The average pilot is not well equipped today to cope with a novel, time critical, highly dynamic event. Much like Chernobyl reactor technicians. Working out what is trying to kill you in the absence of information is a challenge, and those occasions need to be minimised, with crews given training in SA matters. The good news is that these are exceptional events when the underlying engineering issues are resolved.
Chernobyl was, in part, caused by the operators being instructed/required to run an experiment, outside the normal operating parameters, which they had not been trained on. In principle they 'should' have refused.
This
article gives a good overview of the facts immediately preceding the Chernobyl accident, this
article gives a bit more background on RMBK reactors, and
this is a rather long official report (in English) into the matter.
There is a telling quotation from that last report:
1-5.2. The misguidedness of the practice of transferring emergency protection functions to the human operator owing to the lack of appropriate engineered safety features was highlighted by the accident itself: the combination of design deficiencies and the non-total reliability of human operators brought about the disaster.
The personnel were unaware of some of the dangerous features of the reactor and, therefore, did not realize the consequences of the violations. This fact in itself demonstrates the lack of safety culture, not so much on the part of the personnel, but rather on the part of the reactor designers and the operating organization.
And, quoted within this report from the 3-Mile Island report:
"An operator must never be placed in a situation which an engineer has not previously analysed. An engineer must never analyse a situation without observing an operator's reaction to it"
I think,
mutatis mutandis, the same applies for pilots operating aircraft.