Fallout is everywhere, NO not the game.
Or the Boy.
Or…
NO.
Just the nuclear kind!
Seven blessings friends, Trace here for DNews.
Nuclear fallout is an inevitable side-effect of nuclear disaster.
When a nuclear weapon is detonated (or a nuclear power plant has its worst day ever) radioactive
dust is thrown into the atmosphere by the explosive force.
Those radioactive particles then fall back to Earth causing "nuclear fallout."
Nuclear fallout is no different than the ash, dust, dirt, water, and other particulates
that would be thrown by any explosion, except one key thing: it's all radioactive.
Fallout forms within minutes of a nuclear explosion, and depending how high the particles
were propelled into the atmosphere, fallout can be carried by the wind and spread far
and wide from the original nuclear disaster!
How far?
All the far there is.
Before 1963, a handful of countries exploded more than 500 nuclear weapons in Earth's atmosphere,
blanketing the entire planet in low levels of radioactive fallout.
But, don't worry!
When it comes to radiation it's about dosage, and usually that dosage is low… but detectable.
A 12-year study called the "Baby Tooth Survey" collected nearly 300,000 baby teeth from children
in the St. Louis area and found a 100-fold increase of isotope "strontium-90, [that]
rose and fell in correlation with [those] atomic bomb tests."
Again, super low dosage, but it was there.
So, how fallout can affect you depends on when you were exposed and how.
All radioactive heavy elements decay, shooting off tiny high-energy particles over time.
If those bits hit your DNA, they can damage it, causing cancers.
This is why higher dosages are worse, because there are more of those particles decaying,
causing more potential damage.
So, the closer to the nuclear disaster you are, the more dangerous the fallout will be.
For example, according to the National Cancer Institute and CDC, people living in the U.S.
from the 1945 to 1963 likely ingested radioactive iodine-131 left from nuclear testing in the
American West and over the Pacific.10 After the tests, the fallout particles blew over
the U.S., were trapped by moisture, and rained down onto our fruits and vegetables.
Those were then consumed by goats and cows, and the I-131 was passed into their milk.
Eventually, people drank it, and the isotope lodged into human thyroids, decaying and occasionally
causing thyroid cancer.10 Another example is the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
who were closely studied after World War II.
Researchers documented a late-life cancer rate that was much higher than the global
population; things like bone and thyroid cancers, tumors, and leukemia.
And this is still going on as people in Nevada, New Mexico and elsewhere eat local food grown
in soil contaminated by radiation…
If Darwin-forbid something nuclear did happen today, you could create a fallout shelter.
Radioactive particles are easily blocked by things like… dirt.
According to FEMA, only a foot of concrete or a foot and a half of dirt would cut radiation
dosages by 40 times.
But you don't have to stay in that shelter as long as you think.
The "Seven-Ten Rule" says for every factor of seven hours the radioactivity decreases
by 10.
So seven hours after the explosion, it's 10-percent as radioactive; at 49 hours (seven times seven)
it's only 1-percent of the original dosage; and at 7 times 7 times 7 hours -- about two
weeks, it's only one tenth of one percent of the original -- which is why FEMA says,
keep enough water and food for at least two weeks!
The thing is, there is a weird benefit of global radiation exposure…
The isotope plutonium-239 was released into the world at exactly 5:30am on July 16, 1945.
Meaning, it's a good marker for scientists!
They've been using PL-239 to determine the melting of ice caps and glaciers since its
introduction -- amongst other things!
So sometimes, destructive science can teach us a lot.
Silver isotope lining?
So if nuclear fallout causing cancer is the end of the line, where's the beginning?
How do we make nuclear fuel?
Don't worry, we made a super cool video about that right here
Are you
afraid of fallout?
Even though it's around us all the time?