Transcript
Speaker: Hello, hello, and welcome to part two. Did we actually intro this episode at all? I think so. Or do we not usually? And we did too, we did too. Yeah, that's your business when you do do it at the end. Yeah, when I do the other, we'll find out. I'm just here to talk shit and then you have to sit through it after. I used to see the steam coming up across the street. It looks very cool.
Speaker: It's so strange because it feels like it's off screen to me. But yeah, because I literally, I made two cups of tea because I know how fast I drink it. And one is in a travel box. It does cool down quick. I'm on it. I'm on it. Welcome back to part two, where we will be discussing the context of the Chernobyl Diaries because as established,
Speaker: Chernobyl was a real event. Yeah, it was a real thing that happened. The effects are still being felt to this day. But before we get into that, I have a few... Did you know things about the film? Yep. Also, I just mentioned earlier that part of the film was filmed in Ukraine, Serbia and Hungary.
Speaker: But one of those shots, which we saw when they went underground, it was actually a World War II bunker.
Speaker: Oh yeah, that would make sense. They use that as part of that. And Oren Pelly, the director for this, who also wrote it, he's the one who did the paranormal activities. And you can kind of see that through like the video vlog styles and how he wigs that into it, that you can actually see it's, he's got that vlog type style. That style really well. Yeah, he's got it down.
Speaker: There was a scene where they're trying to escape the building. You know, and there's a glass door. And they're trying to hit it with a tire iron and a chair and it just won't break to begin with. There is a continuity arrow there where Michael hands him under a tire iron and then tries to break it with a chair and then
Speaker: In the next shot, he's still holding the tyre iron, as if he never actually gave it to her. Oh, I mean, I'm writing, I'm taking notes, I'm looking down. I just kind of assumed that he was like, give me that back. And then after he breaks the glass and they all flinch away, Amanda has the tyre iron again. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: yeah well you know i'm the thing is i know some people get so oh continuity errors take you out of it i love them i don't know
Speaker: I guess I just kind of, I don't mind them at all. Like I know the fact that when you film it, you don't film everything. And this wasn't a big enough one for it to actually affect the film. I just love just finding these things in films. It gives you like that little ooh. It's like a little treasure hunt kind of thing. Whenever there's a clock in the background of a scene, I like seeing
Speaker: Yeah but are they still keeping the time right? I think it was about 13 minutes into the film when they run the van on the way in. Michael has his hat on and then in the next shot it's off and then next shot it's back on and it's within like a sack up to his hat. I just love picking up on these things. His head was too hot and then it was too cold very quickly.
Speaker: You just need that quick, like, let it breathe. Just for a second. And I mentioned earlier that a cameraman was visible in one of the shots. There was another point where you could actually, in the reflection of Augusto, see the red light reflection from one of the actual cameras. The camera. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Love it. Because at the end of the day, you know, it's a film. Yeah. People who are like, it takes you out of it. It's like a film.
Speaker: And there's one point in the subtitles where it says that Yuri is speaking Russian, where he's actually speaking Ukrainian. Excuse me. Subtitles, come on. But there was a... I'm just going up to the top of my notes. So my notes pages is like 15 pages long, so I'm just gonna... We love it, we love it. I really did open the floodgates with last episode, didn't I? Yeah. It's like, oh, we can... We can do this now, this is an auction. We can do some floodgates. Nice.
Speaker: Yeah, the bit where it looks like nature has really taken over. I love that moment. And there's a fact that I love about that nature has actually taken over quite a lot, and especially this particular town in Pripyat. And nature has adapted so well to like the radiation levels there.
Speaker: It's continued to push through and grow and find ways to adapt around it, like with the plants and stuff. And in 1991, researchers found a type of fungus that was grown in Chernobyl. And this particular fungus has adapted to be able to metabolize radiation for energy. So it's using this radiation to give itself energy and to keep on living.
Speaker: And I know people who are like into the last of us are going to be like, yeah, but the scientists have studied that and are using it in the International Space Station to investigate whether this type of fungus can function as a radiation shield in space. Oh, that's so good because it will just like you use all the radiation up and then you can harness that energy to like
Speaker: powered a ship that's cool that's good i just love that could you also like could you do research into like i don't know coating nuclear power with this fungus yeah or like because one of the one of the main negatives of
Speaker: of nuclear power is that the, the rods that you use stay irradiated for like millennia. But if you could, yeah. Little mushroom boxes. Little mushroom boxes to just coat everything. Mushrooms truly are the best. I, there's a documentary on Netflix that I watched, if you haven't.
