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If you receive around 1 Gy in five minutes, you won't abscond very far. And you would likely receive a lot more. Not to mention that you would leave a trail of

If you receive around 1 Gy in five minutes, you won't abscond very far. And you would likely receive a lot more. Not to mention that you would leave a trail of radioactivity from the reactor to your lair/hiding place. But it is well possible that some people could still try. The Four Lions, only in the real world.

lazide 3y ago
I’ve personally seen someone get 7 Gy and be relatively functional (in a localized area) - no worse than he went into the OR anyway, to get the stent put in his brain. And he almost certainly lived another decade or so. The other stuff sure, but it takes a truly mind boggling amount of radiation to incapacitate someone (near) instantly. A lot more than that. 100-150 Gy? The only concrete number I found looking around for ‘instant’ was 1000 Gy to likely kill someone within an hour.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  Localized exposure is a different story, some body parts can take a lot of radiation. IDK if someone, having just burglarized a live reactor, can keep their exposure localized in a favorable place. I think incapacitation is what matters. The human body will fight death for some time, but it won't be able to running around with a heavy backpack of fission material. Various tissues will scream bloody hell almost immediately from being torn apart by the radiation.
  - lazide 3y ago
    True, though notably the Chernobyl 'firefighters' were picking up hot chunks of core and fuel from the reactor building roof, and reported at most feeling tired at the time. They did die shortly afterwards, but that was weeks to a month after. Definitely a death sentence either way.
- gambiting 3y ago
  Here's an IAEA report from an incident where a worker walked into an irradiation room of a commercial irradiator with the radioactive source still up - he was only there for about one minute and received a dose of "only" about 10-20Gy total, but realized something was wrong because of intense pain that developed shortly after entering the room, followed by intense neusea and diarrhea 5 minutes later. Despite receiving urgent care immediately he still died a month later. It's a fascinating(if very morbid) read if you want to have a look: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub925_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub925_web.pd... The point is, that maybe the terrorists wouldn't be inacapacitated, but they certainly wouldn't be able to ignore the effects for very long if at all.

lazide 3y ago

I’ve personally seen someone get 7 Gy and be relatively functional (in a localized area) - no worse than he went into the OR anyway, to get the stent put in his brain. And he almost certainly lived another decade or so. The other stuff sure, but it takes a truly mind boggling amount of radiation to incapacitate someone (near) instantly. A lot more than that. 100-150 Gy? The only concrete number I found looking around for ‘instant’ was 1000 Gy to likely kill someone within an hour.

inglor_cz 3y ago
Localized exposure is a different story, some body parts can take a lot of radiation. IDK if someone, having just burglarized a live reactor, can keep their exposure localized in a favorable place. I think incapacitation is what matters. The human body will fight death for some time, but it won't be able to running around with a heavy backpack of fission material. Various tissues will scream bloody hell almost immediately from being torn apart by the radiation.
- lazide 3y ago
  True, though notably the Chernobyl 'firefighters' were picking up hot chunks of core and fuel from the reactor building roof, and reported at most feeling tired at the time. They did die shortly afterwards, but that was weeks to a month after. Definitely a death sentence either way.
gambiting 3y ago
Here's an IAEA report from an incident where a worker walked into an irradiation room of a commercial irradiator with the radioactive source still up - he was only there for about one minute and received a dose of "only" about 10-20Gy total, but realized something was wrong because of intense pain that developed shortly after entering the room, followed by intense neusea and diarrhea 5 minutes later. Despite receiving urgent care immediately he still died a month later. It's a fascinating(if very morbid) read if you want to have a look: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub925_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub925_web.pd... The point is, that maybe the terrorists wouldn't be inacapacitated, but they certainly wouldn't be able to ignore the effects for very long if at all.