[agumonkey]

There was a documentary about Tchernobyl surrounding forest few years ago. Most of the vegetation grew back, healthily for my naked eye. Anyways, the most surprising part is that mammals were back too; even though the radiation level was higher than average. I concluded that only a few generation of darwinian selection is needed to breed radiation hardened humans.

[frivoal]

Alternatively, the animals aren't radiation hardened and do die of cancer, but not fast enough to get in the way of breeding and multiplying. Or, in other words, while radioactive waste is unhealthy, it fatality rate is lower than having humans around.

[nolok]

Or put another way : evolution and natural selection aren't about living a long time, they're about reproducing.

[Pica_soO]

Or put another way: Nothing is that poisonous that nature cant swallow it first and bring it underground, thus making nature the ultimate hipster.

[erikpukinskis]

... which is why nuclear holocaust is a risk for individuals and nations but not an extinction risk for the species as a whole.

[maxerickson]

Why would you draw such a concrete conclusion?

What about the animals you possibly didn't see and how many animals reach fertility in 2-3 years?

[agumonkey]

Because I watch too many X-Men movies

[mikeash]

Keep in mind that the Chernobyl exclusion zone has not been fully enforced, and people do live there:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-04-26/30-years-after-cherno...

It's probably unwise, but it's not super deadly.

[sillysaurus3]

Animals that die within 5 years probably don't have enough time to succumb to the effects of radiation. That's just a guess though.

[dasil003]

It's also quite random, they may live there and the background radiation isn't bad enough on average to kill them, but then if they accidentally ingest a few hot particles it could be game over pretty quickly. For most animals this might not even register in the top 10 existential threats, but for humans the psychological stress would be debilitating.

[agumonkey]

Possibly, and maybe with lower radiation levels they don't exhibit mutations...