🕷️ Crawler Inspector

URL Lookup

Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 156 (from laksa176)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa156.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/","crawl_time":1776028501,"first_indexed_time":1561630095,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,forbes!www,\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/ s443","src_root_hash":"7074450602188365556","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl","meta_descriptions":["I was hoping HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework about radiation and consult even 1 nuclear scientist or radiobiologists. Or even read the U.N. Chernobyl Forum Report. But nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and antinuclear activists was much better."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"I just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the\nUnited Nations Chernobyl Forum Report\n, the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people.\nBut nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic.\nThe accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.\nWNA\nThe HBO miniseries\nChernobyl\nhas been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself.\nLooking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s.\nIt was good that\nChernobyl\nscreenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely.\nAnd radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought.\nThe reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book,\n \nVoices From Chernobyl\n, by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident.\nAlexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it.\nSo the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s.\nToo bad.\nChernobyl\nappears to be the highest rated show of all time on\nIMdb\nand was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed\nmore people than radiation\never has.\nMazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. \"I defer to the less dramatic version of things,”\n \nMazin said\n, “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational.\"\nThen why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve\nworked for scale\njust to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts.\nThere have been\nseveral good reviews\nand\ncritiques of the miniseries\n, many\nby experts\nthat were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas.\nWe all say the same thing\n- only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies (\n1\n,\n2\n,\n3\n,\n4\n,\n5\n,\n6\n,\n7\n,\n8\n) have shown that\nthe long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself.\nUnmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem.\nMichael Gäbler\nMany have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death.\nThe worst was the\npregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome (\nARS\n)\n, during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died.\nHBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.”\nWhat? Are you crazy? This could not happen.\nThe father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive.\nRadiation sickness\nis not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl.\nBut this fictional story did appear in\n \nVoices From Chernobyl\n, told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t.\nMultiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear.\nSays UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe.\nMany of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book.\nDr. Gale is a world-renowned expert\non bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl.\nAnother absurd\nscene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children.\nIt takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation \ncommon in many places\naround the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm.\nAll in all\n, the National Institutes of Health\nrecently\ndeclared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.”\nAnd we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years.\nBut whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama.\nSo who did die?\nAccording to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were:\n- 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths\n- 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation,\n- 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and\n- 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation.\nThese are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning.\nYou’d never understand this from HBO’s\nChernobyl\n. But the sets sure were nice.","attrs_markdown":"[Sign Up For Newsletters](https:\/\/account.forbes.com\/newsletters\/)[Games](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games)[Share a News Tip](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesstaff\/article\/tips-and-confidential-sources\/)\n\n- Featured\n  Featured\n  \n  - [Breaking News](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/news\/)\n  - [White House Watch](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/trump\/)\n  - [Daily Cover Stories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/daily-cover-stories\/)\n  - [Why These Leaders Raised Thousands For Blood Cancer — And How You Can, Too \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/bloodcancerunited\/2026\/04\/10\/why-these-leaders-raised-thousands-for-blood-cancer---and-how-you-can-too\/)\n  - [2026 America's Top Wealth Advisors List](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/top-wealth-advisors\/)\n  - [2026 Best-In-State Top Wealth Advisors List](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/best-in-state-wealth-advisors\/)\n  - [The Toughest Problems Are Never Solved Alone \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/american-cancer-society\/2026\/02\/23\/the-toughest-problems-are-never-solved-alone\/)\n  - [How Chief Marketing Officers Are Scaling AI At Speed — While Preserving Brand Trust](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesliveteam\/2026\/02\/23\/how-chief-marketing-officers-are-scaling-ai-at-speed---while-preserving-brand-trust\/)\n  - [New Era, New Icons: The Creators Redefining High-Quality Storytelling on TikTok \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tiktok\/2025\/12\/15\/new-era-new-icons-the-creators-redefining-high-quality-storytelling-on-tiktok\/)\n  - [AI’s Nuanced Impact And A Quest To Quantify It](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-research\/2023\/10\/26\/c-suite-data-reveals-ais-nuanced-impact--a-quest-to-quantify-it\/)\n  - [Embracing And Bracing For AI](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-research\/2023\/10\/26\/new-forbes-survey-reveals-how-executives-are-embracing---and-bracing-for---ai\/)\n  - [Facing A Volatile Market, C-Suites Look To The CFO For Strategic Guidance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-research\/2023\/11\/01\/facing-a-volatile-market-c-suites-look-to-the-cfo-for-strategic-guidance\/)\n  - [By The Numbers: Meet The Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Class Of 2025](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/30-under-30\/2025\/europe\/)\n  - [Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2025](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/amyfeldman\/2025\/08\/12\/next-billion-dollar-startups-2025\/)\n  - [America's Most Powerful Women In Sports](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/maggiemcgrath\/2025\/10\/22\/americas-most-powerful-women-in-sports-2025\/)\n  - [CMO Unscripted: Vulnerability Is The New Superpower For Leaders In The AI Era](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesvideo\/2026\/01\/28\/cmo-unscripted\/)\n  - [Rocky Mountaineer Connoisseur: Unwind And Behold](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/rocky-mountaineer\/2026\/03\/03\/unwind-and-behold\/)\n  - [Clé de Peau Beauté BrandVoice: She’s Shown 80,000 Girls & Non-Binary People They Belong In STEAM \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/cle-de-peau-beaute\/2026\/03\/11\/shes-shown-80000-girls--non-binary-people-they-belong-in-steam\/)\n  - [Nvidia GTC 2026 And The Ambitious Path to \\$1 Trillion In AI Revenue](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/moorinsights\/2026\/03\/26\/nvidia-gtc-2026-and-the-ambitious-path-to-1-trillion-in-ai-revenue\/)\n- [Billionaires](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/billionaires\/)\n  Billionaires\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/billionaires\/)\n  \n  - [World's Billionaires](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/billionaires\/)\n  - [Forbes 400](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes-400\/)\n  - [America's Richest Self-Made Women](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/self-made-women\/)\n  - [China's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/china-billionaires\/)\n  - [India's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/india-billionaires\/)\n  - [Indonesia's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/indonesia-billionaires\/)\n  - [Korea's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/korea-billionaires\/)\n  - [Thailand's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/thailand-billionaires\/)\n  - [Japan's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/japan-billionaires\/)\n  - [Australia's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/australia-billionaires\/)\n  - [Taiwan's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/taiwan-billionaires\/)\n  - [Singapore's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/singapore-billionaires\/)\n  - [Philippines' Richest](ttps:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/philippines-billionaires\/)\n  - [Hong Kong's Richest](ttps:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/hong-kong-billionaires\/)\n  - [Malaysia's Richest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/malaysia-billionaires\/)\n  - [Money & Politics](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/money-politics\/)\n- [Innovation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/innovation\/)\n  Innovation\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/innovation\/)\n  \n  - [AI-Powered Cybersecurity](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/ai-cybersecurity\/)\n  - [Employee and Customer Experience](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/employee-and-customer-experience\/)\n  - [Enterprise AI](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/enterprise-ai\/)\n    - [How AI Hungry Companies Can Use PCs To Supercharge Workforce Intelligence](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/amd\/2026\/03\/02\/how-ai-hungry-companies-can-use-pcs-to-supercharge-workforce-intelligence\/)\n  - [AI](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/ai\/)\n  - [Agentic AI](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/agentic-ai\/)\n  - [Big Data](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/big-data\/)\n  - [Cloud](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cloud\/)\n  - [Cloud 100](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/cloud100\/)\n  - [Consumer Tech](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/consumer-tech\/)\n  - [Creator Economy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/creator-economy\/)\n    - [New Era, New Icons: The Creators Redefining High-Quality Storytelling On TikTok](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tiktok\/2025\/12\/15\/new-era-new-icons-the-creators-redefining-high-quality-storytelling-on-tiktok\/)\n  - [Cybersecurity](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cybersecurity\/)\n  - [Digital Transformation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-transformation\/)\n  - [Enterprise Tech](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/enterprise-tech\/)\n  - [Future Of Work](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/future-of-work\/)\n  - [Gaming](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/gaming\/)\n  - [Healthcare](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/healthcare\/)\n  - [Innovation Rules](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesvideo\/article\/innovation-rules\/)\n  - [Retail Industry](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/retail-industry\/)\n  - [Science](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/science\/)\n  - [Social Media](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/social-media\/)\n  - [Sustainability & Climate](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sustainability\/)\n  - [Transportation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/transportation\/)\n  - [Venture Capital](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/venture-capital\/)\n  - [Technology](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/technology\/)\n  - [TikTok BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tiktok\/)\n  - [Metronome BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/metronome\/)\n- [Leadership](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/leadership\/)\n  Leadership\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/leadership\/)\n  \n  - [Under 30](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/under30\/)\n  - [C-Suite](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cxo\/)\n    - [CEO Network](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/ceo-network\/)\n    - [CFO Network](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cfo-network\/)\n    - [CHRO Network](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/chro-network\/)\n    - [CIO Network](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cio-network\/)\n    - [CMO Network](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cmo-network\/)\n    - [Leadership Strategies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/leadership-strategy\/)\n  - [Careers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/careers\/)\n  - [Education](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/education\/)\n  - [Forbes EQ \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbeseq\/)\n  - [ForbesBLK](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/blk-leadership\/)\n  - [Forbes Research](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/leadership\/forbes-research\/)\n  - [ForbesWomen](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbeswomen\/)\n  - [Deloitte BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/deloitte\/)\n  - [Dell Technologies BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/delltechnologies\/)\n- [Money](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/money\/)\n  Money\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/money\/)\n  \n  - [ETF Investing Trends](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/etf-investing-trends\/)\n  - [Banking & Insurance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/banking-insurance\/)\n  - [ETFs & Mutual Funds](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/etfs-mutual-funds\/)\n  - [Fintech](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fintech\/)\n  - [Hedge Funds & Private