My feelings are that without humans constantly culling them, the deer, moose, antelope and many smaller animals (weasels, groundhogs, chipmunks, squirrels, and so on) would naturally begin to boom, We have to consider that most diseases/infections have very different affects on different species, consider rabies, humans it just outright kills, but many other animals will just go into a rampage attacking anything it sees moving(including its own limbs) This would be the same with this issue, some of the animals (mostly mammals it seems) would be susceptible but some would have either too simplistic brain structures, or too strong of an immunity system. Then other animals would survive due to avoidance… cougars, bear, smaller animals, birds, they all see humans now and GTFO, why would they be any different to a human or group of humans who seem to be snarling and ever so loud.
Would seem to me the most common way the animals would die off would be from the ingestion infected meat(say of pulped zombies scattered across the road>.>) and yes some of their populations if susceptible to the disease, would then lower severely but then they would also soon after have a large boom, due to the fact that their scarce resources are now plentiful so breeding increases, maybe in certain areas there would be large populations of certain types of species and less of the other types.
Birds would be kinda debatable, It isnt very common that a disease will pass from a species of a avian type to a mammalia and vice versa, Now im not saying it never happens as it has happened with many but, the chances are less, and from those insects and reptilians are event less likely to pass disease, aside from blood suckers which can carry any disease from on human to another… which i think mosquitos and fleas should play a small part in cataclysm towards disease.
All in all most animals should have their own characteristics and have different times of extinction, also some should mutate, changing due to environmental issues and radiation… this is just common sense in a world with tons of radio active waste. The few things that shouldnt go extinct or mutate much would be things like insects and birds, they would mutate but not as much, they have common sensors to detect things like radiation and toxicity levels. While so do many mammals they aren’t as refined. so they would commonly walk into radiation or toxic waste and soon figure out they are and leave, of course taking a huge hit to their rad levels.
But i think mutations would have to be seen after a couple years, the first year is unrealistic as mutation should come from animals breeding that have been highly dosed with rads… This can be seen in japan even today, though the people at the time of the actual bomb didnt suffer any mutation the generations after certainly did.
Theres my opinion Love the idea and totally support it.
