>> I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.
That's the immediate death toll from radiation poisoning, not the total years lost as a result of radiation exposure. The article is correct to point out however that the total death toll must be much less than many other disasters and certainly not comparable to what people commonly believe about the death toll at chernobyl.
>>- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
>> If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented and there are photos.
Those were firefighters who ingested radioactive products in the air. Normal human tissue cannot be induced to be become radioactive. I'm not surprised that they would quarantine a firefighter and bury his body in a metal casket but that doesn't apply to the majority of the victims of radiation poising by Chernobyl. The show at one point shows such a burial for liquidators who wouldn't have radioactive material in their body and is almost certainly ahistorical. The show never makes this clear.
>>- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
He was literally standing over a tank of radioactive material when the accident occurred thus explaining the extent of his skin damage. The radiation exposure for the firefighters wouldn't have caused them to suffer skin damage to the same extent and not in the way portrayed in the film. The ingested fission products would have harmed internal tissue before reaching the surface of the body. The show's portrayal of the first responder firefighters is almost entirely completely wrong.
>>There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
I disagree and I'm quite concerned about how the show mistakenly portrays the effects of radiation. At the very least they could explained how radiation works and why the firefighters had to quarantined but they never do anything like that. Instead, we hear dramatic warnings of a thermonuclear blast unless our heroes take immediate action which is completely nonsensical.
You are perfectly right. This series was a good opportunity to actually show people how radiation works. They did make a good step by step of how the disaster unfolded though, which is great. Just above I made the point that most people don't understand how radioactivity works and they will probably mostly pick up the details of the series that are added for dramatic effect since they're mixed with real events. TV series have a strong influence on people's beliefs. My comment wasn't too appreciated.
Being irradiated does not really make human tissue radioactive. You absorb the radiation particles, not the radioactive material emitting it. But ingesting, inhaling, or absorbing the material through the skin will not only kill the person (from the inside), it will also make the remains dangerous enough to not want them seeping into the ground. Now the tissue carries around the radiation source. [0]
To use the bullet analogy from the series, what I said above is akin to being shot with bullets or ingesting a gun that's still firing. The first case might kill you, the second case will definitely kill you but it won't really kill others unless they plan on ingesting you, firing-gun and all.
That's the immediate death toll from radiation poisoning, not the total years lost as a result of radiation exposure. The article is correct to point out however that the total death toll must be much less than many other disasters and certainly not comparable to what people commonly believe about the death toll at chernobyl.
>>- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
>> If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented and there are photos.
Those were firefighters who ingested radioactive products in the air. Normal human tissue cannot be induced to be become radioactive. I'm not surprised that they would quarantine a firefighter and bury his body in a metal casket but that doesn't apply to the majority of the victims of radiation poising by Chernobyl. The show at one point shows such a burial for liquidators who wouldn't have radioactive material in their body and is almost certainly ahistorical. The show never makes this clear.
>>- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
He was literally standing over a tank of radioactive material when the accident occurred thus explaining the extent of his skin damage. The radiation exposure for the firefighters wouldn't have caused them to suffer skin damage to the same extent and not in the way portrayed in the film. The ingested fission products would have harmed internal tissue before reaching the surface of the body. The show's portrayal of the first responder firefighters is almost entirely completely wrong.
>>There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
I disagree and I'm quite concerned about how the show mistakenly portrays the effects of radiation. At the very least they could explained how radiation works and why the firefighters had to quarantined but they never do anything like that. Instead, we hear dramatic warnings of a thermonuclear blast unless our heroes take immediate action which is completely nonsensical.