Equity](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/hedge-funds-private-equity\/)\n  - [Investing](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/investing\/)\n  - [Investor Hub](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/investor-hub\/)\n  - [Markets](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/markets\/)\n  - [Personal Finance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/personal-finance\/)\n  - [Retirement](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/retirement\/)\n  - [Taxes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/taxes\/)\n  - [Top Advisor \\| SHOOK](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/top-advisor-shook\/%20)\n  - [Wealth Management](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/wealth-management\/%20)\n- [Forbes Digital Assets](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/)\n  Forbes Digital Assets\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/)\n  \n  - [News](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/news\/)\n  - [Crypto Prices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/crypto-prices\/)\n  - [NFT Prices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/nft-prices\/)\n  - [Research](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/research\/)\n  - [Learn](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/)\n    - [Crypto Basics](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/crypto-basics\/)\n    - [BTC](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/btc\/)\n    - [DeFi](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/defi\/)\n    - [Web3 Education](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/web3-education\/)\n    - [NFTs](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/nfts\/)\n    - [Crypto Investments](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/learn\/crypto-investments\/)\n  - [Events](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/events\/)\n  - [Crypto Portfolios](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-assets\/crypto-advisor-portfolio\/)\n- [Business](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/business\/)\n  Business\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/business\/)\n  \n  - [Aerospace & Defense](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/aerospace-defense\/)\n  - [Energy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/energy\/)\n  - [Food & Drink](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/food-drink\/)\n  - [Hollywood & Entertainment](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/hollywood-entertainment\/)\n  - [Law](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/law\/)\n  - [Manufacturing](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/manufacturing\/)\n  - [Media](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/media\/)\n  - [Policy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/policy\/)\n  - [Retail](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/retail\/)\n  - [SportsMoney](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sportsmoney\/)\n    - [2026 Election](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/2026-election\/)\n  - [Entertainment Digest](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/entertainment\/)\n  - [Enterprise Growth](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/enterprise-growth\/)\n- [Small Business](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/small-business\/)\n  Small Business\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/small-business\/)\n  \n  - [Entrepreneurs](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/entrepreneurs\/)\n  - [Small Business Strategy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/small-business-strategy\/)\n  - [Small Business Taxes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/small-business-taxes\/)\n- [Lifestyle](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lifestyle\/)\n  Lifestyle\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lifestyle\/)\n  \n  - [Luxury Travel](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/topics\/luxury-travel\/)\n  - [Arts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/arts\/)\n  - [Boats & Planes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/boats-planes\/)\n  - [Cars & Bikes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/cars-bikes\/)\n  - [Dining](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/dining\/)\n  - [ForbesLife](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbeslife\/)\n  - [Forbes Travel Guide](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes-travel-guide\/)\n  - [Spirits](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/spirits\/)\n  - [Style & Beauty](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/style-beauty\/)\n  - [Travel](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/travel\/)\n  - [Vices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vices\/)\n  - [Watches](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/watches-jewelry\/)\n- [Real Estate](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/real-estate\/)\n  Real Estate\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/real-estate\/)\n  \n  - [Commercial Real Estate](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/commercial-real-estate\/)\n  - [Forbes Global Properties](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes-global-properties\/)\n  - [Residential Real Estate](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/residential-real-estate\/)\n- [Forbes Vetted](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/)\n  Forbes Vetted\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/)\n  \n  - [Mattress & Sleep](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/)\n    - [Bed Frames](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/bed-frames\/)\n    - [Mattresses](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/mattresses\/)\n    - [Mattress Toppers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/mattress-toppers\/)\n    - [Pillows](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/pillows\/)\n    - [Sheets & Bedding](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/sheets-bedding\/)\n    - [Sleep Products](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/mattress-sleep\/sleep-products\/)\n  - [Home](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/)\n    - [Bathroom](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/bathroom\/)\n    - [Cleaning & Laundry](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/cleaning-laundry\/)\n    - [Decor](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/decor\/)\n    - [Furniture](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/furniture\/)\n    - [Heating & Cooling](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/heating-cooling\/)\n    - [Hobbies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/hobbies\/)\n    - [Home Office](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home-office\/)\n    - [Kitchen & Dining](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/kitchen-dining\/)\n    - [Outdoor](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/outdoor\/)\n    - [Pets](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/pets\/)\n    - [Storage & Organization](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/storage-organization\/)\n    - [Tools](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/tools\/)\n    - [Wine & Bar](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/home\/wine-bar\/)\n  - [Fashion](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/)\n    - [Accessories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/accessories\/)\n    - [Clothing](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/clothing\/)\n    - [Eyewear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/eyewear\/)\n    - [Footwear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/footwear\/)\n    - [Jewelry](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/jewelry\/)\n    - [Handbags & Purses](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/handbags-purses\/)\n    - [Lingerie & Sleepwear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/lingerie-sleepwear\/)\n    - [Outdoor & Fitness Apparel](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/outdoor-fitness-apparel\/)\n    - [Outerwear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/outerwear\/)\n    - [Watches](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/fashion\/watches\/)\n  - [Kids & Baby Gear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/)\n    - [Baby Gear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/baby-gear\/)\n    - [Kids Clothes & Accessories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/kids-clothes-accessories\/)\n    - [Nursery](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/nursery\/)\n    - [Pregnancy & Postpartum](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/pregnancy-postpartum\/)\n    - [Toys & Books](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/kids-baby-gear\/toys-books\/)\n  - [Gear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/)\n    - [Apparel & Accessories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/apparel-accessories\/)\n    - [Bikes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/bikes\/)\n    - [Camping & Hiking](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/camping-hiking\/)\n    - [Climbing](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/climbing\/)\n    - [Fishing & Hunting](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/fishing-hunting\/)\n    - [Fitness](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/fitness\/)\n    - [Golf](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/golf\/)\n    - [Running](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/running\/)\n    - [Tennis & Racket Sports](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/tennis-racket-sports\/)\n    - [Tools & Tech](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/tools-tech\/)\n    - [Training & Recovery](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/training-recovery\/)\n    - [Water Sports](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/water-sports\/)\n    - [Wellness](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/wellness\/)\n    - [Winter Sports](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gear\/winter-sports\/)\n  - [Beauty & Grooming](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/)\n    - [Haircare](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/haircare\/)\n    - [Makeup](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/makeup\/)\n    - [Nailcare](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/nailcare\/)\n    - [Shaving](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/shaving\/)\n    - [Skincare](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/skincare\/)\n    - [Personal Products](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/personal-products\/)\n    - [Wellness & Self Care](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/beauty-grooming\/wellness-self-care\/)\n  - [Tech & Electronics](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/)\n    - [Audio](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/audio\/)\n    - [Cameras](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/cameras\/)\n    - [Computers, Tablets & Accessories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/computers-tablets-accessories\/)\n    - [Gaming](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/gaming\/)\n    - [Home Office](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/home-office\/)\n    - [Online Tools](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/online-tools\/)\n    - [Smart Home Devices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/smart-home-devices\/)\n    - [Smartphones, Smartwatches & Accessories](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/smartphones-smartwatches-accessories\/)\n    - [Streaming](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/streaming\/)\n    - [TVs](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/tech-electronics\/tvs\/)\n  - [Travel](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/travel\/)\n    - [Cruises](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/travel\/cruises\/)\n    - [Hotels & Lodging](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/travel\/hotels-lodging\/)\n    - [Luggage](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/travel\/luggage\/)\n    - [Travel Products](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/travel\/travel-products\/)\n  - [Gifts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/)\n    - [Father's Day](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/fathers-day\/)\n    - [Holiday](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/holiday\/)\n    - [Mother's Day](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/mothers-day\/)\n    - [Valentine's Day](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/valentines-day\/)\n    - [Wedding](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/gifts\/wedding\/)\n  - [Deals](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/)\n    - [Black Friday](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/black-friday\/)\n    - [Cyber Monday](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/cyber-monday\/)\n    - [Amazon Prime Day](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/amazon-prime-day\/)\n    - [Beauty & Grooming](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/beauty-grooming\/)\n    - [Big Sales](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/big-sales\/)\n    - [Fashion](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/fashion\/)\n    - [Gear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/gear\/)\n    - [Home](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/home\/)\n    - [Tech & Electronics](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/tech-electronics\/)\n    - [Travel Deals](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/travel-deals\/)\n    - [Mattress & Sleep](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/mattress-sleep\/)\n- [Deals](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/)\n  Deals\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/vetted\/deals\/)\n  \n  - [Fashion]()\n    - [Nordstrom](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/nordstrom-promo-codes\/)\n    - [HOKA](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/hoka-coupons\/)\n    - [Quince](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/quince-discount-codes\/)\n  - [Electronics]()\n    - [Dell](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/dell-promo-codes\/)\n    - [TopResume](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/topresume-discount-codes\/)\n  - [Sportswear & Gear]()\n    - [Dick's Sporting Goods](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/dicks-sporting-goods-coupons\/)\n    - [REI](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/rei-promo-codes\/)\n  - [Mattress & Sleep]()\n    - [Nectar](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/nectar-coupons\/)\n    - [Saatva](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/saatva-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Brooklinen](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/brooklinen-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Avocado](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/avocado-mattress-discount-codes\/)\n    - [DreamCloud](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/dreamcloud-coupons\/)\n    - [Helix Sleep](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/helix-discount-codes\/)\n    - [Bear](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/bear-mattress-coupons\/)\n    - [Leesa](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/leesa-mattress-discount-codes\/)\n    - [Brooklyn Bedding](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/brooklyn-bedding-promo-codes\/)\n  - [Travel]()\n    - [SeatGeek](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/seatgeek-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Vivid Seats](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/vivid-seats-coupons\/)\n  - [Home & Garden]()\n    - [Frontgate](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/frontgate-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Wayfair](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/wayfair-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Chewy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/chewy-promo-codes\/)\n    - [Walmart](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/walmart-promo-codes\/)\n    - [West Elm](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbes-personal-shopper\/article\/west-elm-coupons\/)\n- [Lists](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/list-directory\/)\n  Lists\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/lists\/list-directory\/)\n  \n  - [30 Under 30](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/under30\/)\n  - [50 Over 50](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/over-50\/)\n  - [Top Colleges](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/top-colleges\/)\n- [Advisor](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/)\n  Advisor\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/)\n  \n  - [Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/)\n    - [Best Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best-credit-cards\/)\n    - [Travel Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best-travel-credit-cards\/)\n    - [0% APR Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best-0-apr-credit-cards\/)\n    - [Balance Transfer Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best\/balance-transfer\/)\n    - [Business Credit Cards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best\/business\/)\n    - [Best First Credit Card](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/credit-cards\/best\/first-credit-card\/)\n  - [Mortgages & Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/mortgages\/)\n    - [Best Mortgage Lenders](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/mortgages\/best-mortgage-lenders\/)\n    - [Mortgage Refinance Lenders](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/mortgages\/refinance\/best-mortgage-refinance-lenders\/)\n    - [Personal Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/personal-loans\/best-personal-loans\/)\n    - [Business Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business-loans\/best-small-business-loans\/)\n    - [Bad Credit Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/personal-loans\/bad-credit-loans\/)\n    - [Debt Consolidation Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/personal-loans\/debt-consolidation-loans\/)\n    - [Debt Relief Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/debt-relief\/best-debt-relief-companies\/)\n    - [Student Loans Refinance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/student-loans\/best-student-loan-refinance-lenders\/)\n    - [Private Student Loans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/student-loans\/best-private-student-loans\/)\n  - [Banking](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/)\n    - [Best CD Rates](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/cds\/best-cd-rates\/)\n    - [High Yield Savings Accounts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/savings\/best-high-yield-savings-accounts\/)\n    - [Money Market Accounts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/best-money-market-accounts\/)\n    - [Checking Accounts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/checking\/best-checking-accounts\/)\n    - [Business Checking Accounts](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/checking\/best-business-checking-accounts\/)\n    - [Budgeting Apps](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/best-budgeting-apps\/)\n    - [Best Online Banks](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/banking\/best-online-banks\/)\n  - [Insurance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/insurance\/)\n    - [Health Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/health-insurance\/best-health-insurance-companies\/)\n    - [Medicare](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/health-insurance\/medicare\/)\n    - [Life Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/life-insurance\/best-life-insurance-companies\/)\n    - [Best Car Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/car-insurance\/best-car-insurance-companies\/)\n    - [Cheapest Car Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/car-insurance\/cheapest-car-insurance\/)\n    - [Pet Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/pet-insurance\/best-pet-insurance\/)\n    - [Travel Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/travel-insurance\/best-travel-insurance\/)\n    - [Homeowners Insurance Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/homeowners-insurance\/best-homeowners-insurance-companies\/)\n  - [Business Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/)\n    - [How to Start a Business](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/how-to-start-a-business\/)\n    - [LLC Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/best-llc-service\/)\n    - [Payroll Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-payroll-services\/)\n    - [HR Software](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-human-resource-management-systems\/)\n    - [HRIS Systems](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/hris-systems\/)\n    - [PEO Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-peo-services\/)\n    - [Applicant tracking Systems](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/best-applicant-tracking-systems\/)\n    - [Domain Registrars](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-domain-registrar\/)\n    - [Hosting Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-web-hosting-services\/)\n    - [Website Builders](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-website-builders\/)\n    - [Ecomm Platforms](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-ecommerce-platform\/)\n    - [Landing Page Builders](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-landing-page-builder\/)\n    - [VOIP Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-voip-service\/)\n    - [Answering Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-answering-services\/)\n    - [Project Management Software](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-project-management-software\/)\n    - [Task Management Software](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-task-management-software\/)\n    - [Gantt Chart Software](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-gantt-chart-software\/)\n    - [VPNs](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-vpn\/)\n    - [Anti Virus Software](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-antivirus-software\/)\n    - [Password Managers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/business\/software\/best-password-managers\/)\n  - [Home Services](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/)\n    - [Moving Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/moving-services\/best-moving-companies\/)\n    - [Long Distance Moving Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/moving-services\/best-long-distance-moving-companies\/)\n    - [Car Shipping Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/moving-services\/best-car-shipping-companies\/)\n    - [Home Warranty Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/home-warranty\/best-home-warranty-companies\/)\n    - [Solar Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/solar\/best-solar-companies\/)\n    - [Solar Panels](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/solar\/best-solar-panels\/)\n    - [Home Security Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/home-security\/best-home-security-companies\/)\n    - [Home Security Systems](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/home-security\/best-home-security-systems\/)\n    - [Internet Providers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/internet\/best-internet-providers\/)\n    - [Cheapest Internet Providers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/internet\/cheapest-internet-plans\/)\n    - [Fastest High Speed Internet Providers](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/internet\/fastest-high-speed-internet-provider\/)\n    - [Pest Control Companies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/home-improvement\/pest-control\/best-pest-control-companies\/)\n  - [Education](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/education\/)\n  - [Forbes Advisor UK](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/uk\/advisor\/)\n  - [Forbes Advisor CA](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/ca\/)\n  - [Forbes Advisor AU](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/advisor\/au\/)\n- [Health](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/)\n  Health\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/)\n  \n  - [Mental Health](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/mind\/)\n    - [Best Online Therapy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/mind\/best-online-therapy\/)\n    - [Online Therapy that Takes Insurance](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/mind\/best-online-therapy-that-takes-insurance\/)\n    - [Online Psychiatrists](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/mind\/best-online-psychiatry\/)\n    - [Best Online Dating Sites & Apps](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/dating\/best-online-dating-websites\/)\n    - [Best Senior Dating Sites](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/dating\/best-senior-dating-sites\/)\n    - [Best LGBTQ Dating Sites](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/dating\/best-lgbtq-dating-sites\/)\n  - [CBD](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/)\n    - [CBD Gummies](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/best-cbd-gummies\/)\n    - [CBD Oil](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/best-cbd-oil\/)\n    - [CBD Creams](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/best-cbd-creams\/)\n    - [CBD for Anxiety](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/cbd-for-anxiety\/)\n    - [CBD for Pain](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/cbd\/best-cbd-oil-for-pain\/)\n  - [Supplements](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/)\n    - [Protein Powder](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/best-protein-powders\/)\n    - [Preworkout](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/best-pre-workout\/)\n    - [Collagen Powders](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/best-collagen-powders\/)\n    - [Creatine Supplements](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/best-creatine-supplements\/)\n    - [CoQ10 Supplements](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/supplements\/coq10-supplements\/)\n  - [Hearing Health](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/hearing-aids\/)\n    - [Best Hearing Aids](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/hearing-aids\/best-hearing-aids\/)\n    - [OTC Hearing Aids](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/hearing-aids\/best-otc-hearing-aids\/)\n    - [Affordable Hearing Aids](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/hearing-aids\/best-affordable-hearing-aids\/)\n  - [Medical Devices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/medical-alert-systems\/)\n    - [Best Medical Alert Systems](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/medical-alert-systems\/best-medical-alert-systems\/)\n    - [Best Medical Alert Systems with Fall Detection](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/medical-alert-systems\/best-medical-alert-systems-with-fall-detection\/)\n  - [Diet & Weight Loss](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/weight-loss\/)\n    - [Best Weight Loss Plans](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/health\/weight-loss\/best-weight-loss-program\/)\n- [Newsletters](https:\/\/account.forbes.com\/newsletters\/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation)\n  Newsletters\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/account.forbes.com\/newsletters\/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation)\n  \n  - [Forbes Daily](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/newsletter\/forbes-daily\/)\n  - [Editorial Newsletters](https:\/\/account.forbes.com\/newsletters\/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation)\n- [Forbes Games](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/)\n  Forbes Games\n  \n  [See All](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/)\n  \n  - [Frase by Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/frase\/)\n  - [Pinpoint by LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/pinpoint\/)\n  - [Queens by LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/queens\/)\n  - [Crossclimb by LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/crossclimb\/)\n  - [Mini Crossword by Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/mini-crossword\/)\n- More From Forbes\n  More From Forbes\n  \n  - [Forbes Video](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/video\/)\n  - [Forbes 101](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbes-101\/)\n  - [Forbes Magazine]()\n    - [Forbes Asia](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/forbesasia\/)\n    - [Free Issue of Forbes](https:\/\/w1.buysub.com\/pubs\/B4\/FRB\/16-forbes_relaunch_landingpage_2freetrial.jsp?cds_mag_code=FRB&cds_page_id=241223)\n\nToday's Highlights\n\nGames\n\n[![Frase](https:\/\/images.forbes.com\/fbs-games-assets\/frase-high-res.png)Frase By ForbesUnscramble The Anagram](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/frase\/)\n\n[![Pinpoint](https:\/\/images.forbes.com\/fbs-games-assets\/pinpoint.png)Pinpoint By LinkedInGuess The Category](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/games\/pinpoint\/)\n\nSee More\n\n© 2026 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.