Six days after the accident, despite radiation levels several thousand times higher than normal,

authorities encourage people to participate in May Day celebrations, even in areas they know to be seriously contaminated.

I watched the May Day in 1986 festivities with my own eyes. I was there and I witnessed it, the parade of death.

It was a parade of death. Those were terrible deaths.

Disturbingly, all footage of May Day 1986 has now disappeared from the Ukrainian national archives. All that remains are lgor Kostine's photos.

Cherbitsky, the first secretary of the Ukraine, also went to the festivities with his family and his grandchildren.

It's true that, in theory, that seemed very important to us, to avoid any panic.

But had we known how much radioactivity was already in the air.

How many were contaminated during the festivities? Not a single statistical study has yet been published.

Cherbinsky, first Secretary of the Ukraine Communist Party, Later committed suicide.

One week after the explosion, the exodus continues.

The inhabitants of the city of Chernobyl, seven kilometers from the plant, are evacuated.

So all the villages within a thirty-kilometer radius around the plant.

130,000 people are moved, many of whom have already been dangerously contaminated.

A 300,000-hectare area straddling the Ukraine and Belorussia is abruptly evacuated and isolated from the rest of the world.

A vast region uprooted, an entire culture ripped from its land, a world wiped out in a few days' time by an invisible enemy.

It was worse than a war. Here, you couldn't see the enemy.

In a war, you see the cannons, the machine guns, the tanks. Here, you see nothing.

The radiation is everywhere. It goes right through you. It gets into you and you only start feeling the effects later. Sometimes years later. It's terrifying.