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Can anyone explain why the Pripyat hospital in the first episode was so dirty and old? It had only been running for about 15 years at the time of the disaster.

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I've lived my early childhood though USSR (Latvia; born in 1979), and have been to relatively recently remodeled hospitals on multiple occasions for an extended stay. Plaster and paint easily fell off, tiling was irregular and often cracked, walls were never straight or evenly plasered, bed frames already had rust, springs always squeaked. All that said, it was clean, yet because of build quality, standardized pale paint colors, and poor lighting it seemed very used and in need of repairs. It could give impression of being dirty, when watched over TV. 15 years for that type of build quality is a long time.

I recently stayed at a hotel built with this quality. Everything was rusty, from the door hinges to the windows, to the front gate. There were cracks in the foundation that shot up the walls.

I asked the manager when they opened and he told me they had been open for less than a year. The building was less than 3 years old.

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