Chernobyl: History of a Nuclear Disaster

HBO’s Chernobyl is perhaps the finest TV series I’ve ever watched. I can't think of a better example in which a dramatized version of an historic event has been this trenchant. Every ominous scene is like a step closer to the unthinkable abyss that we all know is inevitable.

This was the very beginning of the end for the USSR, it had little to do with Captain Ronnie. The Soviet State was a rotting leviathan and Chernobyl was the most spectacular and horrifying testament to its absolute incompetence. I was living in Athens, Greece, at the time and remember vividly watching the reports of the disaster via Western news outlets as the Soviets didn't utter a word for quite a while.

So far, this series is even better than a documentary because it demonstrates the human aspect of those involved (the Ukrainians were just as much the victims of the Soviet State as everyone in the path of the nuclear cloud that enveloped much of Europe). The next cloud was made up of the lies heaped upon the disaster by the Central Committee which surely doomed thousands of citizens living near the plant.

I’m too impatient to wait for the next installment next week so I started reading Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. The book reads like a thriller. I literally can’t put it down. I woke up last night with my eBook on my face, read some more, and passed out again.

It’s hard to laugh when you’re reading in the fetal position, but this part struck me as the epitome of gallows humor. One nuclear scientist working on cleaning up the disaster gives safety advice to another nuclear scientist just arriving, “If you smell ozone, run!”

The most terrifying aspect of all is to consider how our leaders today would deal with a disaster on this order. Even the monumentally corrupt Soviets of that era had some intelligent, rational people among them, which is more than you can say of Putin and Trump, and their flunkies. Trump prevaricates on matters of little or no importance; imagine his response on this sort of travesty.