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Originally Posted by HorseSoldier
I suspect that the short version of the story is that most people don't have the means to identify contaminated meat and don't have the luxury of avoiding it in the T2K world. Even worse, in some cases places that were avoided in '98 and '99 due to radiation may be the best bets for hunting and foraging by 2000, as other areas have been hunted and harvested out.
On the plus side, the resulting uptick in cancers and such is probably not too noticeable, due to overall life expectancy plummeting down from 20th century levels and most people dying from disease (epidemic or just relating to the individual effects of chronic malnutrition), injuries or conditions made lethal by the collapse of the medical system, or violence well before cancer from fallout and background radiation gets them.
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Those are some excellent points you raised HorseSoldier. As they noted on "Cooking in the Danger Zone", wildlife and wild growing plants had taken over most areas of the Zone of Exclusion due to the general absence of most humans. They noticed several wild boar grazing nearby, but were warned not to kill and eat them as they tend to eat the mushrooms growing in the area, and the mushrooms apparently soak up the rads in the soil like most plants. However, they ran into a few locals (not many, mind you, it's called the Zone of Exclusion for a reason) who still lived in the area, and were eating the wild boars as they came across them. Not sure I'd want to be taking that chance if given the luxury.