Could You Live Through a Fallout?

A nuclear fallout, or simply a fallout is known as the events following a nuclear explosion. This is because residual radioactive material is propelled into the atmosphere following a nuclear blast and then “falls out” of the sky after some time. This is extremely dangerous because the radioactive material that lingers around after the initial explosion holds effects that could not only damage your long-term health, but the health of your unborn future loved ones for generations to come.

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We’ve all seen the damage that nuclear explosions can create; the surrounding area is pretty much toast (literally). However, the scary thing about nuclear bombs is not what we can see, but it’s what we “can’t” see. We tend to forget how powerful nuclear bombs really are. To put this in perspective, there has been over 220,000 deaths from nuclear bombs; and that’s only from two of them. That is over 2x the amount of airplane related deaths, and there has been over millions of airplane flights.

Imagine what would happen if we had dropped 10 more, or even worst imagine if the world went through a complete fallout. Nowhere is safe, we’re all trying to survive to the best we can, imagine the game “Fallout” by Bethesda. Could you live through such a harsh environment?

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The answer is yes, you technically could survive but the real question is would you even want to? There’s a famous torture quote; “You’d wish you were dead”. A world fallout would be one of those situations. The true intent behind the development of a nuclear bomb was not to just “kill” the enemy. It was created so that everything that the enemy knew and could have known would be destroyed. This includes the future children, land, and life as a whole. Scientist knew that nuclear weapons would devastate the future generations, and we we’re aware of the long-term effects.

We knew that cancer would come into play due to genetic mutations, and we knew that land would become poisoned by radiation. Strontium-90 is a radioactive isotope of strontium produced by nuclear fission, with a half-life of 28.8 years. It undergoes beta-decay into yttrium-90, but what does this mean and why should you care? Well, since Strontium-90 is a very “resistant” radioactive isotope,it can poison crops which are then eaten by animals, and those animals are then eaten by us humans. When we consume food that is infected by Strontium-90 it sits inside our bones, acts like calcium, and over time it brings mutations and cancer.

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It would literally be the end of the world, and it’s scary to think that during the Cold War, the end of the world was just one push of a button away. Yes, you could survive a nuclear fallout, if you’re lucky enough but realistically you’re probably better off dying from the initial nuclear blast.

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TL;DR: A nuclear fallout, or simply a fallout is known as the events following a nuclear explosion. This is because residual radioactive material is propelled into the atmosphere following a nuclear blast and then “falls out” of the sky after some time. The nuclear blast is dangerous, we all know this. It devastates everything within the blast radius but the dangerous part about a nuclear fallout is not what we can see, but what we can’t see.

Radioactive dust, and material can poison the world around us, causing the land we live in to become inhabitable for years to come. The exposure to such material creates negative long-term effects; cancer, genetic mutations but the scarier question is “how long” is “long-term”? It is not your life that you have to worry about, but it is the life of your unborn children, generations ahead of us will be affected and this is all according to plan. The question is not; could you live through a nuclear fallout, because the answer is technically yes, it is, would you even want to?

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REFERENCES:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout
2. https://lifehacker.com/how-to-survive-nuclear-fallout-1797685187
3. https://www.ready.gov/nuclear-blast
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90

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