The First Nations people in the Northern Territory in Australia called an area “sickness country” and didn’t live there (that their history is about 60,000 to 70,000 years). In the mid 1900s it was developed to be a major uranium mining area. It seems that the first people decided that living too close to uranium was not a good thing.

People working on the Manhattan Project in the freezing desert used to warm their hands by holding lumps of uranium. A lot of life shortening moves available.