HBO's Chernobyl purports to show not just the causes of the historic nuclear accident,
but the bureaucracy that stood in the way of rescue and recovery in the aftermath.
With the real-life history being shrouded in such secrecy, it's a story that can't help
but leave some questions unanswered.
A lot of numbers get thrown around in Chernobyl.
When Valery Legasov explains the worst case scenario to the Soviet Central Committee,
we get figures of potential fatalities that are downright catastrophic.
When Legasov gives the numbers needed to contain the disaster, from the cost it demands, to
the years it will take, and the lives that will be lost in the process, it sounds like
horrific science fiction.
"For Byelorussia and the Ukraine, 'impact' means completely uninhabitable for a minimum
of 100 years."
But one number audiences don't get is a concrete death toll.
Part of the problem is the Soviet Union's lack of records relating to the topic, but
another, trickier issue is the way radiation exposure actually causes death.
While many people lost their lives in the disaster's immediate aftermath, there were
also untold numbers whose deaths were more indirect, caused by radiation-related illnesses
that took years to develop.
Notes at the end of the series put the death toll between 4,000 and 93,000, but those numbers
are far from universally accepted.
The US-based Union of Concerned Scientists estimates between 4,000 and 27,000 lives lost,
while Greenpeace believes it to be in the range of 93,000 to 200,000.
Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin has also shared estimates he's read that put the death
toll closer to a million.
The estimates are so varied that unfortunately, when it comes to the question of how many
people died from the Chernobyl disaster, the only answer we can all agree on is "too many."
One of the most heartbreaking chapters in Chernobyl comes in the fourth episode, in
which we follow a trio of Soviet liquidators tasked with killing any animals, mostly domesticated
pets, left behind in abandoned villages.
Fleeing civilians were not allowed to bring pets with them for fear the pets could contaminate
humans.
While the episode was difficult for some viewers to watch, showrunner Craig Mazin has said
that his dramatized story is still a toned-down version of what actually occurred.
"They're radioactive, so they have to go.
But it's not hard, they're mostly pets.
They're happy to see you.
They run right up to you.
Bang."
But did the liquidators really manage to wipe out all the pets who were left behind in the
evacuations?
Not quite.
According to SPCA International and the Clean Futures Fund, who frequently visit the Chernobyl
Exclusion Zone to provide spaying, neutering, and vaccination services, over 800 dogs and
cats still live in the area, subsisting off of volunteer donations and their own foraging
skills to survive.
In 2019, SPCA International announced that for the first time, 15 dogs with radiation
levels low enough to be considered safe were taken from the Exclusion Zone and adopted
by homes in the United States.
Chernobyl's fourth episode opens with an elderly woman milking a cow while a Soviet soldier
demands that she evacuate.
The scene is inspired by true stories of people who returned to their homes in the Exclusion
Zone in the years following the meltdown, despite being legally barred from doing so.
Amazingly, many of those people are still there.
"Call them courageous, or just plain reckless, Olga and Andrei Ruzhenko live here on a permanent
basis."
In 2017, the Irish Times visited the so-called "samosely," or "self-settlers", those who
illegally returned to Chernobyl to live there after the disaster.
Despite warnings from scientists, the Times said around 200 people still made their homes
there, some of whom were living well into their eighties.
But don't take their presence as evidence that the Exclusion Zone is safe.
While residents may not be dropping dead in the grisly manners of Chernobyl's first responders,
cancer diagnoses, particularly thyroid cancer and leukemia, have spiked since the accident.
Despite these real dangers, the lives of the self-settlers aren't nearly as post-apocalyptic
as you might think, and according to some who've shared their stories with the media,
things where they live are just fine.
Though the residents aren't officially sanctioned by the government, their presence is tolerated,
and they're given limited support.
"The Ruzhenkos have been married 53 years, and they say they don't need anything from
anyone."
The Chernobyl series opens two years after the disaster, with Valery Legasov recording
his recollections on audio tapes.
Before hanging , Legasov makes like he's taking out the trash to fool his KGB
watchmen, and uses the opportunity to drop the tapes in a nearby building.
A note at the end of the series finale tells us that Legasov's records were "circulated
among the Soviet scientific community," which seems to confirm that this part of the story
is accurate.
However, we never learn who Legasov expects to retrieve the tapes.
We don't know if he's been in contact with a journalist, or perhaps with another scientist.
It's not clear how his influential records actually get out into the world.
Speaking to The Cheat Sheet about how he prepared for the role of Legasov, Jared Harris said
one of his biggest challenges was that there was little historical record left on Legasov
to study.
Just like it's threatened in the show, the Soviet Union did indeed do a good deal to
erase him from history.
Harris also said he never listened to Legasov's audio tapes, and he has a good reason; they
don't exist.
He explained,
"There were no audio tapes.
He left behind journals.
But that's not as cinematic as audio tapes."
Chernobyl's conclusion includes a 2006 quote from Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's
final leader.
It reads, "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl…was perhaps the true cause of the collapse of
the Soviet Union."
But the series doesn't explore what exactly that statement means.
In 2013, Mark Joseph Stern wrote an article for Slate explaining what he called the nuclear
theory of the USSR's collapse.
He explained that shortly before the explosion at Chernobyl, Gorbachev had already introduced
the policy of glasnost, or openness of ideas, expression, and institutional transparency.
Stern wrote that it was Gorbachev's way of combating the widespread practice of censoring
information and keeping secrets that the Chernobyl series does such a good job of conveying.
The policy of glasnost is widely credited with fueling the USSR's eventual dissolution
in 1991.
The aftermath of the Chernobyl accident, Stern argues, is what wound up fueling glasnost
the most.
Stern wrote that before Chernobyl, most Soviet citizens, quote, "believed in the Soviet system,
forgave its flaws, and hoped for a better future."
But the reactor explosion and everything that came to light afterwards put questions in
the minds of citizens, crucial questions about what was in their food and water, and whether
they should believe what the government was telling them.
That new distrust for the Soviet state, according to the theory, made the USSR's demise inevitable.
The horrible aftermath of Chernobyl as depicted in HBO's mini-series probably has plenty of
viewers wondering if what happened in 1986 Ukraine could happen again, in the United
States or elsewhere.
In 2016, Business Insider talked to Chernobyl expert and author Andrew Leatherbarrow.
The writer and photographer took the opportunity to explain why what happened at Chernobyl
simply couldn't happen in the US.
The key, he says, is graphite.
As the series makes clear in its final episode, the power plant's graphite-tipped control
rods are what caused the reactor explosion, accelerating the nuclear reaction instead
of helping to shut it down.
According to Leatherbarrow, using those rods in the real life reactor was, quote, "an incredibly
foolish decision."
Thankfully, American reactors use water instead of graphite to serve that function.
As Leatherbarrow explained to Business Insider,
"There's absolutely no way the accident at Chernobyl could have happened at any American
commercial power reactor."
But before you breathe easier, this doesn't mean a meltdown can't happen at a nuclear
power plant in the U.S. Americans learned a meltdown at one of their plants was possible
in 1979's Three Mile Island incident, just as the Japanese learned in 2011 with the Fukushima
meltdown.
But the specific event that triggered the Chernobyl accident couldn't happen in the
US, meaning the chance of any Americans having to stumble around shovelling graphite off
of rooftops in the years to come is pretty much close to zero.
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