ive been playing fallout forever (replaying 5th time), and i got interested in the idea of nuclear annihilation and atomic war and whatnot. i know we get natural rads from the sun, and man made rads from nukes... but i still dont really know what it is. could someone plz explain? i made a google search and cannot find a simple explanation..

You're body is constantly spewing out radiation. It's the breaking down of molecular isotopes. So every time you take in a breath, you're breathing in radiation. Every time you sip water, you're drinking radiation. You expel radiation and your internal body parts make radiation. It's just the breaking down of molecular isotopes, nothing to fear,e xcept in large quanitties.

I don't know how to explain it simple without sounding like a moron, it's not one of the things I read too much about. All I really know about radiation is like you said, it comes from the sun and it's used to make atomic bombs. Radiation is very deadly to most living things, a direct exposure to a lot of it can burn you up and turn you to dust, while a minor exposure can be toxic to your body and cause you to develop cancer cells or suffer from radiation sickness which causes your hair to fall out and for you to have constant diarria and vomiting.

That's all I can explain. :shrug:

oh so thats why atom bombs have radiation, they break down alot of molecules? through nuclear fission, right? why does the sun hav it though? sorry if im asking to much im just really curious

lol, im glad i never lived in hiroshima then xD

The sun uses a similar (Or the same? I'm dyslexic. It's either fusion or fission.) process to change hydrogen into helium.

woah, so whats happening on the sun can get us all the way down here? and im pretty sure its fission. in my language arts class i read a book called the bomb and they said it was fission... thats a fun word to say... fission, fission

The ozone layer filters a lot of the ultraviolet which can cause skin cancer.

The magnetic field protects us from high energy charged particles, which come from the sun during solar storms, and otherwise come from all directions in space (so-called "cosmic rays"). We mostly see the effects of those in the Northern Lights and Southern Lights.

In very simple terms radiation is a means of transmitting/transferring energy.

There are two types of radiation and the low energy stuff, called non-ionizing radiation, involves heat and light and some similar things. When non-ionizing radiation hits something it can't change it's basic form - it may warm it up or may charge it up and cause it to emit light in the form of a photon, but the thing it hits keeps its fundamental form. So if a carbon atom gets hit by non-ionizing radiation it remains a carbon atom and does not gain or loose any components, it just gets a little boost of energy.

When most people talk about "radiation" they mean ionizing radiation. This not only charges things up but it can change the particle it hits. Gamma radiation and neutron radiation tend to be the really damaging ones, although you're quite familiar with another form of ionizing radiation: X-rays. They all have the potential to cause damage by changing/damaging the particles in your body but the weaker forms (alpha and beta radiation) are unlikely to. As medical x-rays demonstrate very small doses of ionizing radiation can also be fairly safe.

lol u seem to know what ur talking about. so why does it linger around, like in water. i read that after the US tested the able bomb on bikini atoll they let the islanders back on, only to realize a few years later the sand had been poisoned. it also stayed in the lagoon

You werent even born when the bomb exploded there.

What plants crave....

Oh, wait, that's electrolytes.


The sun does fusion, not fission. Fusion happens when you fuse (hence the word) two lighter atoms into a heavier one.

fission happens when you take an atom and split it into multiple, lighter atoms/subatomic particles.

...ok?

It ionizes the molecules it comes in contact with, thus causing them to be radioactive themselves.

do the bombs also use fusion?

lol ther're alot of helpful ppl in the fallout forums. anywhere else id be shunned for being stupid xD

Some do, others don't. There is no bomb that does pure fusion yet, but there is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion-boosted_fission_weapon

Fusion is the holy grail of energy (being quite literally what powers the stars)

when they created the bombs did they just want a big boom or did they intend to hav the radiation?

Radiation is an unavoidable consequence of having a really big boom. Whether it was wanted or not I have no idea though.

but was that known before the bombs?

It was most probably known that there would be something of a radiation problem when A-bombs are detonated. However, the exact effects of it could only have been guessed at.

i think i have a good general understanding now. ahah i got better answers than i thought i would

"Radiation" literally means the travel of energy from one spot to another. Just think of the word "radiate", which calls to mind something emitting or spreading something. An area with high radiation has lots of this energy floating about.

Ionizing radiation, what people usually mean by it as mentioned, is the more well-known dangerous type. Atoms, which everything are made of, have a structure of protons and electrons, little bits of energy and matter (you probably already know the basic structure of an atom, but you did ask for simplification). When an atom is ionized, its electrons are stripped away. Think of it like sandpaper; rub sandpaper against a solid object, and it will scraqe away the outer layers. The high-energy radiation, fizzing about in a radioactive area, will scraqe away those electrons. Because atoms are what what your cells are made of, this causes cell damage such as burns, or damage to DNA, getting you things like cancer and mutation (generally just deformity, not monsters).

As for why it stays a long time, where is it going to go? Particles of energy are too tiny to be heavily affected enough by wind and gravity to just "blow away". You can't open the window and let all the energy outside. It permeates everything in the area and tends to just stay there, being dangerous. Science has various methods of dealing with it but obviously it's not the easiest thing to pack up and move elsewhere.

At least, that's how I understand it.

Radiation is simply another word for light. Generally we refer to anything above the visible spectrum of light as radiation. Ultra-violet, x-rays and gamma rays are all just higher wavelengths of light. Infra-red, microwaves and radio waves are on the lower end of the spectrum. The reason higher wavelengths of light like gamma rays are so deadly is because the wavelengths are so small (molecule sized) that they can interfere with DNA which leads to cancerous tumors. On the other end you have radio waves which can be meters in length and pass through our bodies without interacting with anything.

That's a dangerously misleading mental picture. It suggests that radiation is a thing, which it isn't - it is state of things.

As such, energy cannot "float about" and it cannot "travel", it can only be transferred.