#content guide

Episode 1 - "1:24:45"

This episode concerns the first eight hours after the reactor explodes. Point of view bounces back and forth between what's happening inside the reactor and what's happening in the nearby town of Pripyat. 

Ep. 1 gets a blanket warning for pandemonium and confusion in the wake of the explosion (which happens almost immediately at the start of the episode), gore/blood/wounds consistent with very acute radiation sickness, including burns, frequent vomiting of blood, and vibrant "radiation tans" which appear similar to severe sunburns. There is very little screaming or crying save in a couple of specific cases I will detail below. Mostly, dying of radiation sickness looks like someone with a serious case of the stomach flu who also has a horrible sunburn. 

There are no jumpscares, but the whole episode has a palpable escalating tension about it almost in the style of a horror movie. "No no no don't go in there! The core is open and you're going to die!" That's the general internal monologue while watching. The viewer knows, but characters do not really understand what's happened for the entirety of the episode. Most of the tension revolves around the plant management insisting that everything is fine and making people go to the reactor site to check on things and them becoming horribly ill. It's not until close to the end of the episode that someone goes and looks in daylight and sees what's happening (and even still the management doesn't believe it until the next episode).

Spot warnings:

The first scene is a suicide. A man hangs himself in the very beginning. We only see his feet dangling. It's very fast. We don't see a struggle.

The explosion is also very early in the episode (about 7 minutes in) and is not a jumpscare or particularly rattling. It's viewed from a far off window and is silent initially until the shockwave arrives. There isn't a huge tension build up. It's something very distant. 

(personal note) This is one of my favorite things about the show… they don't go the traditional narrative route. Show starts and they do two things in the first ten minutes. Kill the main character, and blow up the reactor. All of it without any sort of ceremony or tension-building.

Any scenes in the wrecked reactor, turbine, and water pump halls get a blanket warning for radiation related gore and suffering. There is no screaming or yelling due to injury. It feels very claustrophobic and dread-inducing because of the way it's shot. It's almost as if there is a monster in these halls, but that monster is the rapidly leaking radiation.

Same goes for any scenes involving the firemen outside the reactor. They are standing next to an open reactor core spraying it with aerosolized water. They are going to get very sick, and many of them do on site. Vomiting, lethargy, and obvious radiation tans are the main symptoms shown.

One fireman picks up a hunk of graphite which is highly radioactive. Later, he is screaming on the ground in pain when they try to pull his glove off, revealing a very severe and graphically depicted radiation burn on the entirety of the palm of his hand.

A group of people from the town watch the fire burn from a railroad bridge. As they watch, ash falls from the sky. This is actual, honest to goodness fallout. Nothing happens while they are watching, but the cinematography and the score make sure you know that they are all going to get very sick. 

Three men from the plant are sent to lower the control rods by hand, which has them going into the open reactor core (again, they don't know it's blown apart). Two go in and are instantly radiation tanned. The third, who pried the door open, is also partially radiation tanned, but because he had wedged himself against the radiation-leeching metal of the doorframe, he is severely and acutely burned where he'd braced himself. The burns are under his white clothes, but he begins bleeding profusely before collapsing in the hallway.

We find this man later, clothes soaked in blood. He is nearly incapacitated and obviously dying, but there's no screaming or wailing. He actually asks another plant worker for a cigarette and smokes it quietly.

Two men go down to open water pumps and are made incredibly ill by radiation poisoning. Again, there is no screaming. They just get weaker and weaker.

The control room manager, Dyatlov, vomits in a conference room near the end of the episode.

A man is sent to the roof of the reactor building at gunpoint to survey the damage. When he turns back from the edge of the reactor pit, his face has a severe radiation tan.

***

Episode 2 - "Please Remain Calm"

This episode happens over the next 60 hours or so after the accident and concerns the discovery of just how bad the accident is. Up until this point, no one really understood or accepted that the core had cracked open. This is the slow dawning of the apocalypse. There is less gore in this episode. It's more building tension as everyone comes to understand how awful things are and how much worse they are going to get. Blanket warning for general struggle and pandemonium in the hospital scenes, and milder images of radiation sickness (they're all still very sick and traumatized, but there's less actual blood). 

