What were the effects of the heavy atmospheric nuclear testing done in the 40s, 50s and 60s on life on earth? The Tsar Bomba alone had to create some seriously irreversible fallout damage for most of the planet, right?
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Not really, for two reasons.
1. Fallout from nuclear bombs actually decays very fast. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were resettled after a few weeks and nowadays the amount of radiation can barely be told apart from the normal background radiation. Chernobyl is still not settled, because the isotopes that are generated in a reactor are different and longer lived than those created in a nuclear explosion.
2. Fallout is only a big problem in high concentrations. If the fallout of a bomb is spread over a small area, it is problematic, but if it is spread over the entire world, it is barely noticeable.
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