I knew/heard about the disastrous Chernobyl explosion in my teenhood (in 1980s). But being far away from Ukraine and too young, the disaster was registered in my mind as something vague, some alien event I would read in a history text book.

Then, this sensational series showed me the details of the event as if I had been there -from the possibly preventable negligence in the safety test, the massive explosion, the USSR government's furtive and detestably poor crisis management, and the contaminated empty towns. Each episode was great, engrossing me, sometimes keeping me on toes and other times putting me in tears. The series spent a good amount of time depicting the clean up operations with focus on people in them. It was impressive how these normal people (e.g., miners, firemen, and engineers) volunteered at the expense of their own health and lives.

Having seen different authorities being so secretive in crisis management ( in movies and the real-world), just as in Chernobyl, I also started to think about the costs of lies vs truths. I don't have my own answer yet. But Valery's quote from the movie lingers: "What is the cost of lies? The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all"