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.
