A nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, and the Soviets have admitted that it happened.
The Soviet version is this.
One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant in the city of Kiev was
damaged, and there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died.
The Soviets may have been fairly quick to acknowledge the accident because evidence,
in the form of mild nuclear radiation, had already reached beyond the Soviet borders
to Scandinavia.
The large reason why animals seem to be persisting in high densities or high abundance within
the Exclusion Zone is because of the absence of humans.
When you drive around the Exclusion Zone, you're overwhelmed by nature. It's really
an eery reminder of the human impacts that occurred there about 30 years ago.
The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is basically a 30 km radius that extends around the nuclear
reactor where the accident occured.
And within that 30 km zone, that's where preventive measures were taken to exclude people so all
the towns, villages, cities within that area, that 30 km area, were evacuated.