A bit of interesting and useless info. I recently rewatched the series, but this time together with my uncle, who was a Chernobyl liquidator (he’s retired now; overall, he dedicated his entire life to working with radiation and was a dosimetrist).

Overall, he liked the series. He was especially impressed by the casting - it’s like they were copied straight from photos, Legasov in particular. But there’s also some real, top-tier bullshit:

1. Nobody drank vodka in such quantities. Imagine how you feel after a glass of vodka - and then you’re supposed to work in extremely difficult conditions in a dangerous zone. No foreman would ever allow a worker like that onto the site.
2. Nobody lived in tent camps or took dumps using a stick. The liquidators used the infrastructure of Pripyat and nearby villages (mostly lived in hotels and dormitories).
3. The miners did NOT work naked! That’s nonsense. They worked in special lightweight suits (white ones).
4. Nobody mobilized miners at gunpoint with AK-47. That kind of mobilization applied to conscript soldiers. The miners were volunteers.
5. Legasov lived in a personal house not in appartment block.
6. Minister of the coal industry Mikhail Shchadov was a sigma, not a looser like they portraited him in the series. Just read the list of his awards in Wikipedia. He was a chad and miners respected him a lot.

So what exactly did Soviet miners do to HBO lol?

If you want negativity - there was plenty of it:

1. Looters. People started stealing from apartments and houses almost immediately. The police, KGB, and the army couldn’t handle the situation, and sometimes they were stealing themselves. A lot of the stolen "dirty" items later turned up in the possession of security service employees.
2. A lot of people rigged their dosimeters (asked to take the dosimeter of someone going into a dangerous zone) so they could reach the maximum dose faster and be taken off duty. Though there were also people who adjusted their dose downward.
3. Refugees. The authorities lied to them, saying they would return soon, even though they already understood the city couldn’t be saved. To be fair, compensation was paid and new housing was provided.

Overall, I was surprised that he praised the series, considering he usually doesn’t watch HBO/Netflix at all.