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

[Majere]

I never said who I was referring to, it wasnt a swipe at anyone in particular just a call to the gods for mercy
and pidgeon science just means layman science, like when people misuse mass and weight. Yes I spotted the specific gravity, but you were the only one using that term !

We dont do any class on pidgeons.. that I know of


Majere

 

[Craer]

Thank you all very much for the detailed information. I think, if I actually define it, I'll use colbat 60, or just plan old Madeupium. The armor will kill whomever actually puts it on - a cursed item, and nonmagical!

That's a neat idea, by the way. If you've got a sword made of Uranium, or some other suitably hard radioactive mineral capable of holding an edge, yet constantly chilled by magic, it could still be enchanted and glow naturally. If you dispelled the shielding/cooling spell with a command word, it would grow extremely hot and emit radiation (perhaps as a Poison spell on a hit?), yet would require massive saves on behalf of anyone in a large radius. Oh, how I love powerful magic items with both severe benefits and drawbacks.

Again, thanks to all who helped out.

-Craer

 

[eryndel]

A particularly bad wavelength of gamma radiation is emitted by Cobalt 60, which is a common byproduct of nuclear power plants. And it's really not much heavier than Iron, and lasts a relatively long time.

What's the particularly bad gamma of the Co-60? I'm curious because I've been using it quite a bit in my research. Now the source I have is only about 3 uci, but I think the harm would be more dependent on the activity then a particular energy of the gamma, considering that most of them range right around 1 MeV. I've seen table salt come out awfully hot out of the reactor.

Just curious,

Werner

 

[tarchon]

Thank you all very much for the detailed information. I think, if I actually define it, I'll use colbat 60, or just plan old Madeupium. The armor will kill whomever actually puts it on - a cursed item, and nonmagical!

We often call it unobtainium when we're inventing devices that use materials with properties that no material actually has.

I see a quasi-interesting use for cesium. Picture if you will...

DM: "OK, you enter the room. You immediately note that the floor is metal and that the far end has a brick wall with an iron door. The room is quite dry and dusty, as well as cool like the rest of the caverns."
Rogue: "Metal, eh? I check the room for traps. Especially electrical kinds!"
Bard: "I listen at the door."
Mage: "I gather skeleton dust for my Scare spell."
Fighter: "I wait around for something to fight."
DM: "OK, no traps, though it does seem to you like there might be a hollow space under the floor, which is made of up metal panels. Under all the dust, it looks kind of silvery white, maybe a bit like mithral. Oh, and no noise at the door, that you can hear, Bardo."
Rogue: "It's solid though?"
DM: "Seems to be."
R: "Like mithral... I try to pry one up."
DM: "Where is your lantern while you're doing this?"
R: "[cautiously] Er... um... I guess I put it... down?"
DM: "OK. After a bit, you notice your fingers start to itch as you mess with the panel. And roll a DC 15 Ref save."
R: "Ah, nuts. Yay - that 20 probably makes it. What happened?"
DM: "Oh, the panel you were standing on just collapsed and you fell through, the floor, but luckily you managed to grab the edge of the hole. You also hear a splashing sound below, and then a big woosh-bang sound."
R: "Whoosh-bang? That ain't good."
Bard: "I run over to help him."
DM: "Give me a DC 15 Dex save."
B: "Crap, do I fall through too?"
DM: "No, you slipped and fell down. It seems as though the floor got slippery while you were standing around on it. It looks like there's quicksilver on the floor where you were standing, and on your boots. Now you're lying prone."
Fighter: "I carefully walk over to help the rogue."
DM: "So that's only a DC 10 - looks like you made it. You notice the lantern is now lying in a puddle of quicksilver. Mage, you doing anything?"
M: "Walking carefully out of the room. Hey, I only have like 10 hit points!"
DM: "OK, Rogo, you're up."
R: "I pull myself up."
DM: "You know, this metal actually seems to burn your flesh while you're gripping it. It's actually melting in your hand too as you clutch it tightly, like butter or something. Give me a DC 15... let's say Fort save to keep your grip on it and you take 1 hp of damage from the burn."
R: "Drat. Con? Might as well not ever roll. Yep, I blew it."
DM: "You loose your grip. And fall. You catch a glimmer of water below as you plunge."
F: "Can I grab him?"
DM: "You can try, but the floor right here is getting to be covered with the stuff. DC 20 Ref not to slip while lunging for the plunging rogue."
F: [Rolls]
DM: "You're now lying face down in a puddle of corrosive quicksilver, and you can actually feel the remaining panels beneath you starting to soften from the heat of the lantern and your body."
F: "Gaahh!"
R: "Well, I guess the water in the pit will wash this crap off of me at least. Hey, why are you grinning like that?"

