Why HBO’s “Chernobyl” Gets Nuclear So Wrong

Since the start of HBO’s mini-series about the 1986 nuclear disaster, “Chernobyl,” journalists have praised the series for getting the facts of the event right, even if its creators took some creative liberties.

“The first thing to understand about the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” wrote a reporter for The New York Times, “is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter.”

Where have I heard that before?  Ah Yes! “Fake but Accurate”

“Chernobyl” ominously depicts people gathered on a bridge watching the Chernobyl fire. At the end of the series, HBO claims, “it has been reported that none survived. It is now known as the “Bridge of Death.”

But the “Bridge of Death” is a sensational urban legend and there is no good evidence to support it.

“Chernobyl” is as misleading for what it leaves out. It gives the impression that all Chernobyl first responders who suffered Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) died. In reality, 80 percent of those with ARS survived.

It’s clear that even highly educated and informed viewers, including journalists, mistook much of “Chernobyl” fiction for fact.

Follow the link and read the whole article.   The whole thing is rife with one example of Chernobyl’s stunningly unscientific sensationalism after another.

Rotten Tomatoes is doing it’s bit.  A very high 95% rating by the critics, but strangely no rating listed for the audience.  And yet the final episode has been broadcast.   It’s fine, I stopped looking at or believing RT a while ago.