Radioactive Wild Boars Are Out Here Causing Chaos

Radioactive wild boars are posing a serious problem in Japan's Fukushima prefecture.

A wild boar.
WikiCommons

Image via WikiCommons

A wild boar.

Here's a problem you don't see everyday.

Six years after a tsunami caused Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster which, in turn, led to thousands of residents fleeing their daily lives, hundreds of radioactive wild boars have overrun the prefecture in a textbook example of nature re-staking its claim on the land.

This development would seem to present a great problem, as Japan is prepared to lift the evacuation orders they placed upon four towns within 12 miles of the now defunct plant. According to local reports, officials are having trouble getting the boars to leave these towns, and the evacuation orders are set to be lifted in late March.

While boar meat is considered a delicacy in Northern Japan, the ones in the area are far too radioactive to eat, as they can possess up to 300 times more than safe levels of radioactive element cesium-137. Furthermore, officials fear that the pigs may attack residents as they've made the area their homes and no longer fear humans.

Like Chernobyl before it, the area surrounding the plant has thriving animal populations due to the lack of people nearby. Packs of disheveled dogs roam the streets, colonies of rats have taken over grocery stores, and the local agriculture has attracted an overabundance of foxes and boars.

Teams of hunters have been hired to reduce the excess numbers, and have discussed using specialized traps and drones to make things work, but it's currently unclear if that will do shit to make people want to return to their homes. A government survey that was taken in 2016 reportedly found that over half the former residents won't come back out of fear of being radiated by the plant (which will take 40 years to fully deconstruct).

View this video on YouTube

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Sounds like Tokyo Jungle come to life.

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