Google Street View Can Be Amazing

Chernobyl, eh? The plants look healthy enough...

Some interesting research coming out about radiation effects - and how our (Earth life) has evolved with radiation in 'mind' and (in fact) a certain low level amount of radiation may be needed for good health.

Certainly this is quite controversial, and the majority of scientists say it is likely rubbish, but it is interesting none the less. Perhaps we owe our intelligence to the natural runaway nuclear reaction in the Rift Valley in Africa?

Fascinating!

John

I felt irradiated just looking at it.

Outdated. They moved it over, since then!

Check out the rest of her channel for more spine-tingly goodness (like digging around in the soil for specks of insanely hot fuel or moderator debris). :-)

Tim

You wouldn't want to use plants to support that, though. Cancerous cells in a plant will grow a local tumor, but not spread (because plant cells are ... planted, they don't migrate around the organism).

Trees have lots of nonliving wood, and a thin layer of living sapwood and bark. So, the fast-growing parts (leaves, seeds) might take damage, but they're all expendable; the slow-growing parts (bark, phloem) only make a local blemish, indistinguishable from naturally bug-induced burls. And the xylem could glow in the dark, but it isn't alive any more than dandruff and fingernails are. The roots are not available for easy inspection.

Worse, a glow-in-the-dark potato can survive a year and look like food: if you eat those, and survive fourscore years, your cross section for taking damage is a couple of orders of magnitude higher than the potato's.

Health of plants isn't a good indicator, it's not sensitive.

it seems the wildlife it thriving it's like a big reservation with no humans interfering at all

maybe wild animals just don't live long to be affected as much