Crisis Leadership Lessons from HBO Mini-Series Chernobyl

The COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in Americans spending an inordinate amount of time binge watching shows on sites like HBO, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu.

During this time I have certainly spent my share of time catching up on old episodes of HBO’s The Wire, plus viewing new installments of Netflix’s Ozark and Fauda. However, I want to justify my time on the couch by suggesting some of these episodes offer more than just entertainment. They also offer a degree of insight regarding such complex matters as the war on drugs, big city corruption, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But there is one series in particular I consider especially enlightening because it offers valuable lessons that can help prepare for a future crisis similar to the one we are experiencing today. In light of what has occurred with the current pandemic, I suggest the 2019 HBO mini-series — Chernobyl — should be required viewing for both government leaders and ordinary citizens alike. This series about the 1986 man-made disaster goes far in illustrating the natural tension that occurs between experts and government leaders when attempting to confront a major disaster crisis. Though actual incidents are dramatized for TV and some characters are composites of several people, Chernobyl is capable of serving as an effective set of lessons that teaches us what the interaction between experts and government leaders should produce in spite of the inherent friction involved in the relationship.

This relationship is personified in Chernobyl by the two main protagonists, nuclear physicist Valery Legasov, and Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina. Beginning in episode two of the five-part series, they are thrown together to work as a team and use their collective expertise, drive and connections to understand the scope of what is occurring and quickly arrive at solutions that will save lives.

After the Chernobyl nuclear core explodes and news of the disaster reaches Moscow, Legasov and Shcherbina are assigned by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to visit the site and determine the actual extent of the disaster. The job is made extremely difficult by their having to first cut through the fog of uncertainty, as well as the powerful Soviet bureaucratic need to cover up any news that might make the Communist Party look bad. After all, the Soviet system is not supposed to produce disasters of this magnitude.

In a key scene, the two confer on the grounds of the nuclear reactor site. The relationship starts on a rocky note, with nerdy Legasov insisting his scary data and conclusions regarding possible radiation levels are correct and that action must be taken. The gruff, force of nature that is Shcherbina instinctively resists being lectured at by a scientist who knows nothing about working within the rough and tumble world of Politburo politics.

While the engineers at the site continue to paint a “not that bad” face on the disaster, insisting the nuclear core is still intact, Legasov explains the smoke from the collapsed core’s exposed fire is spreading the equivalent of twice the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb every single hour. He is soon able to convince Shcherbina about the severity of the situation. The veteran party official shrewdly understands the possible horrific consequences to occur if that information is ignored. At this point, Shcherbina responds by demanding recommendations to mitigate the effects of the disaster. Legasov answers that in order to put out the fire and stop the spread of radiation, five thousand tons of boron and sand must be poured on the fire from endless helicopter dumps. He also recommends the nearby city be evacuated.

The bold recommendations appear to anger Shcherbina, who knows that to take action on either of these two tall orders is to admit an initial Soviet failure has occurred. He first lashes out at Legasov and complains he cannot order the evacuation of the city due to political reasons the scientist cannot possibly fathom. He then begins to walk away from Legasov, as if exasperated with the expert’s advice and the entire overwhelming situation.

The scientist blurts out to him, “Where are you going?”

In a critical moment that sums up the role of a government leader willing to take the bull by the horns and do what is necessary to attempt a solution, Shcherbina responds in a sour tone, “I’m going to get you five thousand tons of sand and boron.”

In formulating that response, the character of the Deputy Soviet Prime Minister symbolizes a leader willing to place into action the government’s considerable wherewithal to make the scientist’s recommendations become reality. Not all of the expert’s advice immediately meshed with the government’s political vision, but as a leader Shcherbina still saw the need to act, assumed responsibility, and committed to the art of the possible, knowing full well that implementing the solution would raise embarrassing political and public concerns regarding the level of the crisis.

After this initial encounter, the relationship between the two continues to grow and prove beneficial as the series progresses to show the government’s further recovery efforts.

This one Chernobyl scene in particular, however, teaches the following basic but important lessons regarding the interaction that occurs between the two sides (experts and government leaders) that inevitably must work together to counter a natural or man-made disaster:

# 1: The experts are responsible for offering frank and reliable data, findings and conclusions.

#2: This expert input will often be interpreted by the government as “bad news”, made even more difficult to digest by the ugly worst case scenarios that are usually delivered as part of that input.

#3: The government will invariably get defensive and initially interpret release of the bad news as a threat to its reputation for good governance.

#4 The government is obligated to thoroughly study this input, even if the input appears to place the government is a bad light.

#5: The government should demand the experts also accompany their input with possible solutions to solve or mitigate the crisis.

#6: The government should take advantage of expert advice but employ its own collection of policy-makers, political advisors, strategists, and bureaucratic expertise (all conveniently represented for television by one man — Boris Shcherbina ) to shape and coordinate the ultimate official governmental response.

#7: Finally, the relationship between the experts and the government in a crisis is expected to be fraught with tension, but everyone involved should understand that an awkward but functioning relationship offers the best way out of the crisis.

The encounter between Legasov and Shcherbina seems to contrast sharply with the Trump administration’s COVID-19 response. Although expert advice was initially used to formulate “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America” — a mild attempt at a coordinated national response — the administration and its supporters in the media have since strived to portray the experts as misguided or even bad-intentioned antagonists who cannot be trusted to deliver the input capable of satisfying President Trump’s political aims. With COVID-19 cases and deaths continuing to mount, the administration has moved away from its own guidelines in favor of letting each state governor call his or her own shots.

The latest guidance issued by such experts as the Harvard Global Health Institute has recommended the U.S. government provide more testing, contact tracing, masks and isolation facilities as requirements for returning the country to a state of normalcy. Unfortunately, the advice has been largely ignored at the federal government level in favor of issuing guidance that asks citizens to immediately get back to work and resume economic activity. When asked about national testing, Trump responded rather anemically, “Do you need it? No. Is it a nice thing to have? Yes. We’re talking 325 million people, and that’s not going to happen, as you can imagine.” The response is a far cry from Boris Shcherbina’s dramatic “I’m going to get you five thousand tons of sand and boron.”

The expert-government relationship has been mocked with Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, for example, complaining that “the public health establishment” has exercised too much influence in policy-making, while labeling Doctor Anthony Fauci as “some power-drunk epidemiologist,” because his stay-at-home recommendations have led to an economic lockdown. The Trump administration and its media allies have succeeded in convincing their supporters of the existence of a false dichotomy — with the experts and the government positioned at opposite sides of a playing field, and the American public encouraged to pick one side or the other depending on who they will vote for in November.

In short, there has been no Boris Shcherbina-like government effort to take the experts’ advice and coordinate an effective response that aggressively mobilizes valuable national assets. The COVID-19 equivalent of “five thousand tons of boron and water” has been cast aside as undoable by an administration that does not know what to do with the “bad news” delivered by experts other than to counter with magical thinking that aims to wish away the virus.

For the sake of successful future crisis planning, I recommend prospective government policy-makers and advisors devote an afternoon or two to watching the Chernobyl series. Hopefully, when the next crisis occurs, they will anticipate beforehand that the tension between experts and government leadership is inevitable but not a deal-breaker, rather something that must be worked through if government leadership is to ultimately assume responsibility for coordinating an effective national response. Ordinary citizens should watch as well to prevent being fooled again into believing they must take sides between experts and government leaders. An integrated approach to the crisis is what Chernobyl teaches us to expect.