[softwaredoug]

It's interesting to contrast this with the Chernobyl HBO documentary. Both are engineering disasters, both have very complicated cultural and political underpinnings to why they were allowed to happen. It's not to say the Challenger disaster is comparable to the scale of the Chernobyl disaster, but more crucially: what if the same poor incentives and decisions in place that cause Challenger caused other engineering disasters in the US.

[oivey]

HBO’s Chernobyl is more of a dramatization than a documentary. It certainly doesn’t contain interviews of people who were actually involved. There are quite a few good bits highlighting the dangers of nuclear energy, particularly in the context of the Soviet bureaucracy, but there also a few liberties taken with the science and reality of the event. The fact that people think of it is a documentary despite that is also concerning.

[jboog]

I'd go even further and say that the way most people treat "documentary" to be equivalent to "unbiased recitation of factual events" is problematic itself.

I love docs but often research the subject after watching and it's INCREDIBLY rare to see a doc that doesn't play fast and loose with the facts for the sake of creating a dramatic arc or thrilling moments.

It's ESPECIALLY true in "true crime" docs. The director has an idea of painting the subject as either sympathetic guy who was wronged by a corrupt system (Making a Murderer) or evil mastermind (The Jinx) just to give two recent examples.

Turned out years later the giant reveal at the center of The Jinx which made it such a viral hit was 100% manufactured by the director cutting up audio to make Durst say things he didn't. He also lied to the police about the audio so it wouldn't spoil the ending of the doc.

Jarecki never had to apologize for the blatant dishonesty in the doc, never had to give back the Emmy. It's still universally acclaimed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/arts/television/robert-du...

Sorry to rant, but the "documentary" film industry is a fucking joke. I have so many more examples...

[rland]

I agree with this take so much.

It's because with documentaries, the target audience is someone who is expecting to get some semblance of truth from the thing. But the issue is that given two documentaries, A and B, if A is more narratively/cinematically/etc titillating, it will get produced over B. Which means that the cost function of engagement will drive a documentary right up to the constraint of "not lying" as it can possibly go.

If you really care about accuracy, don't watch documentaries. And please if you are one of my friends stop recommending that I watch them to get informed about something.

[jboog]

Yeah, well stated.

The incentives are definitely misaligned. Viewers want and expect accuracy, but most of all what they want is to be entertained and most aren't going to look to hard to see how accurate a really entertaining doc is.

And as you said the incentive for filmmakers is to produce the most entertaining doc possible to get more butts in seats and more streams which means funding and continued work in the industry. Accuracy doesn't really play much into what gets produced and released.

[hardwaregeek]

Agreed that people don't understand that documentaries are still narrative. My cinema studies professor emphasized that it's impossible to make an unbiased documentary. You could take security cam footage and it'd still have some bias from where the camera was placed and which footage you decided to show.

[lostlogin]

Serhii Plokhy’s Chernobyl: History of Tragedy seems a great text on the subject, and while the tv series is undoubtedly dramatised and many characters are morphed into one, the tv series seems to broadly follow the history of events as described in the book. Serhii seems to have a favourable view of the tv series.

Is there something glaring I am missing?

https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/chernobyl-expert-serhii-plokhi...

[dspillett]

> Is there something glaring I am missing?

It is worth listening to the podcast that accompanied the TV show. One of the things they mention quite a bit is where they deliberately deviated from the truth for practical/dramatic/pacing reasons[†], had to pick a narrative path from conflicting records, or had to make bits up to fill gaps in the (publicly available) records, and one or two cases where they toned down rather than ramped up an issue for tonal or "no one would believe it was quite that way" reasons.

It is both an enlightening insight into the process of making a show like that, and gives useful context to start on your journey if you want to delve deeper into the real reality of the events.

[†] merging many people into a single character, exaggerating immediate effects, reordering/repurposing actual events (a helicopter did crash but not at that point), pretty much that entire courtroom scene in the final episode, ...

[garmaine]

There are quite a few scientific or technical aspects of the HBO show which are completely fantastical and typical Hollywood tropes. Like that the core might blow up like a megaton bomb, or render all of Ukraine uninhabitable.

Edit: oh and that’s without mentioning all the factual errors in the story itself. Like the three volunteers who went into the plant to open the drains didn’t die, but are alive today, cancer free and collecting their pensions. So are most of the people who watched the plant burn the first night on the bridge.

[jacquesm]

From what I know about it whether or not the core blew up (again, a small part of it blew up in the beginning of the incident and spewed radioactive graphite all over the site) was a dime on its side, the core was well underway towards landing in the water underneath it, the resulting steam explosion could have thrown all of the core all over the surrounding site. That it didn't happen is due to the heroics of a couple of people who never really made a big deal of it, they went underneath the reactor core to manually open the valves that drained the basin.

[garmaine]

This is correct. However the writers for the show played it up to be much larger than that. In one of the episodes Gorbachov asked how big the explosion would be, and the reply was somewhere in the multi-megaton range IIRC, complete with a description of the predicted damage to the surrounding area equivalent to a major nuclear blast.

