Fin vs History - A Greek Building Site | Chernobyl (Part 2/3)

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

This episode of Fin vs History is brought to you by Surfshark.     Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code FVH for an extra 4 months at ⁠https://surfshark.com/fvh⁠  Grab your ball ice, we’re going to the gym.    Chernobyl (Part Two)    The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.   For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to series, become a Truther and sign up to the Patreon  ⁠patreon.com/fintaylor      Chapters: 00:00 - Monsters Inc SWAT Team  06:02 - Dead Again  09:41 - ARS  14:07 - Ball Ice  19:18 - Charlie’s Pan  24:03 - Yoghurt Mogging  30:58 - The Bridge Of Death  33:24 - Egg On Your Head  38:42 - The Paralympic Tragedy  41:20 - The Liquidators  47:15 - Greek Building Site  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome back to part two of our Chernobyl series. It's Finn versus History. I'm drawn by Horatio Gould. Ah, fuck. Ah! Fuck out. A lovely soundscape there of what must have, what must have been heard down the corridor.

Oh, fuck it. What? Oh, no. Ow! Ow! Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot. Um, we think, is it hot? I don't really understand.

It is hot. It does. It's a awful, awful way to go. I think it's up there with the worst. Yeah. Um, your skin sort of, uh, soils and flays. Your DNA separates.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. So do you change the race then? We'll get to that. I think yes. I'm not sure. Is it a mix and match? You're like glitching. You're like Asian.

You're like black. You're gay. POC, people of Chernobyl. At 1.23 a.m. On April of 26th, 1986, a nerd is trying to woo a lady. Warning, my reactor's power supply is dangerously low.

This is Charlie flushing the toilet at this point. Just absolutely. Fred are getting the toilet flush going, no, no, no, no, no, no, please, please, please. No, don't stick out of the horse. So, we dealt with the science of Chernobyl in our last episode, comprehensively. No one can say they don't know what's happening. Now, the power surge, the power level in RBMK reactor four. Talk to me now.

In the Chernobyl power plant in Pripyat. It surges to 100,000 people. of the original design. That's way too much. Far too much. I don't know what, how is it able to... It's like, why do cars go up to 250 miles an hour? What's the point?

I'm not allowed to drive that fast. But on the autoban, you can. Oh. Have you been on an auto bar? Is it crazy? Fuck yeah. It's mental. Two lanes. There's a lane where for trucks and 30 miles an hour and then a, do you feel lucky lane?

Yeah. And does it feel scary? It's terrifying. Because you scared people are going to crash into you? Yeah, I mean, I was, I literally, we drove through Germany when I was maybe 20, 21

in like my mate's Renault, tiny little thing. And you're constantly looking out and it's just, really? And you're stuck behind a lorry, so you're going 50, right? And then you like,

quickly get into the overtaking layer. Feel lucky. And then you've got Mercedes and BMWs. Furious behind you. Like that behind you. And you're like, Fuck. And then you're looking for any gap to try and pull back it.

It's like a computer game. It's terrifying. The amount of ground you can cover if you use it right, though. How quickly you can get across the country. Well, listen, the infrastructure's terrific. One of the legacies of the Nazis is they left a terrific road infrastructure. And, you know, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, but you seem to be drowning the baby in the bathwater.

Let's not throw the bathwater out with that baby. There was some great warm bathwater that the Nazis created. Let's not let's just keep it all in the bath, shall we? There's a baby in a bath water. And that's lovely. It's lovely. Bath time. Let's put some more babies in this bath. Let's fill up.

Fill up the bath with babies and water. Why do we have to throw anything out? Anyway, we're talking about Chernobyl. And it's the evening of April 26th. And people are stressed. Yeah. High cortisol. They've got a lot going on.

Stress, it's important to say stress ages you. And it takes... So does nuclear exposure. That's true. But it could have been the stress. It's a double team. isn't it? Yes, their hair, they've got grey hairs

and also their face is falling off. And who knows what causes watch? So we've got a picture up now. Kind of immaculate vibes, though. Like, you could see like a listening bar. Do you know what a listening bar is? I do. Yeah, a listening bar designed like that.

I think it's bollocks, I'll say. I actually have never been to one. No, me neither. Wouldn't be seen dead in one. You could make a nice one if it was built like the control room. A listening bar. I go to a bar to spout opinions.

I don't want to listen to other people. I don't want to listening to Bar. That's my pub. People listen to you. Yeah. Because you don't get listened to at home. No. Or it works.

No one's listening. But look, that is a vibe. Click on those picks. Yeah. Yeah, it is a vibe. And also, we haven't talked about how... Lo-fi Chernobyl beats to... Low-fi beat to melt your face melt here.

What we haven't talked about has how everyone who works at Chernobyl is dressed like a dinner lady. They're wearing white coats and little white hats. Why are the white hats? Oh, those two. nuclear power plant UK? Is it just everyone dressed like a... At Hinkley Point are they dressing like...

Workers, workers. What are they... Not core, because obviously you can't type... I know, but a nuclear power plant core is a core of a reactor. Workers. It's also the aesthetic.

I know, but it would not... Workers, workers, workers. Workers uniforms. Obviously. Idiot, stupid guy. Yeah, they're all in blue and high... Guys dumb. Oh no, hang on, they're in white.

80s, now do 80s. Let's just see if it's... It's pretty lit going like the monsters Inc. SWAT team. Fonda zinc SWAT team. Okay, so no, that is what... No, but that's all our MBK. We want Britain.

Interesting. So maybe it is just the standard nuclear. But it's weird. I wonder if it's a Soviet thing, it's what I was. Well, they just look like sort of, they look like chefs. Yeah. And what they're cooking doesn't taste good.

I'm sending the food. Maybe the worst tasting thing. Maybe the worst meal of all time. Yeah, this is the worst meal of all time. What I die and all my kids die is like generational death. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

So everyone has to leave. All animals have to be destroyed. No one's allowed anywhere near this for 20,000 years. Yeah. And any babies that are in the womb will grow up with no legs. Yeah. But they may win Paralympics. So every mushroom cloud.