Speaker: It's so interesting about mycelium and, and fungicides. It's really good. It is very, very much funded by people who are like, everyone should do shrooms. So it is very kind of like, Hey man, if you're not doing shrooms, you're not unlocking your brain. And it's like, okay guys, calm down. But all, all the science bits about mushrooms is really interesting.
Speaker: And then there's lots of like, have you done shrooms yet? I'm like, let's, let's stick to the science. But the science of mushrooms is, it's amazing. It's amazing. Like the mycelium. Cause you know about how the actual mushrooms essentially just the genitalia. Yeah. It's the flower. It's not the actual fungus. The fungus is the bit that's underground and it can spread from the miles and miles, but the mushroom, it's the, it's like the flower. It's what is the spores that.
Speaker: reproductive organs yeah yeah and forests use the mycelium to talk to each other like there's this thing that they've shown that like if a tree there's something wrong obviously some fungus are parasitic like if there's like a parasite it's getting that's killing a tree the
Speaker: mother tree is able to communicate to her children through like warning warnings of this space is dangerous get gone and then they can try and spread further and it's so oh mushrooms man let's make mushroom boxes for everything the thing that I know about how nature is reclaiming is one bit that links back into the
Speaker: film is the bit with the dogs and how like animals just aren't scared of people. It's something that I know a lot of people have mentioned when they come back, you animals are not scared because they're so not used to seeing people that they're just kind of like, you know, like, the reason animals are scared of us is because they've been hunted. And so they've experienced the worst of us.
Speaker: And so the animals around Chernobyl are just like, Oh, cool. What is that mostly? But actually, where did I Yeah, yeah, there is there is an endangered horse that was basically thought to be extinct, but is now making a massive comeback and is actually kind of thriving.
Speaker: due to the exclusion zones. It's just this completely unhumaned area. And this type of course. And it's given these angles this safe environment to be able to come back. Yeah, and it's one of those things that's so lovely, but also is very kind of much, you know, during the pandemic when everyone was like, maybe we're the virus. Yeah, because there's the whole dolphins were coming back into the lakes of Venice, and nature was coming back into places that good people had destroyed and stuff.
Speaker: yeah and it's just oh we have to fully be locked out of the place to have it thrive again we have to fully have irradiated an area so much to the point that we can't go for these horses to be like yeah sick our place but yeah literally this endangered horse is
Speaker: making a massive comeback now. That's so good. Yeah, so good. So cool. And yeah, and also with the kind of with the fact of it being a completely abandoned town. Yeah, there are areas that are but where obviously where it's the higher radiation but there are people that can that like you said they still work there in Pripyat and there's still people there. There's a hotel. There's a hotel that you can go and stay at.
Speaker: And yeah, when I, because I know I wasn't meant to be doing research, but like did nervous for, I think one time when I was looking it up, it is 15 days. So the staff - It's 15 on, 15 off. Yeah. Yeah. And then they have to be fully like checked over. And it does get to a point where if you're too irradiated, you just have to not work out properly. Like they constantly check your levels. And you know, they're having people because at this point,
Speaker: It did happen. It was 1986. 30? Yeah, so it happened 37 years ago. Seven brings us to... Seven years brings us to 93. Yeah, it was 37 years ago. Yeah, there have been people in that time who have reached that radiation limit. And they're like, okay, I gotta find a new job. But it's like, people are still there. It's not completely abandoned. It's not. Yeah, it's not a ghost town.
Speaker: And also people do have to go back and keep track of it. Yeah. And like keep track of the levels, what's going on, what's happening. Is there any changes? Are the buildings as well? And extreme tourism. Yeah. Tourism and buildings, are they still secure? Yeah. Because the thing is, there's still, I think in terms of the nuclear actual material fallout is still there.
