Radioactive Emergency: A Dramatic True Story on Netflix

In September 1987 in Goiânia, capital of the Brazilian state of Goiás, two boys enter the ruins of an abandoned hospital – closed two years earlier in a legal and bureaucratic limbo – and unknowingly stumble upon a medical device for radiotherapy, containing cesium. Unaware of the potentially lethal substance, they decide to sell it to a local junk dealer, initiating contamination that will progressively spread throughout the entire city.

Inside the apparatus, in fact, is the same radioactive component that had contaminated Europe a year earlier after the Chernobyl disaster. The new owner, fascinated by the blue powder emanating from the container, shows it to family and friends, and it's too late when the man's wife, suspicious due to a persistent illness that began precisely with the purchase, decides to take him to the hospital for checks. Meanwhile, the first victims of this Radioactive Emergency begin to show horrible symptoms, and the situation quickly spirals out of control.

In the Heart of the Drama

Gustavo Lipsztein – creator and screenwriter who here signs his most ambitious project – crafts a docudrama that was immediately dubbed "the Brazilian Chernobyl," sharing not only the theme but also the fact of being inspired by a true story. 

But while the groundbreaking HBO miniseries focused on the collapse of the nuclear reactor and attempts to stop the fire, this Brazilian production opts to address the incident in an urban context, concentrating on the enormous effort to decontaminate infected patients and prevent the danger from spreading throughout the country. The focus is on the melodramatic soul, with a good number of storylines – more or less secondary – characterizing the five total hours, about an hour per episode, that define the self-contained essence of Radioactive Emergency.

And so we witness a desperate race against time by physicists, scientists, and doctors, led by physicist Márcio and Dr. Oresntein, director of the National Nuclear Energy Commission, to try to contain that invisible spread in a city now in a state of panic, where distrust towards those who could be carriers of transmission risks compromising even the most basic rules of coexistence and humanity.

Against and Together

While the negligence of politicians and those in power, with attempts to cover up the case at all costs to protect a reputation now ruined, gives voice to that popular spirit where doctors and nurses become heroes, while those in government are potential enemies. It is therefore normal that the focus is mainly on the victims, an ideal empathetic means to allow the public to immerse themselves in a story that, episode after episode, risks becoming increasingly tragic, with the ending informing us before the credits of how things actually unfolded and the blood tribute Brazil had to pay on that occasion.

We are faced with a series that works brilliantly because it prioritizes introspection over spectacle, even at the cost of occasionally yielding to an otherwise forgivable rhetoric. The terror here is not about an explosion or an impending catastrophe, but something already in progress, an invisible threat that devours those affected from within, damaging not only their bodies but also and above all their psyche. Without overdoing the brutal and disturbing medical representation, Radioactive Emergency shows, partially sugarcoating but not hiding, the consequences that the contagion reserves for the sick, with the emotional repercussions also for those awaiting news of them.

The good pacing, solid direction, and a diverse cast, which shows us the faces of a Brazilian nation still divided between wealth and poverty, guarantee an engaging and necessary entertainment to remember a disaster certainly less famous, at least outside of Brazilian borders, than that more famous and already mentioned counterpart that preceded it only a year earlier.