The biggest steam boiler explosions in history were still many orders of magnitude less than that, and those were purpose-built pressure vessels. The core wasn't going to drop into a pressure vessel, just whatever makeshift containment they had enacted at that time. Had the core come in contact with the water it would have converted a large chunk of it into steam, which would within moments blow open whatever cracks or leaks existed in the containment, blowing a lot of radioactive rubble into the surrounding environment.

That would have been a huge setback, but nothing near a multi-megaton nuclear explosion.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The problem wasn't the immediate explosion but the huge cloud of hyper-radioactive fallout it would have produced.

Chernobyl still managed to poison large areas of Europe, but the effects were mercifully localised and temporary.

A steam explosion would have increased those effects and the areas they affected by some orders of magnitude.

[jacquesm]

Indeed, in fact if that steam explosion had happened it would have likely reduced the chance of the core going critical rather than increased it. It still would have been pretty bad though, especially given that they didn't really have a good way of cleaning up the highly radioactive graphite other than to have guys pick it up by hand...

[arethuza]

The epilogue of the show makes it very clear that the three survived and at the time of broadcast two were still alive.

Also, I believe the Soviet authorities at the time may have incorrectly believed that a large explosion was possible - in that respect the show may be correctly repeating a mistake that was made at the time.

[unicornfinder]

If memory serves this is confirmed in the podcast - i.e. the soviet engineers at the time believed it, even if we now know that it was unlikely.

[hef19898]

I have to read the official reports yet, both of them. But from what I understood, while it turned out the massive steam explosion was no real threat, the sincerely believed it would happen. And the three guys draining the reservoirs lived, one died in 200X (I can't remember), the other two are still alive.

There are other things I don't like about the mini series, but really just minor ones. The last episode was a wasted opportunity, so. Using the Vienna meeting would have been the perfect setting to cover the international reaction as well.

That being said, I saw a lot of similar decision processes in my career in purely capitalist jobs to the ones that lead to the screwed up test in Chernobyl.

[hef19898]

Thanks for pointing the bridge thing out. For starters, nobody knows who was there that night. And since nobody counted deaths, because nobody wanted to know, the series final just put a lot of urban legends out there. Not that the fact the nobody wanted to count isn't troubling enough in itself.

[lostlogin]

> Not that the fact the nobody wanted to count isn't troubling enough in itself.

This crappy trait isn’t limited to that time and place. The incident that comes to mind is gulf war 2 Bush “We don’t do body counts”.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/we-count-they-dont...

[TeMPOraL]

> The fact that people think of it is a documentary despite that is also concerning.

That's why I don't like entertainment that stylizes itself as factual. For general audience, there are only two modes of understanding: either something is obviously fiction, or obviously reporting. There's no middle line.

From the shows that try to blend the two, you get things like people believing fictionalizations in HBO's Chernobyl and then becoming opinionated on nuclear energy; people learning history from docudramas; people thinking Top Gear is factual and not staged; people thinking all those performers on talent shows are actually doing these things for real...

[xapata]

I had assumed from the comment that there were two shows, one a dramatization and one a documentary. Surely no one thinks that fiction was a documentary?!

[gumby]

softwaredoug (GP poster) used the word “documentary”

[xapata]

And I was confused by that word choice, thinking I was/am unaware of HBO's Chernobyl documentary, which they must have produced to accompany the excellent film/miniseries.

[dragontamer]

I have friends who keep citing 'The Big Short' for what's wrong with our financial system.

A lot of people can't tell the difference between fact movies and fiction movies.

And that doesn't even get into clearly biased documentaries (but I assume that most documentaries are at least trying to be factual instead of entertainment...)

[URSpider94]

The book “The Big Short” is a documentary. The movie is based reasonably closely on the book. The movie is a fictional re-telling, but the people are real and their motivations and actions are accurate.

[dragontamer]

The Jenga scene to describe CBOs is quite cringe to me.

If a BBB tranche goes under, the investors in the BBB tranche get nothing to protect the AAA tranche (and above). In effect: BBB tranche can fail safely, that's the entire point of them.

That's why they only shorted the BBB tranche (with exception of Brownfield Capital, who did go all the way to the AA tranche). AA was safer and more reliable: so for a short its a riskier move to short.

------

The scene does in fact lay the ground basis of tranches and CDOs, which is better than most Hollywood movies. But its still filled with misconceptions, and the Jenga tower (though dramatic) isn't helping at all.

---------------

Synthetic CDOs was very poorly described. The "rating agency" scenes were pretty much purely fiction and just designed to enrage the audience and IMO unhelpful to the general discussion. Etc. etc.

----

CDOs of CDOs were accurately described IMO. Hammed up by explaining the "yesterday's fish in today's soup), but that at least is somewhat of an accurate analog.

------

I mean, it was a solid movie. But look, I know how reality works. I've actually taken the time to look at (some) of the Congressional Hearings and read some of the papers for how that whole thing worked back in 2008. And there are also some good Frontline Documentaries on the whole 2008 crisis in general.

[phonon]

AIG insured many of the AAA tranches. Once those started becoming at risk, AIG had to respond to a collateral call--which they couldn't (as the AAA tranches were so huge).