Speaker: because obviously they can't take it away. When, are we going to talk about the actual disaster? Um, I was going to say a little on it. Yeah. Because I think you should acknowledge that it was, because it was such a huge thing. And it didn't, whilst the main effects was in Ukraine and like the surrounding countries, the rest of the world did feel the effects of it as well. Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Well, I basically was going to say in terms of the nuclear material,
Speaker: is that they basically have to put a massive dome over it to contain it. And over time, that does great. So they're gonna have to put another, because you can't take that dome away. You are just gonna have to keep growing, because that's the only way to deal with it. So yeah, they do have to very much monitor that. Yeah, yeah. But the buildings, I mean, the pictures, do you remember where I got
Speaker: a lot of this information from is actually the number one old man of the world, David Attenborough, because there was a, like one of his documentaries was about they had a section on, you know, nature reclamation, and they talked about it. And that's where they talked about the horse. I didn't see that. Yeah, these aerial shots of
Speaker: of propiat is insane because it is literally, you know, trees growing out of buildings. Yeah, I always find it so funny how across the road from where I used to live, there was this tree, like in very, very small, like, you know, sapling that was growing out of a chimney across the road from me. But it was literally like it had, it had just the bark, the trunk. Again, like you could put your
Speaker: you could like make a loop around it with your fingers. So it was very thin, but it was literally, and it was just growing out of the chimney. It spanned away. I'm going to do my best impression. Life finds a way.
Speaker: Jurassic Park. I can never do the like, because the thing is you never, you always chicken out. You can never do a pause as long as he does. No. Because you get that awkward feeling and you're like, am I pausing too long? Even though you notice a very long pause. No one can do it like Jeff. No. But life does by the way. And that's what's happened. That's what happened on my neighbour's roof. I was probably loving the heat of the chimney.
Speaker: Yeah, I would be getting good sunlight. Oh yeah, right on top, yeah. As well, the radiation levels of the nuclear explosion that happened at Chernobyl, the radiation released was 400 times greater than that of the Hiroshima atomic bomb in World War II.
Speaker: And we all know how bad that was, so that on a scale, for those who don't know, 400 times worse in radiation, that's shit done. That's very... A literal shit done. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is so... It's so crazy, because again, with Hiroshima or Hiroshima... I've said it both ways. Yeah, like...
Speaker: again, the effects of that are still up to two degrees so and it was a lot more recent so obviously it's still
Speaker: Because like some of the radiation was felt as far as the UK and some parts of it is still has trace elements of that radioactivity. And I think there's some in Cornwall and there's two other places in Wales, Cloid and Guinev. It's Cumbria, I think not Cornwall. You can still now find trace elements of that radiation.
Speaker: and because they had, so the cities that had severe rainfall coming down at the time of the explosion, it carried it, the rain carried it across. Yeah, because I was gonna say it's strange that it's affecting Wales.
Speaker: And that's on the opposite side to Europe. But it's because it came across from the rain. And where's it gonna rain? It's gonna rain anywhere, it'll rain in Wales. But a lot of farming, especially in the UK, was after this event happened, was you could no longer sheep. The selling of sheep was no longer done for quite a while.
Speaker: for consumption because there was radioactive fallout that hit the ground and of course the sheep be eating that and so you can't eat the sheep so there was a ban on sheep. How did whales cope? But no, it was the fourth reactor that went off which was the reactor that was mentioned in the film.
Speaker: And it was a system malfunction and the water cooling system didn't work properly. Um, and it wasn't the guards, the science man at the time noticed and we're trying to explain to the higher up people who weren't scientists that were in charge being like, Hey, we need to evacuate. Now we need to close this down. We need to shut it off. Um, because this will happen. And they were like, Oh no, we'll be fine. No more than that. They had a system.
Speaker: where if there was an error and there was no, basically, the way nuclear power works is you need, it gets really hot pretty quickly. Yeah, and you need that cooling system. Yeah, but it's the cooling system, but it's also how it makes the energy, because you are turning water to steam and that's turning a turbo. Welcome to Science Corner. And so basically, it's this thing that you need to keep the water moving
Speaker: otherwise it gets really hot really quick and that's bad. They had a fail safe that if there was something with the nuclear power, because basically if something happens with the nuclear power, it stops the water moving. So they had a backup generator that was a diesel generator, but the diesel generator took 60 seconds to warm up. And in those 60 seconds, you can get a hell of a lot of steam and a Chernobyl can happen, essentially.
Speaker: but because they basically were like some science blokes and possibly women were like hold on while it's powering down it's still producing a lot of steam so surely we can find a way to harness that to bridge those 60 seconds so you had this big kind of idea that they're like this should work
Speaker: we need to test it. There was this one scientist that was in that reactor, but that was at least one that was saying, no, this won't work. So what happened is they had a scheduled shutdown. They had a scheduled shutdown and they were like, perfect, we'll test it here. We've run the numbers, it should work. Then there was another, I think it was like a fossil fuel reactor that was down elsewhere. So more energy was put on.
