Stellan Skarsgård: Boris Shcherbina

Open Wide, O Earth

Boris Shcherbina

Boris Shcherbina: That went surprisingly well. You came off like a naive idiot. Naive idiots are not a threat.

Boris Shcherbina: Have you ever spent time with miners?
Valery Legasov: No.
Boris Shcherbina: My advice, tell the truth. These men work in the dark; they see everything.

Glukhov: We're gonna need more men. Four hundred at least. We'll have to work around the clock. How deep do you want this tunnel - six meters?
Valery Legasov: Twelve.
Glukhov: Twelve? Why?
Valery Legasov: For your protection. At that depth, you'll be shielded from much of the radiation.
Glukhov: The entrance to the tunnel won't be twelve meters below ground.
Valery Legasov: No.
Glukhov: And we're not twelve meters below ground now.
Valery Legasov: No. We're not. We have some equipment here outside. More will arrive by midnight. You can start in the morning.
Glukhov: No. We start now. I don't want my men here one more second than they need to be.
[gestures at the face mask on the desk]
Glukhov: If these worked... you'd be wearing 'em.
[leaves]
Valery Legasov: Are they all like that?
Boris Shcherbina: They're all like that.

Valery Legasov: How, how, how did this happen? Who gave them the idea? Someone decided that the evacuation zone should be 30 km, when we know, here
[points at map]
Valery Legasov: there's Cesium-137, in the Gomel district. That's 200 km away!
Boris Shcherbina: It was decided.
Valery Legasov: Based on *what*?
Boris Shcherbina: I don't know!
[silence]
Valery Legasov: [shrugs helplessly] Is this really how it all works? An uninformed, arbitrary decision that will cost who knows how many lives, made by some career Party man?
Boris Shcherbina: *I* am a career Party man. You should mind your tone, Comrade Legasov.

Boris Shcherbina: What will happen to our boys?
Valery Legasov: Which boys? The divers?
Boris Shcherbina: The divers, the firefighters, the men in the control room... what does the radiation do to them, precisely?
Valery Legasov: Well, at the level some of them were exposed, ionizing radiation tears the cellular structure apart. The skin blisters, turns red, then black. This is followed by a latency period. The immediate effects subside, the patient appears to be recovering. Healthy, even, but they aren't. This usually only lasts for a day or two.
[he stops]
Boris Shcherbina: [quietly] Continue.
Valery Legasov: [reluctantly] Then the cellular damage begins to manifest. The bone marrow dies. The immune system fails. The organs and soft tissue begin to decompose. The arteries and veins spill open like sieves, to the point where you can't even administer morphine for the pain, which is... unimaginable. Within three days to three weeks, you're dead. That is what will happen to those boys.
Boris Shcherbina: And what about us?
Valery Legasov: Well, we've... we've gotten a steady dose, but not as much of it. Not strong enough to kill the cells, but consistent enough to damage our DNA. So, in time, cancer. Or aplastic anemia. Either way, fatal.
Boris Shcherbina: Well... in a sense, it would seem we've gotten off easy, then... Valery.