Can radiation be felt? If I pick up a tube containing radioactive material, would I feel the radiation coming off it in any way, or would it feel just like a regular metal tube?
In: Chemistry
From my understanding, you only feel radiation at an extreme intensity, at the point where it essentially hits a lethal dose in a matter of seconds, or fraction of seconds. There was the case of the demon core, where someone basically had a sudden flash of exposure, and got a sour taste in his mouth and an intense burning sensation in his hand closest to it–but he was well in excess of a lethal dose not just in his hand.
Though, I also remember the medical scanner software mishap, where people did indeed feel intense pain when getting a dose orders of magnitude higher than expected, but once again I believe this was a short burst of high intensity.
So largely, lower-intensity (but still potentially life-threatening) sources likely wouldn’t be felt to my knowledge. I think if something took exposure over a course of days or weeks, you likely would hit radiation sickness before physical sensation?
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