What Happens to Wildlife After Nuclear Disaster

Get a lifetime membership to Nebula here:

Images Courtesy of Getty Images

Thanks to our Patreon Supporters:
Eric Ypsilantis
Robert Thompson
Keith Skipper

Credits:
Writer/Narrator: Stephanie Sammann
Writer: Lorraine Boissoneault

REFERENCES

[ynxckti]

My dad was hired to run a bioremediation effort on Johnston atole in the early 2000s. Him and his crew realized the radiation contamination was higher than officially recognized. He died of agressively spreading brain tumors within a year of staying on the atole. He was 39. It was later discovered that the US govt knew the radiation levels were dangerous, but covered it up. RIP dad.

[jasepoag]

Funny that we in the reef aquarium hobby often struggle to grow coral, but it was growing well in a nuclear wasteland.

[catfission]

A lot of people mistakenly assume that dogs in the Chernobyl exclusion zone suffer from mutations because of teratogenesis from radiation exposure. The real cause of deformities in that population is severe inbreeding. Those little guys have an *exceptionally* shallow gene pool 😅.

[TJ-vhps]

The wolves that received more radiation may have less cancer because of survivorship bias. Perhaps in the high-radiation group, the wolves that were more susceptible to radiation died, while the ones that survived were more resistant to radiation. In the lower-dose wolves, the ones more susceptible to radiation may have survived, but developed cancer.
Just speculating wildly, Joan Calamezzo style!

[mitsunoseikaku]

We often underestimate the resiliency of life, I mean we got organisms literally living besides active volcanoes and thrive even more after an eruption (its a type of snail) and then there's the tardegrade that can suvive the vacum of space with radiation and all

[EmuEmuchu]

SpongeBob transformed from a sea sponge to cleaning sponge

[ossiantansley]

Please dont forget the human cost of the Marshall island nuclear tests. Of the Islanders who were displaced, and those affected by the fallout. Levels of cancer and birth defects were extremely elevated for generations. Rare earth just made a very good video series about these people, highly recommend.

[blender_wiki]

Conclusions : humans are more dangerous than any nuclear fallout

[jamesdietz]

This makes me curious about the insect life in and around these radiation exclusion zones.

[JinKee]

i am sick of them putting radiation into the water that turns the friggin frogs black

[zachb]

Correction at 15:30 - 100 mGy is the absolute minimum level at which we can see cancer caused by radiation in humans. And even at that level, it increase your risk of cancer by about 1 in 1000 over the course of your life. So instead of having a 40% chance of cancer induction during your life, you'll have a 40.1% chance of cancer induction. So the statement that "Its generally established that exposure of over 100 mGy of radiation in human will cause cancer" is misleading at best. It generally takes a lot more radiation than that to cause cancer on average.

[notfunny]

A little sad they didn't talk much about the human communities affected by the US nuclear tests.

There used to be indigenous people living bear bikini atoll, who had their Islands absolutely covered in radioactive dust.

Rare Earth has a series on them.

[jakepockets]

Lmfao, haven't gotten through the rest of the video... Just gotta point out a potentially accidental pun. "After the dust settles" was such an apt thing to say when considering the Elephant's Foot dust is some of the most dangerous radioactive whoopsiedoodles we've ever created as human beings. Breathe a couple of those dust particles in and you're gonna have a bad time.

[indigofenix]

In the case of the wolves, maybe they had a similar instance of rapid selection as the frogs, where only the wolves with the most cancer-resistant genes survived in the early years. Now the radiation levels are lower, but they still retain the genes inherited from those survivors, making them more resistant to cancer than normal wolves.

[stanarkissed]

"Aggressively selecting for" can also be understood as "all the other variants died of cancer."

[cooltubes]

“So let us now take our vengeance on this murderous ocean” -people who detonated castle bravo probably

[BPBomber]

Wolves naturally selecting for immunity to radiation mutations. Cool.

[markedis]

The world will recover, humans not so much.
Nature finds a way.

[thegunslinger]

Look up Stanislav Petrov and Vasily Arkhipov. Those men saved humanity.

[drakob]

I'm actually marshallese this just hit me in the feels