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
SciFi writers didn’t assume that gamma rays would make Bruce Banner into the Hulk, or that a radioactive spider bite would turn Peter Parker into Spiderman. It’s called a MacGuffin. The story gets interesting once hulk or Spider-Man exist, so the writers need a way to bring them into existence. In doesn’t really matter what that way is.
Post WW2 few people knew what atomic power or radioactivity was, but they knew it was powerful, so it worked in a literary sense as a MacGuffin.
If the stories had been written 100 years earlier it might have been electricity (like Frankenstein) or vampire magic.
If they had been written 2 millennia before it might have been a blessing (or a curse) from the Gods.
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