[loulou24]

I agree about the bias and numerous inaccuracies and simplification but...

> evacuation was swift and well organized;

This could be argued.

It was not swift: It took 36 hours for Prypiat to be evacuated, with people sunbathing and attending (dry) wedding parties in the mean time... The most elementary instructions (stay home, shut the windows) were not given for fear of appearing as "too alarmist".

And it was not that well organized: For instance, the buses used for the evacuation came from Kiev and were used immediately after on their normal routes without prior decontamination.

I'm not even going to talk about the handling of the May 1st, Workers day celebration, unnecessarily maintained despite alarming contamination levels in the atmosphere.

Source: Serhii Plokhy's book "Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy" (2018)

> Miners were enthusiastic and well compensated

I think it's difficult to convey now the level of patriotism in the mind of the miners and soldiers. Maybe courage has declined so much that our societies can't comprehend it anymore. I've read that soldiers were promised big compensations but didn't receive anything though (or maybe inflation ate it up).

For me the biggest problem was the usual naive way scientists and science are presented in movies. The know it all, all rational super human hand-bound by obscurantist authorities.

[egao1980]

First of all, there were emergency protocols in place and radiation levels were monitored. While there was hope that incident could be contained and radiation levels were low no evacuation were needed, but it was planned and prepared. Imagine moving 35000-50000 people while providing food and accommodation.

Moreover if you compare it to Three Mile Island incident this was done faste and was organized better.

It's not about patriotism. Similary to volonteers during COVID outbreak people knew the danger but felt that they need to do something to prevent graver harm to society and people. Please note that we're talking about 1980s and Soviet people were properly informed about radiation and its effects.

[dmit]

> While there was hope that incident could be contained and radiation levels were low no evacuation were needed

Excuse me, hope? Evacuation was not necessary because there was hope that things weren't as bad as they have turned out to be?

And honestly, as someone who has heard a billion Russian jokes about "volunteers" in the USSR, every time you use that word is jarring to me. I'd share the anecdotes with you, but I suspect you already know most of them.

[egao1980]

Reasons for hope - no elevated radiation levels, still unknown scale of destruction to the core. As soon as things were getting known next stages of protocol were brought in action.

In this case we know for sure it was volonteers. First of all most of them are alive and USSR is long gone, so they'd already came up with their stories of forced participation. You just trying to diminish geunine heroism of people just because they lived in USSR.

[loulou24]

The handling at Three Mile Island was pathetic.

The handling at Windscale was even worse. Even before the 1957 fire, the neighboring villages and countryside were getting contaminated daily without any authority doing anything about it.

But I think it's also well documented now that the Ukrainian communist local authorities could have handled the evacuation much better and much sooner. If only for having the tendency to wait for higher ranks from Moscow to take the difficult decisions for them.

[egao1980]

This is all post-knowledge. You could have won the last year's lotteries given all the today's knowledge.

Emergency works on station began immediatly, specialists from Moscow were there in the early morning. There was no immediate need of evacuation at first according to dosimetry and prelimenary damage assessment. It took some time to realise the scale of destruction to the core zone and that triggered evacuation.