Spot warnings:

In the burn ward of the hospital, the firemen are all there and very very ill. A doctor recognizes that it's radiation poisoning and begins pulling their clothes off. The clothes are thrown in the basement. As she's leaving, the doctor looks down at her hand, which had been holding a bundle of clothes and she has a mild radiation burn.

There is a tense scene when the fireman's wife arrives at the hospital. She runs into some of the people from the railway bridge who are very sick. One man begs her to take his baby and run away from Pripyat. There is a lot of pitched yelling and begging.

There is an argument between Legasov and Shcherbina in the helicopter about whether or not they're going to fly over the core. It gets quite tense with vivid threats on both sides.

The plan with the helicopters to drop sand and boron on the reactor goes about as well as one might imagine at least until they get the distance worked out.

When the decision is made to evacuate the city, people are forced to leave their pets behind. 

Towards the end of the episode, it is discovered that there are pools of water under the reactor that need to be drained. This must be done by hand and it is made clear that whoever it is will likely die of radiation poisoning. Three men volunteer to go down under the burning reactor in diver suits, and wade through chest deep irradiated water to open the valves and drain the tanks. Again, this goes about as well as one would expect. It's probably the most tense moment in the whole episode. They get lost when their flashlights fail. The dosimeters are going bananas, and to top it all off… it ends on a cliffhanger with them lost in the dark. So… you might want to keep going. Not that the next episode is much better.

***

Episode 3 - "Open Wide O Earth"

This episode sprawls out over the next couple of weeks post-explosion. It largely concerns itself with the immediate cost of human lives. It gets a huge blanket warning for radiation-related gore, most often in the Moscow Hospital. Radiation poisoning this acute is a horrible and incredibly visceral way to die, and while it's not sensationalized or overwrought… they don't shy away from showing how it truly is. Legasov actually lists the symptoms and progression early on in the episode before we watch it happen. Which goes in this order.

-Initial symptoms were seen last episode: "nuclear tan" surface burns on the skin, vomiting, lethargy, loss of consciousness. This continues for a day or two. 

-Patients seem to rally as they enter a latency period and the immediate effects seem to subside. Recovery seems possible. The firefighters are shown playing cards at one point. Burns are visible on their skin but it looks like a really bad but healing sunburn. This lasts a day or two in these cases.

-Then the true breakdown begins as the cellular damage starts to catch up to the lack of new cell growth. Basically, you decompose from the inside out, starting with bone marrow, then organs, then the vascular system. This is incredibly painful as pain drugs cannot be administered due to failing tissue integrity. Visible symptoms are open, seeping sores, necrosis, eye discoloration, etc. 

They show this on a few patients unflinchingly. Close ups. Full body shots. It's gross and difficult to look at. They are basically melting. Honestly… I stopped wondering why zombies are a thing after I watched this. :(

Spot warnings:

Episode opens back on the divers again, lost in the dark with the dosimeters going ballistic. It's pitched and panicked, but they formulate a plan to handle the situation and succeed in their mission.

Important scream warning: There is a scene that begins with water dripping in the sink. This is followed by a man screaming. The nurses are trying to get the fireman's clothes off and he is shrieking in pain. It's a quick scene but hard to watch. If you're bothered by agonized screaming, cover your ears from the time you see the water dripping until Gorbachev's face appears if you want to avoid. This is probably the worst instance of pain-screams.

After the scene with the miners and the minister, there's another long scene at the hospital. No screaming, but it's the fireman. His condition is clearly deteriorating. Long shots of skin lesions and bandages.

After the "no fans" conversation with the miners we return to the hospital. This time the patient is one of the men from the control room. The one that went down to work on the pumps. He is in severe condition. Eyes are discolored. Skin is swollen and red and shiny. He can barely speak. Again, this is a long scene with lingering shots on his face and body. After he gives his age to the person interviewing him, he gets a nosebleed, which the person cleans up.

After that scene, they transfer the worsening fireman to a critical care ward. His skin is in awful condition. Worse than the patient from the control room. This also has lots of long shots of his symptoms. His face is turning black and necrotic. His skin is pocked with necrosis and looks like it could slide off his bones. For me this was one of the most difficult things to watch, and I actually had to look away. And I pride myself on having a pretty strong stomach.

There's a short scene with Legasov and Shcherbina in their trailer-office, and then… NAKED PEOPLE!!! Naked miners to be precise. Lots of them. Full frontal and everything. It's actually a pretty funny scene… blessedly.

