Off-Topic Discussion > General Discussion
HBO's Chernobyl
General Battuta:
--- Quote from: Rhymes on May 11, 2019, 07:18:39 pm ---Also, the bridge those people are standing on is nicknamed the Bridge of Death because all of the people watching the fire from there (supposedly) died, either from radiation sickness or cancer. Unfortunately I can't find any sources to verify that--might have been exaggerated recollections from the survivors.
In terms of what's verifiable, Lyudmilla, Vasily the firefighter's pregnant wife? Her baby was born with serious birth defects and died after a few days. Whether that exposure happened on the bridge or not I'm not sure, but I wouldn't say it strains credulity.
--- End quote ---
Well if that's true color me dumb (and more credit to the show)! But I would definitely want sources. There are a lot of Chernobyl legends, like the suicide mission to do something or other in radioactive water, where the dead people turned out to be alive and just fine.
e: I don't see where there's room in the accepted casualty figures for those deaths. If they all died of cancer, maybe...but the radiation sickness deaths outside of the liquidators definitely seem like they were <100, probably <50 even at the most pessimistic.
karajorma:
I don't think whether the people on the bridge actually died or not is as important to that scene as the terrifying fact that we don't know what health effects it actually had on them.
General Battuta:
I would like to take that angle on it, but I wonder if the show is going to take sides on whether the Bridge of Death was an urban legend, a hysterical product of traumatized evacuees, or something that actually happened and was covered up.
karajorma:
Yep. That is one thing that worries me too. It would be pretty easy to sensationalise just to make things look worse. I'd prefer to see them keeping things closer to what is know, it's not like that wasn't bad enough.
jr2:
Well, (the following is all to the best of my recollection) to get the jump on anyone thinking nuclear is terrible: (not saying anyone here has, mind you) that whole reactor was a very, very unsafe design by any standard and the operators were forced by political numb nuts to push it outside of its designed parameters to run a dumb test, over their objections. The whole thing was a mess from top to bottom. Not that Three Mile Island wasn't a fiasco, what with the poorly labeled controls, control indicators being wired to switch position rather than actual valve position (yes, indeed the switch is in the right position but the valve is stuck!) but at least it was (comparatively) no big deal as far as the effect. And Fukishima with their coolant backup generators being under sea level in a Tsunami prone area.
Nuclear is actually the safest form of energy generation bar none. It's just one of those things that (like travel by aircraft) goes very, very bad in a very spectacular way when faults, mistakes, and human error do line up in a perfect chain of unfortunate events. And like nuclear, even with that being the case, it's still safer than traveling by automobile.
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