It's established Chernobyl disaster was a
combination of both design flaws (reactor being a bitch to manage) and bad maintenance (untrained enough operators and management). USSR being as it was, they tried to hide and conceal a lot of stuff regarding the aftermath. Nowadays we're talking about a 3000 km² barren zone, which gonna stay barren for probably the next 1000 to 3000 years. We've all seen the Youtube / Drone videos about Pripyat ghost town, or played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. at some point.
I think what's "fascinating" about Chernobyl is how 21st century controlled science can go wrong. There's a horrying factor about radiation poisoning, which most of the time kills people in a utterly painful, excruciating way. The "you know you're dead, you just can't feel it yet" way. That would be a nightmare in any "free" country in 1986, but it happened in USSR, a closed, fascist state at the time. It was crumbling under Gorbatchev, but it still was a country where your neighbours could disappear and wondering about their whereabouts was a state crime.
It's what it is, a human-made disaster where you can't just rebuild on top of the ruins ever. I don't think the TV show is a manifesto about anything besides "what went wrong, who was there and why / how it happened". There's no point looking for humanization, excuses or blame. To me it's just an interesting, dramatized take on a historical incident leading to a potentially massive extinction. That would probably never happened. Then again, we're living in a nuclear deterrence age, it's all fun and games until shit happens. And Pripyat, I think, is here to remind us how it is when shit hits the fan.
