Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.
Speaker 1: So this is, as they say, stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: Who's who? Is that? Me? Okay? Just me? Gotcha? No
Speaker 1: one else calls it this. Everybody called it that. Um,
Speaker 1: what do you call that? That's what they call it, right,
Speaker 1: you know the one with the dudes, right, it was Rambalan, Right,
Speaker 1: go on, tangents, Oh stuff, you should know. I have
Speaker 1: a family member that even you know, not blood relative.
Speaker 1: I'll just say that who A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: were like, you know you guys, you need to get
Speaker 1: to the point. You can't even Sometimes it's like six
Speaker 1: to ten minutes of stuff before you even start talking
Speaker 1: about the thing. It's like a no, sir, glad you
Speaker 1: enjoy it. This is not someone I see a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be vague. Would he know who who?
Speaker 1: He probably didn't even remember saying this. It was at
Speaker 1: a party or something. No, I'm just I'm banking on
Speaker 1: that maybe if I see him again, he'll say, I
Speaker 1: know what you were saying. I heard your message. I
Speaker 1: know you were talking a thinly veiled message. Right. It
Speaker 1: came on the heels of the neighbor's dog telling me
Speaker 1: to do stuff I didn't want to do. Right, Here's
Speaker 1: messages everywhere. That's what I'm trying to say. He's not
Speaker 1: the son of Sam No, no, David Berkowitz. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do a show on him. We really should. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, we should do a show where we
Speaker 1: talk about all the ones that we said we would
Speaker 1: do a show on and just forgot. Just a list, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the David Berkowitz number twenty eight to start some Andy
Speaker 1: Kaufman esque thing, to see how much will people take
Speaker 1: before they hate us. I wrote a really cool Rolling
Speaker 1: Stone profile of him from like nineteen eighty one maybe
Speaker 1: something like that, really really good um on Andy Kaufmann
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Yeah, he's a really interesting cat. I know
Speaker 1: he was basically just doing it all for himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why he was in the comedy, just to amuse
Speaker 1: himself nobody else. Yeah. So it takes a lot of colonists,
Speaker 1: and I think he inspired a lot of people who
Speaker 1: ended up bastardizing what he did too. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people that thought they followed in his footsteps,
Speaker 1: brought a mean spirit like Bob Newhart to things, to
Speaker 1: their to their work. Uh, like Gilbert Godfrey. No like
Speaker 1: you know, um, like you know and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: where you're where you're masquerading as someone to get a
Speaker 1: eyes out of somebody, but the jokes really on that person. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like bored at two, But I don't
Speaker 1: think any Kaufman. I think he always had a sweetness
Speaker 1: about him. I see what you mean. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's ever mean spirited and tried to make other people
Speaker 1: look dumb. Yeah, yeah, that's my dumb opinion. I think
Speaker 1: the joke wasn't between him and the audience on another person.
Speaker 1: The joke was on the audience, and the joke was
Speaker 1: to himself. Yeah, it was between him and himself. Whereas
Speaker 1: with like um, Sasha Baron Cohen, you're laughing, everybody's laughing
Speaker 1: at Ron Paul right, you know, well, like you know
Speaker 1: you saw did you See a Man on the Moon?
Speaker 1: The movie? I was in a long time. It was good.
Speaker 1: And when he uh first did the wrestling thing with
Speaker 1: his future wife and afterwards she was so mad and
Speaker 1: he was like wasn't that great? Like, you were so terrific,
Speaker 1: you were wonderful, And she's like, what what's going on?
Speaker 1: He's like, that was such a great performance and she
Speaker 1: was like, oh you were some jerk? Was that Courtney Love? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What a bizarre casting, I know. So that's a radiation
Speaker 1: sickness is intro. Man, Well, we had to mention something
Speaker 1: light because this isn't no, this is this is rough stuff,
Speaker 1: pretty heavy. The one good thing about radiation this is
Speaker 1: a grab Star article, by the way, is that the
Speaker 1: one good thing about it? Yeah, And the one good
Speaker 1: thing about radiation sickness is it's surprisingly tough to get
Speaker 1: most people who just go about their average day exposed
Speaker 1: the sunlight or um you know, even microwave in their coffee, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: or you know, tuning in their favorite radio program while
Speaker 1: it's around still um or I'm talking on their cell phone.