Every mushroom cloud. Now, after the power surge, two explosions follow in rapid succession. It's the Soviet 9-11. First, the steam. And seconds later, a more destructive hydrogen-based explosion. Another one. Another other. these blasts destroy the reactor building's roof

which triggers a major graphite fire the force of the explosion destroys the core and opens the interior of reactor four to the atmosphere oxygen's rushing in which I imagine does something and also all those are bad stuff's going out crucially as well valerre Valerie Kodemchuk

he's a worker in the plant he's immediately killed and buried under debris and his body is never recovered now He must be fucked. I would love to have a look at him. Because one thing that Chernobyl... That's Charlie coming in after a big weekend. Yeah.

If we do... This is why it's good that we do this. We record these on Tuesdays, not Mondays. Yeah. Because otherwise it would be like the guy buried under the... Yeah. Your body can never be recovered on a Monday. It's on a Tuesday morning.

It's underneath radioactive rubble. You're hauling yourself out from whatever sex club you died in on the weekend. I know this is very well done in the opening of the Chernobyl miniseries. is where you go to the control room and they're like, Diatlov's like, fuck it, cool it, fucking what's happening? Start the test.

DJ, DJ, yeah. Twist it, barp it. This is the original Fred again. Is there they're going, oh no, oh fuck. Dead again. Dead again. The immediate response to the explosion is complete disbelief and denial.

Valerie Berivoschenko runs to assess the damage and returns having witnessed what he thinks is impossible, which is the reactor is exposed and the core's exposed. Now... It's exposing itself.

It's a paedophile on the playground. Yes. With a big coat. It's a peeping Tom. They've opened up the reactor and I can see your core. Yeah. Get that core away from those kids.

Now, there are fragments of graphite scattered all over the site. There are flames rising from the wreckage. He tells Diatlov and the boys this and they're like, nah. No. Bullocks. No.

I don't want it to be true, therefore it isn't. This is not true. That has to be bollocks, because if it's not, we're all completely fucked. So it's not true. So it's not true. Because they go, our BMK reactors don't explode in that way. Jet fuel doesn't melt steel beams. Graphite, reactor course, don't explode.

So what you saw is a lie. Yeah. This is that we're getting into the Soviet culture. And they call disinformation, which is interesting. They always say that you're, this is disinformation. Disinformation is misinformation. Yeah? Yeah, it is, yeah, it's a direct.

Yeah. I don't think that's news to anyone. That's a take. They mean the same thing. Yeah, do you think you're the first person to make that connection? Disinformation is misinformation. Yes, they mean the same thing. No, yeah, they do, yeah.

Yeah. Thank you very much. Porridge is oatmeal. In many ways. Mine blowing. Is it? Yeah. No. Okay, well, then you're not.

neither was your thing well you're wrong then what do you mean I'm wrong porridge is porridge disinformation is misinformation is misinformation is oatmeal is it?

Yes always yes well there is a difference to disinformation and misinformation what about instant porridge it's instant oatmeal is it yeah it's just different word of porridge

it's different word of porridge straight out of the ground what's oatmeal oh god I never I never seem to learn yeah forget about porridge Charlie

porridge is not involved in this story I love porridge I know. Now, the easier explanation that Bruchanov and his boys think is that there had been a huge hydrogen explosion or a steam rupture, which would be serious but contained. So they don't appreciate quite how bad it is. So they get these, they have these, they're not called Geiger counters. They're called decimiters. Dissimiters, yeah. And, um, uh, to the little things that go, and they tell you the radiation, right. Um, and they show, uh, 3.6 Rontgens.

How do I say that? There's a lot of vowels there. Runchins. What's a South African word? Runchens. Runchens. It sounds like a South African slur. Rengen.

Rengen. Rension or runchen. Anyway. It's like bloody Rinchin. 3.6 wrenchens per hour, which is the equivalent to 360 chest x-rays in one go. But the decimeter only went

to 3.6. So they wrote it down to 3.6 and said, that's bad, but not terribly. That's not actually that bad. Considering the things blown up, that's actually fine. That's all right. Brilliant.

Send that off to the polyp. We're giving the immediate surroundings a big chest x-ray. Fine. In fact, the real figure was something like 15,000 rentions, which is the equivalent to 1.5 million x-rays per hour.

So about 25,000 a minute. Or 400 x-rays every second. second, which is bad. Yeah, you don't want that. You know how you go for an x-ray and they put like a steel thing over your balls? Yeah. Imagine there's 400 x-rays. Yeah.

All pointed at your balls. So, um, Anatoly Sittnikov. Anatoa. Not the Anatolla. Uh, is an engineer. He's sent to go and have a look. And he's like, why me, though? Do I have to do it? Can you? Why do I have to go and have a nosey at this?

Uh, and he goes to look at this. Uh, and he goes to look at a look at a look at. react to area and he is severely irradiated. Right. Which is bad. Yeah, it sounds probably better than it is. This episode of Finn versus History is sponsored by Surf Shark. Oh. Yes. Yes. VPN.

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We should talk about... So, yeah, the big risk of radiation exposure is that you get something, which... You get Thomas Muller in between the lights? Yes, of your cells. Of your cells. You know, to add insult to injury, it's called acute radiation syndrome, arse.

So not only... And they've not been through enough. I know. Not only these men's skin falling off and their face is melting, but the cause of death is arse. Which is very, very sad. Yeah.

Akimov and Toptonov they are like right let's open the water valves to pour water in because Diatlov's like I'll fucking cool it down pour water over it and he's like well the reactor can still be stabilised but the core has been destroyed the core's gone

core blimey core blimey so both those men Akimov and Toptonov they get lethal doses of ass I've had worse Mondays hey I've had worse Monday

these guys These guys hadn't had worse Mondays. This is the worst Monday these guys have ever had. Yeah. It's one of the worst Mondays anyone's ever had. I think it is the worst Monday. If you're going to work, this is as bad as Mondays get. Yeah.