Speaker: Chernobyl reactor. You can't do your schedule. Shut down. Other places aren't eating that. Yeah, we need you to keep up the energy. And also we need you to increase the energy slightly. So already they're working at levels that they didn't expect to. So the day shift was all ready to do this test. Then it gets all the way to evening. And then the night shift comes in. And they're saying, we shouldn't do this test. Because one with a night shift, we like
Speaker: There's less energy needed at night. We are not, not that we're not trained, but this isn't - And they're not up to date on the current situation. No, but that's when, what was his name? I remember his surname was Dyatlov, because I always think of Dyatlov past, the man who said, this is going ahead. He was like, no, no, no, this is going ahead. And yeah, there was an engineer.
Speaker: in who was like kind of saying we shouldn't do this and he was 26. And he wasn't taken seriously. No, probably because he was 26 but also. Yeah he was 26 and he was an engineer and he kept saying this won't work it's going to be a massive fallout and they weren't listening to him. And I think it was one of those things where a lot of the other scientists consensus was
Speaker: This should work, but we shouldn't test it when we're not ready to test it. Essentially like leave it to the day shift, have it fully organized. Don't rush this if we don't know what's happening. Yeah. So yeah. So they continued with the shutdown and basically to be able to use the power and down energy
Speaker: you need to keep your output at 700. Yeah, it needs to be a consistent level. And the line is 700. And it's 26 year old. Basically, again, I don't know how scientific do we need to go with the control rods? Explain fission. Yeah, I think because some listeners may not. I remember doing fusion and fission in GCSE physics. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so the cliff notes is there's fusion and there's fission.
Speaker: Fusion is merging particles and that's what happens in the sun and we can't do that on earth and fission is splitting atoms apart like bigger atoms and when you split an atom apart basically you hit it, it splits and then those split bits hit other atoms and they split and that's where you get this chain reaction and that's why nuclear power is so good
Speaker: because you only need to put a tiny amount of effort to give it a tiny little... It's a chain reaction. It keeps itself going, but it's also really dangerous because it can keep itself going to the fact where it's a runaway chain reaction and gets bigger. It needs to be like a containment system. Yeah. And that containment is control rods. So essentially these control rods absorb the nuclear material.
Speaker: So if you put it in a tiny amount, they absorb not a lot and there's lots of particles bouncing around to do more reacting. If you put them in a medium amount, it probably absorbs half and it's a more stable reaction. And if you put them fully in, it absorbs all of the particles and there's no reaction. The reaction stops. So that's basically the easiest of the control rods.
Speaker: So what this, I think his name was Leonard, that's a 26 year old. I can't remember his name. Don't worry. Basically, he had to keep at over 700, but he didn't really want to do this anyway. So I'm putting absolutely no blame at his doorstep. He put the control rods too far in. So that output was only 30. It's quite a difference. Which, quite a difference, which basically meant that the water stopped moving.
Speaker: And the three divers were sent in to try and fix this issue manually. Yeah, three divers went in to try and by hand fix this situation. Those are the three divers and 31 workers. No, I think it was 31 in total, including the divers. So what happened is the water wasn't moving. And so Dyatlov was like, we need to get the water moving quick. And Dyatlov
Speaker: scheme to get the water moving quick was essentially to remove all of the control rods. And he even, there were 211, like fail safe control rods. And if something's called a fail safe, and basically he ordered for all of the fail safe control rods to be removed. So there were only 18, again, fail safe.
Speaker: So nearly 200 of them out. And that's your last hope kind of thing. Because essentially the water wasn't moving. He was like, yikes, we need to pick the energy up. But you also need those rods to be able to control the reaction. That's the thing. It's nuclear power. The thing with nuclear power is it gets going quick and it keeps going quick. Once it starts, it starts. He was like, oh no, we need to get this moving quick. It's like saying, oh no, we need to get this going.
