The caveat to my title is that you do have to know a little about the Chernobyl event and/or how radiation works to understand what is going on. The episode is mostly pure chaos with little explanation of what is happening. All you know is that it is something very very bad, but this is mostly based off of what you might expect about a nuclear meltdown, and the reactions of the few people in the show who experience and/or understand the truth.

The true terror for me is the pain for so many people that is yet to come. The horror of Chernobyl is that untold numbers of highly-radioactive atoms were released in the smoke and soot of the fire. If you have even a vague understanding of how this works, then there will be otherwise serene-looking scenes here that are as shocking as watching mass murder. Children playing in the ash...