They were further hurt by the fact they kept a huge amount of their assets in AAA MBS. Which had now become illiquid and (temporarily) lost value.

AIG's bailout by the government was a critical inflection point; if they hadn't, the entire insurance/financial services industry was at risk.

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b150qdkrd30ggk...

[URSpider94]

Yes, it's a Hollywood movie, about a very technical subject. I would not expect someone to come away with a strong working knowledge of how credit default swaps work, any more than I would expect someone to come away from watching the miniseries "Chernobyl" and understand what caused the reactor explosion.

The Jenga tower should really be inverted. The BBB tranche gets knocked off the tower to protect the AAA tranche at the base.

The ratings agency scenes are fictional in the sense that no conversation actually happened, to our knowledge, but it's 100% true that the ratings agencies played right along with the industry, and were incentivized to give higher ratings, just like the FAA was incentivized not to ground Boeing after the first 737 Max crash.

[gruez]

>but I assume that most documentaries are at least trying to be factual instead of entertainment

Given the recent thread on adam curtis documentaries I'm inclined to believe the opposite. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25880448

[headmelted]

Same.

By the way, I thought Inside Job was a vastly better film about the crisis that was criminally under-rated. Definitely worth checking out.

Not perfect by any means, but far more informative than The Big Short, and not as dumbed down.

[siculars]

A docudrama might be a more appropriate description. Nevertheless, Chernobyl on HBO was haunting and forces you to stop and think how a similar tragedy could be avoided. More broadly speaking it forces you to think about systemic power structures and perverse inventives that lead to these situations. These two are outliers, you need to ask yourself how many millions of times does this happen with localized/limited consequences.

[BurningFrog]

I would have said it highlights the dangers of Soviet bureaucracy and tyranny, particularly in the context of nuclear energy.

[hef19898]

The only "soviet" factor was, IMHO, the reactor design and the fact that the behaviour during shut down was kept secret. All other decisions can happen exactly like that in any other environment. Upper management ignoring risks for promotion? Yep. Bad risk management and safety culture? Check. Ignoring procedure to meet deadlines? Check. That emphasis on the "soviet" angle is the one criticism I have against the HBO series. Small things like getting the evacuation of Pripyat wrong (they evacuated before the west knew what happened, not after), and especially during the final episode which completely ignored the international reaction, or non-reaction. Also the over dramatic death toll, nobody knows how many people died because nobody wanted to know, not the Soviets nor the West.

[hef19898]

I am in the middle of INSAG-7, the revised Chernobyl accident report from the 90s. And the positive reactivity effect of the control rods was, as shown in the HBO series, known since 83. The RBMK chief engineer suggested changes, technical and in procedure, immediately after that. These have not been implemented, because it was considered to be an extreme edge case. Might have been nice to portray it that way.

After all, I love the HBO series, watched it three times by now. Still one of the best mini series ever produced. As shown by the fact that you have to dig that deep to find deviations from reality. In most other cases, you don't even have to scratch the surface.

[hef19898]

INSAG-7 includes a soviet report as annex. That report is really fascinating. Already in 1976 the soviet authorities and relevant institutes were aware of the design related issues of RBMK reactors and had identified necessary changes and modifications. Obviously, none were taken, but all these recommendations were included in the initial soviet report on the Chernobyl disaster.

And in my lay man eyes, the RBMK reactor (which was also found to violate soviet requirements from the 70s) was a disaster waiting to happen. Inherently unstable, optimized for grid stability instead of safety, lacking control and monitoring, erratic behaviour under certain conditions and no clear operating procedures.

Edit: Also nice is that the first reaction was to blame the operators and not the system as a whole. Kind of what always happens with aviation accidents as well, it always the pilots fault first.

[itronitron]

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Boeing 737 Max, both of which have killed more people, come to mind.

[hashkb]

We all deal with the "normalization of deviance" all the time, in large and small ways. Like being in a group where it's "ok to take off your mask" or basically any form of teenage peer pressure. These flaws are basic to humans for obvious reasons (we want to be cool / successful / not problematic) and it takes massive courage to blow the whistle.

[sixdimensional]

In fact, in the social sciences, this is a known phenomenon called "normal accidents" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

[minikites]

I think both of these events together undermined people's general faith in governments to accomplish large scale projects. The two largest superpowers each failed in a big way at a task which should have been within their capabilities.

It shook the assumptions and foundations of modernity and we lurched closer to overvaluing the virtual accomplishments of economic growth and financialization. Wealth is being used to create more wealth, it is not serving any productive purpose, directly or indirectly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financialization#Roots

>In the United States, probably more money has been made through the appreciation of real estate than in any other way. What are the long-term consequences if an increasing percentage of savings and wealth, as it now seems, is used to inflate the prices of already existing assets - real estate and stocks - instead of to create new production and innovation?

We kept trying after the Apollo 1 fire, we didn't really keep trying after Challenger or Chernobyl. Instead of trying to accomplish truly great and difficult things, we became satisfied with making numbers go up on a Bloomberg terminal.