I just watched an anti-war movie “When the Wind Blows” (super disturbing 10/10) and wondered what was happening to the couple as a result of the radiation poisoning.
In: Biology
Radiation poisoning is caused by ionizing radtion, which is high energy particles that are energetic enough to break molecular bonds. When they strike your cells, they rip DNA bonds apart.
When this happens at a large and severe enough scale, you have radiation poisoning. Cells need DNA to operate and reproduce. Broken DNA can stop the cell from working properly and even die, and serious enough DNA damage make the cell unable to divide correctly.
Certain cells in your body, such as the lining of your intenstines divide rapidly and have high turnover. These cells are most affected by radiation, because cells are most susceptible to DNA damage when they’re dividing, and certain types of cells are always dividing.
When you get radiation poisoning, those cells are damaged so badly that they die, and they are unable to reproduce. If this happens to say your intestines and is serious enough, at this point, you’re a dead man walking—even if you stopped all the radiation, the damage has already been done, and will manifest itself with a little delay. In a few days, when your intestinal cells are supposed to regenerate, they simply fail to do so. No intestinal lining -> a slow, painful death.
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