifetime dose. Radiation doesn’t leave the body quickly. Some of the liquidators (what they were called) went more than once but that was their decision to do so

Episode 4 will be very tough on Bralic

The 1000 rubles for them back then would be estimated at around $4,200 USD today. For them it was about 5x the normal monthly salary of about 200 rubles. Basically $4,200 to slice an unknown chunk of time off your life.

Blowing up the building to close in the graphite and cover the core would have likely resulted in the other reactors at the plant blowing up. It wouldn’t have been worth the risk…

Oh boy...episode 4...it is the toughest episode for almost everyone to watch and react to.
The cow was going to be killed regardless of whether she stayed or left...it was contaminated as was its milk.

Something that does not get mentioned in the show is that many of the men who went out onto those incredibly radioactive roof sections actually volunteered to go back out more than once in order to save others from having to be "biorobots".

The 90 seconds per man time limit for going out on that most dangerous roof section was specifically calculated to be equivalent to about 50% of the maximum allowable lifetime dosage for an average human male...so they were trying to avoid killing anyone by sending them out on the roof only ONCE per man. Of course, see my note above about the many men that volunteered to go out on that roof section more than once...and there were certainly those like the man we see who ended up out on that roof for more than 90 seconds for any number of other reasons. But in any event, the Soviets knew that 90 seconds out there would mean each man would have a bout of radiation sickness to deal with, but they were definitely trying to keep every man's dosage to a survivable level.

Also, that huge revelation that the Soviet State knew about the fatal flaw in the shutdown system and both covered it up and did nothing to fix it, all the while lying to even the plant operators about the safety of the RBMK reactors, is something that could only happen in a totalitarian state like the USSR...where there is no free press or free scientific establishment for whistleblowers to talk to when they know about wrongdoing by the State.

Finally, the idea that the baby absorbed the radiation and saved the mother is not a scientific one...it is based on some things that people remembered other people saying years ago, so are subject to all the fallibilities of human memory. In reality, babies are at least ten times more sensitive to radiation than adult humans, so Ludmilla's baby could/would have gotten a lethal dose of radiation just from the initial exposure from being in Chernobyl.

"Comrade" is the way that Communists address each other...though it can also be the way any given person might address a close friend. It definitely is not the same as "sir", since that has a connotation of inequality between the addresser and the addressee...while "comrade" is intended to carry a subtext of equality between the parties...even if that "equality" is merely performative.

There actually is around 100 older women who stayed behind in the Exclusion Zone who have lived there for 4 decades now. They outlived their husbands and sons and some of them are still even alive today.

Master filmmaking. There aren’t many shows this good.

"Comrade" was meant as a way of addressing people regardless of rank and gender because everyone was supposed to be equal, as opposed to the extremely unequal society of the Russian Empire before the revolution. However, at this point in the Soviet Union, when it was clear they were losing the Cold War, very few people actually used it in a non-formal or unsarcastic way, so the show is a little inaccurate in this regard. I've also been informed by more physics-competent people that it's inaccurate in terms of the way radiation works, especially the stuff about the baby absorbing the radiation, but I'm not a physicist, so I'll stick to the linguistics :)

Wow I am impressed you guys pretty much understand the science behind what happened at the plant already. I had to watch the series twice before I understood what happened. Good job 👏

I’m here, but I sent Brutus out of the room.😎😬

Just in time for lunch.  Legendary upload timing gents

They didn’t want to rely on the Americans, their enemy, to fix the problem! He wasn’t saying their technology is inferior, just that would be a bad look to rely on the Americans! 🇺🇸❤️🙏🏼

Just shows how people will put it all on the line for country and humanity.