So, Doc – I know you were not a fan of the Chernobyl mini-series, and I know you’ve mentioned a few times about radiation myths and mistakes you’ve seen in the news and in TV and movies. Which makes me wonder – are there any shows that get it right?
You know, there are two that come to mind – one that didn’t get too much wrong, and one that got most of it pretty much right. The first is the sixth season of the Amazon TV series, Bosch.
I’d been watching Bosch since the first season and when I first saw the trailer for Season 6 I cringed internally – first, because I was trying to figure out how an entire season could be built around a dirty bomb attack and, second, because the only way I could see it maybe happening was by scaring a lot of people with hyperbole and hysteria. Turns out I was wrong on both counts. That’s not saying they didn’t still make some mistakes, but they were fairly minor and not very consequential. Since I don’t want to get into spoiler territory I won’t say any more than that – for this post, let it suffice to say that the dirty bomb plot line got the radiation parts more or less right and it seems to avoid needless drama.
And that leaves us with the other series – Radioactive Emergency, which is showing on Netflix and which is about the 1987 radiation accident in Goiania, Brazil.
I’d never heard of the series and, since I’d been binging a lot of Amazon Prime and Apple TV series I’d missed the trailers. So when a colleague mentioned the show to me I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes, muttered something about “Huh – I’ll have to watch it,” and then promptly forgot. By chance I glanced at a message and was reminded (this was during the most recent government shutdown) and, it being a bit of a slow day, what with not being allowed to actually work, I decided to watch the series. I was tempted to call a colleague to binge-watch with me under the same terms as my Chernobyl binge (a shot of tequila for every significant mistake), but I only had one bottle of tequila and two of mezcal on the shelf and was expecting enough mistake to empty all of the bottles – turns out I’d not have emptied even one of them. I was, to be frank, impressed. And I found myself wondering how the writers, actors, and director got so much right.
A week or so later I found out – I received an email from a dear colleague asking me if I’d seen the series and, when I shared my thoughts with her, she explained that her son had been the series’ main writer and he’d consulted heavily with her to make sure he got it right. And since she was one of the Brazilian officials involved in responding to the incident, she made sure he didn’t make any significant mistakes.
What really upset me about the Chernobyl series was that, for some reason, the writers seemed to think they needed to add drama to an already-dramatic event. Not content with what actually happened, they threw in a lot of stuff that was made-up and out-and-out wrong. Radioactive Emergency resisted that temptation.
I’m not going to go into the nitty-gritty details or to describe specific scenes that I liked (or didn’t). What I will say is that before I’d watched the final show I’d emailed my boss and some other people I work with to tell them they needed to watch the series to help inform work they were doing on what we should expect and how we should respond to any of a number of radiological emergencies, should any come to pass here in the US. Public fear and outrage? It’s there! Regulatory confusion and governmental reluctance to act? That’s there too! A few people who understand what’s actually happening and drag their bosses into actually responding? Check! For an actual dirty bomb attack I suspect government would figure it out pretty quickly – for an accident such as this, I suspect that, as shown in this mini-series, it would take some time to get people onboard. And, as shown in this series, I’m guessing that getting things to the point of actually cordoning off contaminated areas and starting to clean up would generate most of the emotion and would generate the most resistance.
The Goiania accident is a landmark radiological accidents and, when I’ve been involved in planning how to respond to a radiological emergency of any sort, we’ve always used it as a reference point. I can’t claim to be a scholar of the incident – but I’ve spent more time studying it and thinking about it than any other such incident in history, as well as having had the opportunity to learn about it from my colleague when we worked together a few decades ago. It was nice to see a show about it that I learned from more than I cringed at silly mistakes. And if you’re interested in this particular accident, it’s a good portrayal – and one of the best things I’ve seen about radiation on any network.