The Days: The Tragic True Story Behind Netflix's New Drama Series
Sometimes fact truly is stranger than fiction. Take Netflix's new series "The Days," for instance. While an audience watching a film or television show that has an earthquake, a typhoon, and a nuclear disaster all occur one after the other might find the prospect to be a bit hard to swallow, that's exactly what happened in Japan back in March 2011.
"The Days" traces the increasingly dangerous chain reactions of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and how the events culminated in the Fukushima nuclear disaster, an explosive meltdown that further complicated rescue efforts while creating a nuclear event that was as dangerous as the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in Ukraine in 1986.
The problems began when the backup generators for the Fukushima nuclear power plant were damaged by the Tohoku earthquake. As a result, the fuel rods in the three active reactors heated up to an extremely dangerous degree and began to melt down. As the melted material sank to the bottom of the reactors, toxic radiation began to leak out, and explosions began to occur, triggering the events depicted in "The Days."
The Days is inspired by a shocking true story
The events of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, as well as the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, were so devastating to Japan that they led to nearly 20,000 casualties. Meanwhile, thousands more were injured as a result of the disasters, and countless others went missing amid the chaos.
A 30-kilometer no-fly zone was soon set up by the Japanese government, and a land area of 20 kilometers surrounding the Fukushima plant was evacuated. This area was soon expanded as efforts to cool the reactors by flooding them with seawater and boric acid continued. Eventually, things grew so desperate that relief workers began using water cannons to try and cool the fuel rods and stave off further disaster.
Though the worst-case scenario that Tokyo might become uninhabitable for decades did not ultimately come to fruition, the fallout of the disaster was severe enough that even over a decade later, cleanup still isn't close to being completed. In fact, it's expected that it won't be completely cleaned up until the early 2050s.
As for "The Days," the series is said to be a fairly accurate representation of the events. As of this writing, the show is sitting in the Netflix Top 10 in several countries, including Canada and Japan. Whether it will be able to create the kind of zeitgeist that Sky and HBO's "Chernobyl" did, however, remains to be seen.