Yeah, no one in the control room was going, bloody hell, I had worse Mondays. My face has melted. Some of them were saying, I've had better Mondays. Yeah. Last Monday was better than this Monday. Do you remember last Monday? Oh, we took last Monday for granted.

Yeah, it was back holiday, actually. We had the day off. Went to the pub. It was brilliant. This Monday's fucking awful. my skin's fallen off yeah and it's a bit stingy akimov dies on the 10th of may

so two weeks later and toputnov dies on the 14th of May now we should get into arse acute radiate don't look at me like that acute radiation syndrome because this is what the Chernobyl series apparently gets wrong okay or in that

rather than so they paint a picture of like Charlie, Google the photos of the Chernobyl mini-series acute radiation sickness. Like their skin melts. They essentially rot while they're alive. But the brutal thing is they always get better. Yes, there's a latency.

Yeah, look, that one there. Yeah, get that up. So this is from the miniseries. What did they get wrong? Is that what happens? So that is what happens. However, that takes like weeks and months. not over hours.

Right. That's me after the sauna. You've got to cold plunge, Akimov. You need to sauner then cold plunge, okay? You know, 15 minutes. Brian Johnson's selling

branded ice packs for your balls to keep your fertility markers up. Yeah? to the gym. You're not taking your ball ice to the gym? Where are you leaving your ball ice? That's at home. Your ball ice should be on you at all times.

At all times. It should be a key ring. You know how you can get those pocket-sized serracha bottles that you go on a key ring? You have ball ice. So you can just go like that. Sirracha ball ice.

So yeah, so because Brian Johnson, he measures his cum after the thing. And he says that's the... Yeah, because he's a cool guy. I saw it and then I measured my cum. Any further questions? Your Honour? Is that a crime? No. It's not a crime. Is it an hic? Maybe.

Not to me, it's not. That's personal preference. It's pretty mad for him to just slidling up to a woman in a bar going, yeah, I've got an 18-year-old's erections and no micropastics in my ejaculate. I want to come home with me. And if you want to see the paperwork, here it is. Yeah, here it is. Yeah, yeah.

So it gets rid of micro plastics in your car, but then why does he have to ice his balls? Because the one downside of saunering as much as he says. I deferred to the cum specialist. Thank you. No, I'm a sauntist. specials. I'm also a cum specialist. That's Charlie. The one downside of sonning... He's come special needs.

Yeah, sorry, he's got special needs come. No, Brian Johnson says that saunering, whatever amount of times a week, is overall markers for whatever he's measuring is very good. The one downside is that your fertility markers go get quite bad. Your sperm count is bad. Okay. So to counteract that, he sells

Brian Johnson branded ice ball packs and like trunks that you put an ice pack in. in order to... So that offsets the negative so that it's a wholly good experience. Going on a sauna without it is not the end of the world. I don't think so,

but he probably would say... He thinks so, yeah. But he's not... You've got to cold plunge afterwards. Hot cold, hot cold, hot cold. Okay? He's fucked it, that guy. What A.R.S does,

what Ars does, is over the course of, like, weeks, it... Complete immune system collapse. So it's like... I guess it's like super... AIDS, almost? Super AIDS. Super AIDS. Yeah. I think.

Get the picture of Freddie Mercury in the bed with 50 guys. This is the scientist that John Oliver, is it? I'm just trying to paint a vivid picture for the listener. So, sorry, it's Freddie, we're looking at a photo here of Freddie Mercury. To be

fair, looks like one of the best nights over. Freddy Mercury. It's like a sleepover. You'd have to say that's a super Super King bed. Yeah. Velvet. There's maybe 10 guys all with massive tashes and muscles. So you're saying, Freddie Mercury is the Chernobyl core

and his boys are the scientists. That's super AIDS, right? So fast forward a week and they all look like Akimov. Yeah. So what it does is it dissolves, it basically essentially liquefies your organs

over the course of weeks because it destroys the things in you that make new cells. It's like extreme herpes. Yes, or super aids, extreme herpes. So your cells can't divide anymore. so your skin melt like sort of dissolve

and then can't doesn't replace so there's no blood clad no more blood clots yeah and then your organs liquefy become sort of a soup yeah

kill me yeah well that's well yeah yeah I mean you are dying yeah I genuinely think that we should have been a case for just like okay just bullet in the heads

just bolshe definitely if you're shooting all the dogs shoot the fucking they're not shit this is a point where they have to destroy animals oh yeah you're not putting them down

you're destroying them fucking what microwave. Well, no, that's the whole place is a microwave. No, you're like just in an oven, just holocaust. Just destroy the animals. So... But then they get better, right? In the first

few minutes and hours after acute exposure, exposure to acute radiation, there'll be nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fatigue. I mean, that's just, you know, that's a Wednesday for me. Right. I've got diarrhea and I'm tired. Brilliant. Well, yeah.

You've got ass. Whatever. I've got ass. Now, then there is a latency period of about three days where you think it's fine. But this is where the radiation is like in between the lines. Right. Pep Guardiola and your bone marrow. It's bending the run. Yeah. So after a temporary symptom-free latency period, severe symptoms emerge, including fever, dehydration, neurological dysfunction.

This is where your hair is then manifest illness stage. Symptoms based on the specific type of syndrome. So bone marrow, infections, hair loss, severe skin burns. bleeding and dehydration. So gastrointestinal syndrome, neurovascular syndrome, confusion, immediate loss of

consciousness, death within days. When they say confusion? Is it like I'm confused? I feel like my organs are turning into a... Confused.com. Copper soup. Confused.com? Cup of soup organs? What's going on in here?