 

[tarchon]

What's the particularly bad gamma of the Co-60? I'm curious because I've been using it quite a bit in my research. Now the source I have is only about 3 uci, but I think the harm would be more dependent on the activity then a particular energy of the gamma, considering that most of them range right around 1 MeV. I've seen table salt come out awfully hot out of the reactor.

I believe radio-cobalt (60) gets the reputation because it's easily produced in a "salted" nuclear bomb and it has a half-life that makes it suited to particularly nasty fallout. It got a lot of press as a doomsday dirty bomb material in the 50s, though I'm not personally convinced that it would be as bad as advertised (but it would be pretty bad). Wavelengths of gamma don't really matter that much. There's very little spectral dependence in the ionization cross-section at those energies. As a bit of extra trivia, cobalt also gets its name fromt he same source as everybody's favorite CR 1/6 monster, the kobold.

 

[manji]

From the lecture we received in 2nd year medicine ....
====================

EFFECTS OF RADIATION
The effects of radiation are out of all proportion to the amount of energy deposited. For example a single dose of 10 gray given to the whole body will kill almost anyone who receives it, unless they are given a bone marrow transplant. However 10 gray deposits only 10 joule per kilogram of tissue (1 gray = 1 joule per kilogram). You should easily be able to calculate that 10 joule per kilogram represents a temperature rise of only 0.003 °C (remember that the body's specific heat is 3500 joule kg-1 K-1 ). Note that the heat in a cup of coffee if distributed throughout your body would raise your temperature by ten times this amount.

Why is radiation so damaging? The main reason is that it produces ionisation of material that it passes through. Thus chemical changes may occur which are extremely harmful to the body.

As an example, ionisation can convert extremely toxic and dangerous materials to safe ions.
Na and Cl2 are extremely toxic materials however if we take a single electron from atomic Na and add one to atomic Cl we get Na+ and Cl- which are the ions present in salty water. The reverse may also occur in the body, thus superoxide (O2-) is highly toxic to body tissues although oxygen is regarded as being relatively harmless. In fact superoxide is so toxic that every single cell in your body has an enzyme called superoxide dismutase that acts to destroy superoxide about as fast as is theoretically possible. Consequently when tissue is irradiated, chemical changes occur which disrupt the normal function of the cells. This can lead to sickness or death if the damage is too high or to cancer and genetic mutations at lower levels of radiation.

Radiation at sufficiently high levels may cause sickness or death within a short time after the irradiation. A dose of 2 gray will cause sickness in a substantial portion of the population (25%), while a dose of 10 gray will cause eventual death for most.

Exposure over a long time to relatively low doses may result in the induction of cancer. In fact this and genetic damage are the only proven effects of very low doses of radiation.

Cancer is the most likely consequence of low dose radiation and it is believed that any dose of radiation no matter how small will have a probability of inducing cancer. There is usually a delay of 5 to 10 years between the exposure and the induction of cancer. One gray of radiation given to the whole body will give a probability of cancer induction of about 4% for adults and perhaps up to twice that for children. This risk is additive so that multiple small doses over a number of years will give the same risk as from the total dose given on a single occasion (provided that the total dose and dose rate are not too high).

There is also a genetic risk associated with radiation exposure. This may increase the incidence of genetic defects in the progeny of the irradiated individual. The probability of such defects is approximately 1% for 1 gray of irradiation. Note that there are a number of other interventions which may increase the incidence of genetic defects, for example, surgery undertaken to save the life of those with genetic abnormalities.

These effects are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1 Effects of Radiation
High dose
Sickness
Death
Organ destruction
Low dose
Cancer 4% per Gy
Genetic effects 1% per Gy


USE OF RADIATION IN MEDICINE
Radiation is commonly used in medicine, in fact medical exposure is by far the largest man-made source of radiation. It far exceeds all other sources of exposure such as nuclear reactors, nuclear explosions or the industrial use of radiation. In Australia the average radiation dose from medical x-rays is about 0.8 mSv per person. Hence it is of the same order as the natural radiation dose. The largest contributor to this medical irradiation is now the use of CT scans which accounts for 45% of the total in Australia. It has been estimated that 250 people die from cancer each year in Australia as a result of exposure to the x-rays in CT scanning. Of course we can never prove that this is true because the total number of deaths from cancer is so much larger.

