The day after the incident, helicopter crews brave deadly radioactive smoke to extinguish the fire raging in the reactor core. As 50,000 locals evacuate, Soviet authorities try to conceal the scale and human cost of the accident.

As the USSR collapses, an investigation uncovers the cause of the accident and scale of the Soviet cover up. Today, Chernobyl's toxic legacy persists as the nuclear exclusion zone becomes a war zone, raising fears of another disaster.