Nuclear Powered Bacon!
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---------> Bring it on!
Fukushima's radioactive hybrid terror pig boom was driven by amorous mothers
Back in 2021, in the thick of pandemic mania, The Register gleefully reported that "radioactive hybrid terror pigs" were thriving in Japan's Fukushima exclusion zone. The image of feral swine exposed to 300 times the safe human dose of cesium-137 after the 2011 nuclear meltdown, interbreeding with wild boar and roaming a post- …
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Wednesday 11th February 2026 22:27 GMT ChoHag
I think (not a biologist) that it's oestrous that determines the reproduction cycle rate and sperm is more ... opportunistic. Since it was the female swine driving this and they'd become used to the comfort and safety of domestication, mother nature was happy to take advantage of it if it meant more kids.
Wait aren't kids what goats make?
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Friday 13th February 2026 08:56 GMT ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo
I was thinking less in terms of the hormones kicking off the reproduction cycle, and more in terms of survival of the offspring.
In my youth, on my parent's farm, there was the generally accepted truth, that kittens born in the spring are much much more likely to make it than kittens born in the fall. The smaller fall-kittens were less likely to survive a harsh winter as farm cats generally have a tougher life than house cats. They were regularly fed and somewhat taken care of, however, they lived in the farm buildings and not in the heated living space.
So, what I was thinking when I posted my comment was: well, they (the hybrid swine) may have more reproduction cycles than the wild boar, however, does that translate into higher reproductive outcome, i.e., surviving offspring.
Anyway: if someone manages to make Fukushima Pork as prominent and sought-after as Kobe Beef, then I highly recommend that person for the Nobel Price in Marketing.
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Wednesday 11th February 2026 18:22 GMT goblinski
...In other words, the "hybrid" bit is fading...
We were expats in Algeria for a few years in the 80's and one of the cons was that there was no real source of meat that suited our cuisine. There was goat, sheep, you name it, but it wasn't all that.
Eventually we hooked up with a group of local hunters who were protecting the potato fields from feral pigs that were doing a number. They'd go and cull as many as possible, we'd hang around till they were done and dispatch the pigs, then share all that with the rest of the local expat group. Freezers helped greatly. The sight of our little sedan, its rear sagging to the ground under the load, with blood dripping from the flush holes, was not something I'll forget. Would have made for a nice movie.
So - these pigs were supposedly the descendants of the pig population that was released out of the French farms after the independence. The French farmers flew, the farms were nationalized, and the pig pop was partly exterminated, partly released. They then supposedly cross-bred with the local wild boars.
One way or the other - 20 years after that event, while the boar population was large enough to require culling, nothing in these animals suggested "domestic pig" in any way. They were wild boars, big, ugly and strong. Decently tasty too.
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Thursday 12th February 2026 04:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
Which begs the crucial question(s), again ... ¿Quién mató a Bambi?, Qui a tué Bambi?, Who Killed Bambi? ... and so forth ... ;)
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Thursday 12th February 2026 17:50 GMT I ain't Spartacus
please tell me you are not going down the Bambi Burger route :o)
My brother used to sell Bambi burgers in his old pub. It was near a bunch of shooting estates in Berkshire, the gamekeepers drank there, and every so often he got a knock on the door and a Muntjac or two to deal with. They were very popular - and very economical at a few free beers for deer the estates were going to cull anyway. I think he said you could get about 80 burgers out of one.
Now, in his new pub, he's just made a deal with one of the London Parks and has 50 red (I think) deer on the way. So as well as burgers, there'll also be roast venison on sometimes. Or he may go for pies. He's always done good pies in his pubs. Proper ones, with lids (not a casserole with a pastry hat!). Nice, big square ones.
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Wednesday 11th February 2026 21:25 GMT Neil Barnes
And probably delicious, radiation levels be damned.
Two huge advantages to radioactive pigs: (a) no-one will want to operate the apparently mandatory machines that inject nitrites and brine into them while they turn them into bacon, for fear of getting splashed, and (b) they're self cooking.
(I hate bacon with so much water in it it boils rather than frying. Or indeed any bacon in the continental or American idiom where the aim seems to be to take a rasher of bacon and slice it into six or eight sub-rashers. A slice of bacon should be at least 1.5-2mm thick (1/16-3/32 for our US cousins).
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Thursday 12th February 2026 09:49 GMT Bebu sa Ware
Re: And probably delicious, radiation levels be damned.
"A slice of bacon should be at least 1.5-2mm"
I always wondered where the thicker rashers common in Australia (at least in rural parts where 2mm might be a bit thin) originated. So the the UK or part thereof.
Academic in my case as I have never been keen on bacon but a pork chop now …
I have been served breakfast in a country pub that included several such rashers, five fried eggs, two sauages and sundry other artery clogging items as well as, I imagine, a preferred patient voucher for admission to the local coronary care unit.
If you are keen on feral pig Australia isn't short of those; or feral goat or feral camel or feral deer (various) as well as usual pests of hares and rabbits and for the seriously weird you can have your pick of feral cat, dogs and foxes. And nearly forgot feral horses and donkeys. The latter are apparently used in Arles sausages; French bags·of·mystery clearly have a much larger cast of usual suspects than ours.
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Friday 13th February 2026 00:39 GMT The Organ Grinder's Monkey
Re: And probably delicious, radiation levels be damned.
What I want to know is, what happened to bacon rind?
When I was little (1970ish) my mum used to snip the rind off to stop it from shrinking & pulling the rashers into hard-to-fry shapes, but she'd chuck the trimmed-off rinds in the pan along with the bacon. As soon as it got hot it would pull itself into a tightly tangled knot of crispy, chewy bacon-y goodness. I can't remember the last time that I saw a piece of bacon with a proper rind on it that wasn't still part of a living, breathing piggy wiggy?
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Friday 13th February 2026 11:24 GMT Peter Gathercole
Re: And probably delicious, radiation levels be damned.
They effectively sand it off before it is cured. And it would not surprise me if the resultant sludge makes it into budget pork sausages, or anything that needed some natural flavouring.
For larger cuts of pork, they can cut the skin off and deep fry to make pork scratchings
You could stop it making the rasher curl by cutting the rind several times on the rasher (or score it before the rashers are cut). It then fries up forming extra crunchy bits on the rasher.
One common use for unwanted bacon rind cut off before cooking used to be to put it out on bird tables in winter.
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Friday 13th February 2026 20:43 GMT Michael Strorm
Are these Japanese "Radioactive Hybrid Terror Pigs" any relation to...
Which was apparently- and ironically- a conversion of a somewhat cuter Japanese arcade game called Butasan that U.S. Gold needed to be an early example of "Darker and Edgier for Western audiences" when it converted it to UK home formats. Then advertised it with a barely-clad Page 3 girl holding the box, because sex and controversy sells.
Or so they must have hoped.