After the scene with the naked miners we go back to the control room operator in the hospital. Then to the other operator's room. We never see the other operator. Just the interviewer's face. Then we go back to the fireman's room briefly.

The episode ends with a funeral, shot to great but incredibly sensitive effect. The firemen are buried in metal coffins, welded shut and covered in concrete.

***

Episode 4 - "The Happiness of All Mankind"

This episode chronicles the efforts of the "Liquidators" who were sent to the surrounds of the plant to raze the forests, turn the turf, and kill all the animals. 

So… blanket statement for lots and LOTS of animal death. We're talking critters wild and domestic alike killed by the truckload and buried in concrete to prevent the spread of radiation. Most of it is offscreen, but the spot warnings will have specific warnings of particularly sad/graphic instances. There are also some scenes of mild radiation sickness symptoms, but they are barely blips on the radar if you've watched his far. Just some vomiting and people looking generally unwell.

There's also a warning for pregnancy and child death, though labor, delivery, and death all happen off screen.

Spot warnings:

First scene is of an old woman milking a cow. There is a soldier trying to evacuate this old woman. She refuses. Then he shoots his gun, and for a moment you're unsure where the bullet landed. Then her cow falls over dead.

The episode is mostly conversations until you see the soldiers and Pavel roll into a neighborhood in a green truck and start pulling out guns. Bacho will give Pavel some instructions (don't let the animals suffer and so forth) and then he whistles for the animals. They come running and they start shooting them. We don't really see anything, but we hear it. Gunfire and some yelping/whimpering. Mostly we're just watching Pavel's reactions. 

When Pavel gets sent to go door to door, he comes across a cream and gray colored dog. This is the worst scene regarding animal cruelty. You will definitely want to look away when Pavel says "Go… go go go away." He shoots the dog, wounds it but doesn't kill it. We see the dog lying in a pool of blood. Pavel is overcome with guilt and approaches. Bacho appears and shoots it to put it out of its misery. It's over when you hear Bacho say "You're dragging that to the truck."

There are brief glimpses of the animal corpses on the truck when the soldiers are having lunch but they're in the distance and out of focus.

If shouting and smashing things in anger is an issue, be warned that when the German robot gets fried on the roof, Shcherbina flips his shit. He calls Moscow and screams at them, ultimately smashing the phone to pieces.

After the discussion of what to do about the roofs after the German robot fails, we go back to Pavel working. He and the soldiers are shooting animals. Again, you don't see the animals. Just hear the shots and the whimpering. But it's short lived. No wails of suffering or anything.

After Bacho tells Pavel to go door-to-door, he goes up to a house and finds a mom-dog with puppies inside. Bacho follows him and when he sees what he found, sends Pavel outside and kills them himself. Again, you just hear the shots and see Pavel's face.

After this, the three soldiers bury the animals. There's a brief image of them being dumped from the truck, and another of them being covered in concrete. 

One of the most pitched and harrowing scenes comes after the General gives a speech about how to clear the graphite off the roof to a new set of recruits. They are in crude lead shielding and rubber suits, they run out onto the roof and use shovels to clear graphite. They are stumbling and struggling, dosimeters going ballistic the entire time. It's incredibly tense. When they are called in, one of the men stumbles and gets caught on a piece of graphite. His boot tears. The scene lasts about 90 seconds.

In the scene that immediately follows, we see the fireman's widow. She picks up a girl's mitten to hand it to her, and she goes into labor.

The final scene of the episode is the labor ward in a hospital. We see the fireman's widow alone behind a partition.

***

Episode 5 - "Vichnaya Pamyat"

This episode is largely concerned with the trial of the plant management which is intercut with flashbacks to the day of the explosion.

There is a good deal of tension as they are showing step by step what went wrong, cutting between the trial testimony and the flashback to the reactor control room. There is a fair amount of arguing and yelling, mostly on Dyatlov's part both at the trial and in the control room. The flashbacks do not go beyond the explosion so there's no scenes of radiation related trauma. 

Spot warnings:

Shcherbina begins having coughing fits during the trial. He later shows Legasov a bloody handkerchief. 

There is a very tense scene with the head of the KGB after the trial is concluded.

Other than that, nothing to speak of.

***