How painful is it to die from acute radiation poisoning?

[nismaratwork]

I believe that several elements contribute to the fear of radiation exposure:

First, Hormesis is not a sure thing, so if you survive the acute phase, you may well be living with the Sword of Damocles called cancer. Second, there is the "walking ghost" phase for higher doses, properly the latent phase, which is spooky on a basic level. We don't want to die, but we especially don't want to see our deaths coming, having had a taste of the pain to come. Finally, you can't see it, you can't smell it, or fight it, and that scares people. For the average person, germs and radiation are about as scary as scary gets, even if they are more likely to die with a broiling engine block in their lap.

This being said, in terms of pain experienced, compared to some forms of late stage cancers, burns, systemic infection, and a number of other ways to die, radiation poisoning is not the most painful by any measure. Remember though, that we fear death, but we especially fear DYING. The anticipation of death, and the pain to come that has already been felt during the acute phase, and will return after the latent phase is surely hell. Why do we fear aircraft accidents so much? Is it a worse way to die than being shot, or a car accident, or is it that you spend you last minutes completely out of control, in horrible terror?

@Morbius: Radiation Hormesis is not confirmed, but it does seem likely. Fractional doses are clearly less immediately lethal than single large doses however. I think "avoid the blue glow" is just a good way to live.

 

[rod_worth]

My job in the nuclear navy was a radiation health physicist. It's been several years so my estimates might be a little off, but in the ballpark.

22-24 Rem is when we require medical monitoring because your blood will start to show significant mutations.

~50-100 Rem is enough you give you radiation sickness, which is a more severe version of having sun-poisoning from being outside in the summer sun too long. This is the point where you get 'sun-burned' and you begin vomiting. Death is low.

~100-300 Rem. Damage to internals becomes significant. We're usually concerned with gastric intestinal tracts (spelling?), esophagus, lungs, ect. Death is at 'I think' 40% over the course of a few weeks to a few months.

~300-500 Rem. Severe damage to internals. Death rises to 60-90% in a few days to a week or two.

>500 Rem. Death occurs at >90% in a day or two (less than a week).

I hope this helps. Just for a comparison, the average person gets ~0.4-0.6 (I can't remember if it's .35 or .6)Rem/year from the Sun. I used to take reactor samples, and had to make several emergency reactor compartment entries (@ 1 hour post shutdown), and my 'lifetime' accumulated dose was 0.100 Rem which by industry standards is considered 'high', so most other people receive way less than that; working around reactors is inherently safe with respect to day-to-day radiation accumulation. If you want a really good 'picture' of the pain involved however, in my opinion, try watching the movie "K-19: The Widowmaker" with Harrison Ford. It's a true story about a Russian nuclear submarine that develops a severe reactor plant leak/rupture and the Men that tried fixing it.

 

[mjlaris]

The LD 50/30 (the lethal dose that will kill 50% of the population in 30 days with no medical treatment) is 450 REM. With medical treatments like blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants, you can survive up to about 1000 REM. Beyond 1000 REM, they can keep you alive for a while but you'll eventually die. The Shift Manager at Chernobyl got over 1000 REM the night of the accident and died about a year later. As for pain, it is not a death that I choose. Your brain swells, as do your other limbs, you vomit, etc. Exposure to several thousand REM will kill you in a matter of minutes to seconds.

I used to teach a nuclear engineering class where, to impress upon students the need to be careful, I had them calculate how long it would take them to die if a commercial nuclear power plant spent fuel bundle were to be brought to the surface of the spent fuel pool. The answer was about 0.4 seconds. A spent fuel bundle gives off about 2 million REM.

Mark Laris
Chief Nuclear Engineer
Reactor Engineering Associates

 

[nismaratwork]

The LD 50/30 (the lethal dose that will kill 50% of the population in 30 days with no medical treatment) is 450 REM. With medical treatments like blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants, you can survive up to about 1000 REM. Beyond 1000 REM, they can keep you alive for a while but you'll eventually die. The Shift Manager at Chernobyl got over 1000 REM the night of the accident and died about a year later. As for pain, it is not a death that I choose. Your brain swells, as do your other limbs, you vomit, etc. Exposure to several thousand REM will kill you in a matter of minutes to seconds.

I used to teach a nuclear engineering class where, to impress upon students the need to be careful, I had them calculate how long it would take them to die if a commercial nuclear power plant spent fuel bundle were to be brought to the surface of the spent fuel pool. The answer was about 0.4 seconds. A spent fuel bundle gives off about 2 million REM.

Mark Laris
Chief Nuclear Engineer
Reactor Engineering Associates

I think in the 1000-1500 REM range too, you have the horror of the walking ghost period. There is a lot of thinking that while people fear death, the concept of protracted horror facing an inevitable end is torment. It goes a long way to explaining why 2 minutes falling in a airplane with a rapid death at the end is seen as torturous, but being ejected from a car and lingering is less so. The fear you experience in a given situation is a function of the exotic nature of that situation, your level of control or perceived control over events, and then pain and suffering. The complete breakdown of your body's function at a cellular level followed by multiple organ failure is horrendous, painful, and out of control. I would consider it a truly gruesome way to die, and I for one would eat a gun once symptoms re-emerged after the latent phase.