How Radiation Sickness Works

go on, tangents, Oh stuff, you should know. I have a family member that even you know, not blood relative. I'll just say that who A couple of years ago, were like, you know you guys, you need to get to the point. You can't even Sometimes it's like six to ten minutes of stuff before you even start talking about the thing. It's like a no, sir, glad you enjoy it. This is not someone I see a lot. I'm just trying to be vague. Would he know who who?

He probably didn't even remember saying this. It was at a party or something. No, I'm just I'm banking on that maybe if I see him again, he'll say, I know what you were saying. I heard your message. I know you were talking a thinly veiled message. Right. It came on the heels of the neighbor's dog telling me to do stuff I didn't want to do. Right, Here's messages everywhere. That's what I'm trying to say. He's not the son of Sam No, no, David Berkowitz. Right, Yeah,

we should do a show on him. We really should. Well, you know what, we should do a show where we talk about all the ones that we said we would do a show on and just forgot. Just a list, Yeah, the David Berkowitz number twenty eight to start some Andy Kaufman esque thing, to see how much will people take before they hate us. I wrote a really cool Rolling Stone profile of him from like nineteen eighty one maybe something like that, really really good um on Andy Kaufmann

Uh huh. Yeah, he's a really interesting cat. I know he was basically just doing it all for himself. Yeah, that's why he was in the comedy, just to amuse himself nobody else. Yeah. So it takes a lot of colonists, and I think he inspired a lot of people who ended up bastardizing what he did too. I think a lot of people that thought they followed in his footsteps, brought a mean spirit like Bob Newhart to things, to

their to their work. Uh, like Gilbert Godfrey. No like you know, um, like you know and stuff like that, where you're where you're masquerading as someone to get a eyes out of somebody, but the jokes really on that person. Yeah. I mean, I like bored at two, But I don't think any Kaufman. I think he always had a sweetness about him. I see what you mean. I don't think he's ever mean spirited and tried to make other people

look dumb. Yeah, yeah, that's my dumb opinion. I think the joke wasn't between him and the audience on another person. The joke was on the audience, and the joke was to himself. Yeah, it was between him and himself. Whereas with like um, Sasha Baron Cohen, you're laughing, everybody's laughing at Ron Paul right, you know, well, like you know you saw did you See a Man on the Moon? The movie? I was in a long time. It was good.

And when he uh first did the wrestling thing with his future wife and afterwards she was so mad and he was like wasn't that great? Like, you were so terrific, you were wonderful, And she's like, what what's going on? He's like, that was such a great performance and she was like, oh you were some jerk? Was that Courtney Love? Yeah? What a bizarre casting, I know. So that's a radiation

sickness is intro. Man, Well, we had to mention something light because this isn't no, this is this is rough stuff, pretty heavy. The one good thing about radiation this is a grab Star article, by the way, is that the

one good thing about it? Yeah, And the one good thing about radiation sickness is it's surprisingly tough to get most people who just go about their average day exposed the sunlight or um you know, even microwave in their coffee, yes, yes, or you know, tuning in their favorite radio program while it's around still um or I'm talking on their cell phone. That's another controversial one. Sure, you're not going to get radiation sickness. And the reason why you may get cancer

from these things who knows. But the you're not gonna get radiation sickness because that the energy, the radiation coming from these things like your cell phone, from the sun, from the microwave are of a low enough frequency and a low enough energy that they don't have the potential to ionize. Um, they create ionizing radiation, which is, oh, well, that's where a that's where radiation knocks an electron off of an atom that's creating an ion, and ions can

wreak serious havoc. Yeah, in a in a human body in particular. Yeah, so you're not gonna in fact, even the cancer that you might get one day due to long term exposure to your cell phone, if that's even a thing. Um, that's not called radiation sickness. If you worked at a power plant that leaked and ended up getting cancer, that's not even considered radiation sickness. Or if you're an X ray technician and you get radiation poisoning

or cancer years later, it's still not radiation sickness. Radiation sickness is where you are hit with such a huge immediate dose of ionizing radiation that you die pretty quickly from it, and you're going to also experience immediate symptoms, or you become the incredible hulk right in the court in the in the case of gamma rays, it was gamma, wasn't it. I think so right, Yeah, he wouldn't have turned into a monster. That's that's fictitious. He instead would

