"But we did."
Episode 1 of the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.
This story begins in Moscow on April 26, 1988. In a dreary apartment, Valery Legasov speaks into a tape recorder about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He talks about Anatoly Dyatlov, who he feels deserves death for what he had done. Finishing the tape, Legasov places it with others he made and hides it outside. He carefully avoids being seen by a car outside his apartment that is always there, watching him. Back inside, he checks his watch as he finishes a cigarette and lays out extra food for his cat. At 1:23:45, he hangs himself.
We then go to the town of Pripyat in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, approximately two years and one minute earlier. It is a planned community meant to serve the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. In an apartment, a woman named Lyudmilla Ignatenko vomits, smiling because it's a sign of her being pregnant. She goes to make a cup of tea. Outside, the power plant is visible in the distance.
Suddenly, there is a flash at the plant. It is followed by another, much larger and more intense. As Lyudmilla walks back into the living room, the entire apartment is shaken as the shockwave hits. This awakens her husband, Vasily. They look outside at the power plant, which now appears to be on fire and is shining a blue light into the sky. The entire town starts waking up to this unusual event.
Deep in the control room of Reactor 4, we meet Anatoly Dyatlov, who is stunned silent by what's happened. After hearing of a fire in the turbine hall, he concludes that the control system tank must have exploded. But then Foreman Perevozchenko runs in and says that the core exploded. Dyatlov dismisses this as shock, and shift chief Aleksandr Akimov, despite knowing that something has gone very, very wrong, reassures Perevozchenko that an RBMK reactor cannot explode. Akimov finds the control rod mechanism non-responsive, and Dyatlov leaves to lower them from the reactor's secondary control room. As he walks out into an adjacent corridor, he looks out of a row of windows that have been completely shattered by the explosion, and sees lumps of a black mineral on the ground below, but seemingly thinks nothing of it.
After a panicked-sounding operator makes a call to the Pripyat fire department, Vasily is called to duty. Lyudmilla is concerned, but he reassures her that all he's going to have to deal with is a burning roof.
Inside the bowels of Reactor Building 4, Perevozchenko finds a scene of utter carnage. His attempt to find out exactly how bad the radiation levels are is thwarted when it turns out that their personal dosimeters can't read above 3.6 roentgen, and their high-range dosimeter was destroyed in the explosion. However, the level of danger present is indicated all too well when a fellow worker, Gorbachenko, points out the radiation burns on his face. Perevozchenko orders an evacuation and sets out to find the two pump operatives, Valery Khodemchuk and Viktor Degtaryenko, but only gets as far as finding mechanical engineer Aleksandr Yuvchenko before falling violently ill with Acute Radiation Syndrome, the first of many plant workers who will suffer this terrible fate. Yuvchenko takes over the search for the pump room engineers, and finds Degtaryenko just outside the room with horrific burns and injuries; Khodemchuk's body isn't even visible at all beneath the wreckage which fills what was once the pump room.
Dyatlov returns to the control room, where Akimov informs him that his attempt to lower the control rods didn't achieve anything, and that he's sent two trainees, Viktor Proskuryakov and Aleksandr Kudryavtsev, to manually lower them in the reactor hall. In turn, Dyatlov dispatches pump engineer Boris Stolyarchuk to restart the flow of water into the reactor core in order to head off a meltdown, before asking for the radiation level. Akimov tries telling him that all they know is it's somewhere above 3.6 roentgen, but Dyatlov takes 3.6 as the true reading, describing it as "not great, not terrible". Akimov tries reassuring his even more shellshocked colleague, reactor engineer Leonid Toptunov, that they did everything right.
As the fire department arrives on-site and begins dealing with the titanic blaze, Vasily's colleague, Misha notices a lump of the same black mineral that Dyatlov noticed earlier. He picks it up and examines it, before Vasily tells him to put it down and focus on getting the hoses set up. As he does so, Misha feels an odd pain in his hand.
Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev are making their way to the reactor hall when they come across Yuvchenko, carrying the prone form of Degtaryenko. Yuvchenko, realising that Degtaryenko is beyond help, agrees to help them access the reactor core by holding the heavy door open long enough for them to get in, lower the control rods, and get out. When the two trainees actually enter the reactor core, however, all they find is a hellish scene, illuminated by the unearthly glow of the exposed reactor core, which lethally irradiates them both in a matter of seconds. They both flee the reactor hall — past Yuvchenko, who finds painful radiation burns soon developing on his hip and leg — and Proskuryakov struggles back to the control room (Kudryavtsev falling unconscious before he can even do that), where he barely manages to report the destruction of the reactor before falling victim to severe nausea. Dyatlov still refuses to believe that the reactor exploded, and orders Akimov to call in the day shift and inform the local Communist Party executive.
Outside, Vasily is forced to take over Misha's hose, after Misha collapses in agonizing pain. When a first aider removes Misha's glove, he finds the flesh of his hand having seemingly been corroded by some unknown force. Vasily, meanwhile, notices that several of his colleagues are suffering from what look like burns, despite having not been anywhere near the actual fire. Back in Pripyat, several of Lyudmilla's neighbors go to watch the fire from a nearby railway bridge, blissfully unaware that radioactive ash is falling on them. Elsewhere in the town, Dr. Svetlana Zinchenko becomes concerned that the hospital might soon need to treat patients with radiation sickness, but finds the hospital to be woefully ill-equipped to handle such an emergency, and the senior doctors even more woefully ill-informed.
Director Viktor Bryukhanov and Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin arrive at the plant, with both men naturally being pissed that what should have been a simple safety test has turned into a serious incident. Dyatlov reassures them both that they're dealing with nothing more than a hydrogen tank explosion, and consequently a roof fire and a minor radiological release. Stolyarchuk, meanwhile, is discovering for himself the actual extent of the explosion, and realizing that there's nothing left of the core or the pumps. He comes across the injured Yuvchenko, who assumes his situation to be hopeless, and asks for one last cigarette, with the extent of the damage being further laid bare when the firefighters (including Vasily) climb onto the roof and begin dousing the fire with water, which drips down into the room the two are in. Stolyarchuk reports back that there's nothing left of the reactor worth cooling, but Akimov refuses to believe him and enlists Toptunov to manually open all the coolant valves, despite Stolyarchuk's protests that the two will be lethally irradiating themselves for nothing.
Outside the plant, the day shift, led by Deputy Engineer Anatoly Sitnikov, is watching the burning remains of Reactor 4, as it quickly becomes apparent to them that whatever happened was far beyond a tank explosion. Sitnikov finds out that no-one knows how exactly how bad the radiation is, thanks to no-one being able to remember where their other high-range dosimeter is, and heads off to Reactor Building 2 to retrieve it.
Bryukhanov chairs a meeting of the local party executive, and repeats Dyatlov's assurances that what they're dealing with is nothing more than a mild accident. However, one of the executive members, Petrovich, openly challenges his claims, pointing out that the air around the reactor building is glowing, and that several of the firefighters are obviously suffering radiation sickness. At this point, the executive's oldest member, Zharkov, delivers a Rousing Speech about how their job isn't to quibble about the extent of the accident, and that with Mikhail Gorbachev himself having been informed of the disaster, that their goal should be to prevent any information about the disaster getting out of Pripyat, so that the people of the Soviet Union can get on with their jobs without having to worry about such insignificant things as exploding nuclear plants.
The executive members leave the meeting, buoyed by Zharkov's speech, after which Sitnikov shows up to meet with Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov. He reports that their high-range dosimeter burned out as soon as it was turned on, but that they were able to borrow a mid-range dosimeter from the fire department. The radiation level isn't 3.6 roentgen, but at least 200 roentgen, and potentially even higher still. What's more, Sitnikov inspected the area around Reactor Building 4, and found what looked like lumps of graphite, indicating that the reactor core somehow exploded. Dyatlov and Fomin furiously reject this as being impossible, with even Sitnikov himself admitting he doesn't know how it happened, leading to Dyatlov volunteering to go to the top of the building and look down into the core to see that it's intact... only for him to abruptly vomit and pass out before he can do so. Sitnikov therefore finds himself volunteered to do the job instead, despite his protests.