Speaker: It's like, I'm trying to toast a marshmallow and it's not toasting quick, I'll set it on fire, is essentially what that is. And it's like, yeah, I guess that means it's toasted, it also means it's on fire. And that's when, and again, the other thing with the chain reaction is within the water, it had a chain reaction of
Speaker: the water was heating up and turning into steam. And it's evacuating the water which means there's less of the water and they needed more of that. Yeah and also it was increasing the pressure which kind of was again stopping it moving and it basically every it's a feedback loop. It's a feedback loop and that's when a fire started in the
Speaker: for reactor but because they dismantled so many of the safety features they actually didn't know how bad it was well that too but they didn't know how bad it was like a fire started and they were like oh it's a fire call the fire engine in and so there were these firefighters literally going in
Speaker: normal fire gear putting out a fire and it was a nuclear fire because they were unaware of this radiation level situation that was happening and those firefighters like literally died within the day most of them like within the hours pretty much because they were literally just going into like a
Speaker: pure radiation, essentially. And I know the workers of the plant who, they, so the 31 of them, they died within three months because of the radiation levels. Yeah. Yeah. And they, so there was the initial explosion and then the firefighters came in and then there was a secondary explosion. Yeah. And I think that's when the kind of roof blew off.
Speaker: And they still didn't evacuate anyone from the town. Yeah, because they were calling the people in the room thing where all the controls are. They were calling up this higher up person who is in charge, being like, this is going on. We need to evacuate. We need to put these procedures in place. And this higher up person was just like one of these men with money type people. He was not an actual scientist. He wasn't quite on.
Speaker: and was like no it's just fine just keep doing what you're doing yeah yeah i think he he because he fully survived yeah and i think he did get imprisoned yeah he was yeah and it just it just kept on going badly
Speaker: Because by the time they finally said, okay, we need to a fast way, they only told them they would be gone, they would be gone for three days, which is another reason why like, nothing's passed. Yeah, because they had five minutes leave and they were told it was three days, that they'd be gone, you'd be able to come back. So you know, you're not really going to take stuff if you're like, Oh, I can just come back to it. Yeah, yeah. Like it's, it's completely fine. So yeah, and then and then there was this whole thing where you had
Speaker: the nuclear material. I'm no good with the timeline of this. I just know various bits of the terrible thing. There was this bit where essentially all of this nucleographite and lead got ejected. And it kind of landed on the roof of this building. And later when they had to try and contain it,
Speaker: they couldn't because it was all on the roof. So they needed to clear the debris off the roof. Yeah, they need to clear the area. And they sent in robots. And the radiation was so high that it malfunctioned for robots. So they sent in people. Yeah. And essentially, people had three seconds, or it was like a it was like a yes, like you have before the radiation is going to get you.
Speaker: So what we want you to do, we want you to run here, pick up, grab something, chuck it off the roof. Don't even hold it, chuck it off the roof because all we need is to have a roof cleared and that's it. Run, chuck, go. And that's how long you have. And these people were called biorobots and I don't know how many of them died because also
Speaker: No one, the other thing about Chernobyl is no one knew what was going on. Yeah, it was very kept in the dark, secretive. I know the Soviet Union still has the death toll for Chernobyl disaster as 31 people when it's actually killed thousands. Yeah, yeah. And when they, because they didn't say anything about it at all, the only way that the world kind of found out
Speaker: can't remember which country it is, but it was another European, like mainland European country. Basically, they had their own nuclear power station, and they're reading stuff going through the roof, they were picking up something else and they were like, what's going on? Okay, what's wrong? What's wrong? Check the system. Nothing appears to be wrong with theirs. They were like, okay, yeah, let's call the next closest.
Speaker: let's see. I think there was like a board of nuclear like, yeah, let's call call for higher ups. And that's when the USSR had to make a statement. But they all they said was, there has been a malfunction at Chernobyl power station. The residents have been evacuated and all who have been affected are being treated. That was not like
Speaker: Yeah, we're currently using humans as robots. And there was another bit where... Because now all of the water that does the water cool in water is already... And it was sat right above the water reservoirs for the country's drinking water. So they had to go in and find... Because basically that's not where it usually is.
Speaker: there was a crack it spilled in. Some people had to go in and find a way to divert the water. Yeah, I think this is what one of the jobs of the divers were as well was to fix this issue to stop any more radiation getting into the water supply and effect and everywhere else. Yeah, but it was this thing where I remember, I can't remember the degree, like how hot it was, but it was so hot that they basically had to just work in a t -shirt because they
Speaker: And then obviously, that's not radiation proof. So, yeah. But I know the three divers, all of them survived. All three of them survived. And the shift leader, his name was Boris Baranov. He died in 2005. And I think Valerie Best -Pelov and Olexi Ananeko, who are both the chief engineers of one of the reaction sections. I know as far as 2021, they were still alive and living in Kiev.