have um possibly lost consciousness, maybe had diarrhea, vomited. Uh. He probably would have had blistered skin that would have never fully healed and would have formed scars under the skin called kelloid's scars that eventually you are outside of the skin. Yeah, and and then it would have just gotten even worse. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we. Well, what people should know what they're getting into. So, radiation

sickness is an acute situation, and it's accumulative effect. Um, after you get that acute dose of radiation poisoning, there's another way to call it. Uh. And there are three kinds of ionizing radiation? Or is this article that the grabster? He had a couple of nice little clips in here? Did you notice the Neil Young. It would have to say dash Neil Young after it for me, and he still wouldn't get it. Well. One of his his paragraphs

is entitled ionizing radiation and the damage Done. I think he was playing on the needle and the damage done. Maybe probably Neil Young song, he's a cool cat, grabs the so um like, he says. It's comes in three flavors, alpha particles, bata particles, and the gamma raise the aforementioned gamma rays alpha particles. The good news is they're the least dangerous uh for external exposure. And the other good news is your T shirt. Well, you're not wearing a

T shirt. I'm wearing one underneath my undershirt. Well, then you're doubly protected, your friend, because your clothing is even um strong enough to stop an external alpha particle. Right, they just bounce harmlessly off of your clothing, that's right, and go want want Right, So you would think that they're not dangerous at all. Not true, because you can still inhale this stuff uh and ingest it in the form of radon gas. And that's where things can get bad. Yeah.

When you ingest um a radioactive particle, an ionizing particle, you um, it gets into your body, it gets transported around, and as it does, it goes through and it's like, hey, Adam, good to meet you. I'm gonna knock this electron off.

And now you're a free radical. If you're a water molecule, and if you're gonna that's the way we say molecule from now on, by the way, and you're gonna go off and reak havoc on other stuff, right because when this when the um, when the the radioactive particle interacts with an atom and knocks the electron off, that's not the only damage done. When that electron is released or knocked off, energy in the form of what thirty three electron volts thirty three evs are released, and that weakens

the chemical bonds holding the atom together. So it just totally alters the structure of the atom. Right. Well, when you're altering the structure of an atom, atoms make up molecules, so you alter the structure of the molecule. When you're talking about molecules, these things make up the basis of everything, from the proteins that are expressed in your body that carry out functions, to the cells that house these functions

their act as factories. And all of a sudden you have all these weird alterations and like flawed and damaged um processes in your body, and it leads to systemic malfunction which leads to your at least severe illness, if not death. And all of this has to do with these little particles going through your body and bombar and knocking electrons off of their atoms. Yeah, and we'll get into the um specifics of how much is too much in a bit. But to continue, the beta particles are

next up. They move very fastly with a lot of energy, and can travel a few feet when they're admitted from its source. The good news here is is that they can be blocked out by solid objects. Not your clothing, it's not solid enough, but like concrete or for Micah, if you were fighting under your kitchen counter, probably I like for Mica still it still has its you have what do you have like marble or quartz or some No, my my dining room table is would no, no, no,

your kitchen counter like if you got into a cabinet. Yeah, you know, I don't know what my countertop is. I should. I thought it was something, but then when I redid my kitchen and went to cut it, it's black and stone, right, that's sort of the brownish thing. Now, I don't think it's a real stone. You went to cut it and did it just like completely mangle your ACKs off? No, because I got the right kind of blade. Um. I did my research, but it was it was not what

I thought it was. And it's impossible to find this stuff now. Yeah, so we're just kind of begin to redo your countertops. Well at some point we have to. Are you going to redo them? No? Okay, that's gonna say. That's wow. That project right there. I tried to make my own concrete countertop you know those? Yeah, yeah, and you can do it yourself. I didn't know that. Yeah, you build a frame and you pour the stuff and um, but it was it turned out okay for a first try,

but not good enough. Yeah, you don't want okay for the first try for your kitchen counters. Man, that stuff is heavy. Yeah, it's concrete and breaks easily if you drop it or if you just like are carving a turkey. If it's if you have too long of a piece and like you just have a person on each end can snap in half. You know you need a short person in the middle. Yeah, with a hard head. Uh. Anyway, beta particles, Uh, like we said, where were we what