I'm in a bit of a muddle back in. Yeah, I mean, confusion, yeah. You would be a little bit confused. Excuse me. What's going on here then? What's all this then? Hello, hello, hello. My liver seems to be pouring out my ass. Oh, I don't really know what's going on.

Confused.com would be a brilliant advert. The Chernobyl guys. Livers pouring out of my ass. Is there one else's liver pouring out of the arm? Pretty sure my liver was solid a minute ago. And now it's literally on the floor. Teasie. Now, there's a guy called Vasily.

Ignatenko, who's one of the main characters in the Chernobyl miniseries, who's a firefighter. Yes. And we'll get to the first spot. And his wife's played by Jesse Buckley, I believe. Yes, lovely bit of business. Lovely bit of dogs for the rabbits to see. I think it's him, or maybe it's another firefighter. Charlie, you're going to hate this.

I want you look at me when I tell you this. He was discovered, the autopsy after he died, he had a third-degree burn blisters on his heart. How? You know, if you touch a hot pan, which I imagine you do quite a lot. I've done it. And you get like, what, it's this red mark on my head.

How have you put a pan in your head? I tried to go. How have you put a hot pan on your head? I was trying to find a thing in this morning and I went up and I was cooking eggs and I hit my head on the pan. Was this morning? Yeah,

you poured a hot, a hot egg pan. You were saying that as sort of a general joke. It happened this morning. Why is it always so recent? It's always. Yeah. Two hours ago.

Yeah. Fuck, I can see that. Yeah. It really hurts. Yeah. So what, you poured a boiling hot pan of eggs on your head this morning? No,

I hit my head. into a boiling pan of eggs. The egg didn't fall on my head. Was it the handle? It was the rim of the pan. The rim is the pan? Yeah. How are you getting anywhere near the rim of the pan?

I needed to get... Were you going for a header from a corner? I was going for some stuff from the cupboard and then came up and smacked it. First thing it happened today. Fucking hell. First thing it happened today? Yeah. Wow. Um, yeah.

I mean, I've smashed a glass in my... I've got this massive juice stain on the floor in my room. Like, you know that thick juice? The healthy thick juice. Naked smoothie or something? Yeah. Got that all over my carpet. I need to borrow some of that van.

If that's right. Is that all right? Yeah, fine. Any other business? That's it. Okay, great. Okay, you can borrow it at the vanish. Thank you.

Anyway, he had a burnt, he had a burnt heart. He died of a broken heart. Sort of, sort of, sort of. A bit literal. Yeah, also his heart exploded from getting too hot. You've had a gaviscon. So firefighters immediately arrive at the scene, right? And the tragedy is that they think they're just dealing with a conventional fire.

Soviet 9-11. isn't it? This is the Soviet 9-11. Yeah. So they climb on to... First responders. They are the first responders. They climb onto the roof.

They're like, well, let's just get rid of this burning fragments, not knowing that that's graphite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, touched that. Yeah. Worst thing you could touch in the world. Nothing worse to touch. Yeah. It's going to the toilet that Charlie's staying in and just touch the wood. Oh, you're cleaning this, are we? Okay, fine.

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, to be, we should give a similar amount of respect to the cleaners who had to deal with your air and B. The first was wanders to Charlie's holiday poos. We will remember them.

We will remember them. Yeah. There'll be a statue in their honour. They should build a memorial. A monument, yeah. Yeah, it's just like the flush from the system

going down, much like the 9-11 memorial. Yeah. So the firefighters arrive, they enter this lethal environment, they don't know that all this thick smoke has got radioactive particles. They all begin to be able to start tasting metal.

Yeah. Which is... So this is sort of like, so read these three bullet points. This is sort of like going down on a woman, right? You taste metal, your skin turns red and hot, and many begin vomiting and collapsing within the hour. Yeah.

It's me going down on the woman. My God. I did not know I was entering a lethal environment. I thought this was just a normal industrial fire. And then you vomit, you have diarrhea, you're nauseous, your skin peels, and then you think you're better. That's the tragedy.

You go, yeah, I'll go back for seconds. And then my skin falls off. Yeah. So Vasily dies 18 days later, having suffered skin necrosis. Google that. Let's have a look at skin necrosis and organ failure because of arse. I mean, it's so, why is it called ass? Come on.

Why is it called ass? Give them some dignity. Like, it's the worst death ever and it's called ass. Like, at least called it S-R-S, severe respiratory, like, Severe radiation. Let's have a look at some photos. So this is skin necrosis. It looks like my bearded dragon's poo.

Can you say full body skin necrosis? Oh. God. I'm going to ignore the thing you just said about your bearded of dragons, too. I don't know what that's a euphemism for. I don't want to know. It's not.

He's called Roger. Right. Again. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you like this kind of stuff, shorts the video. Fuck me. We must warn, do not go down on a woman. This is why

Jamaicans don't go down on women Who was it? Michael Douglas, where was it? That's Michael Douglas there. Him, that's Michael Douglas after going down at Kathamesee Jones. And he's there going I'd do it again.

I'd do it again. He loves it. I loved it. I can't get enough. This is what a feminist looks like. He's right. They get it. transferred to Moscow and again because of this latency period there's three days where they think

they're improving because the radiation damage is still unfolding at a cellular level in the bone marrow and the gut. Yeah. Um, now again, this is pre-Yakol. We should place this. Yeah. Is it pre-Yakol? It's surely pre-Yakolt. Surely, 1986 is 1986 pre-Yak-alt, Charlie? Fuck close. Are you joking? All right. So this is after Yakult and before Actamel? No, surely not. Actamel. If Yakult's 1935...

Went to Actimal. And it's Japanese. Yakult's pre-Hiroshima. Why is this stuff not... Why is this stuff not getting involved? What is it? There's post-Yakult pre-the-last British Energy blackout,

which is 2019. Well, the last is not, you know... You were trying to rhyme. You got too hot in these lines. Yeah, we gave them too much. He had a great first one now. Yacol, blackolt. It doesn't quite work.

