I think that Chernobyl was a real life tale of cosmic horror.

A picture of the exposed core of Chernobyl reactor 4

The miniseries Chernobyl came out five years ago in 2019 after the finale of Game of Thrones. I didn't watch it back then, but I always had it on my watch list similar to titles like Succession (which I may start this weekend) and Squid Game. There was just so much interesting stuff that came out (and is coming out) that I didn't have the time to consume even a small portion of it. As you can see from my posts for the majority of January, I've been busy consuming programs and shows while on my blog hiatus at the end of 2023. I'm still not done, wanting to weigh in on Percy Jackson and All the Light We Cannot See and Foundation Season 2. So yeah...you get the idea.

Anyway, what could I say that maybe might add a little to the discussion about the miniseries Chernobyl that maybe hasn't been said yet? I have no idea, but it's a really good representation of the events that occurred when I was in Junior High (it's called Middle School now). I remember my science teacher, Mr. Roberts, talking to us about radiation. He had a Giger counter, and he stuck it out the second story window and we could hear it ticking away. He thought maybe that there was a slight bump in what it normally reads, and to be "sensational" in his own way, he declared that this might be from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. "It can reach us even so far away," he said.

The idea of something invisible like that, and that is clearly a threat is not new. But the person (I think) who captured it best was H.P. Lovecraft. So, yes, in a way I kind of think that there was something akin to "cosmic horror" regarding Chernobyl. It was a thing that the best of us...the best minds that walk among us...had difficulty wrapping their minds around. One of the characters in the show, a chemist named Valery Legasov (played expertly by Jared Harris who also stars in Foundation as Harry Seldon) explained the monster perfectly when he said that an RBMK reactor is a simple thing: either power goes up or it goes down. Controlling that power is controlling the reaction of the Uranium 235. As the Uranium reacts you insert Boron rods to absorb the bullets. This then is one failsafe. Another is water which gets boiled away, converting to steam, which then turns a turbine and out comes electricity that powers cities. And it's all done without smoke and fire and other things. The big problem then comes in keeping that water flowing and there needs to be backups for the pumps if power goes out because it's important that the reaction take place where there's plenty of water to turn into steam. And that's it.

What happened at Chernobyl (oversimplified) is that they ran a test which bottomed out the power in the reactor too long. It created this gas called Xenon which is horrible for a fission reaction. To get the power up too quickly, they pulled all of the rods out, and then the Xenon got burned off suddenly, and a full blown uncontrolled chain reaction started (like in a fission nuclear bomb) and they tried to shut it down but it was too late. All of the water vaporized due to the extreme heat and a steam explosion blew the reactor wide open, creating the radiation monster. All of this happened due to grotesque mismanagement, a toxic workplace (to say the least) with bosses demeaning and bullying other people, and then all of that combined with cheapskate building materials. You couldn't have written a more horrifying story in fiction. The fact that it really happened is the stuff of nightmares and horror.

The miniseries Chernobyl had some incredible acting and some very disturbing scenes. The radiation that slew firefighters by the dozens took its time making them decompose while still alive. They didn't even have veins left that you could use to inject morphine. Yuck. It's definitely one of those things where people (and governments) need to be okay with just allowing people to end their lives. Allowing someone to go out in that way rather than choose to take a bullet is the cruelest thing I can imagine.

Just like anything that's complex like this, I was left with questions that I probably can't find answers to. One of them is the three hundred thousand liquidators called upon to clear the three roofs before they could erect the sarcophagus. One question I had was: couldn't they have rigged up some kind of hose and water cannon thing on a crane and aimed the water cannon at the roof and knocked those pieces over into the reactor? Those water cannons that I've seen have a lot of force to them. This is just my homeowner thinking because I've used a hose to wash debris off my driveway. At least the smaller ones could have been handled that way and then the larger pieces could have been done with the soldiers who were taxed to shovel for 90 seconds (longer than that and they would just die). As it was thousands of them died anyway. The miniseries drove this home by showing one particular worker that I labeled "the clumsiest man on earth" who stumbled everywhere he went and managed to rip a hole in his suit. It was left up to the audience but you can pretty much assume that this was a death sentence to the cosmic horror radiation monster.

This is the Elephant's Foot in the basement of Chernobyl. They actually broke a piece off it using
a rifle of some kind (I believe it was an AK-47). That all seems very Russian for some reason.

After finishing Chernobyl, I thought about that situation for several hours. What a weird and otherworldly thing it ended up being, and its ruins afterwards (which have become a kind of tourist attraction) have some truly strange things in it as a result of the meltdown in reactor 4. One of the weirdest is this thing known as "The Elephant's Foot" which is made of a substance called "corium" that is a made up word (now a real word) used to describe the lava created by nuclear material when it is mixed with graphite, boron, and sand. This "Elephant's Foot" made its way into the basement of Reactor 4, melting its way down a set of pipes and through concrete. Apparently, its still melting through the concrete basement, but it hasn't moved in years. To stand near it is a death sentence as it is so radioactive that it will give you a lethal dose in mere seconds. And there's also still people who work at Chernobyl. It doesn't produce power anymore, but there will always be a need to have workers there because it needs to be watched for thousands of years. Recently they erected a new shiny steel sarcophagus over it (at least it looks like steel). It probably is made of all kinds of weird stuff to withstand radiation and earthquakes, etc. It's supposed to last a hundred years, and then it will need to be redone. It also cost $2 billion (which seems like a lot but isn't Mark Zuckerberg spending $1.7 billion on his Kuai bunker in Hawaii?). So maybe $2 billion is cheap these days. But what do I know?

Another question that pops into my head about these nuclear reactors that need to be watched is this: how exactly does this work in zombie apocalypse scenarios? For example, in The Walking Dead there is no one to watch after these nuclear reactors because a ton of people just died and became zombies. I kind of wonder if all of the nuclear reactors around the world got shut down safely before the zombie apocalypse hit. But maybe that's one of those questions that a person shouldn't ask when we are watching shows like The Walking Dead. Also, I validate you completely if you wonder why I would think of such a silly scenario. It's just how my brain works.

Have a good weekend, and on Monday I will be talking about a Walking Dead spinoff called Daryl Dixon where he ended up in France of all places. I enjoyed watching the first season...but it's really a strange twist on old characters.