they can move through? Um? The problem with the beta particles is they're tiny, eight thousand times smaller than the alpha particle. Uh, and that means it can penetrate through your clothing. Into your skin. Uh. This is the stuff that if it enters the local food supply or the groundwater, uh, and it gets in the body that way, you can inhale it. Then you're in big trouble. Right, any time

this stuff gets into your body, you're in big trouble. Yeah, and we should do you want to talk a real quick here about the difference between a radiation and contamination. Did you see that? Yeah, Well, let's finish gamma quickly because I feel like gammas just sort of sitting out

there sad. Yeah, Gamma smash, gamma raise. They're the most dangerous, very high energy, uh, and can travel through most anything, which is why anything with gamma rays is gonna be lined with like a few inches of lead or several feet of concrete or both to block those gamma rays. Um. And this is the stuff that gets in your bone, marrow and your toast. Yeah. This stuff just goes right

through your body all the way through. And as it does, it's it's just think of like these radioactive particles as tiny bullets that are ricocheting around. Electron seeking bullets are just going after your atoms with a vengeance. They're dying hard with a vengeance. So contamination versus a radiation. Uh, that's two ways that you can be dosed, and they're both a little different. Yeah. So, so contamination is what

it sounds like. It's where you actually have uh, some sort of radioactive material maybe like a liquid or a powder or something on your body, on your clothing. In your body is even worse. But you are, for all intents and purposes, radioactive. You can transfer that radioactivity to other people. You're contaminated. Like you said, it's still pinging

around in your body. Yeah, when it gets into your body, it can be transported through your blood, through other processes to transport processes in your body, and it's just reaking havoc everywhere. Um. And it reeks the most havoc on places where cells regenerate the fastest. Um, because the damage is done and spread more quickly. Right. Um. But that's contamination. You're radioactive. You can spread the radioactivity if you're contaminated.

A radiation is different. Yeah, that's when like when you go to get your X chest X ray, you are technically getting irradiation, uh, irradiated irradiated. Um. The difference is you're not coming into actual contact uh. And when the sources turn when they shut off that machine, it's over right, You're you're no longer you're not radioactive, so you can't make other people radioactive and you're you're not just sitting there with radioactive particles in your body. It's done. It's done,

leaving in the past. That's right, is the motto of a radiation Where are we still talking about it? So they're they're different, right, um, And they're they're different ways you can get contaminated. But I mean, if you stood there in front of an X ray machine long enough, you wouldn't be contaminated, but you could still have and you could still develop a cute radiation poisoning um, because

the length of exposure would be long enough. Yeah, because you're just standing there like a jackass in front of an X ray machine turned on. It's a problem. Moved to the side, and X rays are safe. But I still get a little weirded out every time I go in there and like they put the lead vest on and then out of the run out of the room, like they detonated a bomb. Yeah, I'm I was like, oh wait a minute, um, especially like the mouth ones

in your teeth which have gotten. Obviously a lot of you are supposed to UM, and I know you're in

a You're in a ticklish situation in that case. But d Dennists like to take a lot of X rays is because they can charge and get insurance very I'm sure there are plenty of instances where you they do need a new set of X rays or whatever, and you do need to get them, but you should be UM a lot more prone to calling your last dentist if you're moving Dennis and saying I needs you to transfer those X rays and they should do it for free, willingly so you don't have to get another set, you know,

if you change dentists, you know within a single year, you shouldn't have too many X rays. Now, cut down on that whenever you can. I've always had the suspicion that they give you the maximum allowable number of X rays that they can build for. Yeah, I don't know if I was just being cynical or if that's a real thing. And I feel like Dennis says a profession of really gotten into upselling in the last like decade,

really upselling. I'm not saying anything you had done was up selling, but like there's a lot of like offers and and there's a lot of marketing that goes on during average dental visit. Now, yeah, from the dentist, there's a special uh liquid that they have it maybe fluoride. Now they think about it some you know the thing that they say and now here's your thing, and they say, rents with this for a minute and then you go leave and it's like fifty dollars for this rinse treatment.

