Radiation contamination

When nuclear weapons are detonated or nuclear containment systems are otherwise compromised, airborne radioactive particles (fallout) can scatter and irradiate large areas. Not only is it deadly, but it is also a long-term affect on the next-generation for those who are contaminated. Ionizing radiation is hazardous to living things, and in such a case much of the affected area could be unsafe for human habitation. In the 1940's United States troops dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: as a result, the radiation fallout contaminated the cities' water supplies and food sources, and half of the populations of each city were stricken with disease. The Soviet republics of Ukraine and Belarus are part of a scenario like this after a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered a meltdown in 1986. To this day, several small towns and the city of Chernobyl remain abandoned and uninhabitable due to fallout. in the 1970's a similar threat scared millions of Americans when a presumed failure occurred at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in Pennsylvania, which was fortunately resolved with little contamination resulting.