Some of them likely would have been completely fine and completely unexposed to dangerous levels of radiation.. but not all of them.. and it was impossible to k

Some of them likely would have been completely fine and completely unexposed to dangerous levels of radiation.. but not all of them.. and it was impossible to know which were which until weeks and months later when they did more thorough testing. Many local areas were reporting over radiation of >500 millisieverts/year, which is ~150x the typical background dose. The famous XKCD Radiation chart shows a bunch of Fukushima related doses -- it was actually pretty dangerous for people close to the exclusion zone! https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/