I'm like, you didn't even ask me if I wanted that. So this last time I went, I have to go four times a year now because I have short roots, um, which is my worst nightmare to have to double the amount of time at the dentist. Hate it. And that's not including any of my stupid tooth stuff. This is just for cleaning. Oh I see, Like I just have to go in four times a year now for cleaning. But do you have your own chair? I do? I should I certainly bought one by this point, but um,

I went in this last time. I was like, all right, I'm not gonna I'm gonna decline that rents. I was so ready to fight with this lady, um, and she didn't give it to me. I think they can sense that. I really consense when you're paying attention. When's a good time to upsell, when's it, when's again? You gotta know when to hold them and no when to fold them.

Is the new motto for for dentistry. All right, well we got on this because of X rays, and we're going to take a break and stop venting our frustrations and come back and talk a little bit more about ionizing radiation. You know what, it really stinks the dentist

just kidding. Um. So Ed points out, if you're going to talk about radiation poisoning, Um, what you're looking at is a total dosage, and that includes different factors like what it came from, like we talked about with the alpha, beta or gamma rays, um, how much it was, how long you were exposed, how much was absorbed. It's not an exact science. It's taken as a total accumulative effect. Right.

But the the sivert which takes all those things into account, is it's pretty close to exact science as far as

measuring human absorption of radiation, right, Um. And so based on these calculations which I couldn't find anywhere, how you calculate siverts specifically, but apparently there are people who know how to do this right, and when you calculate siverts, you're able to say, okay, well, just flying in an airplane gets you x number of millisiverts or micro siverts on a five hour airplane flight or something like that, right, um, And we we've come to realize that just living on

planet Earth, we are exposed to background radiation on the order of something like um I think three point six millisieverts per year. Yeah, that's point zero zero three six siverts, right, And that's that's fine, you can totally deal with that. It's when you start getting closer and closer to a full sivert because if you'll notice, think siver or radiation exposure is measured in millisieverts and even microceiver it's a

million of a fever. Which we love those members, and we should say, you know, if you're getting an X ray at the dentist or something like that, you're getting a low level of of UM exposure to potentially deadly radiation. If if it were just if you were standing next to what's producing the X rays outside of an X ray machine and you're holding that you'd be a big trouble the fact that you're not exposed to it like that.

You're exposed to doses that, as far as we understand scientifically right now, the human can take and it's not going to have any adverse effects. It's when you start getting closer to a full sivert that you really run the risk of acute radiation poisoning. Yeah, like point seven five siverts will get you sick, um and weaken your immune system. Three siverts. Uh, you need medical attention or you will probably die. Um, but you will probably live

if you do have medical care. Um, if you get a dose of tin siverts at once, you are dead. Even if you do get medical care. That's like a death sentence basically. Um. But you're not going to encounter that at all. So you don't need to worry about that unless you work in a lab or something and there's an accident, yeah, which we'll talk about some of those that have happened. But um, tin siverts is really

bad news. Yeah. Um, between ten, I'm sorry, between one and ten, you got about a fifty chance of dying within a month. And if it's uh, a less if it's not just one big blast, and it's over time, then it's your odds are a little bit better, totally different, but it's a totally different, like prolonged exposure is different

than the kind of acute exposure that that creates radiation sickness. Right, and Ed points out to the factors that are included in the formulation of a Sivert radiation dose is they're not absolute. It's not like, hey, buddy, here's ten doses or here's ten siverts of radiation your toast. It would

be slightly I think that actually probably is absolute. But let's say too, it's going to be different depending on where you were exposed, what part of your body, how old you are, what kind of immune health you have, um, and a number of different factors, the type of particle that you're exposed to. So it's different. But for the most part, once you get higher and higher along the Sivert scale, it does become kind of absolute as far as human mortality is concerned. Uh, if you do get exposed,

you're going to get sick very very quickly. Um. I mean sometimes it's like you immediately start vomiting or lose conscious Yeah, your body is just so immediately poisoned. Um. It's hardcore nausea, diarrhea, headache, fever. Um. Like you said, you can be knocked unconscious. And I looked everywhere to find out what happens that makes you lose consciousness, and I have the impression that they don't really know. It

doesn't make sense. What what about radiotion makes you lose consciousness unless it just completely alters the effects of your or the the action of your neurons. I guess. Yeah, see you get a little more inquisitive about that stuff. I hear that, and I just think, you know, your brain just overloads. Well, now I'm like, what happened? Why that? Why that? Why that person just lose consciousness by being exposed to an X ray machine? That's not good? What's

