How does radiation poisoning kill you, and why does it sometimes take weeks?
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DNA is the instructions on how our body makes things. This includes regrowing/replacing/repairing damage to parts. Radiation poisoning messes up these instructions.
As a result, someone affected might not immediately show symptoms like you might expect in a horror movie. That’s because the body hasn’t had to regrow/replace/repair those cells yet. When the time comes inevitably to replace those cells, those instructions now damaged, are still being followed, if they aren’t destroyed completely.
So, this is why you can seemingly survive the initial dose, only to die in agony weeks later. There was a Japanese man who took a massive dose of radiation, but because of this process taking some time to be noticeable, some thought he was recovering. Sometime after the first week it all went down hill.
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