Speaker 1: That's another controversial one. Sure, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: radiation sickness. And the reason why you may get cancer
Speaker 1: from these things who knows. But the you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get radiation sickness because that the energy, the radiation coming
Speaker 1: from these things like your cell phone, from the sun,
Speaker 1: from the microwave are of a low enough frequency and
Speaker 1: a low enough energy that they don't have the potential
Speaker 1: to ionize. Um, they create ionizing radiation, which is, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's where a that's where radiation knocks an electron off
Speaker 1: of an atom that's creating an ion, and ions can
Speaker 1: wreak serious havoc. Yeah, in a in a human body
Speaker 1: in particular. Yeah, so you're not gonna in fact, even
Speaker 1: the cancer that you might get one day due to
Speaker 1: long term exposure to your cell phone, if that's even
Speaker 1: a thing. Um, that's not called radiation sickness. If you
Speaker 1: worked at a power plant that leaked and ended up
Speaker 1: getting cancer, that's not even considered radiation sickness. Or if
Speaker 1: you're an X ray technician and you get radiation poisoning
Speaker 1: or cancer years later, it's still not radiation sickness. Radiation
Speaker 1: sickness is where you are hit with such a huge
Speaker 1: immediate dose of ionizing radiation that you die pretty quickly
Speaker 1: from it, and you're going to also experience immediate symptoms,
Speaker 1: or you become the incredible hulk right in the court
Speaker 1: in the in the case of gamma rays, it was gamma,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. I think so right, Yeah, he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: turned into a monster. That's that's fictitious. He instead would
Speaker 1: have um possibly lost consciousness, maybe had diarrhea, vomited. Uh.
Speaker 1: He probably would have had blistered skin that would have
Speaker 1: never fully healed and would have formed scars under the
Speaker 1: skin called kelloid's scars that eventually you are outside of
Speaker 1: the skin. Yeah, and and then it would have just
Speaker 1: gotten even worse. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we. Well,
Speaker 1: what people should know what they're getting into. So, radiation
Speaker 1: sickness is an acute situation, and it's accumulative effect. Um,
Speaker 1: after you get that acute dose of radiation poisoning, there's
Speaker 1: another way to call it. Uh. And there are three
Speaker 1: kinds of ionizing radiation? Or is this article that the grabster?
Speaker 1: He had a couple of nice little clips in here?
Speaker 1: Did you notice the Neil Young. It would have to
Speaker 1: say dash Neil Young after it for me, and he
Speaker 1: still wouldn't get it. Well. One of his his paragraphs
Speaker 1: is entitled ionizing radiation and the damage Done. I think
Speaker 1: he was playing on the needle and the damage done.
Speaker 1: Maybe probably Neil Young song, he's a cool cat, grabs
Speaker 1: the so um like, he says. It's comes in three flavors,
Speaker 1: alpha particles, bata particles, and the gamma raise the aforementioned
Speaker 1: gamma rays alpha particles. The good news is they're the
Speaker 1: least dangerous uh for external exposure. And the other good
Speaker 1: news is your T shirt. Well, you're not wearing a
Speaker 1: T shirt. I'm wearing one underneath my undershirt. Well, then
Speaker 1: you're doubly protected, your friend, because your clothing is even
Speaker 1: um strong enough to stop an external alpha particle. Right,
Speaker 1: they just bounce harmlessly off of your clothing, that's right,
Speaker 1: and go want want Right, So you would think that
Speaker 1: they're not dangerous at all. Not true, because you can
Speaker 1: still inhale this stuff uh and ingest it in the
Speaker 1: form of radon gas. And that's where things can get bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you ingest um a radioactive particle, an ionizing particle,
Speaker 1: you um, it gets into your body, it gets transported around,
Speaker 1: and as it does, it goes through and it's like, hey, Adam,
Speaker 1: good to meet you. I'm gonna knock this electron off.