Find Actamel. When was Actamel founded? When was the Actamel drinking yogurt made? Because I don't want to know the... 994. So it is. By denon. So it is.

It's between the two drinking yoghuts. Well, that's actually a lovely placement then, I suppose. Look at that. There's a picture of Yakult and Actamel next to each other. Are you like an Actimal botherer or something? Are you looking for a sponsorship? Why? You're just the tone of your voice.

What? No, it is. No, it is where Atchamol's pound is. actually. Yeah. That's a lovely placement, I think. Yeah, but it is a lovely placement, but are you, do you really like Actamil? I don't hate Actamel. Yeah, because you've got, beneath you, there's some, there's some bubbling food neuroses. Yeah, there's something going on. The other day you were like, if you're trying to cut down on salt, you can lose lemon juice. And you just said that, you said that unironically.

As if you're just putting lemon juice on pepper on steak, yeah, crazy. He's a good, it's good though. Um, so the firefighters' bodies, so yeah, so they arrive and, um, um, They don't know. Quite quickly, some of them start vomiting and shitting themselves. And everyone's like, bloody hell. Cows. Keep it in.

Come on. You might be trained for this. Yeah. But they end up, the first responders, their bodies are so radioactive that they have to be buried in coffins made of lead and zinc, welded shut and then covered in concrete

to prevent the corpse from contaminating the area. So his body, Vasily Ignatco, his body is so deformed and swollen that his shoes and clothes don't fit. And then during, in the autopsy. Oh yeah, that's when they find

they had burn blisters on his heart. So imagine being buried, like buried in a fucking zinc coffin and then just concrete poured on. Yeah, it's like a fucking superhero villain. It's crazy.

To make sure you never wreak havoc on the earth again. As the scale of the accident starts to become clearer, the crisis starts to reach the actual upper echelons of the Soviet state. So, the Deputy Minister of Energy stresses that measures are being taken by this staff to cool down the active zone of the

reactor. Okay, fine. Sounds like we've got it under control. Health officials say, the adoption of special measures, including evaculating the population from the city, is totally unnecessary. Everyone remain calm.

And the KGP is stopping any of the information getting out. Yes, because again, we should talk about how this is 1986 in the Soviet Union. This is, you know, Gorbachev who's in power now, the ugliest leader. Yeah, egghead.

Egghead. He's got an egg on his head. Sorry. Preach, and Yeah, exactly. It would make sense if he had been born after Chernobyl. Yeah. Because he's got an egghead. And he did a lot of press picks with victims of Chernobyl because it was the best he ever looked.

Well, they, the best they ever looked, well, and they felt better. Gorbachev has initiated this policy of Glasnost, which means openness. Yes. So he's gone, we've been two seasons to- He's the great modernizer. Yeah. Quite controversial though, because a lot of people don't view him as a good president. It's very...

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It helps protect against identity theft and financial fraud, so I can stress less during tax season, or any season. Plan started just $12 a month. Learn more at tellus.com slash online security. No one can prevent all cybercrime or identity theft. Nations apply. Well, Russians are like, why the fuck are you being open? Yeah.

We're a deeply closeted country. Yeah. I mean, it must be said as well that obviously, as we discussed in our Russian Revolution series, Russians, and I'd say Ukrainians as well, not to Paraputin, but they're quite similar. They love suffering. So Chernobyl's for them. As much they love cabbage. They love it.

Cabbage and suffering. Fish and chips. Strawbage and cream. Cabbage and face melting from nuclear exposure. They love it. So this is actually great stuff for them. Yeah. So Gorbachev has initiated this policy of Glasnost,

which means openness. He's saying, oh, the Soviet Union's been too secretive and Ness has held us back. And Chernobyl really stress tests that because he goes actually, you know, we're not fucking certain. We can't say, we can't be open about everything. A man's got to have secrets. So in the initial hours after what's going on,

What happened in the group chat? Well, that's private. That's for me to know. And you'd never find out. So what happens is this back in massive beam of light is shot out of this exposed core. So everyone in Pripyat's like, ooh, they think it's like fireworks. So life carries on. People hear this big noise and see this sort of strange glow over the power plant.

But the city remains calm because they don't tell other. Children are playing outside. People are walking to get a good view of the glow. It's sort of on a much smaller scale, Boris Johnson, as soon as the COVID hit, making a big thing of shaking everyone's hand, as it's been like announced. Yeah.

Sneezing in my mouth. Yeah, come on. Windows are left open because it's a lovely spring evening. Normal life continues for more than a day, right? Some residents think that the bluish hue in the air is beautiful. Now, there's a story about the bridge of death, which I think is maybe apocryphal, but the story is that there's a railway bridge where

residents are gathering to watch the burning reactor. And everyone who stands on that bridge ends up dying from aviation exposure. And the bridge is real. And apparently people went and had a look, but there's no evidence that everyone died from it. Citizens start to have this sense that maybe something's a bit wrong because they hear on Kiev loudspeakers, the regular programming stops and classical music starts. It's just like, we don't know what to say. Let's just play a record.

Apparently, that's a familiar signal that bad news is being managed. Which is now, I have a similar thing in my house when I put Classic FM on in the car or in the hat. It's because there's bad, the kids are being a nightmare. Auschwitz card, right? Auschwitz card, I have said this before. There's screams.

And I just put the classical music on slightly louder than the screams. Chopping carrots. Chopin carrots. Like an Auschwitz guard. Just drowning the screams out. Yeah. with some nice brahms. Yeah.

Do you think that's more sinister than if it was like if you put on like death metal? Is that, but that's not helping There's not a contradiction there. I guess the classical music is the whole point. Sorry.

It's like a serial killer drinking milk. It's like. You're saying that there's an Auschwitz guard and while he's hearing the screams, he's like, yeah! I mean, that is fucked. It's hardly, yeah, it is fucked.

