'Chernobyl' (2019)

Have you ever found yourself watching your favorite horror film and it has gotten to the point where the pretty girl is about to die? You know that she shouldn't go down that alley or into the woods, and she knows that the killer is there, but she decides to path directly into him or her. I don't know about you, but I genuinely get angry when I see such stupidity. I am not talking about when the pretty girl has no clue that the killer is lying in wait, but that she clearly understands that the killer is there and proceeds to scream or make noise to give away her position. I am not so naive to assume that those characters have the same training or tenacity as the killer, but if your life is in danger, and you simply need to sit still and not whimper, why in the hell would you make any noise?

I found a series that is historical representation of such stupidity. Chernobyl recreates that nuclear explosion and meltdown in the infamous city of Pripyat, Russia. There are some minor differences that HBO changed to streamline the show for quality purposes, but the names, incidents, and timelines are accurate to true life events. I will warn those that have no desire to 'feel' something while watching a show. Chernobyl should not only anger you to the point of wanting to impeach every crooked politician, but also leave you with the feeling that humans in power are the scourge of this planet. I will admit that I did cry once or twice while watching this, but I will get into that later. This review is going to be short, because the lessons that can be learned from this series are far reaching.

The series is five episodes long, and begins with the explosion at reactor number four. After the series establishes the main characters, it proceeds to work back and forth from before the incident to the present trial, attempting to charge those responsible. I did not expect this show to play out the way that it did. I was more or less expecting it to be an entertaining look into that incident, but I was pleasantly disappointed as I was pulled into the lives of the heroes and the work that they performed. Essentially the one reactor exploded because of gross negligence, but not from the only source that is shown on screen. Engineers and physicists warned the State that the reactors they were building had a fatal flaw, but the State ignored these warnings and built several dozen of these reactors across the country. The theory was that the reactor would never be placed in the perfect storm scenario that would enable the flaw to become active. Well, they were very wrong. The lead technician on the night of the incident was the head of the entire plant, and it was assumed that he knew what he was doing. Of course he did, and that was where my mind was blown straight out of the front of face. The State classified the findings that warned about that single, fatal flaw, and the workers at the plants never knew what was happening. As the reactor was placed further and further into that 'perfect storm' scenario, the technicians thought that they were doing the right things to pull it back from disaster. All the while, thinking that they had a fail safe kill switch that killed the reactor and stopped it from overloading and exploding.

So after the reactor blows, they evacuate a massive surrounding area around the city and months of containment ensue. They literally need to terraform about 400 square kilometers around the city, because the fallout carried nuclear radiation into neighboring countries. I found this part of the series worthy of its story line, and was very pleased that they allowed it to be shown. You got a glimpse into the lives that were affected, and in such a way that I felt my heart being ripped out of my chest. I remember one scene that was haunting. The team came to the conclusion that they needed to manually open some water pumps that were in a room right next to the exposed core, and they did eventually find three men willing to do this. They dawned as much protection as they had, and marched into the building that was most certainly going to become their grave. The scene has them walking through shoulder high water, but that was not the haunting portion I mentioned. Since they were wearing masked they could not communicate properly, and they had battery operated flood lights that allowed them to see. The radiation was so strong that it killed their lights and they were left with the radiation meters crackling that they were slowly dying of radiation poisoning in pitch blackness.

They did find those responsible for the incident guilty, but it hardly seems like a punishment for a crime of that scale would ever be harsh enough. All of those that were involved with the containment were dead within five years, but there were reports that many survived and lived full lives. I am not sure if this is accurate, but before the credits, there were some historical facts that were revealed, but there was only one that stuck in mind: after all of the death, exposure, attempted cover ups, and gross negligence, the Soviet Union still reported (to this day) that only 31 people died in the accident. I will let that sink for a minute.

We are human and that means that we are full of error, but we are also full of arrogance and egoism. I find that to be the single, most disgusting thing about this entire event. Not that the State withheld information, not that the technicians were arrogant and thought they were in control, not that the incident did inevitably happen, not the loss of life, not the harm to the planet, but the fact that even after all of this tragedy, the humans that were responsible for it still tried to act as though they were justified in their actions. The massive deaths aside, it still took the suicide of the lead physicist in charge of the containment and recovery to get the policies changed and the remaining reactors retrofitted. If you think that this was a long time ago, like back in some dark ages era where man was evil and unchecked by the good, think again. This happened in 1986.

When are we going to wake up as a species? The ego of man has brought us to a point in history that the meaning of life is collateral to the mission, and that the individual has no choice as to what he or she is capable of. Humans achieve power over one another, and instead of utilizing that position to make the lives of every one better, they simply horde as much wealth and power for themselves as possible. I am not suggesting that people do not deserve what they earn, but I am most certainly suggesting that with that power and position comes a responsibility to not abuse it. The sad thing is that we are now in a world where the middle class has surgically been eliminated with a precision that can match any neurosurgeon. You have one class that is beyond wealthy, and you have another class that is overweight and lazy. The middle class has been destroyed by being stretched between both by taxation and institutionalization. You cannot expect anyone to fight back against the corruption when they have to work forty to fifty hours a week just to keep their families from starving, but it still is not enough to stop the debt from piling on.

The reason that those in power are allowed to toy with the lives of those under them is all a delusion. The delusion that we need to work our entire lives for someone that does not care about us or love us like they claim. The longer that they are in that position, the larger their ego grows and they begin to use your life and the lives of your children as experiments for ways that they can attain more power. I hope that one day the majority wakes up and stands up for itself, but I think that we are long passed that time.