Hacker News Reader

Comment by dos1 | Hacker News Reader

This is the money quote:

>The prevailing scientific view of the exclusion zone has become that it is an unintentional wildlife sanctuary. This conclusion rests on the premise that radiation is less harmful to wildlife populations than we are.

I don't consider myself an environmentally focused person, but the effects humans have on the ecosystem cannot be overstated. I'm not saying the effects are negative or positive, just that we as a species need to be very cognizant of the changes we cause, and we need to think critically about what ramifications those changes have.

View on HN

Species that have much lower lifespans than humans are less likely to develop cancer in their lifetimes. These species particularly benefit from the lack of humans around Chernobyl more than they suffer from the high radiation.

Animals are a lot more tolerant of death and mayhem, too. For example, if radiation caused e.g. a 10% incidence of horrible birth defects, a lot of animal populations could survive that just fine, but humans would be horrified at the very idea.

Despite the fact that somewhere around a third of pregnancies already miscarry. People are weird.

Humans will survive just as well.

'Being horrified' is not a credible threat to survival.

In fact, in both cases the affected individuals of any species will die and the rest will go on.

Of course humans will survive, but they'll avoid the area if they can.

Humans deal with it just fine.

  In 2009, there were 31 countries reported in which at least 10% of children under five died.

For comparison:

  In 2011, the world average was 51 (5.1%), down from 87 (8.7%) in 1990.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_mortality

We "deal with it" in the sense that we can survive and even thrive in such an environment. But we don't "deal with it just fine" in terms of accepting it when we could easily change it by e.g. avoiding a particular area.

The "no man's land" DMZ between the Koreas is doing very well: http://news.discovery.com/earth/korean-dmz-teems-with-wildli...

Edit: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/06/wildlife-h...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com