Speaker 1: And now you're a free radical. If you're a water molecule,
Speaker 1: and if you're gonna that's the way we say molecule
Speaker 1: from now on, by the way, and you're gonna go
Speaker 1: off and reak havoc on other stuff, right because when
Speaker 1: this when the um, when the the radioactive particle interacts
Speaker 1: with an atom and knocks the electron off, that's not
Speaker 1: the only damage done. When that electron is released or
Speaker 1: knocked off, energy in the form of what thirty three
Speaker 1: electron volts thirty three evs are released, and that weakens
Speaker 1: the chemical bonds holding the atom together. So it just
Speaker 1: totally alters the structure of the atom. Right. Well, when
Speaker 1: you're altering the structure of an atom, atoms make up molecules,
Speaker 1: so you alter the structure of the molecule. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about molecules, these things make up the basis of everything,
Speaker 1: from the proteins that are expressed in your body that
Speaker 1: carry out functions, to the cells that house these functions
Speaker 1: their act as factories. And all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: have all these weird alterations and like flawed and damaged
Speaker 1: um processes in your body, and it leads to systemic
Speaker 1: malfunction which leads to your at least severe illness, if
Speaker 1: not death. And all of this has to do with
Speaker 1: these little particles going through your body and bombar and
Speaker 1: knocking electrons off of their atoms. Yeah, and we'll get
Speaker 1: into the um specifics of how much is too much
Speaker 1: in a bit. But to continue, the beta particles are
Speaker 1: next up. They move very fastly with a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: and can travel a few feet when they're admitted from
Speaker 1: its source. The good news here is is that they
Speaker 1: can be blocked out by solid objects. Not your clothing,
Speaker 1: it's not solid enough, but like concrete or for Micah,
Speaker 1: if you were fighting under your kitchen counter, probably I
Speaker 1: like for Mica still it still has its you have
Speaker 1: what do you have like marble or quartz or some No,
Speaker 1: my my dining room table is would no, no, no,
Speaker 1: your kitchen counter like if you got into a cabinet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know what my countertop is. I should.
Speaker 1: I thought it was something, but then when I redid
Speaker 1: my kitchen and went to cut it, it's black and stone, right,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the brownish thing. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's a real stone. You went to cut it and
Speaker 1: did it just like completely mangle your ACKs off? No,
Speaker 1: because I got the right kind of blade. Um. I
Speaker 1: did my research, but it was it was not what
Speaker 1: I thought it was. And it's impossible to find this
Speaker 1: stuff now. Yeah, so we're just kind of begin to
Speaker 1: redo your countertops. Well at some point we have to.
Speaker 1: Are you going to redo them? No? Okay, that's gonna say.
Speaker 1: That's wow. That project right there. I tried to make
Speaker 1: my own concrete countertop you know those? Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can do it yourself. I didn't know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you build a frame and you pour the stuff and um,
Speaker 1: but it was it turned out okay for a first try,
Speaker 1: but not good enough. Yeah, you don't want okay for
Speaker 1: the first try for your kitchen counters. Man, that stuff
Speaker 1: is heavy. Yeah, it's concrete and breaks easily if you
Speaker 1: drop it or if you just like are carving a turkey.
Speaker 1: If it's if you have too long of a piece
Speaker 1: and like you just have a person on each end
Speaker 1: can snap in half. You know you need a short
Speaker 1: person in the middle. Yeah, with a hard head. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: beta particles, Uh, like we said, where were we what
Speaker 1: they can move through? Um? The problem with the beta
Speaker 1: particles is they're tiny, eight thousand times smaller than the
Speaker 1: alpha particle. Uh, and that means it can penetrate through
Speaker 1: your clothing. Into your skin. Uh. This is the stuff
Speaker 1: that if it enters the local food supply or the groundwater, uh,
Speaker 1: and it gets in the body that way, you can
Speaker 1: inhale it. Then you're in big trouble. Right, any time
Speaker 1: this stuff gets into your body, you're in big trouble. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should do you want to talk a real
Speaker 1: quick here about the difference between a radiation and contamination.
