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Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
@annethegnome
Apr 21 • 25 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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There are fungi at Chernobyl that EAT radiation and nuclear fallout – and that’s only the start of this wild story 🍄☢️

Buckle up for a wild thread about radioactive boars, fungal space suits, radiation-detecting fungi, black frogs and a good dose of hope! 🧵
A Ferris wheel at an abandoned amusement park in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine. PE3CHECK/GETTY
A dosimeter in hands with a level of radioactivity near mushrooms growing in the city of Pripyat, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Source: Adobe Stock, https://burgundyzine.com/radiotrophic-fungi-the-fungus-among-us-that-eat-radiation/
On 26 April 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded. It destroyed the containment building and caused a reactor core fire that lasted 8 days, spraying airborne radioactive contaminants throughout the USSR and Europe 😨 Black and white image of reactor 4 after the explosion. Image from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/16/chernobyl-was-even-worse-than-tv-series-kim-willsher
People started dying of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) (and the WHO predicts that 9000+ people will die of cancer triggered by this event). They created the Exclusion Zone – a restricted area of 2,600 km2 (1,000 sq mi) around the site where radioactive contamination is highest. Map of the Exclusion Zone. Image from https://www.britannica.com/event/Chernobyl-disaster
Imagine how SURREAL it must have been for the researchers when they got access in the 90s, approached this desolate wasteland at this tragic site, and saw that the surrounding soil had turned BLACK from fungal growth!
Even stranger: they realised this black fungi wasn’t just growing *despite* the radiation, but seemed to be growing *towards* it.
When they were able to get close enough, they found mould and yeast GROWING on the walls INSIDE the reactor. The old control room inside reactor No. 4 in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Image from https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/evolution/melaninfilled-fungus-thriving-on-radiation-from-chernobyl-meltdown/news-story/15af9f34faa4b62dff46a1258dbfb235
How? Why? What are they DOING in there?? And why are the fungi black?
In 2007, a group of researchers found the fungi had melanin (yup, just like humans do) that was converting energy from ionizing radiation into usable chemical energy. They use pigment to EAT IT! 🍄☢️ Culture of Cladosporium cladosporioides, a black microfungi found inside reactor 4 at Chernobyl. Image from https://www.adelaide.edu.au/mycology/fungal-descriptions-and-antifungal-susceptibility/hyphomycetes-conidial-moulds/cladosporium
Source of first paper:
Confirmed by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory: doi.org/10.1016/j.mib.…
doi.org/10.1371/journa…
Unrelated but cool: while looking around in 2016, they found BLACK FROGS! Eastern tree frogs (Hyla orientalis) which are normally bright green had rapidly evolved to have way more melanin. Nature is rad as heck.

reaction.life/chernobyl-blac…

Almost completely black Hyla arborea. Photos: Aleksandar Simović and Sonja Đorđević.
Green eastern tree frog (more typical coloration) Hyla_orientalis_(Eastern_tree_frog)_by_Omid_Mozaffari Image from Wikimedia
Fungi can absorb & metabolize radiation – can this protect humans who are at risk of radiation poison, like astronauts🧑‍🚀?? YUP!
In an experiment, a thin layer of melanized fungus decreased radiation that would affect astronauts in space by 2%-5%! Mushroom space suits when??
Source:

Read my full thread about fungi in space here (it's wild, they grow on the outside of the ISS):
doi.org/10.1111/1462-2…
WHATS MORE if these kind of fungi grow *toward* radiation, then we can use them to locate radioactive material! These bad ass fungi are absorbing the nasty radiation waves, but we still have radioactive particles in the soil. What if fungi could stop the radiation at the source?
From the University of Saskatchewan:
“We wanted to see whether we could train our fungi to recognize certain types of radioactive nuclides. This potentially would turn these fungi into cost-effective and highly sensitive biological detectors of nuclear fallout,” said Dadachova.
“And because the fungi grow in response to radiation, they could envelop microscopic particles, preventing the radioactivity from leaching into the ground. So potentially we could use these radio-adapted fungi ... to clean up nuclear contamination.”

HECK YEAH! 🥳🎉🍄🍾
Source, press release:
Paper: news.usask.ca/articles/resea…
doi.org/10.1016/j.funb…
But fungi don’t just surround and contain radionuclides — some mushrooms actually absorb the radionuclides. Which sounds super cool until you learn that the mushrooms themselves then become radioactive. Image says "radioactibe mushrooms! Cs137" as has a picture of a brown mushroom in green grass. Source: https://allradioactive.com/chernobyl-fallout-in-mushrooms/
According to the German food safety regulator, in 2021~95% of wild mushrooms in Germany showed radioactive contamination from Chernobyl– but not above legal limits. Lots of foods are a little radioactive and it’s probably ok — unless you’re a boar.
reuters.com/business/envir…
The Chernobyl disaster displaced humans, but some wildlife actually flourished. Birds were found nesting inside the steel sarcophagus built around the reactor. In 2 years, the wild boar population increased by 8x!