Examples of the use of radiation in medicine are:
PROCEDURE EFFECTIVE DOSE (mSv*)
Simple chest x-ray 0.05
Abdominal x-ray 1.0
Pelvis x-ray 0.7
CT scan
body
head
7 - 15
1
Angiography 5 -10
Nuclear medicine 2-10
Therapy 20-50 Gy (treated volume)


OTHER SOURCES OF RADIATION
The first point to note however, is that mankind has been subject to natural radiation throughout the whole of history. The earth is radioactive and so is each and every person on it. The natural radiation levels in Perth are given in Table 2.

Table 2 Natural background radiation SOURCE DOSE (mSv)
Terrestrial (232Th, 238U) 0.6
Cosmic rays 0.3
Radioactivity in the body
Radon 0.2
Th/U 0.2
40K 0.2
TOTAL 1.5


There are parts of the earth where the radiation level is quite high either due to the radioactivity of the earth in that environment or due to the increased cosmic radiation which occurs at altitude (see Table 3). On the Darling scarp there are areas where the natural radiation level is up to 5 mGy per annum. The beach at Minninup is capable of giving a dose near to the maximum level that is regarded as acceptable for radiation workers (20 mGy), if you were to sit on it for the whole year. If you fly in a jet aircraft the radiation level rises to about 5 mGy per hour. Thus a round trip to Europe represents an additional radiation dose of about 0.2 mGy. Concorde will give an even higher dose rate.

Table 3. Areas of high natural dose Location Dose rate (mGy / year)
Brazil (monazite) 5-10
Brazil (volcanic) 16-120
Kerala in India (monazite) 13
South Pacific (volcanic) 10
Nile delta (monazite) 3-4
France (granite) 2-4
Minninup (mineral sands) 2-16


OTHER RISKS
The second point to note is that most common activities are not totally safe (see Table 4.). The obvious example is driving on the roads where the risk of death is approximately 1.3 in 10,000 per year, the risk of serious injury is 10 times higher. Of course this risk can be minimised by taking care etc, however some risk is always present. Likewise, most work places result in risks, as do most other activities. Thus although radiation is dangerous and it should only be used when benefit will result to the patient, there are many other activities which also introduce hazard. In particular most medical interventions have a significant risk associated with them. For example coronary angioplasty has a risk of death of approximately 0.5% per procedure. Thus we have to balance the risk against the benefit.

Table 4.
Activities with a risk of death of 1 in 1 million
Travelling 1000 km by air
Travelling 150 km by car
Smoking 3/4 cigarette
2 minutes rock climbing
1 week at work (low risk occupations)
20 minutes being a 60 year old
Whole body dose of 25 mGy

 

[Darklone]

Gah. I'm here to relax a bit and what do I have to read? Work.

 

[Agback]

Yes I spotted the specific gravity, but you were the only one using that term !

No, actually I used it too.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Darklone]

I'd still go with the density mentioned above

 

[Deadguy]

(I suspect the slow burning and low-explosive reactions treebore had were due to using old cesium samples that had thick oxide layers or still had alot of petrolium on the surface (cesium is stored under oil to prevent exposure to air or moisture). The classical experiment with cesium is to drop a pellet in a bowl sized beaker of water, the beaker pretty much always "explodes" (shatters) from the reaction)

You've seen that too?

The UK Open University used to have a classic chemsitry course programme that showed the different reactivities of the alkaline metals, Li through Cs. I actually knew the guy who was the demonstrator for those filmed experiments (it was filmed at the University of Nottingham). He said that the quantity of caesium used was supposed to have been judged small enough to be safe. He was as surprised as anyone when the heavy glass tank just exploded! Of course, the director was delighted!

I had a friend who did a PhD on caesium chemistry and it is seriously not nice stuff! I used to accompany him to the lab if he had work to do in the evening, since it wasn't considered wise to work alone with caesium (especially when your experiments involve heating the stuff in a sealed vessel at about 600 degC!)

Of course, that didn't stop one lecturer handing round a sealed glass tube of the stuff, just so people could see it melt at body heat! Chemsitry lecturers, it seems, are fairly uniformly mad!