Speaker 1: Did you see that? Yeah, Well, let's finish gamma quickly
Speaker 1: because I feel like gammas just sort of sitting out
Speaker 1: there sad. Yeah, Gamma smash, gamma raise. They're the most dangerous,
Speaker 1: very high energy, uh, and can travel through most anything,
Speaker 1: which is why anything with gamma rays is gonna be
Speaker 1: lined with like a few inches of lead or several
Speaker 1: feet of concrete or both to block those gamma rays. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is the stuff that gets in your bone,
Speaker 1: marrow and your toast. Yeah. This stuff just goes right
Speaker 1: through your body all the way through. And as it does,
Speaker 1: it's it's just think of like these radioactive particles as
Speaker 1: tiny bullets that are ricocheting around. Electron seeking bullets are
Speaker 1: just going after your atoms with a vengeance. They're dying
Speaker 1: hard with a vengeance. So contamination versus a radiation. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's two ways that you can be dosed, and they're
Speaker 1: both a little different. Yeah. So, so contamination is what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's where you actually have uh, some
Speaker 1: sort of radioactive material maybe like a liquid or a
Speaker 1: powder or something on your body, on your clothing. In
Speaker 1: your body is even worse. But you are, for all
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, radioactive. You can transfer that radioactivity to
Speaker 1: other people. You're contaminated. Like you said, it's still pinging
Speaker 1: around in your body. Yeah, when it gets into your body,
Speaker 1: it can be transported through your blood, through other processes
Speaker 1: to transport processes in your body, and it's just reaking
Speaker 1: havoc everywhere. Um. And it reeks the most havoc on
Speaker 1: places where cells regenerate the fastest. Um, because the damage
Speaker 1: is done and spread more quickly. Right. Um. But that's contamination.
Speaker 1: You're radioactive. You can spread the radioactivity if you're contaminated.
Speaker 1: A radiation is different. Yeah, that's when like when you
Speaker 1: go to get your X chest X ray, you are
Speaker 1: technically getting irradiation, uh, irradiated irradiated. Um. The difference is
Speaker 1: you're not coming into actual contact uh. And when the
Speaker 1: sources turn when they shut off that machine, it's over right,
Speaker 1: You're you're no longer you're not radioactive, so you can't
Speaker 1: make other people radioactive and you're you're not just sitting
Speaker 1: there with radioactive particles in your body. It's done. It's done,
Speaker 1: leaving in the past. That's right, is the motto of
Speaker 1: a radiation Where are we still talking about it? So
Speaker 1: they're they're different, right, um, And they're they're different ways
Speaker 1: you can get contaminated. But I mean, if you stood
Speaker 1: there in front of an X ray machine long enough,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be contaminated, but you could still have and
Speaker 1: you could still develop a cute radiation poisoning um, because
Speaker 1: the length of exposure would be long enough. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you're just standing there like a jackass in front of
Speaker 1: an X ray machine turned on. It's a problem. Moved
Speaker 1: to the side, and X rays are safe. But I
Speaker 1: still get a little weirded out every time I go
Speaker 1: in there and like they put the lead vest on
Speaker 1: and then out of the run out of the room,
Speaker 1: like they detonated a bomb. Yeah, I'm I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, um, especially like the mouth ones
Speaker 1: in your teeth which have gotten. Obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: you are supposed to UM, and I know you're in
Speaker 1: a You're in a ticklish situation in that case. But
Speaker 1: d Dennists like to take a lot of X rays
Speaker 1: is because they can charge and get insurance very I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are plenty of instances where you they do
Speaker 1: need a new set of X rays or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you do need to get them, but you should be
Speaker 1: UM a lot more prone to calling your last dentist
Speaker 1: if you're moving Dennis and saying I needs you to
Speaker 1: transfer those X rays and they should do it for free,
Speaker 1: willingly so you don't have to get another set, you know,
Speaker 1: if you change dentists, you know within a single year,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have too many X rays. Now, cut down
Speaker 1: on that whenever you can. I've always had the suspicion
Speaker 1: that they give you the maximum allowable number of X
Speaker 1: rays that they can build for. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I was just being cynical or if that's a
Speaker 1: real thing. And I feel like Dennis says a profession
Speaker 1: of really gotten into upselling in the last like decade,
Speaker 1: really upselling. I'm not saying anything you had done was
Speaker 1: up selling, but like there's a lot of like offers
Speaker 1: and and there's a lot of marketing that goes on
Speaker 1: during average dental visit. Now, yeah, from the dentist, there's
Speaker 1: a special uh liquid that they have it maybe fluoride.