As Akimov and Toptunov begin their doomed mission to open the valves to the cooling system, Sitnikov undertakes his own, similarly doomed mission. He peers down into the exposed reactor core from the wrecked roof of the building and, like Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev before him, instantly receives a lethal dose of radiation. Dyatlov, meanwhile, is taken out of the administration building, with the breaking dawn laying bare the full sight of the destruction that has occurred. Several of the firefighters, including Vasily, find themselves overcome with Acute Radiation Sickness. And back in Pripyat Hospital, Dr. Zinchenko finds herself called to duty as the first casualties arrive.
In Moscow, a younger and healthier Valery Legasov answers the phone, and is informed by the voice of Deputy Chairman Boris Scherbina that he will be serving on a committee to oversee the handling of the accident.
As the children of Pripyat walk to school, none of them notice a bird falling out of the sky, dead from the cloud of radiation that is slowly but surely making its way over the town.
Succeeded by "Please Remain Calm".
Tropes:
- All for Nothing: A theme throughout the episode, as in the series at large.
- Several core technicians expose themselves to lethal amounts of radiation in an attempt to cool down the core. The problem is, there is no more core, and the entire exercise is pointless. The only reason it happens to begin with is because the plant chiefs are too far in denial to admit just how bad things are.
- Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov refuse to accept Sitnikov's readings and observations of graphite on the ground, and send him to the roof to observe the damage. Sitnikov gets a lethal dose of radiation while in there and his new report is still not believed, despite having obvious radiation burns on his face.
- The fire fighters pump water at the reactor all night, not knowing that they are needlessly exposing themselves to lethal radiation trying to put out an exposed nuclear fission reaction with water.
- Apocalyptic Gag Order: After the accident, the executive committee decides to seal off the town of Pripyat and cut the phone lines to "contain the spread of misinformation" rather than evacuate the endangered area.
- Arc Words:
- "RBMK reactor cores don't explode."
- "Do you taste metal?"explanation
- Armor-Piercing Question: "How does an RBMK reactor explode?" Fomin uses this to push past Sitnikov's reports about the reactor core being open, using his power as chief engineer coupled with the Insane Troll Logic that if Sitnikov can't explain how the core exploded, then he's wrong about the underlying fact of the explosion. He's less successful when he tries the same tactic on Legasov, who simply refuses to answer the question in the hours after the explosion (letting the facts, such as the 15-kilorem dosimetry readings and visibly exposed graphite shards, speak for themselves). Legasov will ultimately answer this question at the trial, summing the answer up as "Lies."
- As You Know: When Shcherbina calls up Legasov and notifies him about the accident, he clarifies for the benefit of the audience that Legasov is "the First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy".
- Awful Truth: Implied to be the reason why Akimov and Toptunov act as if the reactor did not explode in and futilely open the valves manually. Accepting otherwise means that the situation is not only exponentially worse but also completely beyond their control to stop or contain.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: Zharkov starts to praise a member of the emergency committee, who wants the city evacuated, for having the interests of the people at heart, but turns this into a speech over how the people should not be troubled with matters that are better left to the state.
- Bastardly Speech: Zharkov gives a lecture to the town's executive committee on how everyone should nobly do what's right in the name of Lenin and the revolution. What he's actually asking them to do is to endanger the lives of thousands by covering up that anything bad has happened.
- Blame Game: During the first meeting of the power plant administrators, Dyatlov and Fomin each try to subtly shift Director Bryukhanov's attention to the other.
- Canary in a Coal Mine:
- When Yuvchenko enters the room overlooking the exploded pump room, the first thing he sees is a bird flapping erratically against the walls, trying to get away from the radiation.
- The last shot of the episode shows a starling falling out of the sky, writhing in pain, and dying. It is ignored by the oblivious citizens around it.
- Captain Obvious: Bryukhanov's quip in greeting to Dyatlov after being awoken to deal with the reactor explosion.Bryukhanov: I take it the safety test was a failure.
- Cassette Craze: Legasov records his thoughts and the story behind what happened in Chernobyl on audio tapes, which he hides in a crevice by the ash bin (presumably for a cohort to pick up and disseminate) before committing suicide.
- Children Are Innocent:
- On the "Bridge of Death" (as it was later dubbed) the children watching the fire are shown laughing and jumping around in the accumulated piles of radioactive ash.
- The episode ends with children heading to school, oblivious of what is happening around them.
