How long would it take for the effects of massive radiation to show up?

[Craer]

I'm DMing a throwaway game for a few of my friends, where we're really not too focused on realism or plot continuity. To give an example, the Hexblade has an antimatter cannon. Anyway, the group killed a Dolomite (from the Monsternomicon) and found inside an ornate breastplate and sword with a dull metal sheath. Both sword and armor are glowing with a uniformly bright cyan color. The sheath of the sword is made of lead.

Yeah, the items are made out of cesium. I'm evil.

Anyway, the question I have is how long would it take for such massive doses of radiation poisoning to show up? Fortitude saves are the order of the day, but does anyone have any ideas on how I should run this?

-Craer


EDIT: I did some more research, and it turns out the cesium is liquid at room temperature. Oops. What else could I use? The above question still applies.

 

[Zappo]

I don't know about radiation damage, but I wonder how much those things weigh.

 

[Garmorn]

If it is radoactive enough to glow then about 20 minutes and dead in about an hour.

The rate and affects of radiation posioning depends on the level of radition/rate of posioning.

 

[Treebore]

I don't know about radiation damage, but I wonder how much those things weigh.

I don't know exactly what you mean by massive, but you are talking dead, with no save, within minutes, to hours, to days. The difference in times is dependent on how massive a dosage exposure you are talking.

Since you are talking direct exposure to a large amount of pure cesium, dead in less than an hour, incapacitated in about 10 to 20 minutes, dependent upon body mass and other variables. That is assuming I am even close to remembering how many RADs are put off by cesium.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Quick perusal of the NRC site gives an annual average exposure of 360 millirems. Acute exposure (ie over several hours) of 400,000 millirems will result in death in 50% of the population within 30 days. 200,000 and up will result in hair loss, sickness, and a good chance of dying within six weeks. Radiation sickness is possible with an acute exposure starting at around 50,000 millirems. Maximum safe occupational exposure is limited to 10,000 per year. A full set of dental x-rays only gives you an acute exposure of about 40 millirems.

OTOH, Cerenkov radiation (the blue glow) is emitted when intensely high energy particles travel faster than light (not faster than c, just faster than the light is travelling through the air or water or whatever). I would suspect that close exposure to something glowing visibly blue in the air would be almost immediately fatal.

IAMANP (I Am Not A Nuclear Physicist), so don't use this as an excuse to take some radium home from the lab to play with.

 

[Tessarael]

EDIT: I did some more research, and it turns out the cesium is liquid at room temperature. Oops. What else could I use? The above question still applies.

Just make the blade and armor always have frost or chill metal on them - that's one way to handle the cesium being solid. i.e. They're not at room temperature.

If you want to be more realistic, I suspect Cesium wouldn't be a great choice for it's material properties even if it was solid.

This is the sort of thing that might be useful for you to choose what radioactive metal to use, e.g.
http://www.chemsoc.org/viselements/pages/data/plutonium_data.html
http://nobel.scas.bcit.ca/resource/ptable/pu.htm
Plutonium is warm to the touch, it is a silvery metal, the surface will be oxidized yellow.

If they glow, that will be more obvious in the dark.

Just my thoughts ...

 

[Rel]

I don't know about radiation damage, but I wonder how much those things weigh.

Maybe not as much as you might think. Cesium has an atomic weight of 132.9 vs. 55 for Iron. So only about 2.4 times as much as an iron sword of equal size. I'd suspect that the scabbard weight might be annoying though. Lead has an atomic weight of 207, not that much less than Uranium.

Speaking of which, Uranium has a melting point of 1135C so it would be solid at room temperature. And it is more common than Silver (according to Los Alamos National Laboratory) so you could certainly find enough of it. Living long enough to get good at smithing it might be a problem though...

 

[LazarusLong42]

Air has a very low index of refraction, so Cerenkov radiation will only show up in air at extreme energies--i.e. you would be dead very quickly just by being near this thing.

Cesium's melting point is ~28 °C, so it's not room temperature that's the problem, it's body temperature But yeah, uranium would be a better choice.

Since you've stated you're not really worrying too much about rality, though... why worry about reality? Give anyone who gets near it for long periods of time a DC 20 Fort save or be sickened, 1d6 Str/1d6 Con loss per failed Fort save. Make the blue glow magical, i.e. it's there to say "Hey, you idiot, maybe you shouldn't touch this if you're not immune to radioactivity!"

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Hmmm...cesium armor. Time to break out the Create Water. Better make that an Enlarged Create Water.

 

[tarchon]

Naturally occurring cesium (133) isn't really radioactive anyway, though I wouldn't want to be standing near it just because of the extreme chemical reactivity. I'm pretty sure it burns exposed flesh, and of course it explodes on contact with water.