Speaker 1: Now they think about it some you know the thing
Speaker 1: that they say and now here's your thing, and they say,
Speaker 1: rents with this for a minute and then you go
Speaker 1: leave and it's like fifty dollars for this rinse treatment.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you didn't even ask me if I wanted that.
Speaker 1: So this last time I went, I have to go
Speaker 1: four times a year now because I have short roots, um,
Speaker 1: which is my worst nightmare to have to double the
Speaker 1: amount of time at the dentist. Hate it. And that's
Speaker 1: not including any of my stupid tooth stuff. This is
Speaker 1: just for cleaning. Oh I see, Like I just have
Speaker 1: to go in four times a year now for cleaning.
Speaker 1: But do you have your own chair? I do? I
Speaker 1: should I certainly bought one by this point, but um,
Speaker 1: I went in this last time. I was like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm gonna decline that rents. I was
Speaker 1: so ready to fight with this lady, um, and she
Speaker 1: didn't give it to me. I think they can sense that.
Speaker 1: I really consense when you're paying attention. When's a good
Speaker 1: time to upsell, when's it, when's again? You gotta know
Speaker 1: when to hold them and no when to fold them.
Speaker 1: Is the new motto for for dentistry. All right, well
Speaker 1: we got on this because of X rays, and we're
Speaker 1: going to take a break and stop venting our frustrations
Speaker 1: and come back and talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: ionizing radiation. You know what, it really stinks the dentist
Speaker 1: just kidding. Um. So Ed points out, if you're going
Speaker 1: to talk about radiation poisoning, Um, what you're looking at
Speaker 1: is a total dosage, and that includes different factors like
Speaker 1: what it came from, like we talked about with the alpha,
Speaker 1: beta or gamma rays, um, how much it was, how
Speaker 1: long you were exposed, how much was absorbed. It's not
Speaker 1: an exact science. It's taken as a total accumulative effect. Right.
Speaker 1: But the the sivert which takes all those things into account,
Speaker 1: is it's pretty close to exact science as far as
Speaker 1: measuring human absorption of radiation, right, Um. And so based
Speaker 1: on these calculations which I couldn't find anywhere, how you
Speaker 1: calculate siverts specifically, but apparently there are people who know
Speaker 1: how to do this right, and when you calculate siverts,
Speaker 1: you're able to say, okay, well, just flying in an
Speaker 1: airplane gets you x number of millisiverts or micro siverts
Speaker 1: on a five hour airplane flight or something like that, right, um,
Speaker 1: And we we've come to realize that just living on
Speaker 1: planet Earth, we are exposed to background radiation on the
Speaker 1: order of something like um I think three point six
Speaker 1: millisieverts per year. Yeah, that's point zero zero three six siverts, right,
Speaker 1: And that's that's fine, you can totally deal with that.
Speaker 1: It's when you start getting closer and closer to a
Speaker 1: full sivert because if you'll notice, think siver or radiation
Speaker 1: exposure is measured in millisieverts and even microceiver it's a
Speaker 1: million of a fever. Which we love those members, and
Speaker 1: we should say, you know, if you're getting an X
Speaker 1: ray at the dentist or something like that, you're getting
Speaker 1: a low level of of UM exposure to potentially deadly radiation.
Speaker 1: If if it were just if you were standing next
Speaker 1: to what's producing the X rays outside of an X
Speaker 1: ray machine and you're holding that you'd be a big
Speaker 1: trouble the fact that you're not exposed to it like that.
Speaker 1: You're exposed to doses that, as far as we understand
Speaker 1: scientifically right now, the human can take and it's not
Speaker 1: going to have any adverse effects. It's when you start
Speaker 1: getting closer to a full sivert that you really run
Speaker 1: the risk of acute radiation poisoning. Yeah, like point seven
Speaker 1: five siverts will get you sick, um and weaken your
Speaker 1: immune system. Three siverts. Uh, you need medical attention or
Speaker 1: you will probably die. Um, but you will probably live
Speaker 1: if you do have medical care. Um, if you get
Speaker 1: a dose of tin siverts at once, you are dead.
