Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Globutron]

Tangents again.

I'm getting tired of this myth that the cockroach is the ONLY all-supreme survivor should the world be attacked by a billion nuclear bombs.

Sure they can reproduce and mutate, and have their heads cut off and only die from lack of food. But studies have shown that they are not even top 5 on the list of survivors when exposed to high levels of Radiation.

A leading theory on several extinctions throughout history is that of a particularly large solar flare burning the earths creatures where they stand. As Bill Bryson states, if you had a Hiroshima sized bomb for every human alive and detonated them at once, it would still be a few billion bombs short of the typical solar flare you get thousands of times a minute on the surface of the sun.

Yet through all the mass extinctions, animals survive and push forward. Think of the Tardigrade, for example - a type of Bdelloid rotifer I reckon - which is considered the toughest creature on earth. They have blasted it with thousands of times more radiation than what a human or indeed any creature could even think about surviving, they've launched them into the vacuum of space for a week or so, only to find they give birth back on earth as if they had just gotten back from a rather expensive honeymoon. They've survived hundreds of degrees of heat, and right down to almost absolute zero - the temperature even atoms give up (-273.15C) - and still they wake up and continue their day as if nothing ever happened.

The bdelloid rotifer itself simply enters a state of anydrobiosis(sp?) and allows itself to become exposed to similar extremities.

The cockroach in comparison is useless. Even many breeds of parasitic wasps can survive several times the radiation a cockroach spends generations working on.

I'm more impressed with the creatures found in Romania, or off the Gulf of Mexico. Creatures that are sitting, feeding off temperatures of 200+ C from volcanic vents, or crabs that have evolved to feed of a lake from methane.

Get over the cockroach, is all I'm saying.

[Senior]

The area around Chernobyl is supposedly swarming with wild life.

[Globutron]

Oo, that is something I didn't know, which I will read about very shortly.

Also the cave that have been cut off from the rest of the world - water, air, light - for a long, long time, nobody knows how long, yet there are insects living within. Blind, translucent and living off the scum from the surface of pools which in turn are feeding of the sulphides and the like coming from mini volcanic vents.

[djsmnc]

I wish I could absorb radiation and transform it into superpowers

[sharkey]

[NYC_Gal]

[Globutron]

urrrrgh


*goes and finds a science forum*

[The Goalie]

Cockroaches share our living space and have a vivid presence in our consciousness, unlike the extremophiles at the bottom of the sea or an obscure wasp that no one's heard of. Scientists would certainly agree with you but until some of these other more hardy creatures start scurrying out from under our sink, I doubt they will develop the mythological status that our flat little friends have.

[thomas pars]

Well i guess it depends if the world will end with fire or ice.

Cockroaches can't handle the cold. They are tropical, but survive in
our nice warm houses. If the world ends. There will be no heat for many
many homes/factories/etc. After the first winter they would die off in
many areas that aren't tropical.

[Globutron]