\n\n- [Advertise with Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/connect\/)\n- [Forbes Licensing & Syndication](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/connect\/content-partnerships\/)\n- [Report a Security Issue](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/contact\/)\n- [Editorial Values and Standards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesstaff\/article\/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards)\n- [Site Feedback](mailto:feedback@forbes.com)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/contact\/)\n- [Careers at Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/careers-at-forbes\/)\n- [Tips](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/tips\/)\n- [Corrections](<mailto:corrections@forbes.com?subject=Report Correction: James Conca&body=Reporting Correction for: %0A %0A Title: How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl %0A Author: James Conca %0A URL: https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/%0A %0A - %0A %0A Your Name: %0A Correction Request: %0A %0A - %0A %0A Thank you for reporting a correction. Forbes Staff will review your concern shortly.>)\n- [Privacy Statement](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/privacy.html)\n- [Your Privacy Choices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/consent\/editprivacy\/?consent_do_not_sell=true)\n- [Cookie Preferences](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/terms\/)\n- [AdChoices](https:\/\/youradchoices.com\/control)\n- [Reprints & Permissions](https:\/\/www.parsintl.com\/publication\/forbes\/)\n\n[Business](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/business\/)\n\n[Energy](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/energy\/)\n# How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl\nBy[James Conca](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/ \"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/\"),\n\nFormer Contributor.\n\nForbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.\n\nI write about nuclear, energy and the environment\n\nJun 27, 2019, 06:00am EDT\n\nApr 14, 2022, 02:05pm EDT\n\nThis article is more than 6 years old.\n\nI just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the [United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report](https:\/\/www.iaea.org\/sites\/default\/files\/chernobyl.pdf), the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people.\n\nBut nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic.\n\n[![The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30... \\[+\\] operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.](https:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/jamesconca\/files\/2019\/04\/Chernobyl.jpg)](https:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/jamesconca\/files\/2019\/04\/Chernobyl.jpg)\n\nThe accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.\n\nWNA\n\nThe HBO miniseries *Chernobyl* has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself.\n\nLooking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s.\n\nIt was good that *Chernobyl* screenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely.\n\nAnd radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought.\n\nThe reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book,*Voices From Chernobyl*, by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident.\n\nAlexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it.\n\nSo the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s.\n\nToo bad. *Chernobyl* appears to be the highest rated show of all time on [IMdb](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt7366338\/) and was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed [more people than radiation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2013\/03\/18\/fukushima-fear-is-still-the-killer\/#4ecad82a54c9) ever has.\n\nMazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. \"I defer to the less dramatic version of things,” [Mazin said](https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2019\/05\/new-chernobyl-mini-series-delivers-big-drama-without-nuclear-scale-hyperbole\/), “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational.\"\n\nThen why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve [worked for scale](https:\/\/harrypotter.fandom.com\/wiki\/Working_for_Scale) just to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts.\n\nThere have been [several good reviews](https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/65766-chernobyl-series-science-wrong.html) and [critiques of the miniseries](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaelshellenberger\/2019\/06\/11\/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous\/#1a20d8d31e07), many [by experts](https:\/\/www.cfact.org\/2019\/06\/19\/33373\/?mc_cid=192894e3f0&mc_eid=bd39b4b86f) that were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas.\n\nWe all say the same thing \\- only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies ([1](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4899336\/), [2](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4674166\/), [3](https:\/\/www.nei.org\/resources\/fact-sheets\/chernobyl-accident-and-its-consequences), [4](https:\/\/www.who.int\/ionizing_radiation\/chernobyl\/WHO%20Report%20on%20Chernobyl%20Health%20Effects%20July%2006.pdf), [5](https:\/\/www.euronuclear.org\/events\/pime\/pime2006\/presentations\/Balonov.pdf), [6](http:\/\/www.unscear.org\/unscear\/en\/chernobyl.html), [7](http:\/\/www.unscear.org\/docs\/publications\/2008\/UNSCEAR_2008_Annex-D-CORR.pdf), [8](http:\/\/www.world-nuclear.org\/uploadedFiles\/org\/info\/Safety_and_Security\/Safety_of_Plants\/jaworowski_chernobyl.pdf)) have shown that the long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself.\n\nUnmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem.\n\nMichael Gäbler\n\nMany have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death.\n\nThe worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome ([ARS](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Acute_radiation_syndrome)), during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.”\n\nWhat? Are you crazy? This could not happen.\n\nThe father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive. Radiation sickness is not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl.\n\nBut this fictional story did appear in*Voices From Chernobyl*, told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t.\n\nMultiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear.\n\nSays UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe.\n\nMany of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book.\n\n[Dr. Gale is a world-renowned expert](https:\/\/peerspectrum.com\/2019\/06\/05\/the-american-doctor-at-chernobyl-dr-robert-gale-part-i\/) on bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl.\n\nAnother absurd scene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children.\n\nIt takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation [common in many places](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4030667\/) around the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm.\n\nAll in all, the National Institutes of Health recently declared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.”\n\nAnd we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years.\n\nBut whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama.\n\nSo who did die?\n\nAccording to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were:\n\n\\- 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths\n\n\\- 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation,\n\n\\- 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and\n\n\\- 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation.\n\nThese are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning.\n\nYou’d never understand this from HBO’s *Chernobyl*. But the sets sure were nice.\n\n[Editorial Standards](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbesstaff\/article\/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards\/)[Reprints & Permissions](https:\/\/www.parsintl.com\/publications\/forbes\/)\n\nLOADING VIDEO PLAYER...\n\nFORBES’ FEATURED Video\n\n© 2026 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.\n\n- [AdChoices](https:\/\/youradchoices.com\/control)\n- [Privacy Statement](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/privacy.html)\n- [Your Privacy Choices](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/)\n- [Cookie Preferences](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2019\/06\/27\/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl\/)\n- [Digital Terms of Sale](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/digital-terms-of-sale)\n- [Terms of Service](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/terms\/)\n- [Contact Us](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/fdc\/contact.html)\n- [Send Us Feedback](mailto:feedback@forbes.com)\n- [Report a Security Issue](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/contact\/)\n- [Jobs At Forbes](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/careers-at-forbes\/)\n- [Reprints & Permissions](http:\/\/forbesreprints.magreprints.com\/)\n- [Forbes Press Room](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/forbespr\/)\n- [Advertise](http:\/\/www.forbesmedia.com\/)","attrs_readable_markdown":"I just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the [United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report](https:\/\/www.iaea.org\/sites\/default\/files\/chernobyl.pdf), the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people.\n\nBut nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic.\n\n[![The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30... \\[+\\] operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.](https:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/jamesconca\/files\/2019\/04\/Chernobyl.jpg)](https:\/\/blogs-images.forbes.com\/jamesconca\/files\/2019\/04\/Chernobyl.jpg)\n\nThe accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.\n\nWNA\n\nThe HBO miniseries *Chernobyl* has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself.\n\nLooking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s.\n\nIt was good that *Chernobyl* screenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely.\n\nAnd radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought.\n\nThe reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book,*Voices From Chernobyl*, by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident.\n\nAlexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it.\n\nSo the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s.\n\nToo bad. *Chernobyl* appears to be the highest rated show of all time on [IMdb](https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt7366338\/) and was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed [more people than radiation](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/jamesconca\/2013\/03\/18\/fukushima-fear-is-still-the-killer\/#4ecad82a54c9) ever has.\n\nMazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. \"I defer to the less dramatic version of things,” [Mazin said](https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/gaming\/2019\/05\/new-chernobyl-mini-series-delivers-big-drama-without-nuclear-scale-hyperbole\/), “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational.\"\n\nThen why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve [worked for scale](https:\/\/harrypotter.fandom.com\/wiki\/Working_for_Scale) just to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts.\n\nThere have been [several good reviews](https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/65766-chernobyl-series-science-wrong.html) and [critiques of the miniseries](https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/michaelshellenberger\/2019\/06\/11\/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous\/#1a20d8d31e07), many [by experts](https:\/\/www.cfact.org\/2019\/06\/19\/33373\/?mc_cid=192894e3f0&mc_eid=bd39b4b86f) that were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas.\n\nWe all say the same thing \\- only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies ([1](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4899336\/), [2](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4674166\/), [3](https:\/\/www.nei.org\/resources\/fact-sheets\/chernobyl-accident-and-its-consequences), [4](https:\/\/www.who.int\/ionizing_radiation\/chernobyl\/WHO%20Report%20on%20Chernobyl%20Health%20Effects%20July%2006.pdf), [5](https:\/\/www.euronuclear.org\/events\/pime\/pime2006\/presentations\/Balonov.pdf), [6](http:\/\/www.unscear.org\/unscear\/en\/chernobyl.html), [7](http:\/\/www.unscear.org\/docs\/publications\/2008\/UNSCEAR_2008_Annex-D-CORR.pdf), [8](http:\/\/www.world-nuclear.org\/uploadedFiles\/org\/info\/Safety_and_Security\/Safety_of_Plants\/jaworowski_chernobyl.pdf)) have shown that the long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself.\n\nUnmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem.\n\nMichael Gäbler\n\nMany have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death.\n\nThe worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome ([ARS](https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Acute_radiation_syndrome)), during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.”\n\nWhat? Are you crazy? This could not happen.\n\nThe father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive. Radiation sickness is not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl.\n\nBut this fictional story did appear in*Voices From Chernobyl*, told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t.\n\nMultiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear.\n\nSays UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe.\n\nMany of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book.\n\n[Dr. Gale is a world-renowned expert](https:\/\/peerspectrum.com\/2019\/06\/05\/the-american-doctor-at-chernobyl-dr-robert-gale-part-i\/) on bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl.\n\nAnother absurd scene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children.\n\nIt takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation [common in many places](https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC4030667\/) around the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm.\n\nAll in all, the National Institutes of Health recently declared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.”\n\nAnd we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years.\n\nBut whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama.\n\nSo who did die?\n\nAccording to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were:\n\n\\- 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths\n\n\\- 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation,\n\n\\- 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and\n\n\\- 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation.\n\nThese are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning.\n\nYou’d never understand this from HBO’s *Chernobyl*. But the sets sure were nice.","meta_canonical":null}

