Just reading a book by a Ukrainian chap called Serhii Plokhy titled ‘Chernobyl - History of Disaster’ and from reading that, it seems that Briukhanov gets a bit of a raw deal in the series. Apparently he was quite softly spoken and well liked according to the book, but the series portrays him as a bit of a blowhard douchebag. Dunno whether that can be attributed to artistic licence or a differing source as to his character.
It is worth noting that for the guilty three we meet them at their worst, yes they made terrible decisions and yes they killed a
lot of people, but as for the decisions they made and the way they acted it was them at their very very worst, all at the same time.
Dyatlov was reportedly never a nice person but on the day he blew up the reactor he was himself at 1000% presumably due to the pressure of wanting to impress Bryukhanov and Fomin. When he left reactor 4's control room and walked to the reactor 3 control room to hit the reactor 4 AZ5 from there (each control room could also kill the other three reactors) he walked past the glowing graphite debris and ignored it, completely convinced he could never make such a mistake, even when he survayed the outside before briefing Bryukhanov and Fomin he ignored the scattered graphite and fuel before his eyes.
Fomin was reportedly quite a nice person when not feeling the pressure, however on the day he too refused to believe what was happening, he too refused to see the graphite before him, even after Dyatlov left he ignored the engineers telling him the truth even sending Sitnikov up to get a look from above after personally witnessing the graphite debris on the ground (and then refusing to believe what Sitnikov told him). He even ordered Bagdasarov (reactor 3 shift chief) to keep his adjacent reactor running despite the fact his roof was also on fire from the explosion and his men were succumbing to radiation sickness.
Briukhanov is something as a paradox as he was the one that pushed hardest for the test that caused the disaster but also the one who had the least involvement with it, however at the end of the day it was his reactor and it was ultimately he who green lit the test. In fairness to the man he was lied to by Akimov (still scared of Dyatlov and unwilling to admit to himself what had happened) then by Dyatlov himself, however he along with Fomin refused to believe Sitnikov about what he saw from the roof (the fact Briukhanov had no desire to look for himself however may imply he did believe him but wanted to maintain plausible deniability).
In all, the three of them got of light for what they did but what they did was them at their very worst, Dyatlov is probably the only one who could really be classified as a terrible person, the other two merely made bad decisions for the pursuit of greed/power then doubled down on them out of fear/pride.
Sorry, when I said Chernobyl I meant Pripyat by implication.
It's kinda interesting that Pripyat had a population of 50,000, yet the city they built to replace it immediately after the accident only ever reached 25,000. I guess the returning/new workers were less interested in bringing their families to live near Chernobyl (it's only 50km from the plant).
It really is quite scary how millennials are turning out.
I've seen a number of them complaining that the show should never have used the actual fire dept call in the first episode because it's offensive (no idea to whom) >.>
