579: Nuclear Powered Evolution | The Wolves of Chernobyl Reveal Human Potential

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

Science, Life Sciences, Fiction, Society & Culture, Documentary, Science Fiction

4.8 • 5.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Scientists discovered something impossible in Chernobyl's radioactive ruins - life is thriving where nothing should survive. Animals aren't just living in lethal radiation zones, they're evolving faster than nature should allow.

From Chernobyl to Bikini Atoll, creatures are activating ancient genetic sequences designed to process radiation. These same genes appear in human DNA, raising profound questions about our own origins.

The implications stretch from Earth's ancient past to humanity's future among the stars. What we're learning about life in Earth's most radioactive places is changing our understanding of human potential.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A few years ago, scientists discovered something impossible in Chernobyl.
0:05.0	Animals were thriving in radiation levels that should have killed them.
0:09.0	In the 50s, the United States tested 23 nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll.
0:16.0	The area is still radioactive, yet life flourishes there.
0:20.0	Plants and animals grow faster than they should.
0:22.6	After the Fukushima disaster, animals developed stronger antioxidant systems.
0:27.6	They reproduced faster. This happened in just 15 years.
0:31.6	How can plants and animals evolve so quickly?
0:35.6	Well, they can't.
0:36.6	They activated ancient genetic sequences
0:39.1	designed to survive radiation,
0:41.7	genes that were always there,
0:43.3	waiting. And in Earth's most radioactive
0:45.3	places, those genes
0:46.9	are waking up.
0:53.4	Music March 1st, 1954, Bikini Atoll, Operation Castle, Test Bravo.
1:04.8	The military expected a 5-meaton blast. They got 15.
1:24.6	The On blast, they got 15. This miscalculation created a blast 1,000 times stronger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1:30.3	Oh-oh, someone forgot to carry the one.
1:34.3	The fireball reached 20 million degrees Fahrenheit in under a second, that's 2,000 times hotter than the sun's surface, and twice the temperature of the sun's core. The mushroom cloud stretched 25 miles high.
1:47.0	The blast carved a crater in the sea floor over a mile wide and 300 feet deep,
1:52.0	deep enough for a 30-story building.
	...

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