What happened, of course, is that it killed everything. It sterilized the microbes in the soil to the extent that 65 years later it is still mostly a kill zone, nothing larger than small surface weeds can grow. It is clearly visible in Google Maps.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fhjeJF4Todp5FWAa7?g_st=ic

https://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/bulletin/files/1962/1962011...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/brookhaven-gamma-forest

BNL, of course, sits right on top of Long Island’s drinking water aquifer, and the aquifer layer that supplies drinking water is not even from below the allegedly impermeable clay layer.

https://www.nswcawater.org/water_facts/our-long-island-aquif...

I grew up on Long Island and I expect that it will eventually kill me. My elementary school, middle school, high school, and childhood home are all located within a Superfund site that was/is/will continue to be contaminated with cadmium and hexavalent chromium. The entire island is littered with WW2 and Cold War defense industry detritus.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

maybe we are trying to 'jump' the tech tree too much - perhaps the first step was to create a much smarter entity than ourselves, and then letting it have a look at the collider data.