Chernobyl, 2026

I finally watched the HBO five-part miniseries Chernobyl over the past two days. I'm not sure why I didn't see it when it came out in 2019. I think it was because I was busy then with people in my family dying and a small business I was trying to launch, plus a few other things since it came out in May, that month when I'm always doing something else. 

If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. 

I've been trying to bring to mind what I remember from 1986, when the disaster occurred. It was not long before I moved to Minnesota, but after I had decided to come here. I remember hearing about it as it hit the news in the U.S. a few days later, and being freaked out about it, but no details about why it happened or anything. 

I moved here just as the Soviets were working to contain the radiation: while people were dying, and they didn't know if it would poison all of Ukraine. I don't know how soon afterward there was very complete knowledge in the West. Was it one of those stories where, by the time the Soviets let the facts out a few years later, U.S. media couldn't be bothered to make a big deal about it? Or was I just too busy with life by that point and I missed it?

I somehow managed to accumulate some general knowledge that people were evacuated from a wide area around the plant, and that the reactor was enclosed in concrete, but not how that happened. Until I watched the series, I had no idea how many people died along the way. 

This summer, I've been consuming a media diet of Soviet-life-as-cautionary-tale. First there was Star City, then Ponies, and now Chernobyl. Each show is a different example of how creating a society where people are afraid to tell the truth to the people in power above them causes dangerous problems. Chernobyl particularly emphasizes why it's a bad idea to subordinate science to political power and priorities.

It's hard to watch any of these shows in our current time without seeing them as a warning. Too bad that message appears to be too subtle for the people who should learn from it.