- The Constant: Legasov is survived by his pet cat in the prologue. When the episode reintroduces the younger-looking Legasov in 1986, the first thing we see of his is the cat.
- Cut Phone Lines: Following Zharkov's advice, the local authorities in Pripyat cut the phone lines to prevent rumors of the disaster from spreading.
- Dead Man Writing: Legasov makes several tapes going over the truth behind what happens in Chernobyl before killing himself.
- Death Ray: The pillar of flourescing air indicates that the surrounding area is innundated with them, namely X- and gamma rays. Downplayed, as being close enough to see it is a death sentence, but it doesn't immediately kill people. It makes them experience a living Hell for a week first...
- Definitely Just a Cold: In the middle of insisting that the core is still intact, Dyatlov vomits and immediately the plant managers conclude it is just from him being around the feed water so long.
- Dumbass Has a Point: While Bryukhanov is completely oblivious as to the implications as to why the first dosimeter that Sitnikov attempted to use burned out, it's not exactly unreasonable to expect something designed to measure up to 1,000 roentgen to actually be able to function in that kind of environment without getting fried,note making his complaint about the "shit equipment" that Moscow keeps sending them Right for the Wrong Reasons.
- Dutch Angle: Dyatlov is first shown in a dramatically tilted portrait shot, standing in Shell-Shock Silence moments after the explosion.
- Eldritch Abomination: The exposed reactor core is treated as if it were some kind of otherworldly being that had somehow forced itself into the reality of the characters; it's only ever seen in obscured and shadowy fashion, its presence only truly indicated by belching columns of smoke and weird glowing lights, yet it is beginning to warp the world in strange and lethal ways mere moments after being exposed, and there's a constant sense of unknowable yet malevolent threat around it.
- Extremely Short Timespan: Except for the two-year flash-forward at the beginning, the entire episode takes place over about six hours. The first twenty minutes or so are in Real Time, or in less than Real Time, since several things are shown happening at once.
- Face-Revealing Turn: After Sitnikov looks into the open reactor core from the roof, the camera zooms in and he slowly turns his head, revealing that his face has been severely burned by the radiation.
- Facial Horror: The episode takes an unusual approach to this trope by emphasizing the skin discoloration that results from massive radiation exposure, first with Perevozchenko's "nuclear tan," then the trainees' and later Sitnikov's faces turning bright red in seconds as they stare into the open reactor. While actual gore isn't seen (the result simply looks like a bad sunburn), the implications make it chilling, especially as it continues to appear on more characters, including Vasily.
- Futureshadowing: We see the explosion from afar and the worker's reaction to it in the first episode. It's not until the last that we get to see the buildup and the explosion up close.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Legasov is not shown immediately before or after hanging himself, not even putting the noose on. We hear his suicide while the camera focuses on the clock and then are shown his glasses on the floor next to one of his suspended feet.
- Harmful to Touch: Misha makes the mistake of picking up a piece of highly radioactive graphite from the core. A minute or two later he is screaming on the ground as the flesh of his hand is eaten away in front of him.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: Once Dyatlov gets a radiation reading of 3.6 roentgen, he immediately accepts it as the definitive number, ignoring Akimov when he says that's as high as the meter goes. Later, Sitnikov tries to explain that the radiation level is much, much higher, saying that a high-end dosimeter burned out the moment it was turned on and another one maxed out at 200 roentgen. Bryukhanov, Fomin, and Dyatlov dismiss those as faulty equipment.Bryukhanov: See, this is what Moscow does. Sends us shit equipment, then wonders why things go wrong.
- How We Got Here: After Legasov's suicide exactly two years after the disaster, the episode jumps back to the minute before the reactor blew up and continues from there.
- Insistent Terminology:
- Anything regarding the seriousness of the situation is mere "misinformation."
- Dyatlov tries to insist to his workers that it was a hydrogen tank that exploded, not the reactor, because RBMK reactors don't explode. Technically, he is partially right: the mechanism of the explosion was a mystery to the workers because they didn't know everything about how the reactor was constructed, due to issues of state secrecy.
- Instant Mystery, Just Delete Scene: The actual explosion and events leading up to it are not shown in the first episode. This allows for the show to explore the mystery of what happened up until the very end.
