
Chernobyl and the Cost of Lies (2019) - tosh
https://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/HBO-chernobyl-disaster-nuclear-soviet-union
======
acidburnNSA
"The series ends with an epilogue noting that, while the official death toll
remains 31, other estimates have ranged from 4,000 to 93,000, with some
estimates climbing even higher."

This was the worst moment in the series. The otherwise pretty solid
description of the event was tainted by that. I screamed at the screen. The
correct statement would be closer to:

"60 deaths have been directly attributed to Chernobyl, and large careful
consortia of hundreds of scientists concluded in the 2000s that "up to 4000"
early deaths may occur from the accident across the decades, though they later
revised the statement to say they do not recommend multiplying small doses by
large populations to get large death values. Meanwhile, a few fringe groups
and Greenpeace said 93,000 and Helen Caldicott says millions just because she
feels that it must be that high. By the way, burning fossil fuel kills 4
million people every year by air pollution. That's a Chernobyl every 2.5 days,
day after day. So even though Chernobyl was horrible, the dispassionate
numbers show that nuclear energy is still extraordinarily safe compared to
other major forms of energy production. Plus it is very nearly carbon free,
which matters more than ever today."

The UNSCEAR group with the 4000 number is analogous to the IPCC. The 93,000
and beyond people are analogous to the anti-vaxxers. The HBO series gave them
equal weight.

Look it up! It is truly shocking.

~~~
panta
I'm not knowledgeable on the subject, but reading the related wikipedia page
[1], and in particular the section about liquidator mortality, leaves me
skeptic about the <100 numbers. And there are also deaths which are more
loosely related, but still related. See for example the abortions: "an
estimated excess of about 150,000 elective abortions may have been performed
on otherwise healthy pregnancies out of fears of radiation from Chernobyl"
[3]. Even if you consider most if not all of these ill-advised, these are
nonetheless lives lost due to the disaster.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster#Liquidator_mortality)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Abortions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Abortions)

~~~
acidburnNSA
I personally continue to use 4000 deaths total (acute and latent), which is
what the UNSCEAR folks said up until 2006 or so. Some colleagues yell at me
and tell me that there's no basis for a number this high given what we now
know about radiation dose response and about what's happened monitoring people
for decades. But I use it just in case.

Fear of radiation kills thousands of people. At Fukushima, the only nuclear-
related (non-tsunami) deaths were from the evacuation. (Up to 1 person did die
from radiation, they say now). That's why I fight to make people understand it
more and be less afraid.

We can all agree that unduly panicking people about radiation is bad.

[https://aeon.co/ideas/fear-of-radiation-is-more-dangerous-
th...](https://aeon.co/ideas/fear-of-radiation-is-more-dangerous-than-
radiation-itself)

~~~
vilhelm_s
I think it's worth noting that the UNSCEAR report also said 5000 more deaths
among less exposed people (so 9000 in total), it's all rather arbitrary.

~~~
acidburnNSA
That was in 2006. They changed their policy and stopped multiplying small dose
rates by large populations to get large numbers after that because the linear-
no-threshold assumption has not been shown to be applicable at very low doses.
Their later reports do not give any large numbers like this.

~~~
vilhelm_s
But that's just even more arbitrary, right? It just means nobody knows how
many deaths it caused, and there is an uncertainty of an order of magnitude
based on how the effects of very low doses.

------
epistasis
The show's writer has been pretty clear that he sees this story as a
cautionary tale about our current governments ideological refusal to accept
climate science and the politically driven lies that dominate all public
discussion.

And when the ruling party has taken that same anti-science attitude when
dismantling our pandemic response (as well as all other areas where the US has
strong science), we now end up with massive loss of life, and massive economic
losses, that would have been completely unnecessary with just a small amount
of scientific leadership.

And I don't think any of us realized how quickly our science and leadership
had been dismantled. There were cautionary stories telling us this in 2018
when it happened, but with all the other distraction and lying going on, it
was completely lost.

Other countries hadn't realized just how far we had fallen either, and our
lack of throwing up a warning signal probably made other countries think that
SARS-CoV-2 wasn't as threatening as it was, because we were all used to
competent pandemic response being helpers by the US. For example, during our
prior president's term, we helped a lot with Ebola, which our current
president criticized heavily, yet when given a chance to respond, did not
manage it any better than Italy or Spain, and in fact quite a bit worse than
those governments.

The cost of lies are massive. A few people in tech, including some prominent
investors, think that politics is a realm where reality can be manufactured.
And to some degree it can, particularly with economics. But when it comes to
the physical world, such attitudes are disasters waiting to happen.

------
perfunctory
> Chernobyl is ultimately a deeply frightening story about the danger of
> refusing to accept reality in favor of political ideology. The Soviet Union
> provided many examples of this danger, but such refusal is not only a Soviet
> phenomenon. Chernobyl is a reminder that lies have a cost and, eventually,
> reality will catch up with you.

As a thought experiment, substitute climate change for Chernobyl and US for
Soviet Union.

~~~
diego_moita
To be fair, the US is not the only country going through this ideological
denialism. Most countries in the world are.

Some (e.g.: Brazil), are even worse than the US.

~~~
lisper
Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it OK.

------
oldsklgdfth
At various points in the series, the motives of different characters are shown
to be driven by external incentives: \- the chief scientist wants to pass this
test and get promoted \- the manager guy received a medal for completing the
reactor construction early. he also had to maintain output to meet quota for
the month \- the local council decided to not evacuate because the would get
some recognition.

There are many characters that are so caught up with their own rat race that
they are oblivious to reality.

I find this somewhat analogous to large corps and middle management. (a recent
example is Well Fargo and the multiple accounts scandal).

It's interesting how these types of structures (i guess i'd call it
bureaucracy) are independent of political and financial systems.