Humans gone? Let's party! 🐗🐗🐗

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/49…
Some hopefully-not-radioactive boars. Image Credit: WildMedia/Shutterstock. image source https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/why-are-wild-pigs-in-germany-so-radioactive
What do boars love to eat? Truffles!
Unfortunately, cesium (very radioactive) accumulates in truffles. This leads to a process called 📢biomagnification: contaminant concentrations increase in the tissue of higher species of the food chain.

☢️DO NOT EAT THE BOARS!☢️ 🙅🐗 Some friendly deer truffles. Photo by Ryan Stephens. Source: https://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/chipmunks-truffles-healthy-forest
Other beings are thriving in the exclusion zone. Boars, birds, lynxes, wolves & mushrooms alike!
Despite this horrific disaster and the unfathomable amount of toxins, nature is adapting and recovering. Even the poisoned earth is not a cold dead thing 🧡 A Chernobyl wolf. Image by Valeriy Yurko. Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/06/free-of-humans-chernobyl-sees-wildlife-boom.html
And this is where I leave you with hope: we have mounting evidence that fungi can CLEAN UP nuclear fallout, and that they're ALREADY doing it.
There's a whole field called mycoremediation that studies how fungi can help remove toxins from the earth and theyre making big strides!
There are fungi that eat microplastics!
There are fungi that clean oil spills!
There are fungi that break down mining waste!
There are fungi that remove heavy metals & e. coli from water!

FUNGI CAN DO ANYTHING 😍🍄🧡
As for nuclear fallout?
Some fungi can grow despite radiation.
Some fungi can absorb, eat and shield us from radiation.
And some fungi can pull the radioactive particles out of the soil.
😍😍😍

A lot of this research is relatively new: who knows what we'll find next!
If your interest is peaked, you can check out my other threads here:

And if you want to buy me loot, you can do that here:

Friendly reminder that I'm not a scientist, just a D&D nerd who likes fungi
throne.com/gnome_anne
linktr.ee/annethegnome
If you’re knowledgeable & annoyed about something I didn’t explain enough, I encourage you to use that energy to answer the many questions in the replies 💕💕
I love the curiousity but I can’t answer everyone, so help is appreciated.

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More from @annethegnome

Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Mar 6
I've been thinking about D&D and the expectations we put on DMs 🧵
The DM "should" keep track of (and/or write) the world & all the NPCs, run combat, create a compelling story AND ALSO *out of game* the DM typically takes on organizational tasks and hosting. It's so much 😭
Some systems are designed to be more collaborative. In Kids on Bikes, the players create the world as much as the GM. In GMless systems, everyone shares the cognitive work equally. But it goes beyond the design, I think, into the culture of D&D.
Often D&D players feel disempowered to add to the world. They seem taken aback when I encourage them to add to the lore, or add to their backstory mid-game. There's an expectation that I've written a game that they are going to play through & they don't want to mess with it.
Read 14 tweets
Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Feb 14
Fungi invented dirt, feed plants, and save the soil 🍄💚

Get your tea because it’s time to chat about how fungi are plants best friends, can revolutionize agriculture, and how the power of SOUND could help! Image of Schizophillum Commune (the splitgill mushroom). Image: Steve Axford, fungal photographer! / http://steveaxford.smugmug.com/
You really can't overstate how important fungi are to soil.

Back when the world was young, the land was just rock. Plants and fungi emerged from the water into a pretty barren, hostile landscape. The plants couldn’t break up the rocks, but the fungi could.
I wrote a whole thread about this, but short version: fungal "roots" are made up of threads called hyphae. These threads are SO SMALL, like 1/20th the width of a human hair, and they can DRILL THROUGH ROCK.
Read 25 tweets
Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Feb 1
FUNGUS IN SPACE!!! 🍄🚀

Equal parts cosmic horror and nature being metal, let's talk about the lichen that grew on the OUTSIDE of the International Space Station!

