Haunting scenes of the death, destruction and sickness that followed the Chernobyl meltdown 36 years ago — the deadliest nuclear accident of all time — were recorded on film and video but remained hidden for decades. Now, these previously unknown stories are finally coming to light, in a new HBO documentary, "Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes."
A trailer for the film, which HBO shared Friday (June 3) on YouTube, offers a glimpse of what unfolded in Ukraine (then a part of the Soviet Union, or USSR) after the horrific disaster, which took place on April 26, 1986 in the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, about 81 miles (130 kilometers) north of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.
In the long-lost tapes, testimony from witnesses offer a glimpse of life in Chernobyl before the disaster, and show how it was forever transformed in the accident's aftermath. "Everything was documented," one of the witnesses says in the trailer, but many of the explosion's details and potential dangers were obscured by Soviet officials, who sent in soldiers to "liquidate" the damage and to help cover up the incident, HBO representatives said in a statement.
Related: 5 weird things you didn't know about Chernobyl
People who lived in Chernobyl and nearby, as well as the workers who were assigned to clean up the damage at the site, were subsequently kept in the dark about the risks posed to their health by exposure to deadly radiation. As more people who had been exposed to Chernobyl's radiation fell sick, their trust in Soviet leadership eroded, contributing to the widespread unrest that ultimately dissolved the Soviet Union, according to the statement.
Chernobyl's reactor explosion killed two plant workers, and 29 more people, many of them firefighters who rushed to battle the blaze, later died from radiation poisoning, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Over the years that followed, cancer rates skyrocketed among Ukrainian children, climbing by about 90%, Live Science previously reported. In 2006, a report commissioned by Greenpeace International estimated that over 93,000 people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia died from illnesses linked to radiation exposure from Chernobyl.
The report further stated that approximately 270,000 people in those countries who developed cancers, would not have done so had they not been exposed to the high levels of radiation produced by the accident.
"Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes" premieres June 22 on HBO at 9 p.m. ET/PT, and will be available to stream on HBO Max.
Originally published on Live Science.