I don't know if it's sinister, because sinister implies I've got a bad feeling about this, it's just openly sort of evil, I guess. Yeah, because... No disguise on it. There's something... Something not right about it,

like, I mean, a creep about this, Auschwitz. Da, da, da, ha! What could the hell? Gate to death! Hey, yeah. You think? Yeah, I don't know what's creeper, actually.

I think if I was, if I was a prisoner in Auschwitz, and then I saw people being ushered out of ovens, and there's just classical music, I'd be like, God, this is awful. Yeah. This is civilized people

that are doing this, the barbarity. but if it was just a fucking troll be like ah welcome to have it it's just fucking hell you're like fuck me yeah this is yeah

well this tracks of course you're burning people you're into death metal anyway so an evacuation order finally arrives on the 27th April 36 hours after the explosion

hundreds of buses roll in loudspeakers announced the evacuation residents are told they're only leaving for like a you know a couple of days or whatever

That's why when I went there, there's still everything's less completely as it was. So they just take food and they basically, the main worry at this point is people are not allowed to take their dogs or their cats, which is very sad. And so they're going on fuck, will the dog, the dog be all right without anyone for two days? That's what they're thinking. No, it won't. No, everyone's fucked. Yeah. So people lock their doors, they leave food out for their pets.

Laundry is left on the lines and tens of thousands of people are moved out in a matter of. hours. So they disperse into nearby towns and villages and then they become permanently resettled later when the contamination becomes pretty much undeniable. So what's Moscow doing? At an extraordinary Politburo session on the 28th of April, the Soviet leadership start worrying about information control. Gorbachev tries, you know, and everyone's like, you've got a, you've got a, he's like, no, it's just, it's a thing. There's no, there's no, but there's an egg on your head. No, I know, but I was born with it's a birth. No, it's a birth. No, it's a birth. It's a bird. I can't concentrate.

Can you flip it on mine's sunny side up? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so there's concern about who should know, and there is a radioactive cloud drifting across Soviet territory and beyond. And yet, they're debating the wording of a statement so as not to cause excessive panic. Was it sort of like notes that apology?

Yeah. You're sort of drafting it about finding the right words. Yeah. Yeah. So he, Gorbachev's wants to get ahead of it because he's aware that other people what? I was drafting your notes the other day and I accidentally sent on a,

I've only just got a hinge and I accidentally sent her two versions of the same message in draft. Like I drafted two like what you're doing next week but there were two separate ways of asking it but clearly drafted and then I sent them as one message

she hasn't replied. So what was the double message? What are you doing? What you want to hang out next week and then like what are you, you want to hang out next week? what you do? I think it was just like a flip. What are you doing next week? What are you doing next week? Do you want to hang out?

Do you want to hang out? Please, please. Hey, wait. Oye, do you want to hang out? Go on. Yeah, it doesn't sound desperate at all. What are you doing next week? Do you want to hang out? Do you want to hang out? What are you doing next week? I chased it by saying, sorry, I got excited because you seem cool and gorgeous. Oh yeah. Oh, fuck. She didn't reply. I thought she'd like it. I thought she'd like it. I thought she'd think it was kind of, um...

Well, this is what the Pollock Bureau are doing. You seem cool and gorgeous. Christ. So Gorbachev wants to get ahead of it. He's aware that foreign countries are going to detect this release. The diplomat noted the Americans will notice the fact of the explosion and the spread of the radioactive cloud anyway. So we, but Gorbachev's like, we can't give up on nuclear power

because the Soviet economy is tied to it. So they have to keep Chernobyl running to run the grid. Right, right. So there are 18 nuclear power plants at the time. 14 of them have these RBMK reactors. So they can't afford to underwark. mind a confidence in them because the grid would collapse. Yeah.

So, like when Grenfell, when everyone was like, well, my fucking building is made of this shit as well. Yeah. It's the same sort of thing. So the challenge is not to confront the accident without allowing it to discredit the entire system, right? But on the morning of 28th of April, so yeah, 36, 48 hours afterwards, a nuclear plant in Sweden

radiation alarms trigger and alert. So the staff think it's local, but then it's clear that the radiation is coming from outside. There are similar readings elsewhere in Scandinavia, and so within hours it becomes clear, they follow the wind, and he goes, well, this must be the Soviet Union, because it's all the, it's the south, come from the south-east, south-east. So the explosion had sent a plume of radioactive past course equivalent to 400 Hiroshima bombs, more than seven kilometres into the atmosphere at due east.

This was Charlie on the ski trip. A toxic plume. So obviously Western intelligence is scrambling to interpret this. Food imports are monitored. And, you know, within like in Germany, West Germany, as it is then,

children are told to stay inside. They close playgrounds. They shut schools. There's an abortion spike across Europe because of radiophobia. I mean, yeah, but maybe this is why they don't have as many good Paralympians. you know so it's sort of you had to weigh it up

this is a tragedy for the Paralympics this really is the amount of Paralympians we were starved off this is a holocaust for Paralympians genuinely yeah in Germany as well probably hey in Germany again they again they won't stop doing it

so radio phobia and sensationalist media information about the accident means that everyone's terrified as a result of all this the Kremlin is forced to issue a statement on the 28th of April Bear in mind how bad we know this is. This is one of the great understatements of the age.

An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl atomic power station, one of the nuclear reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Aid is being given to the victims. Our government commission has been established. Fine. Fine. Okay, cool.

We've gone under control. There's been a commission. Brilliant. Another fucking meeting. Great. So, the Council of Ministers, Jackie Weaver, they form a commission to plan the cleanup. Right, and it's chaired by Boris Shabina, Selwyn Scar's Garden, the miniseries.

He's a party man, as they all are. And there's not a party boy, very different. Yes. Party man. They're very... Opposites, almost. Charlie's a party boy. The Corbachev's a party man.

Sure. He's a great character in the miniseries, I think. He is brilliant. I find his arc. It's amazing. Yeah. And then there's the key science guy is Valerie Lagassov, who is played by Jared Harris.