3. Robots.txt Check

Query:

Response:

4. Spam/Ban Check

Query:

Response:

5. Seen Status Check

ℹ️ Skipped - page is already crawled

📄

INDEXABLE

✅

CRAWLED

7 days ago

🤖

ROBOTS ALLOWED

Page Info Filters

Filter	Status	Condition	Details
HTTP status	PASS	`download_http_code = 200`	HTTP 200
Age cutoff	PASS	`download_stamp > now() - 6 MONTH`	0.3 months ago
History drop	PASS	`isNull(history_drop_reason)`	No drop reason
Spam/ban	PASS	`fh_dont_index != 1 AND ml_spam_score = 0`	ml_spam_score=0
Canonical	PASS	`meta_canonical IS NULL OR = '' OR = src_unparsed`	Not set

Page Details

Property	Value
URL	https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/
Last Crawled	2026-04-12 21:15:01 (7 days ago)
First Indexed	2019-06-27 10:08:15 (6 years ago)
HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl
Meta Description	I was hoping HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework about radiation and consult even 1 nuclear scientist or radiobiologists. Or even read the U.N. Chernobyl Forum Report. But nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and antinuclear activists was much better.
Meta Canonical	null
Boilerpipe Text	I just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report , the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people. But nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic. The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl. WNA The HBO miniseries Chernobyl has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself. Looking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s. It was good that Chernobyl screenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely. And radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. The reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book, Voices From Chernobyl , by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident. Alexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it. So the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s. Too bad. Chernobyl appears to be the highest rated show of all time on IMdb and was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed more people than radiation ever has. Mazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. "I defer to the less dramatic version of things,” Mazin said , “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational." Then why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve worked for scale just to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts. There have been several good reviews and critiques of the miniseries , many by experts that were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas. We all say the same thing - only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ) have shown that the long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself. Unmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem. Michael Gäbler Many have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death. The worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome ( ARS ) , during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.” What? Are you crazy? This could not happen. The father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive. Radiation sickness is not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl. But this fictional story did appear in Voices From Chernobyl , told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t. Multiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear. Says UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe. Many of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book. Dr. Gale is a world-renowned expert on bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl. Another absurd scene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children. It takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation common in many places around the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm. All in all , the National Institutes of Health recently declared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.” And we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years. But whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama. So who did die? According to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were: - 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths - 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation, - 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and - 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation. These are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning. You’d never understand this from HBO’s Chernobyl . But the sets sure were nice.
Markdown	[Sign Up For Newsletters](https://account.forbes.com/newsletters/)[Games](https://www.forbes.com/games)[Share a News Tip](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstaff/article/tips-and-confidential-sources/) - Featured Featured - [Breaking News](https://www.forbes.com/news/) - [White House Watch](https://www.forbes.com/trump/) - [Daily Cover Stories](https://www.forbes.com/daily-cover-stories/) - [Why These Leaders Raised Thousands For Blood Cancer — And How You Can, Too \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bloodcancerunited/2026/04/10/why-these-leaders-raised-thousands-for-blood-cancer---and-how-you-can-too/) - [2026 America's Top Wealth Advisors List](https://www.forbes.com/lists/top-wealth-advisors/) - [2026 Best-In-State Top Wealth Advisors List](https://www.forbes.com/lists/best-in-state-wealth-advisors/) - [The Toughest Problems Are Never Solved Alone \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/american-cancer-society/2026/02/23/the-toughest-problems-are-never-solved-alone/) - [How Chief Marketing Officers Are Scaling AI At Speed — While Preserving Brand Trust](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesliveteam/2026/02/23/how-chief-marketing-officers-are-scaling-ai-at-speed---while-preserving-brand-trust/) - [New Era, New Icons: The Creators Redefining High-Quality Storytelling on TikTok \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiktok/2025/12/15/new-era-new-icons-the-creators-redefining-high-quality-storytelling-on-tiktok/) - [AI’s Nuanced Impact And A Quest To Quantify It](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-research/2023/10/26/c-suite-data-reveals-ais-nuanced-impact--a-quest-to-quantify-it/) - [Embracing And Bracing For AI](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-research/2023/10/26/new-forbes-survey-reveals-how-executives-are-embracing---and-bracing-for---ai/) - [Facing A Volatile Market, C-Suites Look To The CFO For Strategic Guidance](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-research/2023/11/01/facing-a-volatile-market-c-suites-look-to-the-cfo-for-strategic-guidance/) - [By The Numbers: Meet The Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe Class Of 2025](https://www.forbes.com/30-under-30/2025/europe/) - [Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2025](https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2025/08/12/next-billion-dollar-startups-2025/) - [America's Most Powerful Women In Sports](https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2025/10/22/americas-most-powerful-women-in-sports-2025/) - [CMO Unscripted: Vulnerability Is The New Superpower For Leaders In The AI Era](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesvideo/2026/01/28/cmo-unscripted/) - [Rocky Mountaineer Connoisseur: Unwind And Behold](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rocky-mountaineer/2026/03/03/unwind-and-behold/) - [Clé de Peau Beauté BrandVoice: She’s Shown 80,000 Girls & Non-Binary People They Belong In STEAM \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cle-de-peau-beaute/2026/03/11/shes-shown-80000-girls--non-binary-people-they-belong-in-steam/) - [Nvidia GTC 2026 And The Ambitious Path to \$1 Trillion In AI Revenue](https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2026/03/26/nvidia-gtc-2026-and-the-ambitious-path-to-1-trillion-in-ai-revenue/) - [Billionaires](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/) Billionaires [See All](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/) - [World's Billionaires](https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/) - [Forbes 400](https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/) - [America's Richest Self-Made Women](https://www.forbes.com/self-made-women/) - [China's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/china-billionaires/) - [India's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/india-billionaires/) - [Indonesia's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/indonesia-billionaires/) - [Korea's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/korea-billionaires/) - [Thailand's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/thailand-billionaires/) - [Japan's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/japan-billionaires/) - [Australia's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/australia-billionaires/) - [Taiwan's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/taiwan-billionaires/) - [Singapore's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/singapore-billionaires/) - [Philippines' Richest](ttps://www.forbes.com/lists/philippines-billionaires/) - [Hong Kong's Richest](ttps://www.forbes.com/lists/hong-kong-billionaires/) - [Malaysia's Richest](https://www.forbes.com/lists/malaysia-billionaires/) - [Money & Politics](https://www.forbes.com/money-politics/) - [Innovation](https://www.forbes.com/innovation/) Innovation [See All](https://www.forbes.com/innovation/) - [AI-Powered Cybersecurity](https://www.forbes.com/topics/ai-cybersecurity/) - [Employee and Customer Experience](https://www.forbes.com/topics/employee-and-customer-experience/) - [Enterprise AI](https://www.forbes.com/topics/enterprise-ai/) - [How AI Hungry Companies Can Use PCs To Supercharge Workforce Intelligence](https://www.forbes.com/sites/amd/2026/03/02/how-ai-hungry-companies-can-use-pcs-to-supercharge-workforce-intelligence/) - [AI](https://www.forbes.com/ai/) - [Agentic AI](https://www.forbes.com/topics/agentic-ai/) - [Big Data](https://www.forbes.com/big-data/) - [Cloud](https://www.forbes.com/cloud/) - [Cloud 100](https://www.forbes.com/lists/cloud100/) - [Consumer Tech](https://www.forbes.com/consumer-tech/) - [Creator Economy](https://www.forbes.com/creator-economy/) - [New Era, New Icons: The Creators Redefining High-Quality Storytelling On TikTok](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiktok/2025/12/15/new-era-new-icons-the-creators-redefining-high-quality-storytelling-on-tiktok/) - [Cybersecurity](https://www.forbes.com/cybersecurity/) - [Digital Transformation](https://www.forbes.com/digital-transformation/) - [Enterprise Tech](https://www.forbes.com/enterprise-tech/) - [Future Of Work](https://www.forbes.com/future-of-work/) - [Gaming](https://www.forbes.com/gaming/) - [Healthcare](https://www.forbes.com/healthcare/) - [Innovation Rules](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesvideo/article/innovation-rules/) - [Retail Industry](https://www.forbes.com/topics/retail-industry/) - [Science](https://www.forbes.com/science/) - [Social Media](https://www.forbes.com/social-media/) - [Sustainability & Climate](https://www.forbes.com/sustainability/) - [Transportation](https://www.forbes.com/transportation/) - [Venture Capital](https://www.forbes.com/venture-capital/) - [Technology](https://www.forbes.com/sites/technology/) - [TikTok BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/tiktok/) - [Metronome BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/metronome/) - [Leadership](https://www.forbes.com/leadership/) Leadership [See All](https://www.forbes.com/leadership/) - [Under 30](https://www.forbes.com/under30/) - [C-Suite](https://www.forbes.com/cxo/) - [CEO Network](https://www.forbes.com/ceo-network/) - [CFO Network](https://www.forbes.com/cfo-network/) - [CHRO Network](https://www.forbes.com/chro-network/) - [CIO Network](https://www.forbes.com/cio-network/) - [CMO Network](https://www.forbes.com/cmo-network/) - [Leadership Strategies](https://www.forbes.com/leadership-strategy/) - [Careers](https://www.forbes.com/careers/) - [Education](https://www.forbes.com/education/) - [Forbes EQ \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeseq/) - [ForbesBLK](https://www.forbes.com/blk-leadership/) - [Forbes Research](https://www.forbes.com/leadership/forbes-research/) - [ForbesWomen](https://www.forbes.com/forbeswomen/) - [Deloitte BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/deloitte/) - [Dell Technologies BrandVoice \\| Paid Program](https://www.forbes.com/sites/delltechnologies/) - [Money](https://www.forbes.com/money/) Money [See All](https://www.forbes.com/money/) - [ETF Investing Trends](https://www.forbes.com/topics/etf-investing-trends/) - [Banking & Insurance](https://www.forbes.com/banking-insurance/) - [ETFs & Mutual Funds](https://www.forbes.com/etfs-mutual-funds/) - [Fintech](https://www.forbes.com/fintech/) - [Hedge Funds & Private Equity](https://www.forbes.com/hedge-funds-private-equity/) - [Investing](https://www.forbes.com/investing/) - [Investor Hub](https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor-hub/) - [Markets](https://www.forbes.com/markets/) - [Personal Finance](https://www.forbes.com/personal-finance/) - [Retirement](https://www.forbes.com/retirement/) - [Taxes](https://www.forbes.com/taxes/) - [Top Advisor \\| SHOOK](https://www.forbes.com/top-advisor-shook/%20) - [Wealth Management](https://www.forbes.com/wealth-management/%20) - [Forbes Digital Assets](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/) Forbes Digital Assets [See All](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/) - [News](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/news/) - [Crypto Prices](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/crypto-prices/) - [NFT Prices](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/nft-prices/) - [Research](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/research/) - [Learn](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/) - [Crypto Basics](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/crypto-basics/) - [BTC](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/btc/) - [DeFi](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/defi/) - [Web3 Education](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/web3-education/) - [NFTs](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/nfts/) - [Crypto Investments](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/learn/crypto-investments/) - [Events](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/events/) - [Crypto