By that example, it sounds like "after a while" would be "a couple weeks". That's a short enough timeframe to piece together "oh darn, this happened because we went into that scary place with all the jagged rocks and took the curse of that strange land back with us". Maybe that particular village is doomed, but villages do communicate/trade with other villages and could spread the word that "hey, we visited this weird place with jagged rocks and a couple weeks later we all got crazy sick, so like, don't go there".
Soon enough, the Curse of the Jagged Land will become part of the local folklore/religion, at which point Mission Accomplished. Worst-case, you might see an uptick in animal and/or human sacrifice at the site to appease the God of Plutonium.
Did you miss the part about “we prefer that people don’t die at all”? Or the contaminated land? How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste?
And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days. More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages. How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines?
> How many deaths per generation on average do you feel is acceptable to store our radioactive waste?
My point is that only one generation (maybe two) would be impacted, since future generations would have learned from prior generations that "Hey, if you go to this very-ominous-looking place with giant black spikey stones sticking out of the ground you're gonna get really sick and probably die". That sort of thing is the exact sort of thing that gets passed down from generation to generation via oral history.
It's obviously better that people don't die at all, but that's an idealistic goal. If people are going to die, might as well make it as easy as possible to associate that death with the trespassing that preceded it.
> And in the linked example it was highly radioactive, and people fell sick and died within days.
That... only proves my point further. That's even less time between cause and effect, making it easier to associate and connect the two. Especially - again - when it's associated with a place that has a physical appearance that screams "this land is evil; stay the hell away".
> More likely is higher rate of cancers, stillborns and different kinds of genetic damages.
In the example you linked, the rate of incidence for these things among those exposed to the radiation was not higher than the baseline for that locality.
> How long is it going to take before people connect those things to the strange mines?
No, the example was atypical. In the general case, it will take longer, and will be harder to figure out than in the example. And in timespans of hundreds of thousands of years, this might have to repeat several times.
I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in future generations get sick and die, because of our short term economic gains now, I can't help to consider you as evil.
> I'm sorry, if you think people that it is acceptable that a lot of people in future generations get sick and die
Oh yes, because the contaminants polluting the Earth from solar panel manufacture are so much better[1]. And let's totally ignore that coal power is actively spewing radioactive soot into our atmosphere and water and food right now at this very moment day in and day out[2]. Who cares about that, right?
Oh, but surely we can bury those byproducts deep in abandoned mines where they're relatively isolated and quarantined... oh... wait... hmm...
If you think that it is acceptable that a lot of people in current and future generations get sick and die, because of our myopic and irrational fear of a power source the harmful byproducts of which are trivial to contain, I can't help to consider you as evil.
----
[1]: https://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt... ← In fairness the situation is apparently improving, and future technologies will hopefully make this less of a problem, but this is nonetheless a problem now, and unlike nuclear waste we're doing far less to try to contain these pollutants.
This was not a discussion pro or con nuclear power. I don't consider you evil because you are pro nuclear power. I consider you evil because you so easily dismisses as acceptable human suffering and death.
Just imagine your own grief and rage if it was your own children who got sick and died because someone else in a distant past just didn't care about what they did to your local environment.
I consider it one of the greatest problem we as humanity has right now that so many seem to be incapable to sympathise with people just because they are distant (in time or space). A death of a child or a spouse hurts as much in the Middle East or in thousand years (most likely) as it does in the US in 2019.
Soon enough, the Curse of the Jagged Land will become part of the local folklore/religion, at which point Mission Accomplished. Worst-case, you might see an uptick in animal and/or human sacrifice at the site to appease the God of Plutonium.