Chernobyl: The Debt to Truth
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, and sooner or later, that debt is paid.”
Six years after its release, I’ve finally watched the HBO series Chernobyl. Despite the time that has elapsed, not only since the series came out, but since the disaster itself in 1986, I’m still sitting with some overwhelming feelings. Every frame is a reminder that denial and misinformation were, and are still, used as active tools of power.
Warnings unheeded.
Inside the control room, alarms are sounding and voices are rising. Engineers are warning the supervisor that the test isn’t safe, that the reactor is unstable, that the risks are too high. Their words come fast and urgent. Still, the leader rebukes their concerns; yelling, smacking papers from their hands, insisting the test must go on.
Authority overrules expertise. It’s the first domino to fall — the belief that power is always right, even as the core itself is breaking down.
Silenced expertise.
A female scientist is noticing the gravity of the situation and voicing her concerns. Steady but urgent, she’s laying out the risks as plainly as she can. The men in charge barely look at her. They treat her like static on a noisy TV. Books and charts are within reach, but they stay closed. Witnesses stand ready, but are being told they didn’t see what they saw. The room is thick with choices. The ones plucked from the air are not to listen, not to open, not to acknowledge. They aren’t strewn together into steadfast action.
Instead choices are made to bury truth.
Words as sedation.
A government car is circling the streets, a speaker mounted on top, with a calm voice telling the people to temporarily evacuate. To take their documents and necessary items with them to the buses provided for evacuation. The verbiage and the tone are eerily calm. Sedating, almost. It’s as if the words are Ativan through IV.
Propaganda lulling people into believing nothing is wrong, even as everything is collapsing around them.
Water not cleansing, but contaminating.
Headed toward the power plant, a car is sent to measure the radiation. It’s rigged with sheets of lead under the guise of added protection. Officials are insisting their numbers are correct, that it’s not as bad as it looks. But inside the car, the dosimeter starts clicking higher and higher. Quantifiable. Undeniable. The radiation readings are catastrophic. In the search for truth, the soldiers are risking their lives.
Their exposure is becoming the exposure.
Afterward, car is being hosed down; water running down its body and seeping into the soil. Every tiny drop now a contaminant, spreading deeper and wider. We do this often: rinsing, scrubbing, pouring water on what needs “cleansing,” but some things can’t be washed away. It isn’t just about Chernobyl. It’s about every time we reassure ourselves with falsehoods.
Every time we don’t stand in the mess of real truths because we can’t bear to feel unclean.
The sacrifice we make to touch lives.
Nurses and doctors are moving quickly, overwhelmed by the mass influx of those showing signs of poisoning. The men exposed at the plant lie pale and sweating, their bodies already breaking down at a cellular level. The caregivers strip off their clothes and bag them, but in doing so their own hands, their own lungs, are absorbing the same invisible particles. I’m gutted. As a nurse, I can’t stop thinking about how instinctively we touch, how often we reach for someone out of compassion.
They do not know how badly the act of helping is turning against them.
And even when they do realize, they do not abandon their mission as healthcare workers.
Physical labor with physical consequences.
The miners are digging tunnels beneath the plant, stripping down to nakedness because the heat underground is unbearable. Bodies covered in sweat and coal dust, faces set with grim determination. They think they’re just doing what their fathers and grandfathers did before them, the same level of grit and risk. They don’t know the actuality, the severity, of their physical efforts and the physical consequences that surely will follow. As they chip away at the foundation, they are becoming the foundation — preventing another catastrophic explosion.
No propaganda could erase the fact that the ground itself is being reshaped by their bodies.
Intentional deception.
Nearly every step, every decision — these are intentional. The denial isn’t confusion. It’s strategy. Silence and delay aren’t accidents. These are tools that feel terrifyingly familiar.
We have books, witnesses, experts, the internet, even AI. So much access to information, yet we still repeat the same cycles. Lies that are shielded by “free speech.” A way to package misinformation as truth. The events, the timeline, the people. They all change. But the lies? They always stay the same.
What Chernobyl is showing us is not only how systems fail, but how they choose to fail — by denial, by delay, by gaslighting their own people.
And that’s the debt that always comes due. The wreckage of lies succumbs to truths, like a crumbling building falls to its foundation.
