Eli5: How does radioactivity kill/mutate the body?

Question

Apologies if the tag is wrong!

From what I understand, the radiation doesn’t do squat untill it’s ionized. The way it was explained to me is that the Radiation is the knife, while the ionization is the hand weilding the knife.

So how does it affect the body? I know it does something to our DNA but what does it do specifically?

Bonus Question: What did scifi writers assume Gamma Ray’s would do to Bruce Banner to make him the Hulk, as opposed to what it does IRL and just… kill you.

In: 63

Answer 1

I’m probably wrong here as I’m not anything close to someone who specializes in anything like this. But radiation was explained to me as “thousands and thousands of microscopic bullets shooting through you constantly”