Speaker 1: Even if you do get medical care. That's like a
Speaker 1: death sentence basically. Um. But you're not going to encounter
Speaker 1: that at all. So you don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: that unless you work in a lab or something and
Speaker 1: there's an accident, yeah, which we'll talk about some of
Speaker 1: those that have happened. But um, tin siverts is really
Speaker 1: bad news. Yeah. Um, between ten, I'm sorry, between one
Speaker 1: and ten, you got about a fifty chance of dying
Speaker 1: within a month. And if it's uh, a less if
Speaker 1: it's not just one big blast, and it's over time,
Speaker 1: then it's your odds are a little bit better, totally different,
Speaker 1: but it's a totally different, like prolonged exposure is different
Speaker 1: than the kind of acute exposure that that creates radiation sickness. Right,
Speaker 1: and Ed points out to the factors that are included
Speaker 1: in the formulation of a Sivert radiation dose is they're
Speaker 1: not absolute. It's not like, hey, buddy, here's ten doses
Speaker 1: or here's ten siverts of radiation your toast. It would
Speaker 1: be slightly I think that actually probably is absolute. But
Speaker 1: let's say too, it's going to be different depending on
Speaker 1: where you were exposed, what part of your body, how
Speaker 1: old you are, what kind of immune health you have, um,
Speaker 1: and a number of different factors, the type of particle
Speaker 1: that you're exposed to. So it's different. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, once you get higher and higher along the
Speaker 1: Sivert scale, it does become kind of absolute as far
Speaker 1: as human mortality is concerned. Uh, if you do get exposed,
Speaker 1: you're going to get sick very very quickly. Um. I
Speaker 1: mean sometimes it's like you immediately start vomiting or lose
Speaker 1: conscious Yeah, your body is just so immediately poisoned. Um.
Speaker 1: It's hardcore nausea, diarrhea, headache, fever. Um. Like you said,
Speaker 1: you can be knocked unconscious. And I looked everywhere to
Speaker 1: find out what happens that makes you lose consciousness, and
Speaker 1: I have the impression that they don't really know. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. What what about radiotion makes you lose
Speaker 1: consciousness unless it just completely alters the effects of your
Speaker 1: or the the action of your neurons. I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: see you get a little more inquisitive about that stuff.
Speaker 1: I hear that, and I just think, you know, your
Speaker 1: brain just overloads. Well, now I'm like, what happened? Why that?
Speaker 1: Why that? Why that person just lose consciousness by being
Speaker 1: exposed to an X ray machine? That's not good? What's
Speaker 1: the science behind that? That's what I sound like in
Speaker 1: my head? Um burns on the body. We talked about
Speaker 1: external exposure, UM, bad scarring. Uh. There's something called a
Speaker 1: latent period after that initial set of symptoms. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is just mean where you don't have symptoms, you get better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they you know, things gonna go away. But I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone thinks are going to get better because they
Speaker 1: know about the now, but I'll be the first few
Speaker 1: people who die from radiation sytince. You're like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is miraculous. And then yeah, so the the initial symptoms
Speaker 1: are very obvious and very bad, and then there's that
Speaker 1: latent period like you said, it was a lull and
Speaker 1: then yeah, and apparently what's going on at that point
Speaker 1: is the damage that has been done immediately. And I
Speaker 1: mean like, when, for example, your DNA is altered, it
Speaker 1: happens on the in in the billions trillions of a
Speaker 1: second that that damage is done. If a free radical
Speaker 1: is created, it still takes on the order of like
Speaker 1: a second to to do this damage. So it's very quick,
Speaker 1: but the effects of that damage take a little while
Speaker 1: to appear. But when they when they do appear, it's like,
Speaker 1: oh man, and you're you're having multi organ failure right
Speaker 1: now because you were exposed to so much ionizing radiation,
Speaker 1: your cells were so totally altered um and your DNA
Speaker 1: was ultimately altered too, that your body is not functioning
Speaker 1: properly and some parts of your body are definitely more
Speaker 1: susceptible than others. Like I said, the ones where cells
Speaker 1: replicate more frequently, like the lining of your gut. And