the science behind that? That's what I sound like in my head? Um burns on the body. We talked about external exposure, UM, bad scarring. Uh. There's something called a latent period after that initial set of symptoms. Yeah, this is just mean where you don't have symptoms, you get better. Yeah, they you know, things gonna go away. But I don't think anyone thinks are going to get better because they know about the now, but I'll be the first few

people who die from radiation sytince. You're like, wow, this is miraculous. And then yeah, so the the initial symptoms are very obvious and very bad, and then there's that latent period like you said, it was a lull and then yeah, and apparently what's going on at that point is the damage that has been done immediately. And I mean like, when, for example, your DNA is altered, it happens on the in in the billions trillions of a

second that that damage is done. If a free radical is created, it still takes on the order of like a second to to do this damage. So it's very quick, but the effects of that damage take a little while

to appear. But when they when they do appear, it's like, oh man, and you're you're having multi organ failure right now because you were exposed to so much ionizing radiation, your cells were so totally altered um and your DNA was ultimately altered too, that your body is not functioning properly and some parts of your body are definitely more susceptible than others. Like I said, the ones where cells

replicate more frequently, like the lining of your gut. And that's a big problem if your guts messed up, because you're prone to infections, which is not good. You don't want a gut infection. You had one of those. You had staff a staff stomach confection. And I've never seen a human being sicker than you were. And you had to fly home. Do you remember you had to get on a plane as that was hitting you. I felt

so bad. Dude's pretty bad. You were green, Yeah, green, Your face was green like the whole You had a gamma ray burst of radiation. I had a gamma ray burst in my shorts. That's so growth. Uh, standing up, sitting down, lying down, everywhere. Um. So, that latent period, if it's it's shorter, the smaller the dose, wait shorter, the larger the dose, the latent period. Yeah. And in fact, if you get dose with more than ten, there is no latent period at all. It's that it doesn't take

a break. So um, like you said, after that latent period wears off is when it's really clear what's happened inside your body. And one thing we haven't specifically talked about yet is the is your bone marrow, which is a very bad place to get radiation poisoning because it basically what's you know, where you produce blood cells to make your body better, and it basically shuts down your immune system because there's so much damage and now you

can't even make yourself better or try to make yourself better. Yeah. It either it either directly damages the cells and kills them right, so therefore you're just not making as many cells. You don't have as many white blood cells. And then it also can damage the d n A in your cells so that when they are when it is making more white blood cells, is not making them correctly, so there's malfunctioning white blood cell. So yeah, your immune systems

total anemic at that point. Yeah, well that's from the red blood cells being affected as well. And then again when your gut gets um assaulted, You've got a lot of bacteria in your gut and it's beneficial so long as it's in your gut. When it leaks into the rest of your body, you can get blood infections from that because the the stomach lining is not is not protecting your stomach like it's supposed to any longer. It's bad news, man, it is bad news, all right. Well,

let's take another break and UM. We'll talk about some of these tragedies and accidents when we get back. So Chuck UM. We know actually, fortunately very little about the effects of ionizing radiation on the human body because there's not that many people who have died from it. UM. Basically everything we know it comes from industrial accidents like

Three Mile Island or Fukushima. UM. And then the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, by the way, any time that comes up, I feel it's it's totally worth mentioning going to see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Like I think everybody in the world should have to

go to this. It's so well done, it's so asked Lee some of the stuff that they're showing UM and and it's it's basically here Ashima saying, this happened to us, So we're going to take UM this terrible gift that was bestowed on us and turned it into UM a way to keep it from ever happening again. And that's what they did with it. Carl Or in Japan make a trip to hear is Human to check it out. We'll talk about those then since we're there. I ran across a cool article on a website called Today I

found Out, which is a neat site. You ever been there? Yeah, it's pretty cool. This was called why can people live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Now? But not chernobyl Um. So here's a little background, and I think it it should have its own podcast at some point for sure. Which one the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, But here's here's a short version. UM. On August the bomb Little Boy was a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, hundred and forty pounds of uranium. But these were detonated both of

more above each city. It's like two thousand feet above Hiroshima. Only two pounds of the hundred and forty pounds underwent nuclear fission um and then sixteen kilo tons of explosive force. So because Hiroshima was on a plane, it caused a lot of damage. UM estimated seventy thousand people were killed on that day period seventy thousand, another seventy thousand injured, and about seventy of the buildings gone UM for fat Man which was a few days later on Nagasaki on

