Is Chernobyl Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

Two years later, a man with a tape recorder

The series starts exactly two years after the accident, when the Soviet chemist Valery Legasov records his memoirs on tapes and then hangs himself in his Moscow apartment. The story then jumps back to the early hours of April 26, 1986, when the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl plant explodes. In the control room, Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov refuses to believe the core is exposed, because he has decided that is impossible, and he orders Akimov and Toptunov to pour water in by hand. Firefighters, including Vasily Ignatenko, go to put out the blaze without knowing the radiation will kill them. Civilians in Pripyat stand on a bridge to watch the fire. Plant director Bryukhanov and chief engineer Fomin lock down the city and cut the phone lines so nobody panics. Dyatlov sees dozens of first responders already sick with radiation syndrome and keeps denying the damage. Legasov is called to the Kremlin to advise Gorbachev.

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An accurate dosimeter, finally

Seven hours after the explosion, the physicist Ulana Khomyuk sees a radiation spike in Minsk and guesses it came from Chernobyl. At the hospital, Lyudmilla Ignatenko is told that Vasily, her husband, is going to Moscow along with the worst cases. At the Kremlin, Boris Shcherbina repeats Dyatlov's false report to Gorbachev, but Legasov works out that the core is open and talks Gorbachev into sending him and Shcherbina to look. Bryukhanov and Fomin accuse Legasov of spreading misinformation until General Pikalov produces a working dosimeter reading, and Shcherbina arrests them. Legasov privately tells Shcherbina that both of them have taken a lethal dose, which convinces him to evacuate Pripyat. They order the core smothered with sand and boron, not knowing the reservoirs below are full of water. Khomyuk works this out from a phone call in code and warns Legasov that the sand will heat the water into a huge steam explosion. Gorbachev picks three plant workers to drain the reservoirs, and their flashlights die in the radiation.

Tula miners dig under the reactor so the core cannot melt through

The three workers finish the job with hand-cranked flashlights and drain the basement reservoirs. Gorbachev sends miners from Tula to dig beneath the reactor and install a heat exchanger so the core cannot melt down. Shcherbina tells Legasov that the KGB is watching them openly. Legasov sends Khomyuk to question Dyatlov, Akimov and Toptunov about the cause. In Moscow, Lyudmilla finds Vasily looking better, and Legasov explains that this is only a latency period before his organs fail. Within weeks Vasily, Akimov and Toptunov all die painfully, and Akimov and Toptunov give Khomyuk their accounts first. From them she learns that pressing the AZ-5 emergency shutdown button set off the explosion, which was supposed to be impossible. Khomyuk catches Lyudmilla at Vasily's bedside and threatens the nurse who allowed it. The KGB arrests her and releases her when Legasov demands it. Lyudmilla then watches as Vasily and his fellow firefighters are put into one grave and covered with concrete.

Ninety seconds on the roof, and a very long list of pets

Legasov expands the Exclusion Zone and drafts hundreds of liquidators to decontaminate the region. One team is sent to kill every surviving pet and wild animal left behind, and this is the scene most viewers dread. It runs in the fourth episode, and soldiers shoot abandoned dogs and other animals on screen, so that stretch of the episode is the one to skip. Elsewhere in the episode, a German robot sent to clear graphite from the roof has its circuits fried, because the Central Committee had underreported the radiation to avoid embarrassment. Shcherbina and General Tarakanov instead send 3,828 liquidators up in 90-second shifts to clear it by hand. Many of those men later get cancer or have children born with defects. Despite the state's redactions, Khomyuk finds out that a design flaw makes AZ-5 briefly raise the reactor's output. Legasov already knew, since a colleague warned the Kremlin ten years earlier. Lyudmilla's baby dies within four hours of birth from radiation passed on by Vasily.

A trial where the star witness ruins the plan

The last episode opens twelve hours before the explosion, when the three managers Bryukhanov, Fomin and Dyatlov are told to cancel a safety test. They want promotions, so they wait a little and run it anyway. Back in the aftermath, the KGB rewards Legasov for leaving the AZ-5 flaw out of his Vienna talk. It also says reactor fixes can wait until after the three managers are tried, since the state plans to pin the blame on them. Legasov and Khomyuk expect the state to break its word. On the stand, Legasov lays out how those three managers pushed the reactor toward meltdown during the test. He then describes the flaw in the AZ-5 button, admits his Vienna testimony was a lie, and says Dyatlov, Akimov and Toptunov were right to think the button was safe, because the state kept the flaw secret. The KGB responds by taking his honors away and keeping him apart from other scientists.