Speaker 1: that's a big problem if your guts messed up, because
Speaker 1: you're prone to infections, which is not good. You don't
Speaker 1: want a gut infection. You had one of those. You
Speaker 1: had staff a staff stomach confection. And I've never seen
Speaker 1: a human being sicker than you were. And you had
Speaker 1: to fly home. Do you remember you had to get
Speaker 1: on a plane as that was hitting you. I felt
Speaker 1: so bad. Dude's pretty bad. You were green, Yeah, green,
Speaker 1: Your face was green like the whole You had a
Speaker 1: gamma ray burst of radiation. I had a gamma ray
Speaker 1: burst in my shorts. That's so growth. Uh, standing up,
Speaker 1: sitting down, lying down, everywhere. Um. So, that latent period,
Speaker 1: if it's it's shorter, the smaller the dose, wait shorter,
Speaker 1: the larger the dose, the latent period. Yeah. And in fact,
Speaker 1: if you get dose with more than ten, there is
Speaker 1: no latent period at all. It's that it doesn't take
Speaker 1: a break. So um, like you said, after that latent
Speaker 1: period wears off is when it's really clear what's happened
Speaker 1: inside your body. And one thing we haven't specifically talked
Speaker 1: about yet is the is your bone marrow, which is
Speaker 1: a very bad place to get radiation poisoning because it
Speaker 1: basically what's you know, where you produce blood cells to
Speaker 1: make your body better, and it basically shuts down your
Speaker 1: immune system because there's so much damage and now you
Speaker 1: can't even make yourself better or try to make yourself better. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It either it either directly damages the cells and kills
Speaker 1: them right, so therefore you're just not making as many cells.
Speaker 1: You don't have as many white blood cells. And then
Speaker 1: it also can damage the d n A in your
Speaker 1: cells so that when they are when it is making
Speaker 1: more white blood cells, is not making them correctly, so
Speaker 1: there's malfunctioning white blood cell. So yeah, your immune systems
Speaker 1: total anemic at that point. Yeah, well that's from the
Speaker 1: red blood cells being affected as well. And then again
Speaker 1: when your gut gets um assaulted, You've got a lot
Speaker 1: of bacteria in your gut and it's beneficial so long
Speaker 1: as it's in your gut. When it leaks into the
Speaker 1: rest of your body, you can get blood infections from
Speaker 1: that because the the stomach lining is not is not
Speaker 1: protecting your stomach like it's supposed to any longer. It's
Speaker 1: bad news, man, it is bad news, all right. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take another break and UM. We'll talk about some
Speaker 1: of these tragedies and accidents when we get back. So
Speaker 1: Chuck UM. We know actually, fortunately very little about the
Speaker 1: effects of ionizing radiation on the human body because there's
Speaker 1: not that many people who have died from it. UM.
Speaker 1: Basically everything we know it comes from industrial accidents like
Speaker 1: Three Mile Island or Fukushima. UM. And then the nuclear
Speaker 1: bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: any time that comes up, I feel it's it's totally
Speaker 1: worth mentioning going to see the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum,
Speaker 1: Like I think everybody in the world should have to
Speaker 1: go to this. It's so well done, it's so asked
Speaker 1: Lee some of the stuff that they're showing UM and
Speaker 1: and it's it's basically here Ashima saying, this happened to us,
Speaker 1: So we're going to take UM this terrible gift that
Speaker 1: was bestowed on us and turned it into UM a
Speaker 1: way to keep it from ever happening again. And that's
Speaker 1: what they did with it. Carl Or in Japan make
Speaker 1: a trip to hear is Human to check it out.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about those then since we're there. I ran
Speaker 1: across a cool article on a website called Today I
Speaker 1: found Out, which is a neat site. You ever been there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. This was called why can people live
Speaker 1: in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Now? But not chernobyl Um. So
Speaker 1: here's a little background, and I think it it should
Speaker 1: have its own podcast at some point for sure. Which
Speaker 1: one the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, But here's here's
Speaker 1: a short version. UM. On August the bomb Little Boy
Speaker 1: was a uranium bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, hundred and
Speaker 1: forty pounds of uranium. But these were detonated both of
Speaker 1: more above each city. It's like two thousand feet above Hiroshima.