Yes, so one... A phenomenal actor, Jared Harris. Brilliant. And I'm just watching him Mad Men as well. well, it appears in there as well. I think one of the main historical inaccuracies that they had to do for narrative was the fact that they

distilled a team about 30 people into two people. One woman. One woman and him. Yeah. So that completely changes it because they sell it as a narrative of these two people screaming, but it was actually this massive team, but they just squished it all down. No, it's not as good though. Yeah.

So Lagassov is the one who's like, this is really bad. Yeah. He's going, guys guys I've got a bad this is this is this is fucked yeah and everyone's like it's all right so it's not that bad chill out mate chill out Valerie um boron boron um we're all right it's not as if our president's got an egg on his head or anything anyway so the state assembles this vast workforce who is tasked to contain the disaster yeah and led by legasov and uh yeah 30 people um they're called they're called they're called

the liquidators, which means a liquidator in Russian, or ligvidator, means to eliminate the consequences of an accident. It's very Soviet. Very Soviets. Yeah. So their job is to stop reactor four getting worse because it's beyond repair, limit radioactive emissions, and keep Chernobyl's other reactors from being pulled into the catastrophe because there are three other ones still going at this point. So the first thing is to put out the fire because the fire is giving off twice the radio. released by Hiroshima every hour. Yeah.

Which really does make me think, did Hiroshima? Were they overreacting? Yes, I think so. They're making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, it wasn't a mountain out of a mushroom cloud. Yeah, it wasn't fucking Chernobyl, chill out. You know what I mean?

It puts it into perspective, I guess. Yeah. Anyway, so 2,000 degrees was how hot the fire was. Can you just give us a sense of like, can you Google how hot other fires are? Boiling. No, I mean, Google it, Charlie. I just say, boy, you can mean another word for it. How hot is that? You could probably cook a pizza. How long will it take to your pizza?

Pizza's 200 degrees, right? Pizza's 180. Well, pizza's 400, you can get up to 400. In 2,000 degrees. Yeah. So easy. Instant, like, if you put a doctor-erker pizza in at 2,000 degrees. 30 seconds. Wow. That still, that still seems very long. Oh, no, 2,000 Fahrenheit.

So it'll be 20, 15 seconds. It'll be about 15 seconds. However, at this temperature, the, pizza would move instantly from raw to completely incinerated. So it wouldn't cook. No. But it would for like a millisecond. So you'd have to just do that, right?

Yeah, yeah. I think that might actually be quite delicious if you did look like that. And also how quick the production line would be. And they do look like pizza chefs. Yeah. The chry not a lot. The whole way there. Yeah.

So again, you know, pizza ovens is another way of making steam. I don't know why we're bothering with this nuclear stuff. Because also pizza ovens, you can make pizza. It's two birds, one stuff. own. Government, I'm available. To do a white paper on why we should replace Hinkley Point C with a massive pizza oven.

Anyway, it's so hot that if you poured water on it, it would just instantly vaporise. They start getting helicopters to fly over the crater and drop sand, clay, lead and boron in order to smother the fire and absorb the neutrons and to reduce the emissions, right? Which is one of the only things they can do in the first few days because nobody can get safe,

nobody can get close to it. So pilots flying into highly contaminated air. They can't actually get over the core because of the thing. So all the sand they drop misses. And then there is this footage of a helicopter that can't see where it's going and flies into a crane

and then crashes, killing the pilot. Yeah, look at this. So this is, and it flies too close to a crane and then... Oh, dear. You can see someone going, fuck. Whoops. Yeah.

Oh, shit. Ah, yeah. Smoking. Fuck. Fuck me. Can't part of there, mate. Yeah. Yeah.

Sigs have never been more like, smoked. Necessary. Yeah. Definitely trying to work out at Chernobyl. It's very hard to make the case that you should stop smoking. When you're working at Chernobyl. You're getting 15,000 x-rays a fucking second.

So pretty much all the sand like misses And the flight bars are crowded with cranes and rigging And they were trying to build stuff around I mean they don't know what to do at this point Right So doesn't that doesn't really work Then there's this whole thing with the miners So Lagasov's big fear

This is Charlie this is minors as in coal miners Not I'm a paed of our miners Yeah Yeah Um Lagasov's big fear is that the molten core will burn through the ground and interact with the water in the Pripyat River. Contaminate all the water.

China syndrome. You wear a China syndrome? Is that not just down syndrome? It's not down syndrome. That's very offensive to Chinese people. Take that back. Doesn't that sound like an uncle? Oh, what's he got a China syndrome, is it?

It's a theoretical scenario where the molten core of a nuclear reactor penetrating. penetrate through the earth and reaches the other side of the earth. So it's from an American perspective which is what it's called China Syndrome. Right. That's a very American name. Yeah.

China, China Syndrome. So the idea of just having a whole burrowed through the entirety of the earth. It comes out the other side. So the idea is that what happens here can affect China. Right, right. So he thinks it's going to melt down

and contaminate the groundwater. So they go to the Donbass and they get 400 miners who are brought into dig underneath the reactor to create space for like a protective concrete barrier to stabilise the ground and prevent

heat from moving into a new now I don't understand and we'll get into this in the next step final episode if you know if you're building a steel cover for it and you're moving concrete why don't you just build the fucking plan out of that in the first place what do you mean like

if concrete is going to stop all this why isn't there already a concrete platform there that's true is it not been destroyed an explosion or anything? Well, if it has, then there's no point to putting another one here because it's melting. What? But do you think they even bothered with like, because it's so fucked if anything happens,

is there even any point in protecting yourself anyway? Because it's just fucked. Well, this is, they do this very well in the series, is that this is, you know, it's psychological more than anything. It's the Soviets are going, listen, this country is about suffering. Everyone in this country ultimately dies for nothing,

but we're aware. of it and we quite like that. The meaning of life is suffering. You know, St. Pegger's bum. Yeah. And who wants to do that? Yes, please. Does anyone want their skin to fall off

in order to build a concrete barrier? Yeah, I'd love to have some... It's the only thing I believe in is my own death for the greater good. Yes, please. They're dying to die. Yeah. So they get these miners in

and they offer them these, in this mini series at least, they offer them these like shit COVID masks. And he's like, if these don't fucking work. do they? If they were working, you'd be fucking wearing them.

