How can I watch it if I dont have HBO? Can I rent it online etc?

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Originally posted by redstone:
How can I watch it if I dont have HBO? Can I rent it online etc?

You can get a streaming subscription for HBO, either through the standalone HBO Now service, or by adding the HBO channel to your Amazon Prime Video subscription.

It's $15/month. Wait until the miniseries is complete, then get a HBO streaming subscription for a month, watch the series, and then cancel the subscription.

Something about Chernobyl has always fascinated me, will have to give this a watch.

There are many good documentaries on the subject on youtube for free. Here's one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg1kwoSiIc0

No need for a dramatized version, the real one is scary enough. Biorobots are one example. The Soviets were in Afghanistan at the time. Soldiers were offered a get out of the service opportunity in exchange for spending about 90 seconds on the roof of the building near the reactor, shoveling radioactive debris off into an area that would be covered in concrete. The electronics in regular remote controlled equipment couldn't operate in the highly radioactive area. They called them biorobots.

As bad as it was, it could have been worse and will continue to be a problem into eternity.

I am always wary of miniseries and historical accuracies. I would go with the free documentaries. The film Chernobyl Diaries which is completely fiction is surprisingly pretty good. Essentially a group of American adventure tourists go into the restricted area in the abandoned city of Prizbyl for a look see.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by redstone:
How can I watch it if I dont have HBO? Can I rent it online etc?

You can get a streaming subscription for HBO, either through the standalone HBO Now service, or by adding the HBO channel to your Amazon Prime Video subscription.

It's $15/month. Wait until the miniseries is complete, then get a HBO streaming subscription for a month, watch the series, and then cancel the subscription.

Excellent. I will definitely do that. It looks like I can ad it to my amazon prime subscription.

It predict glowing reviews.

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Originally posted by sigmonkey:
It predict glowing reviews.

Nice!!!!!

If you go the subscription route, do it through Amazon if you can. The HBO UI is atrocious.

I find it interesting how communism and the lackadaisical atmosphere that results, can bring us these disasters.

The workers can care less about quality control. Yet they build nuclear subs , nuclear bombs, etc.

Even years later viewing the Chernobyl disaster, so SCARY. Amazing that most of that part of the world wasn't fatally contaminated.

quote:

Originally posted by xantom:
If you go the subscription route, do it through Amazon if you can. The HBO UI is atrocious.

My experience as well. I used to have a standalone HBO Now subscription, but switched my HBO subscription to my Amazon account.

In addition to the UI, HBO's streaming service seems to bog down and buffer more than usual on highly anticipated debut nights (like the premier of Game of Thrones seasons). But I haven't experienced that same slowdown with HBO through Amazon.

Just a reminder that the first episode aired last night. I got lucky as I happened to come across it when it was starting as I was getting into bed and decided to stay up and watch it. I had forgotten all about it.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed the first episode. Seems to be very well done.

No HBO for us, I did just read "Ablaze: The Story of the Heroes and Victims of Chernobyl" by Piers Paul Read.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod...def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i5

I'm planning a visit to Kiev next year, will take a side trip to Chernobyl:

https://www.tourkiev.com/

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sigmund,

Gonna check it out tonight, thanks for the review Balze.

quote:

Originally posted by FN in MT:
Even years later viewing the Chernobyl disaster, so SCARY. Amazing that most of that part of the world wasn't fatally contaminated.

The area is contaminated but, not THAT contaminated...don't get me wrong, I'm not eating anything that was raised or, grown around there.
Recently a new all-steel containment shelter was slid over the entombed reactor; funded of course by the largest economies in the world. There's a video in the link, it took awhile to build and the workers are wearing some protection but, not all suited-up like your imagination.

Be prepared for four things:

1. It's dark. But then it happened at night. I'm talking of the story portrayed. I predict everybody in Episode 1 dies horribly in Episode 2.

2. It is a hit on nuclear power, not the insanity of nuclear power run by the Soviets. And that way it's a shame because the only viable alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear power. Or a return to completely agrarian society like that which existed in the 15th century.

3. If you understand the Soviet state you'll understand of the completely fucked-up world these people lived in. Facts that did not conform to Leninist theory had to be disposed of. Where facts that conformed to Leninist theory did not exist, they needed to be created out of lies. No facts or theory were allowed to tarnish the image of Lenin, the supremacy of the state, or the subjugation of the individual to the will of the many. Sadly those who do not realize these facts about the Soviet state will probably miss the importance of that aspect of the story. It's a shame that that probably includes anybody under the age of 30.

4. There is very little about the show that I would qualify as enjoyable. It's enjoyable only in the display of individual heroism by many people who knew that the acts they were doing spelled their doom with the certainty of the sun rising in the east. It's interesting that we probably owe the continued inhabitation of Europe to these people but we will never know who they really were.

I'll be watching next week.

ETA to Corsair.

I believe FN in MT was referring to the radiological disaster that did not occur because of the heroism of the responders in the first days of the disaster. There was a very high potential for the vast amount of radioactive material in the reactor to be expelled into the air bound to very fine particulate matter that would have come down over a large swath of Europe. You might have ended up with the situation of a large portion of Europe depopulated in the way the area around Pripyat is depopulated now.

I was working at a Nuclear Shipyard when this happened. I was rather shocked at just how much our NRRO (Naval Nuclear Reactor Office) folks knew within hours about what had happened. Everything that was shared with management proved 100% accurate.

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. If you understand the Soviet state you'll understand of the completely fucked-up world these people lived in. Facts that did not conform to Leninist theory had to be disposed of. Where facts that conformed to Leninist theory did not exist, they needed to be created out of lies. No facts or theory were allowed to tarnish the image of Lenin, the supremacy of the state, or the subjugation of the individual to the will of the many. Sadly those who do not realize these facts about the Soviet state will probably miss the importance of that aspect of the story. It's a shame that that probably includes anybody under the age of 30.

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I am a student of history and well acquainted with the Soviet Union. The film smacked of propaganda at times. I had the sense that the Communist bureaucracy was overemphasized. If this had occurred during the time of Stalin or early in the Cold War it would be more believable. I am curious as to the historical accuracy. I can recall that there was quite a bit of secrecy as to what actually happened and am thankful that things were not worse.

I enjoyed it. I liked how the plant operator kept telling his staff that they were wrong and that they didn’t know what they were talking about.

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“Denial” ain’t only a river in Egypt. Yes...denial on ALL levels was absolutely astonishing.