Get your tea and curl up, because I PROMISE you wanna hear about these fungal cosmonauts 🧑‍🚀
🧵
Image of Xanthoria elegans, also known as Rusavskia elegans, commonly known as Sunburst Lichen, growing on a rock. It's bright orange!
Image from the ISS: Looking out of the 'Cupola,' an observation window of the ISS built by the European Space Agency. The dome weighs over 1800kg and is equipped with shutters in case of contact with micrometeorites and debris. PHOTOGRAPH BY PAOLO NESPOLI AND ROLAND MILLER
Starting at the beginning:

In 1988, we first learned that fungi could survive in outer space in a VERY DRAMATIC WAY. Astronauts on the Russian space station Mir saw a strange film spreading across the OUTSIDE of a window.

This feels like something from the Magnus Archives 😨
The substance KEPT GROWING, destroying the window's titanium-quartz surface and GETTING INTO THE SPACE STATION!

Listen, I know you're thinking 👽aliens👽, but it was the opposite: these were just piggyback astronauts who'd hitched a ride from Earth. This is a real picture of the astronauts collecting a sample from the exterior of the window on the Mir space station.
Read 24 tweets
Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Jan 18
The fear of mushrooms is a direct result of British colonization🧵

Many mushrooms (mycorrhizal) only exist in forests and cannot be cultivated as agriculture. If there’s one thing colonizers hate, it’s anything that resists domination. Colourful mushrooms arranged like a bouquet. art work by Jill Bliss
This cultural mycophobia is widely documented phenomenon. The term “fungophobia” was coined in 1887 by a British mycologist, William Delisle Hay, who was so frustrated at how the Brits hated mushrooms even while other europeans loved them. Image of a skull and devil surrounded by mushrooms. Toadstools, mushrooms, fungi, edible and poisonous (Plate VI), from Wikimedia.
He wrote: "[mushrooms] are looked upon as vegetable vermin only made to be destroyed.. No fad or hobby is esteemed so contemptible as that of “fungus-hunter”, or “toadstool-eater.”
archive.org/details/elemen…
Read 13 tweets
Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Jan 16
Since I already made a whole thread cyberbullying the mushroom emoji 🍄🍄, I think the time has FINALLY come for me to explain its iconic appearance.

Why is Amanita Muscaria red?
What are those little white polkadots?
Why does she have a little skirt?

Time to learn 🤓🍄🧵
3 Fly Agarics (Amanita Muscaria mushrooms) at different stages of growth. They all have red caps and white stipes. Image from Wikimedia.
First: Is it red because it’s poisonous? Nope! You’re thinking of "aposematism": when animals use warning coloration to warn predators that they’re dangerous. Red is a fave colour, like with coral snakes or these cool frogs! But fungi don’t really use this. Bright red frog! The bright colours of this granular poison frog signal a warning to predators of its toxicity. Image from Wikimedia.
Many red mushrooms are edible, some are poisonous, and some are just gross. Mushrooms are different colours because they contain pigments (some of the only blue pigment in nature!) – some even have melanin, just like people! (additional info in alt text)


Beefsteak or Oxtongue mushroom. Choice edible. It looks like meat and actually "bleeds"!
Poison fire coral. This mushroom looks like coral you see under the sea! It's one of the few mushrooms whose toxins can absorb through the skin. Don't touch it!
Red Cage Fungus. It has a cool honeycomb pattern! They smell like rotting meat to attract flies. It might be edible, we're not sure, but no one eats it because *it smells like rotting meat* Photo by Patricia Woods on Flickr, available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/patriciawoods/6958469255
Russula emetica, also known as the Sickener (bad ass). Eaten raw, it will make you very sick, but in many places people prepare it in a way that makes it edible and it's actually quite commonly consumed in Eastern Europe. Image from Wikimedia.
Read 13 tweets
Gnome Anne 🔜 GenCon Profile picture
Jul 23, 2023
While the Destroying Angel👼may be the beautiful killer of the mushroom world, the Death Cap is its legendary Reaper 💀🧢

Buckle up to learn how this quiet assassin spread around the world, killed emperors, and made its way onto restaurant plates.

CW for medical stuff, death Photo by Paul Kroeger of a mature and young death cap mushroom next to a human skull on the forest floor. Photo from http://www.bccdc.ca/about/news-stories/stories/2020/death-cap-mushrooms-make-fall-appearance-in-urban-areas
Amanita phalloides, commonly known as the Death Cap mushroom, is considered the world’s most poisonous mushroom. Just half of its sickly pale cap is enough to kill a human. I’ll get into the nitty gritty of poison, but first let’s talk about her ILLUSTRIOUS history. Illustration of a death cap mushroom as a grim reaper, weilding a scythe, by bermi.art
Just like me, the Death Cap originated in Europe but is THRIVING in the Pacific Northwest.
She forms symbiotic relationships with the non-native trees that were also introduced by Europeans (sigh)
Read 17 tweets

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