~~~
marcosdumay
They are not independent of political systems. When you have an independent
party check the work and incentives that align with doing the right thing, the
right thing gets done.

In general, the most authoritarian the political system, the less you have
both of those conditions.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
> When you have an independent party check the work

I'm not sure what you mean, like an outside auditor?

> In general, the most authoritarian the political system, the less you have
> both of those conditions.

I agree with this statement, but I don't necessarily believe the opposite is
true.

------
blululu
The irony here is that the miniseries was itself propaganda denouncing lies.
The underlying point rings true, but I kept seeing people watch it and feel
somehow superior to those backwards soviets whilst seeing such a stacked
narrative. As someone who used to work with radiation this really annoyed me.

The other thing I will add is that the miniseries drew heavily from Svetlana
Alexievich’s master work ‘Voices of Chernobyl’, which I cannot recommend
enough. Perhaps what really annoyed me is that the miniseries did a second
rate job retelling people’s stories, while the book was so rich.

~~~
epistasis
> but I kept seeing people watch it and feel somehow superior to those
> backwards soviets

Wow, that is _not_ the message that I got _at all_ and I didn't hear anybody
else say that either.

It seems to be quite the opposite, we see lots of extremely skilled, brave
people in the face of disaster and an oppressive social structure. If
anything, it seemed to make explicit parallels between the current US people
and our current political battles.

For example. the scene with the Ukrainian babushka milking the cow. Holy crap
that was touching and felt so human. Made me feel so connected to a people on
the other side of the world.

~~~
blululu
>> For example. the scene with the Ukrainian babushka milking the cow. Holy
crap that was touching and felt so human. Made me feel so connected to a
people on the other side of the world.

In that case I would highly recommend reading 'Voices of Chernobyl' \- that
scene (an several others) is lifted from it, and in my opinion Svetlana
Alexievich is simply more talented and qualified to tell these people's
stories.

~~~
erosb
> in my opinion Svetlana Alexievich is simply more talented

or simply it is just the matter of difference between textbook and screenplay.

------
idoubtit
> such refusal [of reality] is not only a Soviet phenomenon

Indeed. A few recent US lies that caused many deaths and made millions of
people suffer in the Middle East :

\- Saddam Hussein had mass destruction weapons. (Iraq)

\- The USA want a new relation will the Muslim people of Middle East, not with
their dictators. (Egypt, Yemen)

\- Chemical attacks would cross the red line. (Syria)

\- Libya was about to massively kill rebels, so some countries will bring
airplane protection.

\- Iran is a terrorist country.

------
arbuge
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth... sooner or later, that debt is
paid."

------
egao1980
The series is just a bunch of propagandist BS in a very nice package. The
amazing number of factual errors given that not only documents but documentary
footage are available along with internationally verified reports.

~~~
verelo
Can you outline a few for us?

~~~
egao1980
Presented in random order: \- Helicopter fell after entangling the rotor
blades 6 months after the events;

\- Scuba divers knew the layout of the station, there were ankle high of water
and 2 of them are still alive, third died of unrelated causes;

\- Legasov was talking to Scherbina about failures of evacuation during
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident)
and not about how reactor works as it was common knowledge and Scherbina was
experienced engineer who supervised energy sector in USSR;

\- there were no forced labor neither for miner nor soldiers;

\- miners knew and well respected Schadov, who was a miner himself. Needless
to mention that he never came to any of the mines - there was a broadcast
message that called for volonteers.

\- Miners were enthusiastic and well compensated - they competed to go to the
shaft. And they used proper tools. Documentary video exists.

\- Vodka drinking in the middle of the harshest prohibition in Russian
history. People could not get ANY alcohol for weddings still series shows
vodka drinking on a high security object;

\- Cherenkov radiation couldn't be visible in that situation;

\- evacuation was swift and well organized;

\- Legasov was not doing all the calculations alone he was a head of a whole
institute;

\- In helicopter scene Scherbina not only knew how reactor works but could not
threaten Legasov as a) he can't order soldiers because chain of command b)
Legasov has roughly the same political standing in USSR. Not to mention that
Scherbina was quite nice person and was focussed on a problem at hand.

I can continue...

~~~
eunoia
> 2 of them are still alive, third died of unrelated causes;

I’ve seen a number of different ends (continuations?) posited for these 3
guys. I tried to research and found about as much evidence that they lived
happily ever after as they died immediately (i.e it’s a black hole of
conjecture based on the particular writer’s feelings towards the Soviet
Union).

Can you point me towards evidence?

~~~
blix
Here's an inteview with one of them from 2019 [1], which would be pretty hard
if he immediately died. I have never found any piece of evidence that they
immediately died; most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO
series as if it were a documentary.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOo3Rp7rCE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqOo3Rp7rCE)

~~~
dmit
> most sources that say this seem to draw it from the HBO series as if it were
> a documentary

That would be strange, because the series didn't show them die. And one of the
epilogue screens said: "It has been widely reported that the three divers who
drained the bubbler tanks died as a result of their heroic actions. In fact,
all three survived after hospitalization. Two are still alive today."

~~~
blix
The show itself makes a big deal of the 'suicide mission' nature of the task.
I'm not sure many viewers bothered watching the epilogue.