Portfolios](https://www.forbes.com/digital-assets/crypto-advisor-portfolio/) - [Business](https://www.forbes.com/business/) Business [See All](https://www.forbes.com/business/) - [Aerospace & Defense](https://www.forbes.com/aerospace-defense/) - [Energy](https://www.forbes.com/energy/) - [Food & Drink](https://www.forbes.com/food-drink/) - [Hollywood & Entertainment](https://www.forbes.com/hollywood-entertainment/) - [Law](https://www.forbes.com/law/) - [Manufacturing](https://www.forbes.com/manufacturing/) - [Media](https://www.forbes.com/media/) - [Policy](https://www.forbes.com/policy/) - [Retail](https://www.forbes.com/retail/) - [SportsMoney](https://www.forbes.com/sportsmoney/) - [2026 Election](https://www.forbes.com/2026-election/) - [Entertainment Digest](https://www.forbes.com/sites/entertainment/) - [Enterprise Growth](https://www.forbes.com/topics/enterprise-growth/) - [Small Business](https://www.forbes.com/small-business/) Small Business [See All](https://www.forbes.com/small-business/) - [Entrepreneurs](https://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/) - [Small Business Strategy](https://www.forbes.com/small-business-strategy/) - [Small Business Taxes](https://www.forbes.com/topics/small-business-taxes/) - [Lifestyle](https://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/) Lifestyle [See All](https://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/) - [Luxury Travel](https://www.forbes.com/topics/luxury-travel/) - [Arts](https://www.forbes.com/arts/) - [Boats & Planes](https://www.forbes.com/boats-planes/) - [Cars & Bikes](https://www.forbes.com/cars-bikes/) - [Dining](https://www.forbes.com/dining/) - [ForbesLife](https://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/) - [Forbes Travel Guide](https://www.forbes.com/forbes-travel-guide/) - [Spirits](https://www.forbes.com/spirits/) - [Style & Beauty](https://www.forbes.com/style-beauty/) - [Travel](https://www.forbes.com/travel/) - [Vices](https://www.forbes.com/vices/) - [Watches](https://www.forbes.com/watches-jewelry/) - [Real Estate](https://www.forbes.com/real-estate/) Real Estate [See All](https://www.forbes.com/real-estate/) - [Commercial Real Estate](https://www.forbes.com/commercial-real-estate/) - [Forbes Global Properties](https://www.forbes.com/forbes-global-properties/) - [Residential Real Estate](https://www.forbes.com/residential-real-estate/) - [Forbes Vetted](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/) Forbes Vetted [See All](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/) - [Mattress & Sleep](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/) - [Bed Frames](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/bed-frames/) - [Mattresses](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/mattresses/) - [Mattress Toppers](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/mattress-toppers/) - [Pillows](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/pillows/) - [Sheets & Bedding](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/sheets-bedding/) - [Sleep Products](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/mattress-sleep/sleep-products/) - [Home](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/) - [Bathroom](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/bathroom/) - [Cleaning & Laundry](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/cleaning-laundry/) - [Decor](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/decor/) - [Furniture](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/furniture/) - [Heating & Cooling](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/heating-cooling/) - [Hobbies](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/hobbies/) - [Home Office](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home-office/) - [Kitchen & Dining](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/kitchen-dining/) - [Outdoor](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/outdoor/) - [Pets](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/pets/) - [Storage & Organization](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/storage-organization/) - [Tools](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/tools/) - [Wine & Bar](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/home/wine-bar/) - [Fashion](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/) - [Accessories](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/accessories/) - [Clothing](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/clothing/) - [Eyewear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/eyewear/) - [Footwear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/footwear/) - [Jewelry](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/jewelry/) - [Handbags & Purses](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/handbags-purses/) - [Lingerie & Sleepwear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/lingerie-sleepwear/) - [Outdoor & Fitness Apparel](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/outdoor-fitness-apparel/) - [Outerwear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/outerwear/) - [Watches](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/fashion/watches/) - [Kids & Baby Gear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/) - [Baby Gear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/baby-gear/) - [Kids Clothes & Accessories](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/kids-clothes-accessories/) - [Nursery](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/nursery/) - [Pregnancy & Postpartum](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/pregnancy-postpartum/) - [Toys & Books](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/kids-baby-gear/toys-books/) - [Gear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/) - [Apparel & Accessories](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/apparel-accessories/) - [Bikes](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/bikes/) - [Camping & Hiking](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/camping-hiking/) - [Climbing](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/climbing/) - [Fishing & Hunting](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/fishing-hunting/) - [Fitness](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/fitness/) - [Golf](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/golf/) - [Running](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/running/) - [Tennis & Racket Sports](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/tennis-racket-sports/) - [Tools & Tech](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/tools-tech/) - [Training & Recovery](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/training-recovery/) - [Water Sports](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/water-sports/) - [Wellness](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/wellness/) - [Winter Sports](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gear/winter-sports/) - [Beauty & Grooming](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/) - [Haircare](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/haircare/) - [Makeup](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/makeup/) - [Nailcare](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/nailcare/) - [Shaving](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/shaving/) - [Skincare](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/skincare/) - [Personal Products](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/personal-products/) - [Wellness & Self Care](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/beauty-grooming/wellness-self-care/) - [Tech & Electronics](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/) - [Audio](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/audio/) - [Cameras](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/cameras/) - [Computers, Tablets & Accessories](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/computers-tablets-accessories/) - [Gaming](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/gaming/) - [Home Office](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/home-office/) - [Online Tools](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/online-tools/) - [Smart Home Devices](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/smart-home-devices/) - [Smartphones, Smartwatches & Accessories](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/smartphones-smartwatches-accessories/) - [Streaming](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/streaming/) - [TVs](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/tech-electronics/tvs/) - [Travel](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/travel/) - [Cruises](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/travel/cruises/) - [Hotels & Lodging](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/travel/hotels-lodging/) - [Luggage](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/travel/luggage/) - [Travel Products](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/travel/travel-products/) - [Gifts](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/) - [Father's Day](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/fathers-day/) - [Holiday](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/holiday/) - [Mother's Day](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/mothers-day/) - [Valentine's Day](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/valentines-day/) - [Wedding](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/gifts/wedding/) - [Deals](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/) - [Black Friday](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/black-friday/) - [Cyber Monday](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/cyber-monday/) - [Amazon Prime Day](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/amazon-prime-day/) - [Beauty & Grooming](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/beauty-grooming/) - [Big Sales](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/big-sales/) - [Fashion](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/fashion/) - [Gear](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/gear/) - [Home](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/home/) - [Tech & Electronics](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/tech-electronics/) - [Travel Deals](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/travel-deals/) - [Mattress & Sleep](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/mattress-sleep/) - [Deals](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/) Deals [See All](https://www.forbes.com/vetted/deals/) - [Fashion]() - [Nordstrom](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/nordstrom-promo-codes/) - [HOKA](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/hoka-coupons/) - [Quince](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/quince-discount-codes/) - [Electronics]() - [Dell](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/dell-promo-codes/) - [TopResume](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/topresume-discount-codes/) - [Sportswear & Gear]() - [Dick's Sporting Goods](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/dicks-sporting-goods-coupons/) - [REI](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/rei-promo-codes/) - [Mattress & Sleep]() - [Nectar](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/nectar-coupons/) - [Saatva](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/saatva-promo-codes/) - [Brooklinen](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/brooklinen-promo-codes/) - [Avocado](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/avocado-mattress-discount-codes/) - [DreamCloud](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/dreamcloud-coupons/) - [Helix Sleep](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/helix-discount-codes/) - [Bear](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/bear-mattress-coupons/) - [Leesa](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/leesa-mattress-discount-codes/) - [Brooklyn Bedding](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/brooklyn-bedding-promo-codes/) - [Travel]() - [SeatGeek](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/seatgeek-promo-codes/) - [Vivid Seats](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/vivid-seats-coupons/) - [Home & Garden]() - [Frontgate](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/frontgate-promo-codes/) - [Wayfair](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/wayfair-promo-codes/) - [Chewy](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/chewy-promo-codes/) - [Walmart](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/walmart-promo-codes/) - [West Elm](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/article/west-elm-coupons/) - [Lists](https://www.forbes.com/lists/list-directory/) Lists [See All](https://www.forbes.com/lists/list-directory/) - [30 Under 30](https://www.forbes.com/under30/) - [50 Over 50](https://www.forbes.com/over-50/) - [Top Colleges](https://www.forbes.com/top-colleges/) - [Advisor](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/) Advisor [See All](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/) - [Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/) - [Best Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best-credit-cards/) - [Travel Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best-travel-credit-cards/) - [0% APR Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best-0-apr-credit-cards/) - [Balance Transfer Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best/balance-transfer/) - [Business Credit Cards](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best/business/) - [Best First Credit Card](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/best/first-credit-card/) - [Mortgages & Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/) - [Best Mortgage Lenders](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/best-mortgage-lenders/) - [Mortgage Refinance Lenders](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/refinance/best-mortgage-refinance-lenders/) - [Personal Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-loans/best-personal-loans/) - [Business Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business-loans/best-small-business-loans/) - [Bad Credit Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-loans/bad-credit-loans/) - [Debt Consolidation Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/personal-loans/debt-consolidation-loans/) - [Debt Relief Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/debt-relief/best-debt-relief-companies/) - [Student Loans