Haunting scenes of death, destruction and disease that followed the Chernobyl The meltdown 36 years ago – the deadliest nuclear accident of all time – was recorded on film and video but remained hidden for decades. Now, those previously unknown stories are finally revealed, in a new HBO documentary, “Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes.”

A trailer for the film, which HBO shared on Friday, June 3 on Youtubeoffers an overview of what happened in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Unionor USSR) after the horrific disaster that occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, about 130 kilometers north of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

In the long-lost tapes, witness testimonies offer insight into life in Chernobyl before the disaster and show how it was forever changed after the accident. “Everything was documented,” says one of the witnesses in the trailer, but many of the details and potential dangers of the explosion were covered up by Soviet officials, who sent in soldiers to “liquidate” the damage and help cover up the incident, HBO representatives said. said in a statement.

Related: 5 weird things you didn’t know about Chernobyl

People who lived in and around Chernobyl, as well as workers tasked with cleaning up the mess at the site, were then kept in the dark about the risks posed to their health by exposure to deadly agents. radiation. As more people exposed to Chernobyl radiation fell ill, their faith in Soviet leadership eroded, contributing to the widespread unrest that eventually dissolved the Soviet Union, the statement said.

The Chernobyl reactor explosion killed two plant workers and 29 others, including many firefighters who rushed to battle the blaze, later died of radiation poisoning, according to the international atomic energy agency. In the years that followed, cancer rates have skyrocketed in Ukrainian children, climbing about 90%, Live Science previously reported. In 2006, a report commissioned by Greenpeace International estimated that more than 93,000 people in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia died of illnesses linked to exposure to Chernobyl radiation.

The report further states that approximately 270,000 people in these 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 posted on Live Science.