August nine, only two pounds. This was plutonium and only two pounds of that underwent fission and that was about sixteen feet in the air. But because it's a valley, a lot of the city was protected. Still killed about between forty five thousand and seventy thousand peep immediately. And I get the feeling that a lot of that stuff was just the blast impact for these were just so immense. Yeah, so bring in Chernobyl because this article compares you know,

the conditions there at these places. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster, nuclear disaster that had, uh the way they say been this article was that the reactors had a built in instability was the quote. Um. So basically, when the reaction got hotter and hotter, the coolant would decrease and just make everything less stable and they couldn't control it. So they did some went to do some test one day on ap uh to see how long these turbines would

run after the reactor was down. So in order to do this, they had to turn off all these safety controls and remove you know, I think we talked about the control rods and um, how a nuclear meltown works, Yeah, how nuclear mount work. So these control rods absorbed the neutrons and limit the reaction. They had to remove cheese. How many, only all but six of the two five control rods for this test, and they shut down the safety system, so it was just ready for disaster. Basically,

why were they doing that just for fun? No, they were trying to see how long these turbines would run once everything was shut down. But in order to do that, you had to do all these other things. That's like figuring out how much weight a bridge can take by driving increasingly heavy trucks across the until it collapses. Yeah, and systematically waking as you do it. That's insane. Yeah, it was not a good idea. And they said it all came down to like the hubrists of the people

who designed it, and we're working there. It was totally preventable. So uh, a lot of these graphite rods they tried to put them back in there, and they fractured because there was a design flaw in them, and there was an explosion. Uh, it basically just blew it up. UM seven to ten tons of nucle your fuel were released that day. Only eight people died immediately, and over ninety thousand square miles of land were contaminated. How many people

died immediately? Eight that were just like in the area. Uh. And of course you can't get accurate numbers on fallout since then because they're not really sharing that information. But by two thousand five, there were seven thousand cases of thyroid cancer uh in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia alone, So obviously it had an effect. But um, nowadays people can live in Japan in those two places, and they say that the levels of background radiation are basically like

anywhere else in the world. But Chernobyl is still they have a zone where like you can't live there at all anymore. So the difference is basically, Uh, the amount of fuel only two pounds, like I said, of each of those bombs, um, only two pounds underwent fission and a hundred there was a hundred and eighty tons of nuclear fuel. Really Chernobyl. That's crazy that there's any of Chernobyl even left. Yeah, they just blow up the whole town. Well,

and they're studying um. Well, I think the explosion wasn't anything like Nagasaki Hiroschma. It was just but they're studying that area now because it's a big you know, like you said, you don't have this opportunity to see what it means for the ecology of that area and the ecosystem, and like they found some things have like adapted and are thriving, and lately they've been reports that they're like animals they're living there. Yeah, like normal animals that aren't

you know, three eyed bears and stuff like that. And the other difference was that, um, it was on the ground and these other you know, the bombs are detonated two thousand feet in the air, so while it's airborne, it just has a bigger impact obviously if it's like literally ground level. So that's sort of the deal on why you can not live in Chernobyl anytime soon. Yeah. Finally, in tumbing the reactor, that's it's just yeah, I mean they tried before, but they did a pretty terrible job

of it and it was already leaking and cracking. So now they're building I think other countries are helping them with it. They're building like this huge tomb to go around it, so nobody can enter for I think at least a century. Jeez. Yeah. Well there have been some scientists too though that had minor well not minor for them, but minor accidents and labs that were exposed heavily, like the stuff that that created there that led to their deaths were just so small. With anything else, you would

probably even barely noticed that you'd messed up. But these guys died because of it. Yeah, two dudes notably working on the same core plutonium core, not at the same time, like a year apart, and it came to be called the Demon core for that reason because it killed two people. Yeah. One guy was a physicist named Harry kay dag Lean Jr. He got a five point one severt exposure uh and died days later. Who's the other guy, Lewis Slawton Slaughton.

