Remember the awkward heavy vest they lay over you at your trip to the dentist’s office? Well they use those for a good reason, to keep you from dying.
Sickness
Get enough radiation exposure and you will develop ARS, that is Acute Radiation Syndrome. This is the official name for radiation sickness, also known as radiation poisoning.
Your body is dealing with being exposed to ionizing radiation a form of energy released by traveling atoms by way of gamma rays or more familiarly, X-rays. The ionizing radiation is a result of the excess energy being put off by the radioactivity of the pollution source such as the thing spewing it out towards you.
While a blast of a lot of radiation at once can create radiation poisoning the inverse creates a different effect. There is a different but similar condition known as Chronic Radiation Syndrome. This kind happens after long exposures to low doses of radiation.
First 24-72 hours
After being dealt a blow by radiation exposure the effects can be debilitating even after less than an hour. Depending on the amount of radiation these can be felt within minutes. The immediate effects are vomiting, nausea, trouble seeing, and lack of breath.
One of the first differences in appearances of the body is marked by dark and deep red patches of skin that are near the areas exposed most to the radiation source.
At this point you are looking down the barrel of a more serious threats to come, one of which is a double threat. Aplastic anemia is a condition in which the number of blood cells in the body is drastically reduced.
A result of having low blood cell count this means you also have less white blood cells which means infections are now a major threat. On top of this the body is most likely bleeding where cuts and rashes from the initial burns are located, because of the lack of blood platelets.
Weeks to months and 1-3 years
The terrifying thing about radiation when you are talking about a heavily irradiated body is the fact that even your DNA has been irreparably damaged. What this means is ultimately cancer forming and most likely killing you.
Unfortunately this also means birth defects for pregnant women is almost a definite occurrence. Although it may not be permanent in fact the woman who was married to the first responder firefighter to Chernobyl meltdown did go on to mother a son who lived. This was after losing her first child while pregnant and being exposed to her husband’s irradiated body.
Autophagosomes have been displayed by fluorescent markers injected into the body
Prevention
There are not many ways to defend from a heavy dose of radiation. Cosmetically the body will fare much better if the amount of time exposed to the pollution source is minimized. However the full effects are not immediately apparent.
The ways to defend from radiation are Iodine pills, lead shielding, detection, and source avoidance. Lead is a particularly good mechanism for shielding the body, the source of its effectiveness is found in its molecular structure.
Because of the element lead’s high atomic number and molecular density it is good at blocking the ionizing radiation coming at you from the radiation source.
Iodine pills work against radiation exposure by preventing the body’s thyroid a body part most sensitive to radiation from absorbing radioactive iodine. This radioactive iodine can not be used by the thyroid since it believes the good iodine from the pills has filled it to capacity already.
Ironically radioactive iodine treatment is used to treat thyroid problems like hyperthyroidism and even in treating prostate cancer.
Birth defects affect all life and in relevance to us mammals, animals too. Consider a piglet diagnosed with dipygus found at the National Chernobyl Museum in Ukraine.
Myrtle corbin, a famous dipygus was known by many, but she actually had parasitic twin and/or the medical condition of having two side by side pelvises.
Birth defects are so dangerous medically and cosmetically gruesome, because there are so many disparate possibilities. Babies can be born with less limbs or even more limbs than that of healthy babies.
Corbin an American freakshow performer who . She was able to move the little legs, while they were too weak and fragile to support actually walking.
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