Aftermath: Population Zero
Last night TDW flipped it over to NatGeo after my daughter went to bed, and found a program called "Aftermath: Population Zero". I missed the first few minutes, so I'm not sure of exactly why the human race was wiped out, but apparently every single hum on the planet died. Sometime around day 10 the waste from nuclear fuel had superheated to the point of explosion. They claim that each storage facility will explode from the split atoms continuing to heat up and the refrigeration systems being offline, and will be a nuclear explosion 20 times the size of Chernobyl, which was 50k sq. mi. So that puts one storage facility at 1 million sq. miles. With 78 facilitys in the united states alone, 158 across europe, and a whopping 58 on the island of Japan, this seems like a disaster that would completely kill all life. They state that strontium-90 will be active for 300 years (I think) and that plutonium would be radioactive for something like 248k years (I think).
My questions is based around the fact that they show animals living through this if they are large enough to survive the 1 1/2 inch of radioactive penetration, so whereas rodents die, larger animals would simply have radiation poisoning but their internal organs would be "unharmed".
Basically, I was wondering if anyone else had seen the show, and what your opinion on it was. Does this look like plausible reality to you based on the situation, or do you think it's all just wishful thinking and that the technology we created to further our comfortable life style will ultimately radiate the planet into oblivion?:eek:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...nel/aftermath/
A new reality--those who survive will adapt & evolve
Germany's radioactive boars a legacy of Chernobyl
April 1, 2011
(AP) BERLIN (AP) — "For a look at just how long radioactivity can hang around, consider Germany's wild boars.
A quarter century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union carried a cloud of radiation across Europe, these animals are radioactive enough that people are urged not to eat them. And the mushrooms the pigs dine on aren't fit for consumption either.
Germany's experience shows what could await Japan — if the problems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant get any worse.
The German boars roam in forests nearly 950 miles (1,500 kilometers ) from Chernobyl. Yet, the amount of radioactive cesium-137 within their tissue often registers dozens of times beyond the recommended limit for consumption and thousands of times above normal."
In Austria, authorities say that eating the unlikely amount of 2 pounds of contaminated boar meat that is 10 times above the legal cesium limit would amount to two-thirds of an adult's normal annual radiation intake by food.
"We assume that wild game will still be similarly affected until 2025 and then very slowly recede," said Reddemann, of Bavaria's hunting association. "The problem will certainly still be around for the next 100 years, and Chernobyl will still be an issue for our children and grandchildren."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/...20049585.shtml