Speaker: Hey, raise your toes to a real one. I mean, it is, yeah, like, like, yeah, the 26 year old who said this should not go ahead. I know that he pretty much died.
Speaker: in the initial fire or... Yeah, because he didn't quite want to help, but he was also like, well, this needs to be done. And so he was like, okay. He said it should not happen, but obviously if they say go ahead, you're like, right, if it has to go ahead, I'm going to be the one to do it because I want it to be done right. But as well, what I take issue with with the film is how they portray these victims of radiation.
Speaker: People are still experiencing radiation from Chernobyl now. It's still an ongoing thing. And even countries in surrounding areas like parts of Russia, Serbia, Hungary, Belarus, they're all still getting cancer from the radiation that's in the ground. They're all
Speaker: I know there's been spikes in leukemia from it amongst children being born. And so a lot of people don't make it past into adulthood because of all this. It's still going on. And the way this film portrayed these radiation victims was kind of like the living dead. Yeah, the zombies.
Speaker: I would almost classify it as a zombie film. In some scenes they look like vampires, in some they look like zombies. They really reminded me of The Descent. So what I thought it was a good film, I also think I do take issue with how victims were represented.
Speaker: I think at the end of the day it's a horror film and it is still a work of fiction but I think they could have done it a slightly different way instead of having them as... I think if you're gonna have the whole there's irradiated people there there's no way and that's the horror there's no way of doing that without them being zombies or you know what I mean like the living dead exactly what you said like
Speaker: zombie esque. I think the bits were early on in the film, the montage, those were done very well. Yeah, those were done very well and highlighted just how, just what it looks like, how it is there. I think that bit was done well. And Yuri was really good. I really liked seeing Yuri's face. And his face, he really saw a sadness in his face when they were going through.
Speaker: I yeah I think um yeah that was really good I think but again like especially when they highlighted when you highlighted the fact that they didn't have time to pick up anything they just had to leave things like that when they did things like that I thought was good I just I just sort of feel like to a certain extent I don't think I really mind the kind of tone death nature of the end
Speaker: because I kind of feel like that's the medium that it is. Whilst I do have those issues, it's also a conspiracy theory film. It's kind of like, there's TV, there's the... Yes, so I would say, there's the Chernobyl series. Yeah, I remember, I think I saw that as part of my friend's X -ray level.
Speaker: we did the, we watched the series that was like the documentary of what happened. Yeah, yeah. I feel like there is enough sensitive material that I'm not as
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, like, like, like exactly, like you said, like, they have basically be turned into zombies. But to a certain extent, I'm fine with that. It because again, I didn't really know if they were meant to be the residents if they were meant to be. So yes, it was so it was so disconnected from people, but I kind of was not seeing them as people affected by
Speaker: i was like and now it's a zombie film yeah it's like when i was when watching it until the end you kind of get the feeling that i thought for me you kind of got the feeling that they were
Speaker: distill there, people living in the town, and they've been affected by this radiation. And then at the end, you see with this, where it comes to the government bit, that it's lab testing and it's... They're trying to find the mushrooms. They need the mushrooms. That's what they're doing. They're just trying to find the mushrooms in the people. I think that ending with the labs brings it back into the fact that this is not quite actually
Speaker: about the people as people. Yeah, yeah. I feel like this is one of those things, you know how usually we say, okay, that's the film now with the context, what do you think now? This is a film that we kind of can't do that because I feel like there are probably people who don't know about Chernobyl. Yeah, which is why, yeah, because I know the amount that I know because I studied it
Speaker: in one of my modules. And I know VML but I know because I've hyper fixated on it. And so like I know there are people who don't know as much and especially with this film with I thought we should like give a bit of the actual events that happen especially to people who may not know. I just feel like I can't give like how we usually do I can't really give like a
Speaker: Ooh, pre -context I thought this, and now post -context I feel this. Watching it, I was like, oh, I know about Chernobyl. And even during the film, I was kind of sat there being like, oh, nice, Yuri's mentioned it, that it was the fourth reactor. And why are they so surprised about animals? Actually, I know that there's a breed of horse and all of that. Because we kind of had that background knowledge going into it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I would say that it's probably one of those films where context is completely neutral. If not, maybe even detrimental. Because I feel like if you think about the context too much, you get into that space of where you kind of are saying the way that they're treating these people is a bit tone deaf. I think, and this is like when I said like, if I were to recommend this to someone, which I would,
Speaker: I'd say dumb action film with a bit of good scenic thoughts, but I wouldn't say this is a hard hit and relevant film about the Chernobyl. I'd be like, this is an action horror that's got some dumb scenes, but also does in some scenes pay homage to actually what happened, you get some information. But at the end, it's still a fiction and it's still a horror.
