I watched the HBO series with a woman who was about 80km from Chernobyl when the explosion occured. She was 15yo, with her Komosol (sp, effectively ‘Young Communist’) group camping, drinking vodka, when the sky to the north lit up with a dark red color. It stayed that way all night, so the guide headed back to town, found out what happened, went back to the group and got them out of there, back to the town- and promptly quit her job, something you just did not do in Soviet Russia.
Inna knew it was serious when the decision was made not to punish the guide, instead giving her another job.
She can’t speak to the science of the show, but she definitely has opinions as to the accuracy of how Soviet life was portrayed: