[en] In contrast to the usual S-matrix approach where only asymptotic reaction products are considered, the spatio-temporal development of hadronic reactions following Feinberg is studied. Certain features of the development are generally applicable to a wide variety of reactions. The crucial aspect is the Zeno effect modifying the interactions which take place in rapid succession. The time scales involved make the Zeno effect practically unobservable except in nuclear hadronic cascades. After demonstrating the nature of the modifications in solvable models it is applied to hadronic cascades and a good fit is obtained to the data on pion production in hadron-nucleus collision at incident projectile energies of 50, 100 and 200 GeV. This good fit is obtained without the use of any free parameters. 15 references