Yeah. Fuck off. Yeah, he's amazing. He's amazing. He looks like Red Richardson as well. Anyway, they're working in punishing conditions and the tunnel is dug in very

costrophobic surroundings and there's constant pressure to go faster. And the radiation down there is lower than on the roof, but that doesn't mean it's safe. Yeah. So they're breathing in radioactive dust. But the worst, the actual worst job is the roof crews.

And they do the, this really well in the documentary is because they just have one unbroken take. So you have an idea of the length of time they're up there for. Yeah. So there's all this debris on the roof around reactor four, which is the actual graph, the actual core is on the roof.

Right. So this has to be removed before you can actually contain the disaster. Yeah. Now the scientists give the roof 's female names like Masher, Katya and Nina, which is a bit like when they give it's like storms are all that's named after women, aren't

Right. Is it to make the men more likely to do the job? No, I think it's just because it's like, you know, it's angry and irrational. Right. Okay. So we're watching footage now of, yeah, so these are the men. What do they call these men? I forgot what the nickname for these men are.

They're on the roof. And they're only allowed to be on there for like a minute. And they're basically like, they're in shit fancy dress. Yeah. They're wearing lead aprons. Yeah. they initially tried these West German robots

was it or East German Be East German robots I guess Yeah They could just flick them Where they were trying to Sort of like like bomb clearing Yeah They're trying to get the graphite off

I think the radiation disrupted them Yeah so they all broke Yeah Masha was the most dangerous roof If you were standing on Masha For 40 seconds That could be enough to kill you

Yeah Going down on Masha Yeah It's like Michael Douglas was going down on Catheter Jones so they tried these remote control machines but they failed under radiation

and terrain was all streamed yeah they're treated they've been told you're probably going to die or have they been told they're probably going to die they don't know how just how dangerous is but it's like you have a good chance of dying and they're literally just shifts everyone's up there doing it 30 seconds

yeah but the thing is is that no one very few people actually die in the immediate aftermath are they sort of working like sort of like Greeks but Greeks do that without the radiation right? Yeah this is a just this is Greek building site

who are watching now 30 seconds of work yeah I'm then break okay now please now I will die I will die I will die any longer than 90 second I will die

yeah I can't um so So Noble's made Russians Greeks that's which is why it's such a disaster yeah how have you made the hardest people, the laziest. So they're wearing this improvised protective

kit, a mask. Oh my God, if you know what happened in Greece, can you imagine? Well, we... Thank fuck it happened in Russia, is all I'm saying. We would not be here. Yeah. Thank fuck it happened. Thank fuck it happened in a country where they have no regard for human life. Yes. Yes. Because we would be fucked to nearly every other country. Well, this is what I meant it said last

episode is that the flip side of the disaster is that they did save the world. Yeah. And if it happened in Greece, there'd be a bunch of babies born with plastic chairs welded onto their back. Like turtles. So each man is limited to a short run between 40 and 90 seconds before being pulled back.

So nearly 4,000 men do this to get rid of all the graphite on the roof. You couldn't get Brits to do this, I don't think. I don't know, like 4,000 men to just commit suicide like this. Japan is the only other country which you could do that. And it's where the two big ones happened. Yeah, it is. It is very, creepily ironic.

that the only two countries where this has happened are the two most prepared for it culturally every single member of the cleanup operation gets these radioactive exposures now the short term ass acute radiation sicknesses for those close to the reactor but longer term cancer risks and chronic health problems for anyone else

so a lethal dose of radiation is around 400 to 450 rontogens at Chernobyl the roof was omitting 20,000 engines an hour close to the core it was 30,000 so sorry how many died of the four thousand who were doing the shifts. Well, so they think that only about... And why don't have these stats?

I don't know why they're confused stats. Because it's Soviet. It could be, but they think that... So only 38 people were recorded dead in the immediate aftermath. Right. But they think about 9,000 or 10,000 their cancers were attributed to what happened. But because it's cancer, it's... It's hard to...

It's quite hard to say... Right, yeah. In the core, if you were in the core, you would have been there for second. and then you basically just sort of instant death. So they didn't really have dissimiters that could read big enough readings.

The workers were sent into places that should have been treated as untouchable and many liquidators were personnel who just could not refuse the job, even if they wanted to. What'd you mean? Conscripts? Yeah, but they also they probably fucking loved it.

So in a matter of hours Pripyat is emper. emptied. And the reactor fort is still badly damaged

and the Soviets have had to issue a response because you know fucking West German kids are being

aborted and they're like fucking well don't blame us for that so we're going to leave this episode

here. In the next episode we will get to the aftermath the Soviet effort to contain the

reactor and the long-term consequences of Chernobyl does it ultimately bring down the Soviet Union and what's it like

what's it like today? See then that episode's already on the Patreon where for three pounds a month you can join a community of people who Terrifyingly like-minded people Yeah terrifyingly It's a marketplace for

Many things Memorabilia and ideas You get an ad free You get bonus episodes We've got a whole A whole fucking sunken Zen pit of bonus content, hours of the stuff.

Yeah, and it's lethal. It is lethal. Too much. If you listen to too many of the pageant episodes, you will end up looking like Michael Douglas. You will have to start taking shifts to finish the patron episode. 4,000 of you.

I can only listen to 30 seconds at a time. Yeah. If you were to play every patron episode at the same time simultaneously, it would take you seconds before your face would melt off. That's on the Patreon, and if not, we'll see you next time

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