- Instant Thunder: Averted. We see the explosion at Chernobyl, but don't hear it until three seconds later when the shockwave hits Lyudmilla's apartment.
- I Reject Your Reality: Sitnikov reports that a dosimeter with a higher range also maxed out, this time at 200 roentgen. But this is dismissed as faulty equipment. He also says there's graphite in the rubble. Dyatlov, who saw the graphite himself, denies this.Dyatlov: You didn't see graphite.Sitnikov: I did.Dyatlov: You didn't. YOU DIDN'T!!! Because it's not there!!
- Just Following Orders: Legasov says in his memoirs that many people were following orders, himself included, of the Central Committee and the KGB to hide the flaw in the RBMK design.
- Light Is Not Good: The reactor core post-meltdown is depicted as a hellish light so radioactive that anyone who gets a glimpse of it is doomed to die of ARS. The blue light above the exposed core is radiation smoke ionizing the air, showing just how dangerous the situation really is.
- Meaningful Background Event: With the jump back to 1986, the series cuts to a sleepy Lyudmilla making tea in her apartment. A small dot of light, from the initial and smaller explosion, is seen in the distance through the window. It then grows to a bigger ball of light. Then the shock wave of the second and much more serious explosion arrives.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Kudryavtsev and Proskuryakov, the two trainees sent to manually lower the control rods into the reactor, have this reaction when they find themselves staring into the exposed, burning reactor core.
- Vasily, formerly convinced the fire was nothing too dangerous, sees Misha on the ground screaming and clutching his hand, which has been severely burned by the graphite he picked up. Vasily looks down to see more of the graphite near him, and then raises his gaze to the fire with a horrified expression on his face, realizing that something is very, very wrong.
- After Sitnikov reports back the results of his inspection of the core (namely, that it doesn't exist any more), Fomin and Bryukhanov can be seen screaming at him in such a way that clearly suggests, even though we can't hear what they're saying, that the news has tested even their powers of denial.
- Only Sane Man: The one guy at the first emergency meeting who points out that Bryukhanov is bullshitting—aid workers are vomiting, the air is glowing blue, the radiation is clearly out of hand and they need to evacuate Pripyat. He is ignored.
- Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Lyudmilla's neighbor plans to watch the burning plant from the railroad bridge. When she asks if it will be dangerous, the neighbor's husband says that it is just a fire and it can't hurt them beacue "It's over there; we're over here." As soon as he says it, he remembers (with a rebuke from his own wife) that Lyudmilla's husband is a fireman, who is putting out the fire himself, and apologizes.
- Pillar of Light: A faint blue sky beam emerges from the nuclear power plant once it explodes. It is ionized air that is the first clear indication that the core is now exposed to the exterior.
- Plausible Deniability: Dyatlov's Exact Words when reporting to Bryukhanov about radiation levels are "I'm being told, 3.6 roentgen." If anyone finds out that number was wrong and accuses him of lying, he can claim that he was merely misinformed by other people.
- Readings Are Off the Scale:
- Immediately after the accident, dosimeters in the building register radiation of 3.6 roentgen per hour—"not great, not terrible," but certainly survivable. The problem is that 3.6 is the maximum those dosimeters can read, meaning the real amount could be much higher. Multiple characters note this, but Dyatlov, deep in denial, decides that 3.6 roentgen is the true number. He continues to believe this even as an operator comes into the control room to report and vomits on the floor. The fact that 3.6 roentgen is the high end of the scale is a clue that leads Legasov to believe that things in Chernobyl are much worse than Bryukhanov is letting on.
- Later a horrified Sitnikov reports to Fomin and Bryukhanov that his 1,000-roentgen dosimeter fried when it was turned on and his 200-roentgen dosimeter also pegged at the top of the scale. Fomin and Bryukhanov initially decide to believe that the dosimeters themselves are faulty.
- Readings Blew Up the Scale: The 1000-roentgen dosimeter is fried when Sitnikov turns it on. The true reading is yet higher...
- Redemption in the Rain: A variation. Stolyarchuk and Yuvchenko get indirectly "rained on" by the water being sprayed on the fire, immediately after the latter says "it's over". The two would be amongst the survivors of the catastrophe, living to see the new millennium.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: As civilians start venturing out to see what's happening, the sky has gone red from the blaze and there is a beam of blue light that some think is due to floodlights; it's actually ionisation of the air from the incredibly high radiation.