Speaker: Like I almost feel like they give you as much of a context that you need. Like Yuri says, like if you went into it knowing completely nothing, Yuri gives you the information that he would need. Like he points out, like that was the reactor. And he tells you that that's what it was. He gives you the information that they didn't have time to leave. He gives you the information like how the fire ground was never used. Yeah. And the fact that it was like a failed safety procedure thing. Like
Speaker: all of that. You don't need any more than what the film gives you. But
Speaker: us being us, we like to delve into remorse. Yeah. So yeah, that was the film. And yeah, I've got a note here. It's about 98 ,000 people within like the close time of the disaster died. But the Soviet Union has it as 31 bloody workers. And it only has workers. It doesn't include the other people affected. And people are still dying now from this.
Speaker: like like we said about the liver yeah and it's like um crops like you know with like children in Belarus the a lot of their crops are still contaminated they have they're still exposed to certain levels of cesium -137 which affects your immune system which weakens it and makes you die younger causes all these different illnesses and there was
Speaker: There's a Belarus doctor who said about four weeks away in clean, fresh air can help build your immune system back up to help them live that bit longer and give them their life. So there is this film was it just have some complaints. It did have good to it because those at least one organization someone watches film created an organization to actually help children of who are still suffering from this disaster to get those four weeks away.
Speaker: And I don't know what the original, like the one that did that, but I know there is, my church has this program thing with a church called the Chernobyl Children's International Lifeline, which was founded in 1991.
Speaker: And it's they bring people over from Belarus and surrounding areas and travel to here and give them that four weeks away, give them health care, dental care, help with their education, give them new clothes, trips to the beach, because some of them never have seen the beach.
Speaker: um a lot are orphans and so they get time they spend time like outside of an orphanage in like they get placed in with these families and they learn English they see doctors which I think is very good um but as well in more recent years as well as bringing the children in they also send workers over to Belarus as well and run camp activities out there so they so if they can't come over they give them
Speaker: help there they give yeah and they fund support for hospitals schools because a lot of people are born with disabilities because of the radiation that's still going on they give
Speaker: education for how to manage with certain disabilities and how to help and cope. Because that was something about, sorry, just thinking about the disabilities. I think this struck out to me slightly more, slightly more because we'd just watched Freaks.
Speaker: one of the Chernobyl zombies. Oh yeah, crawled on the floor. Had only had was essentially like, yeah, it was like Prince Randian and was just yeah, crawling along the floor, like on it on his belly. And that was
Speaker: I don't know, it just felt a bit jarring because you had this film from 1932 where your person who only had a torso felt very much like a human. And this one is a zombie. And that's, you know, 80 years since. Yeah.
Speaker: so that yeah yeah sorry just uh you know i remember when i saw that scene i sort of fixed as well from i was thinking yeah yeah but yeah so that was the film yeah so yes well this was a film that was a work of fiction i thought we should go into actually what happened at Chernobyl just to give people that knowledge of what happened
Speaker: because also it was only 37 years ago. Yeah it's still very recent and people are still affected by it now and it's still not very widespread known. So yeah that was the wrap -up of Chernobyl, Chernobyl Diaries 2012. Thank you for listening. Next episode I will be talking about the, is it
Speaker: 70s. I want to say 70s because it feels very 70s. 72, not hard. Yeah, of course it's going to be 72. We will be discussing the 1972 classic of Blackular. That's, yeah, so buckle up on that.
Speaker: what please do feel free to watch it so you can join us in discussing that film let us know what you think as well we have instagram which is at a underscore horror underscore shared we also have an email which you can email your opinions to your thoughts any ideas any film suggestions if you have any yeah we'd love to hear from you which is a horror shared at gmail .com and until next time listen to your Geiger counter
Speaker: If you have it, listen to it. Use it. Use it. Listen to it. All of it.
