- Welcome back, vault dwellers.
Now, when the world ends, you're gonna need
a little bit more than a laser pistol
and some power armor.
You're gonna need some food and water to survive.
And thankfully, it won't be all RAD roach meat out there.
You'll still have the very refreshing Nuka-Cola,
even though it's a little bit irradiated.
(bright techno music)
Ah, Nuka-Cola, the most popular soft drink
before the Great War.
They survived total nuclear annihilation to remain
one of the Wasteland's most popular drinks as well.
But though the bottles weren't destroyed,
radiation seeped in.
Nuka-Cola's are irradiated but useful.
They restore health points,
and give you more opportunities to target enemies,
but how many of these sodas could you actually drink
in real life, before radiation sickness sets in?
We start with the RAD.
RAD stands for radiation absorbed dose,
and equals one one hundredth of a joule of radiation energy
absorbed per kilogram of mass.
It has largely been replaced by other standardized units
like the gray, but we still know what happens health-wise
depending on how many RADs you get hit with.
So, how many Nuka-Colas can you drink before you drop?
(cash register cha ching)
In the latest Fallout adventure, Fallout 4,
which I spend most of my waking moments playing,
drinking one regular Nuka-Cola nets you some health
and a radiation dose of five RAD.
One Nuka-Cola isn't that bad,
nor is two or five,
but it's when you start guzzling Nuka-Cola
that you get into serious trouble.
At 20 Nuka-Colas, your internal organs
will have absorbed 100 RAD.
This is when radiation sickness,
or acute radiation syndrome sets in.
At exposure of 100 RAD, your body will lose
a noticeable amount of white blood cells
and you will feel weak and fatigued
as radiation knocks your DNA apart.
However, after a few days, your body is able to repair
some of this damage.
If a Nuka-Cola bottle has a similar volume
to maybe a glass bottle of Coca-Cola,
then radiation sickness will set in
after drinking only 1.25, or one and a quarter,
gallons of Nuka-Cola.
All right, this is how much Nuka-Cola will kill you.
If you drink 160 bottles of Nuka-Cola
in a short amount of time,
your body will be absorbing over 800 RAD,
and then no amount of Stimpaks will save you.
Within minutes after exposure,
you'll experience extreme nausea, and confusion,
and fever, and diarrhea.
You'll be mentally incapacitated,
and your organs will begin to fail.
After an 800 RAD exposure,
unlike an 100 RAD exposure,
which has effects that can be mitigated by early treatment,
your chances of dying with 48 hours
are effectively 100%.
Granted, it would be a challenge to drink
the 10 gallons of irradiated carbonated cola
needed to see that kind of exposure,
but remember, the effects of radiation
do add up over time.
According to recommendations
about how much radiation a civilian should absorb
over the course of a year,
assuming that we are drinking products and particles
of multiple nuclear explosions,
we should only subject our self to maybe,
you guessed it, five RAD a year.
That's just one measly Nuka-Cola.
While just one bottle of Nuka-Cola
will put you over the recommended limit
for how much radiation you should absorb
over the course of a year,
in the Wasteland, you have much bigger things
to worry about like deathclaws,
and frag mines, and raiders.
Just make sure you're not guzzling gallons
of Nuka-Cola, and that you're keeping
the bottle caps afterwards.
Why?
Because science and Wasteland economics.
And, yep.
(bright techno music)
Want more science?
Go back to Nerdist.com and check out my last video
about how strong the laser weapons are
in the Fallout series.
And as always, if you have any comments or questions,
you can hit me up on Twitter at Sci_Phile.
Thanks.