Why doesnt a geiger counter get destroyed by the radiation, while everything else does?

Question

Just watched Chernobyl and saw how “everything” electrical got destroyed from the radiation, but not the geiger counters. Why it that?

In: Biology

Answer 1

It destroys electronics, not necessarily all electric equipment. The margin to failure for advanced electronics is much smaller than a simple current detector.

So you can have significant degradation of a Geiger counter and it will still be USABLE unless you induce a large enough current to actually burn out windings.

On the other hand, even a small amount of damage to a circuit board can brick a computer.