Refinance](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/best-student-loan-refinance-lenders/) - [Private Student Loans](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/best-private-student-loans/) - [Banking](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/) - [Best CD Rates](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/cds/best-cd-rates/) - [High Yield Savings Accounts](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/best-high-yield-savings-accounts/) - [Money Market Accounts](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/best-money-market-accounts/) - [Checking Accounts](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/checking/best-checking-accounts/) - [Business Checking Accounts](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/checking/best-business-checking-accounts/) - [Budgeting Apps](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/best-budgeting-apps/) - [Best Online Banks](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/best-online-banks/) - [Insurance](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/insurance/) - [Health Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/best-health-insurance-companies/) - [Medicare](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/medicare/) - [Life Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/life-insurance/best-life-insurance-companies/) - [Best Car Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/best-car-insurance-companies/) - [Cheapest Car Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/cheapest-car-insurance/) - [Pet Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/pet-insurance/best-pet-insurance/) - [Travel Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/travel-insurance/best-travel-insurance/) - [Homeowners Insurance Companies](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/homeowners-insurance/best-homeowners-insurance-companies/) - [Business Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/) - [How to Start a Business](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/how-to-start-a-business/) - [LLC Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/best-llc-service/) - [Payroll Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-payroll-services/) - [HR Software](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-human-resource-management-systems/) - [HRIS Systems](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/hris-systems/) - [PEO Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-peo-services/) - [Applicant tracking Systems](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/best-applicant-tracking-systems/) - [Domain Registrars](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-domain-registrar/) - [Hosting Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-web-hosting-services/) - [Website Builders](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-website-builders/) - [Ecomm Platforms](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-ecommerce-platform/) - [Landing Page Builders](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-landing-page-builder/) - [VOIP Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-voip-service/) - [Answering Services](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-answering-services/) - [Project Management Software](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-project-management-software/) - [Task Management Software](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-task-management-software/) - [Gantt Chart Software](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-gantt-chart-software/) - [VPNs](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-vpn/) - [Anti Virus Software](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-antivirus-software/) - [Password Managers](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-password-managers/) - [Home Services](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/) - [Moving Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/moving-services/best-moving-companies/) - [Long Distance Moving Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/moving-services/best-long-distance-moving-companies/) - [Car Shipping Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/moving-services/best-car-shipping-companies/) - [Home Warranty Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/home-warranty/best-home-warranty-companies/) - [Solar Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/best-solar-companies/) - [Solar Panels](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/solar/best-solar-panels/) - [Home Security Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/home-security/best-home-security-companies/) - [Home Security Systems](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/home-security/best-home-security-systems/) - [Internet Providers](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/best-internet-providers/) - [Cheapest Internet Providers](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/cheapest-internet-plans/) - [Fastest High Speed Internet Providers](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/internet/fastest-high-speed-internet-provider/) - [Pest Control Companies](https://www.forbes.com/home-improvement/pest-control/best-pest-control-companies/) - [Education](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/education/) - [Forbes Advisor UK](https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/) - [Forbes Advisor CA](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/ca/) - [Forbes Advisor AU](https://www.forbes.com/advisor/au/) - [Health](https://www.forbes.com/health/) Health [See All](https://www.forbes.com/health/) - [Mental Health](https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/) - [Best Online Therapy](https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/best-online-therapy/) - [Online Therapy that Takes Insurance](https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/best-online-therapy-that-takes-insurance/) - [Online Psychiatrists](https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/best-online-psychiatry/) - [Best Online Dating Sites & Apps](https://www.forbes.com/health/dating/best-online-dating-websites/) - [Best Senior Dating Sites](https://www.forbes.com/health/dating/best-senior-dating-sites/) - [Best LGBTQ Dating Sites](https://www.forbes.com/health/dating/best-lgbtq-dating-sites/) - [CBD](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/) - [CBD Gummies](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/best-cbd-gummies/) - [CBD Oil](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/best-cbd-oil/) - [CBD Creams](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/best-cbd-creams/) - [CBD for Anxiety](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/cbd-for-anxiety/) - [CBD for Pain](https://www.forbes.com/health/cbd/best-cbd-oil-for-pain/) - [Supplements](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/) - [Protein Powder](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/best-protein-powders/) - [Preworkout](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/best-pre-workout/) - [Collagen Powders](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/best-collagen-powders/) - [Creatine Supplements](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/best-creatine-supplements/) - [CoQ10 Supplements](https://www.forbes.com/health/supplements/coq10-supplements/) - [Hearing Health](https://www.forbes.com/health/hearing-aids/) - [Best Hearing Aids](https://www.forbes.com/health/hearing-aids/best-hearing-aids/) - [OTC Hearing Aids](https://www.forbes.com/health/hearing-aids/best-otc-hearing-aids/) - [Affordable Hearing Aids](https://www.forbes.com/health/hearing-aids/best-affordable-hearing-aids/) - [Medical Devices](https://www.forbes.com/health/medical-alert-systems/) - [Best Medical Alert Systems](https://www.forbes.com/health/medical-alert-systems/best-medical-alert-systems/) - [Best Medical Alert Systems with Fall Detection](https://www.forbes.com/health/medical-alert-systems/best-medical-alert-systems-with-fall-detection/) - [Diet & Weight Loss](https://www.forbes.com/health/weight-loss/) - [Best Weight Loss Plans](https://www.forbes.com/health/weight-loss/best-weight-loss-program/) - [Newsletters](https://account.forbes.com/newsletters/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation) Newsletters [See All](https://account.forbes.com/newsletters/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation) - [Forbes Daily](https://www.forbes.com/newsletter/forbes-daily/) - [Editorial Newsletters](https://account.forbes.com/newsletters/?utm_source=forbes&utm_medium=featured&utm_campaign=navigation) - [Forbes Games](https://www.forbes.com/games/) Forbes Games [See All](https://www.forbes.com/games/) - [Frase by Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/frase/) - [Pinpoint by LinkedIn](https://www.forbes.com/games/pinpoint/) - [Queens by LinkedIn](https://www.forbes.com/games/queens/) - [Crossclimb by LinkedIn](https://www.forbes.com/games/crossclimb/) - [Mini Crossword by Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/games/mini-crossword/) - More From Forbes More From Forbes - [Forbes Video](https://www.forbes.com/video/) - [Forbes 101](https://www.forbes.com/forbes-101/) - [Forbes Magazine]() - [Forbes Asia](https://www.forbes.com/forbesasia/) - [Free Issue of Forbes](https://w1.buysub.com/pubs/B4/FRB/16-forbes_relaunch_landingpage_2freetrial.jsp?cds_mag_code=FRB&cds_page_id=241223) Today's Highlights Games [![Frase](https://images.forbes.com/fbs-games-assets/frase-high-res.png)Frase By ForbesUnscramble The Anagram](https://www.forbes.com/games/frase/) [![Pinpoint](https://images.forbes.com/fbs-games-assets/pinpoint.png)Pinpoint By LinkedInGuess The Category](https://www.forbes.com/games/pinpoint/) See More © 2026 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. - [Advertise with Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/connect/) - [Forbes Licensing & Syndication](https://www.forbes.com/connect/content-partnerships/) - [Report a Security Issue](https://www.forbes.com/contact/) - [Editorial Values and Standards](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstaff/article/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards) - [Site Feedback](mailto:feedback@forbes.com) - [Contact Us](https://www.forbes.com/contact/) - [Careers at Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/careers-at-forbes/) - [Tips](https://www.forbes.com/tips/) - [Corrections](<mailto:corrections@forbes.com?subject=Report Correction: James Conca&body=Reporting Correction for: %0A %0A Title: How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl %0A Author: James Conca %0A URL: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/%0A %0A - %0A %0A Your Name: %0A Correction Request: %0A %0A - %0A %0A Thank you for reporting a correction. Forbes Staff will review your concern shortly.>) - [Privacy Statement](https://www.forbes.com/fdc/privacy.html) - [Your Privacy Choices](https://www.forbes.com/consent/editprivacy/?consent_do_not_sell=true) - [Cookie Preferences](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/) - [Terms of Service](https://www.forbes.com/terms/) - [AdChoices](https://youradchoices.com/control) - [Reprints & Permissions](https://www.parsintl.com/publication/forbes/) [Business](https://www.forbes.com/business/) [Energy](https://www.forbes.com/energy/) # How HBO Got It Wrong On Chernobyl By[James Conca](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/ "https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/"), Former Contributor. Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about nuclear, energy and the environment Jun 27, 2019, 06:00am EDT Apr 14, 2022, 02:05pm EDT This article is more than 6 years old. I just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the [United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report](https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf), the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people. But nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic. [![The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30... \[+\] operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.](https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jamesconca/files/2019/04/Chernobyl.jpg)](https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jamesconca/files/2019/04/Chernobyl.jpg) The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl. WNA The HBO miniseries Chernobyl has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself. Looking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s. It was good that Chernobyl screenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely. And radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. The reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book,Voices From Chernobyl, by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident. Alexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it. So the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s. Too bad. Chernobyl appears to be the highest rated show of all time on [IMdb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/) and was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed [more people than radiation](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/03/18/fukushima-fear-is-still-the-killer/#4ecad82a54c9) ever has. Mazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. "I defer to the less dramatic version of things,” [Mazin said](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/new-chernobyl-mini-series-delivers-big-drama-without-nuclear-scale-hyperbole/), “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational." Then why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve [worked for scale](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Working_for_Scale) just to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts. There have been [several good reviews](https://www.livescience.com/65766-chernobyl-series-science-wrong.html) and [critiques of the miniseries](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/11/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous/#1a20d8d31e07), many [by experts](https://www.cfact.org/2019/06/19/33373/?mc_cid=192894e3f0&mc_eid=bd39b4b86f) that were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas. We all say the same thing \- only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies ([1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/), [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674166/), [3](https://www.nei.org/resources/fact-sheets/chernobyl-accident-and-its-consequences), [4](https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/WHO%20Report%20on%20Chernobyl%20Health%20Effects%20July%2006.pdf), [5](https://www.euronuclear.org/events/pime/pime2006/presentations/Balonov.pdf), [6](http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html), [7](http://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2008/UNSCEAR_2008_Annex-D-CORR.pdf), [8](http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/Safety_and_Security/Safety_of_Plants/jaworowski_chernobyl.pdf)) have shown that the long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself. Unmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem. Michael Gäbler Many have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death. The worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome ([ARS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome)), during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.” What? Are you crazy? This could not happen. The father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive. Radiation sickness is not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl. But this fictional story did appear inVoices From Chernobyl, told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t. Multiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear. Says UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe. Many of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book. [Dr. Gale is a world-renowned expert](https://peerspectrum.com/2019/06/05/the-american-doctor-at-chernobyl-dr-robert-gale-part-i/) on bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl. Another absurd scene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children. It takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation [common in many places](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4030667/) around the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm. All in all, the National Institutes of Health recently declared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.” And we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years. But whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama. So who did die? According to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were: \- 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths \- 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation, \- 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and \- 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation. These are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning. You’d never understand this from HBO’s Chernobyl. But the sets sure were nice. [Editorial Standards](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesstaff/article/forbes-editorial-values-and-standards/)[Reprints & Permissions](https://www.parsintl.com/publications/forbes/) LOADING VIDEO PLAYER... FORBES’ FEATURED Video © 2026 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. - [AdChoices](https://youradchoices.com/control) - [Privacy Statement](https://www.forbes.com/fdc/privacy.html) - [Your Privacy Choices](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/) - [Cookie Preferences](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/) - [Digital Terms of Sale](https://www.forbes.com/digital-terms-of-sale) - [Terms of Service](https://www.forbes.com/terms/) - [Contact Us](https://www.forbes.com/fdc/contact.html) - [Send Us Feedback](mailto:feedback@forbes.com) - [Report a Security Issue](https://www.forbes.com/contact/) - [Jobs At Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/careers-at-forbes/) - [Reprints & Permissions](http://forbesreprints.magreprints.com/) - [Forbes Press Room](https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/) - [Advertise](http://www.forbesmedia.com/)
Readable Markdown	I just knew it! I was hoping I’d be wrong, that HBO would have the courage and integrity to do their homework and consult even one actual nuclear scientist or radiobiologist. Or even just read the [United Nations Chernobyl Forum Report](https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/chernobyl.pdf), the best source of information on the disaster for non-nuclear people. But nooo…they decided that talking to journalists, historians and anti-nuclear activists was much better. Certainly, it was much more dramatic. [![The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30... \[+\] operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl.](https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jamesconca/files/2019/04/Chernobyl.jpg)](https://blogs-images.forbes.com/jamesconca/files/2019/04/Chernobyl.jpg) The accident that destroyed the Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor on April 26, 1986, killed 30 operators and firemen within three months and several more later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in the hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was confirmed in 134 people involved with the clean-up. Of these, 29 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more subsequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot be attributed to radiation exposure. Nine child fatalities resulted from thyroid cancer that may have been caused by radiation. But you wouldn’t know any of this from watching HBO’s Chernobyl. WNA The HBO miniseries Chernobyl has been praised for its realistic portrayal of the place and times. And in that respect, it was mightily impressive. The acting was fantastic, the script, scenes and props gave a realistic feel of the collapsing Soviet Union, and there were awesome set designs, especially of the control room and the explosion itself. Looking at archaic cathode-ray tube technology with old dials and eerily-lighted numbers brought back memories from work in the 70s and 80s. It was good that Chernobyl screenwriter and creator Craig Mazin nailed the politics, the bureaucratic lies and deception, and a manager over-riding safety protocols. But on the key aspect of the whole affair – radiation – the miniseries failed completely. And radiation is the key aspect. It’s why we remember Chernobyl at all. If it had been any of a number of gas plant explosions, coal impoundment failures or oil tanker derailments with the same casualties and environmental effects, we wouldn’t give it a second thought. The reason the miniseries failed on radiation and death is that, for the health and environmental effects, Mazin deliberately avoided talking to experts on this subject. Instead, the miniseries closely followed a recent book,Voices From Chernobyl, by Belarusian Nobel Laureate Svetlana Alexievich, that is a compilation of interviews with survivors of the nuclear reactor accident. Alexievich is a journalist and oral historian whose book is not based on scientific knowledge of the events or the actual health effects, but impressions from people who lived through it, or knew people who lived through it. So the emotional impact of the miniseries was spot-on while the scientific impact wasn’t much better than The Simpson’s. Too bad. Chernobyl appears to be the highest rated show of all time on [IMdb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7366338/) and was the best opportunity we had yet to get this right for the public, to tamp down the fearmongering of radiation that has killed [more people than radiation](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/03/18/fukushima-fear-is-still-the-killer/#4ecad82a54c9) ever has. Mazin insisted that his mini-series would stick to the facts. "I defer to the less dramatic version of things,” [Mazin said](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/new-chernobyl-mini-series-delivers-big-drama-without-nuclear-scale-hyperbole/), “you don’t want to cross a line into the sensational." Then why did the miniseries cross the line into sensational over and over again with respect to radiation? Why didn’t Mazin just talk to a nuclear scientist? There are some really good ones just a stone’s throw from him. Any nuclear graduate student would’ve [worked for scale](https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Working_for_Scale) just to get on a movie set. Mazin probably spent more on donuts. There have been [several good reviews](https://www.livescience.com/65766-chernobyl-series-science-wrong.html) and [critiques of the miniseries](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/11/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous/#1a20d8d31e07), many [by experts](https://www.cfact.org/2019/06/19/33373/?mc_cid=192894e3f0&mc_eid=bd39b4b86f) that were there and who have worked on the issue over the decades since, treating and monitoring the people and the places, even those of us who designed clean-up strategies for the surrounding areas. We all say the same thing \- only the fear of radiation killed anyone outside the immediate area of Chernobyl. All health and epidemiological studies ([1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899336/), [2](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4674166/), [3](https://www.nei.org/resources/fact-sheets/chernobyl-accident-and-its-consequences), [4](https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/WHO%20Report%20on%20Chernobyl%20Health%20Effects%20July%2006.pdf), [5](https://www.euronuclear.org/events/pime/pime2006/presentations/Balonov.pdf), [6](http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html), [7](http://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2008/UNSCEAR_2008_Annex-D-CORR.pdf), [8](http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedFiles/org/info/Safety_and_Security/Safety_of_Plants/jaworowski_chernobyl.pdf)) have shown that the long-term mental health effects from radiophobia - fear - were the only significant public health consequence of the accident outside of the vicinity of Chernobyl itself. Unmolested by human hands for 33 years, the 30-km Chernobyl exclusion zone has become an amazing natural wildlife habit, as well as a growing tourist attraction. There just wasn’t much radiation or radioactive material deposited beyond the immediate area. The environment outside of Pripyat was not harmed at all. In fact, about a thousand people never left Chernobyl and have survived just fine for 30 years. Another 3,000 people worked at the other Chernobyl reactors for decades. Wild boars, hunted in Germany, the Ukraine and other areas of Europe, have to be monitored for radiation when killed. None have ever posed a problem. Michael Gäbler Many have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death. The worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome ([ARS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome)), during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO's fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.” What? Are you crazy? This could not happen. The father was not radioactive - he received a dose of radiation which cannot make you radioactive. Radiation sickness is not contagious. Only ingesting a huge amount of radioactive material can make you radioactive, and that did not happen to anyone because of Chernobyl. But this fictional story did appear inVoices From Chernobyl, told to Alexievich by someone at someplace, so Mazin thought it must be true. Except it wasn’t. Multiple studies have shown that there were no pregnancies affected by radiation from Chernobyl, although many unnecessary abortions were performed out of unfounded fear. Says UCLA’s Dr. Robert Gale, “We estimate incorrect advice from physicians regarding the relationship between maternal radiation exposure from Chernobyl and birth defects resulted in more than one million unnecessary abortions in the Soviet Union and Europe. Many of the very same well-meaning but ill-informed physicians that Alexievich interviewed for her book. [Dr. Gale is a world-renowned expert](https://peerspectrum.com/2019/06/05/the-american-doctor-at-chernobyl-dr-robert-gale-part-i/) on bone marrow transplants who immediately went to treat the Chernobyl victims after the accident and spent two years working there. For the next 30 years, Gale worked on several studies of the long-term medical consequences of Chernobyl. Another absurd scene from the miniseries takes place in the local hospital that appears to show children suffering from acute radiation syndrome. That did not happen. The only cases of ARS were among the firefighters and the workers, none in the public, even from the local town of Pripyat. Certainly not in any children. It takes over 1,000 millisieverts (mSv) to get ARS, and that depends on the dose rate, all at once or over awhile, and the type of radionuclide. The average dose to the people of Pripyat was only about 30 millisieverts, equivalent to three whole-body CT scans, an amount that has never been seen to cause health effects of any kind. Outside of this local population, the doses never exceeded 10 mSv - just one rem – per year, an amount of background radiation [common in many places](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4030667/) around the world where hundreds of millions of people have lived for centuries without any measurable harm. All in all, the National Institutes of Health recently declared that, “In spite of the best efforts of statisticians and epidemiologists, the claimed thousands of Chernobyl-induced cancers and mutations have yet to manifest themselves.” And we have been looking really, really hard for 33 years. But whether it was the Bridge of Death scene, the Helicopter scene, pretending radiation makes you start bleeding, pretending a nuclear reactor can go off like a nuclear bomb, or claiming a dramatic spike in cancer rates across the Ukraine and Belarus, for radiation and death the script was a fictional historical drama - heavy on the drama. So who did die? According to the IAEA, the United Nations Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, the actual fatalities were: \- 2 immediate, non-radiation deaths \- 29 early fatalities from radiation (ARS) within 4 months from radiation, burns and smoke inhalation, \- 19 late adult fatalities presumably from radiation over the next 20 years, although this number is within the normal incidence of cancer mortality in this group, which is about 1% per year, and \- 9 late child fatalities resulting in thyroid cancer, presumably from radiation. These are serious results from a horrible accident, but they don’t rise to the level of hundreds of disasters from chemical explosions, dam failures, coal-mining disasters, or even the thousands of Americans who die every year from food-poisoning. You’d never understand this from HBO’s Chernobyl. But the sets sure were nice.
Shard	156 (laksa)
Root Hash	7074450602188365556
Unparsed URL	com,forbes!www,/sites/jamesconca/2019/06/27/how-hbo-got-it-wrong-on-chernobyl/ s443