Chernobyl
“Chernobyl”
Hiroshima
There’s a difference between a nuclear STRIKE that ejects a lot of material into the atmosphere that disperses and dissipates in danger over time, and something like Chernobyl where you have a huge concentration of it just producing more and more. But I’ve read studies that have shown that animals live in the area just fine, with no apparent zombie apocalypse.
Sure, maybe in the HOLE, you don’t want to sit in it. But even the crater itself will eventually be safe to build your house on it and dance all day and night.
“The mixture of radioactive elements formed in a nuclear explosion is so
complex, with both short- and long-lasting isotopes, that radioactive decay
can only be estimated. During the first hour after a nuclear explosion,
radioactivity levels drop precipitously. Radioactivity levels are further reduced by about 90% after
another 7 hours and by about 99% after 2 days.”
http://www.nae.edu/File.aspx?id=11313
I’ve read that it is actually more than 2 days, for all the other particles that take a bit longer to decrease, as the timeline is usually about a week, and at that only going above ground for a few hours at a time. It’s best to wait it out for a couple of weeks, and the full effects, admittedly, might take months or even a year or so, but quite frankly you could get the same dosages of radiation just traveling around the country experiencing all the Earth has to offer.