mm ok i was just wondering why Gorbatchov said that they did not get enough real information from Chernobyl - and by whom does he mean? From scientists, police, some emergency organisation, KGB?

After reading your comment and hearing the vid I take it that they already organised for the worst case, but still did not exactly know what happened, with this message from Chernobyl "the reactor will be online soon again" :hmmm:

The Kiev 1st of may parade :o
And "the bridge of death", why did no one tell them.

Catfish there wasn't any "bridge of death" - it was 1:30 - everybody were sleeping and nobody had the least intention to go and see the fire - this episode is a fiction from TV series. 1'st of May demonstration however took place - my mother-in-law was in Kiev those days, took a walk to see celebration and later that year she suffered problems with thyroid and due to that a hair loss but no more than that - after some medical treatment she was ok and she is relatively ok up to present moment, thanks God and Soviet free medicine. Maybe her health problems weren't connected to Chernobyl but they happened too sudden and she was in one of regions that took most part of initial contamination.

Concerning Gorbachev - look, he was at the very top of power system. And knowing how the bureaucracy works - nobody wants to be the one that brings bad news to superior so every info about such a calamity is checked twice before sending reports up the chain and being in position when one has to send such awful report, I believe the one would want to sweeten the pill a bit. Understanding of the scale of disaster came by 15-00 of 26 th april - and that's only at the level of local authorities and it had to be translated
higher. And the chain of reports was quite long: duty shift - Head of Station - Ministry of Energy and Electrification - Central Committee of Party - Politbureau. USSR was a very very big state so number of reports in all spheres of life every day ( including urgent and top-high-importance) was slightly higher than anywhere I believe. And when something happens at some part of a state it takes time to define the importancy of this happening. So at the highest level the situation was taken as serious since evening of 26th of april, first message in Mass-Media from Council of Ministers was made on 28th of april and understanding of the situation as top-dangerous at the level of Central Committee was only by 01 of May. And Ligachev together with Ryzhkov visited the site on 2nd of May - and that's when Legasov gave them the full picture - that's 7-th and 8-th days of calamity.

^ ok after rechecking this bridge is on the fiction side of the HBO production for dramatic effect (as if this was necessary..). Thanks!

Not just HBO, I've heard about it for years in docus and written accounts.


A Finnish nuclear physicist described the show as 'good drama, but thick with long since debunked myths' or something to effect.

Fallout was going north, not south to Kiev. There was no massive threat to people marching in Kiev.

As to the decisionmaking - information had to go through the chain of command so to speak, with the top of said chain being fairly removed from nuclear matters.

Might want to recheck those fallout maps again.

ikalugin - right what I was talking about the chain of command.

Finally, one of most important participants of liquidation - the great Doctor Robert Gale himself expresses all the bsht in "Chernobyl" series : https://www.forbes.com/sites/michael.../#af6f7431e072

He says word-by-word what I've read and heard about the calamity before but I hope that getting acquainted with his view will give our Western colleagues more objective picture of how everything happened in reality.

Im not sure the Fukushima and Chernobyl can be compared in regards to evacutation. No doubt that once evacutation started at Chernobyl, it was fast.

McBeck, dr Robert Gale in his articles compares - here's the direct link to them ( there are four parts and You'll need to read them all to understand what happened in reality) https://cancerletter.com/articles/chernobyl/. And he gives short- and long- term considerations for evacuation and why it wasn't and couldn't be immediate. He event describes when, how and why was made evac of 30-km zone. I strongly recommend to everyone interested in real story to read his articles.