Um he was. He was basically messing with the core with the screwdriver from what I read, and um, just the screwdriver just barely slipped just a little bit, and I guess came and allowed the cover to come in contact with the core and the core went subcritical for half a second. He luckily was like able to like throw the core off, so it didn't really lead to an even bigger problem that killed bore people, but it led to his death. And um, he got a twenty

one severt dose. We've been saying ten is almost, you know, instantly fatal. He lost consciousness and threw up immediately, and he died I think nine days later. I can't believe it took that long, you know, but the air turned blue around him. Yeah, and there was like a visible wave of heat. Yeah, and he was Immediately after his death, I think he was kind of praised for containing the accident, but then later on, even after that, they were like, yeah, but he did something wrong that led to it to

begin with. Oh yeah, yeah, so it was kind of a you did a good job, but you shouldn't have done it. Well, what said? It also killed somebody else. Um, a guard who was in the room died years later from cancer. That they're like, that was definitely from exposure. Yeah, don't surprise me. So what happens if you, I mean, how can they treat this stuff? Surprisingly, they can't treat it.

Like if you think about radioactive particles entering your body, you just think it'd be like, well, here's some morphine. I hope you had a nice life. But there's actually stuff they can do to treat it. Um. And one of the first things they do if you're contaminated. Is they wash you off. It seems like a good step one because you didn't get some of that stuff off. But if it's in your body, they have to give you drugs that are known to actually bind to radioactive

materials and then flush out of your system. Yeah, like Prussian blue dye. It's actually good for um, caesium and thallium poisoning UM. It's like it's a blue dye that goes in and it binds to the stuff and um holds it so it's no longer going through your body making havoc. Since you're coming with me. Then you poop it out. There's another one. You're gonna try this one, Oh, dia thy leen, try a mind penatic acid band or d t p A been to acetic acid. That was

the easier part. Yeah, let's call it that. So that one's good for plutonium among other things. And they inject you with that and it does basically the same thing. It seeks out those radioactive particles, binds to them, and then you pee it out. So it I mean, it is possible to treat people who have been contaminated with radioactive stuff. I just want to point out every time Josh said, binds to him. You hug your stomach. What is that all? I don't know. I hadn't really noticed.

I hadn't done that, but it's both times. Uh. What else can they do? They can prevent infection. Uh. If your immune systems compromise because of the bone marrow, you could have a bone I'm sorry, blood transfusion. If you only have a little bit of bone marrow damage, um, that could help you out. But if it is too severe, you would have to have a complete bone marrow transplant. And then and even then you're not guaranteed to be Okay, you're in pretty bad shape if that's going on. Um.

Did you read about this Goyana, Brazil accident? I did. It is nuts, It's crazy. So back in there were I guess some people who were just wandering around an abandoned hospital in Guyana, Brazil. Yes to two dudes, Uh,

scrap salesman, like scavenger salesman. Okay. So they found I guess maybe an X ray machine or something like that, and cracked it open and there was a cake of glowing blue caesi um inside and they said, well, this looks pretty let's take it with us and they did, and they sold it to people, including some children who rubbed it on their skin so that they would glow in the dark. Yeah, and a lot of these people died very shortly afterwards. Yeah, they took I mean, it

wasn't just the raw stuff. They took the machine in a wheelbarrow and then spent the next few days like trying to take this machine apart to get to this glow because they, I mean, they thought it was like supernatural. They didn't know what it was. Um, these dudes started vomiting and stuff. Of course, went to the doctor and they're like, it's food poisoning. Um, here's a here's a coke, go home, clam. Uh. So one of the guys finally freed some of this glowing blue goo. He thought it

was gunpowder and tried to light it on fire. It didn't light. It's not flammable. Uh. And then he sold it to a scrap yard, like you said, for bucks. Um. And this guy, the owner of the scrap rd I think was his uncle, was like, man, everyone come and see this, and he invited like for three days, like family and guests could all come over and look at They called the carnival glitter and like you said this,

I mean it's really sad. But this guy's daughter was like rubbing it on her skin and her bed sheets, and uh, they were just enamored with this stuff. So again, a lot of people died from this. Um well, four people died for still, it's a lot, you know, four people died, but they two people had significant levels of material in their body. And hundred and twelve thousand people were examined and they demolished several square city blocks, just gone like this is contaminated, we have to get rid

of it. They just leveled parts of that city. Yeah, it was crazy, all because some guys like broke into an X ray machine because somebody just left it in an abandoned hospital. Yeah. I think there were guards, but the guard was off duty or something. There still shouldn't be like X ray machines in a hospital. Yeah, that was I think. I think they ended up there being lotsuits and I would hope so, man, So that's it, right, I got nothing else I don't either. That's a radiation sickness.

