Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Just a point here: the statement in the original thread was that the risk was vastly higher. I suppose we could argue about the exact meaning of "vast" - does it mean the SF B-movie "mutants everywhere", or something less than the increased cancer risk from smoking?
The point, though, is that whatever those risks may be, they are, judging from the reports of wildlife abundance &c, less damaging than the normal activities of humans were.
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I would understand "vastly" as anything with influence on the species (shorter life expectancy, lower birth rate, less young reach reproduction age, etc.). An example of "non-vastly" would be effects on a few individuals, but without effect on the whole population.
Of course, if we look at it through the human PoV, then even something which would effect individuals would have an impact on the rest in the form of additional taxes going towards treatment, etc.
We also have to remember that radioactivity and the mutations it causes are both governed by chance - We cannot say for sure that someone will have so-many lethal mutations in such-and-such time frame. Instead, the chances of gamma rays hitting a DNA string are such-and-such, then there is a chance that the DNA will mutate, then there is a chance that this mutation will survive when the cell divides, the chance that the mutation will at some point become lethal, or even noticeable, and so on. This is why a small dose of radiation will eventually kill one individual, while another may not have any noticeable change. Of course, as the radiation's intensity grows, so do the chances of mutations.