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Following the accident, Soviet authorities failed to warn neighboring countries of the disaster. Two days later, a dramatic increase in radiation levels at a nuclear power plant in Sweden caused immediate alarm, and investigation led the Swedes to suspect it came from the western Soviet Union. The Soviets admitted there was an accident, but denied it was serious. Sweden, however, persisted and announced it would file an official alert with the International Atomic Energy Authority, which would have sent investigators. Only then did the Soviet Union admit to the world the seriousness of what occurred.

Throughout the series, people refer to each other in the form "Comrade-surname," which is inappropriate among colleagues. Dyatlov's subordinates would have called him "Dyatlov" among themselves and "Anatoly Stepanovich" (his first name and patronymic) when addressing him directly, rather than "Comrade Dyatlov," as they do in the episode. Colleagues familiar with one another would have referred to each other either by first name or surname, but also without the use of "comrade," which is an official/bureaucratic form of address. Ironically, when Bryukhanov summons the local Party leadership into an office to figure out what's going on, he refers to them more than once as "gentlemen." Now, if ever there were a time to address a room as "comrades," this would have been it. "Ladies" and "gentlemen" (Russian: "damy" and "gospoda") were terms that had been tossed out of the lexicon upon the establishment of the Soviet regime in the late-1910s/early-1920s for being "bourgeois" and were replaced by "comrades." At a meeting of Communist Party officials, no one would dare address the others as "gentlemen" for fear of appearing politically degenerate.

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