We hope that this save you or someone you love if you're ever going through an abandoned hospital and you come across an extray machine. Don't crack it open, just observe it from afar. Well, we always talk about exploring abandoned structures and it's super dangerous. Oh yeah, they're all fraught with dangers. They definitely are, and probably when you wouldn't think about something like this, you know, have I ever talked about Grossingers? I don't think so. Man, there's

this one side about Grossingers. It's just it's a it's a cat skills resort that was abandoned in the eighties. It's just now it's almost completely reclaimed by the forest. But about five ten years ago somebody went and documented it. I like peak decay where the structures are still there because it's totally coming in so fascinating. I don't know, but it's there. There's I can't remember what the name

of the site is, but it's grossing Jersey. And this guy went many many years, like over many times over the years and documented it. And I think his dad was the caretaker there as the place was shutting down, so he knew the place really well. And he has like old photos from while it was still in use to compare and contrast. It's just amazing. Yeah, I thought you were gonna say it was completely overtaken now by forest fairies, and that's what I meant. And the Hulk.

Have you ever seen Hulk Hodgeman? It's a Twitter account where it's like stuff Hodgeman says that. I would say, yeah, but as the Hulk. I mean, I've heard the Hulk for other things, but not there's one for I'm not sure how he feels about it. Sounds you gotta check it out. Well, mind is swirling? Alright? Uh did you say listener mail? Oh no, If you want to know more about radiation sickness, you can type those words in the search bar. How stuff works. And since I said

search parts, time for listening. Now, I'm gonna call this something I've never really thought about before. Hey, guys, my loyal listener from the very beginning, I've listened to every podcast and watched all of your TV shows episodes, um, and most, if not all, of your Internet roundups. How about that this person is Yeah, yeah, I'm writing about a very serious topic and one that is dear to my heart. Uh. The high rate of physician and medical

students suicide. Uh. This one of the highest stress careers in terms of training, debt, work schedule and trying not to take on the stress of every one of your patients that you see. You are not allowed. I'm sorry. We she's speaking first person. We are not allowed to have any mental health weaknesses where we risk being labeled a liability by medical board, employers, are peers, and even our own patients. Um, I really thought about that. You

know you can't like stoic doctors. Whateverybody wants our school I see, I want a wacky doctor Adams. Yeah, like a whoopie cushion or joy buzzer. Every now and then our schooling and training or grueling, it can be emotional roller coaster. We're sleep deprived, made to feel inadequate on a daily basis, and often humiliated and belittled in front of our peers. She said it was tougher than eleven

years in the army. We're supposed to convince our patients to seek help when they need it, but we are certain to harm our own careers if we personally reach out for help. So she said that in recent years she had a hit close to home. Classmate committed suicide before graduating, and his parents have spoken out UH and have gotten together with a filmmaker to create a documentary called Do No Harm UH exposing the silent epidemic. So

they have a lot of support. Um, you can go to their Facebook page UH Facebook dot com slash do No Harm the film, and um they have a Kickstarter that you can look up if you just google kickstarter do No Harm documentary there really close. That's just a couple of thousand away from their benching funds. So I think they are going to maybe even by this time it will be done. But if anyone out there felt like phone a few dollars their away, they'll be great.

So that's from Brooklyn Bertel's, a fourth year medical student. Thanks a lot, Brooklyn, It's really that was a great email. It took a really a turn at the at the beginning, right, Yeah, So thanks for that. Um. And if you guys want, you can go help that kickstarter out. If you want to hang out with us, you can hang out with us on Twitter at s y s K podcast in the same for Instagram. You can join us on Facebook

dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us at at Home on the Web Stuff you Should know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how staff Works dot com. MHM