In the event of a mass environmental apocalypse, dealing with leakage of radiation due to damaged nuclear plants, what animals do you thing would be the first to die and which ones would last the longest? Should I have the genes of a certain animal be changed drastically or keep them recognizable but with certain noticeable flaws like extra limbs?
Well, Cockroaches would definitely last the longest. They'd probably develop some kind of way to filter out the toxic air and might also grow stronger pincers to eat dead animals. Idk, this is just randomly coming to my brain.
I'd imagine birds small mammals would be the first to go, larger animals would of course survive longer but not much considering the probably contamination of the ground water and thus their food (then again if the groundwater is toxic everything will be dead soon) cockroaches and other insects especially those in the beetle family would be especially durable. But the best advice I could give you would be to look into information about death, contamination, and mutation in Chernobyl following the nuclear disaster there 30 years ago and long lasting effects it's had on the ukraine's ecosystem.