Exclusion Zone Ecology — Radiation vs. Human Pressure

Simulation

Exclusion zone

Contamination level 50%

Human-inhabited landscape

Human pressure 65%

Hunting, farming/habitat loss, roads, pesticide runoff — combined.

Live readouts

Human landscape

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Years elapsed

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Exclusion zone (total)

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Zone hotspot only

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Why does the zone grow?

Both landscapes start with the same intrinsic wildlife growth rate. The human-inhabited side loses part of that growth every year to hunting, habitat conversion, roads and pollution — pressures present almost everywhere humans live. The exclusion zone loses almost none of it, because those pressures vanished when people left.

Radiation is real and spatially uneven (see the heatmap): in the lethal hotspot, harm regularly exceeds growth and that local population keeps struggling or shrinking. Everywhere else in the zone, harm stays small and sub-lethal, so the zone-wide total still trends upward — radiation is present but is usually the smaller of the two threats.

Δpop = r·pop·(1 − pop/K)
r_human  = r0 − pressureHarm(pressure)
r_zoneRest = r0(elevated) − 0.015·contamination
r_hotspot  = r0(elevated) − 0.45·contamination

Contamination level — scales radiation harm across the zone; the hotspot's harm term grows far faster than the rest of the zone's.
Human pressure — hunting + habitat loss + roads + pollution on the inhabited landscape; at 0% it behaves like an unmanaged wild landscape too.
Heatmap — spatial contamination: dim green outside the hotspot (mostly sub-lethal), red/orange at the hotspot core (genuinely lethal).

🌾 Human-inhabited ☢ Exclusion zone

Human landscape animal Zone animal (safe area) Zone animal (hotspot)

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