- Right on the Tick: Legasov kills himself exactly at the time of the disaster, two years later, at 1:23:45. He is shown checking his watch to make sure he gets the time right.
- Sadistic Choice: Sitnikov, when ordered by Fomin and Bryukhanov, has to choose between going and looking into an open nuclear reactor and getting shot in the face.
- Shame If Something Happened: Dyatlov forces Akimov to calling in the day shift (to maintain the now-destroyed reactor) by telling him that he may not be able to save Akimov's career, but he can certainly make it worse.
- Shell-Shock Silence: After the explosion, we get this from Dyatlov's perspective while Akimov shouts his name.
- Slave to PR: Fomin and Bryukhanov are more interested in passing the blame than investigating the accident, wasting valuable time while the exposed reactor is belching out radioactive smoke every second.
- Starts with a Suicide: The episode begins with a heartbroken and traumatized Legasov recording his thoughts about Chernobyl two years after the event and then hanging himself. We then flash back to the actual disaster and see how things got this bad.
- Stupid Sacrifice: Dyatlov, Fomin, and Bryukhanov send several men to their deaths for no reason. Dyatlov wants to cool down the reactor core that's currently in small pieces, and Fomin and Bryukhanov send Sitnikov to look into the core even though he already saw it. Every man gets nothing for their troubles except lethal doses of radiation and in Sitnikov's case, an earful of denials.
- Suicide Mission: Sitnikov goes to the roof to look down into reactor #4, on Fomin's order, despite having seen graphite on the ground and thus already knowing that the core has exploded. He receives a lethal dose of radiation.
- Thanatos Gambit: Legasov's suicide can be considered this, as it was his death combined with the tapes he disseminated that finally drew public attention to the design flaws of the RBMK reactors. Afterwards, the Soviet government has no choice but to publicly admit the flaws and fix them.
- This Is Going to Be Huge: Zharkov convinces the local authorities to isolate but not evacuate Pripyat and trust "the State" to handle the crisis. He calls this their "moment to shine" and is convinced that they'll be rewarded for such actions instead of living in infamy for it.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Sitnikov is forced by his superiors to go to the plant roof and report back on the damage to the core; after he witnesses the immense blaze he turns back with a dead stare and a burned face, knowing that he's absorbed a fatal dose of radiation.
- Title by Number: 1:23:45 is the precise time that the reactor explodes.
- Too Broken to Break: The last shot we see of Sitnikov in this episode is him, sitting in a chair, staring blankly into space while Fomin and Bryukhanov scream what are presumably all manner of abuse and threats at him, clearly well beyond giving a single solitary fuck what they have to say — as he knows all too well that he's been doomed to a lingering death by radiation poisoning and there's absolutely nothing worse they could say or do to him at this point.
- Visual Title Drop: When Legasov hangs himself, there is a closeup of a clock showing the time is 1:23:45.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: As the symptoms of radiation poisoning emerge, several characters start puking up their guts. It's used for particularly dramatic effect when Dyatlov—who has remained firmly in denial about the whole situation even when a subordinate vomited right in front of him—is suddenly and violently sick mid-rant, finally forcing Fomin and Bryukhanov to acknowledge that there is, in fact, a crisis.
- Wham Shot:
- Proskuryakov and Kudryavtsev staring into the exploded reactor core as it's bellowing out a massive cloud of radioactive, black smoke looks as if they're peering into the entrance to hell, combined with their faces visibly turning red from the radiation burns proving how fruitless an effort attempting to containing the disaster is.
- When the Pripyat residents are watching the fire from the bridge, the camera cuts to a close-up showing radioactive ash from the plant blowing in the air. This is followed with slow-motion shots of the children laughing and jumping around in the accumulating ash-like snow, driving home that no one around Chernobyl understands what they're in danger of.
- You Did Everything You Could: Akimov keeps on saying "we did everything right" to himself and the crew running the safety test when the reactor exploded. The sad truth is they didn't, because they were forced to obey Dyatlov's ridiculous orders.
- You Have to Believe Me!: A technician runs into the control room to say that the reactor core exploded, but Dyatlov is in such denial that he insists the man must be in shock.