Speaker 1: Only two pounds of the hundred and forty pounds underwent
Speaker 1: nuclear fission um and then sixteen kilo tons of explosive force.
Speaker 1: So because Hiroshima was on a plane, it caused a
Speaker 1: lot of damage. UM estimated seventy thousand people were killed
Speaker 1: on that day period seventy thousand, another seventy thousand injured,
Speaker 1: and about seventy of the buildings gone UM for fat
Speaker 1: Man which was a few days later on Nagasaki on
Speaker 1: August nine, only two pounds. This was plutonium and only
Speaker 1: two pounds of that underwent fission and that was about
Speaker 1: sixteen feet in the air. But because it's a valley,
Speaker 1: a lot of the city was protected. Still killed about
Speaker 1: between forty five thousand and seventy thousand peep immediately. And
Speaker 1: I get the feeling that a lot of that stuff
Speaker 1: was just the blast impact for these were just so immense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so bring in Chernobyl because this article compares you know,
Speaker 1: the conditions there at these places. Chernobyl was a preventable disaster,
Speaker 1: nuclear disaster that had, uh the way they say been
Speaker 1: this article was that the reactors had a built in
Speaker 1: instability was the quote. Um. So basically, when the reaction
Speaker 1: got hotter and hotter, the coolant would decrease and just
Speaker 1: make everything less stable and they couldn't control it. So
Speaker 1: they did some went to do some test one day
Speaker 1: on ap uh to see how long these turbines would
Speaker 1: run after the reactor was down. So in order to
Speaker 1: do this, they had to turn off all these safety
Speaker 1: controls and remove you know, I think we talked about
Speaker 1: the control rods and um, how a nuclear meltown works, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how nuclear mount work. So these control rods absorbed the
Speaker 1: neutrons and limit the reaction. They had to remove cheese.
Speaker 1: How many, only all but six of the two five
Speaker 1: control rods for this test, and they shut down the
Speaker 1: safety system, so it was just ready for disaster. Basically,
Speaker 1: why were they doing that just for fun? No, they
Speaker 1: were trying to see how long these turbines would run
Speaker 1: once everything was shut down. But in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you had to do all these other things. That's like
Speaker 1: figuring out how much weight a bridge can take by
Speaker 1: driving increasingly heavy trucks across the until it collapses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and systematically waking as you do it. That's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not a good idea. And they said it
Speaker 1: all came down to like the hubrists of the people
Speaker 1: who designed it, and we're working there. It was totally preventable.
Speaker 1: So uh, a lot of these graphite rods they tried
Speaker 1: to put them back in there, and they fractured because
Speaker 1: there was a design flaw in them, and there was
Speaker 1: an explosion. Uh, it basically just blew it up. UM
Speaker 1: seven to ten tons of nucle your fuel were released
Speaker 1: that day. Only eight people died immediately, and over ninety
Speaker 1: thousand square miles of land were contaminated. How many people
Speaker 1: died immediately? Eight that were just like in the area. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course you can't get accurate numbers on fallout
Speaker 1: since then because they're not really sharing that information. But
Speaker 1: by two thousand five, there were seven thousand cases of
Speaker 1: thyroid cancer uh in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia alone,
Speaker 1: So obviously it had an effect. But um, nowadays people
Speaker 1: can live in Japan in those two places, and they
Speaker 1: say that the levels of background radiation are basically like
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the world. But Chernobyl is still they
Speaker 1: have a zone where like you can't live there at
Speaker 1: all anymore. So the difference is basically, Uh, the amount
Speaker 1: of fuel only two pounds, like I said, of each
Speaker 1: of those bombs, um, only two pounds underwent fission and
Speaker 1: a hundred there was a hundred and eighty tons of
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel. Really Chernobyl. That's crazy that there's any of
Speaker 1: Chernobyl even left. Yeah, they just blow up the whole town. Well,
Speaker 1: and they're studying um. Well, I think the explosion wasn't
Speaker 1: anything like Nagasaki Hiroschma. It was just but they're studying
Speaker 1: that area now because it's a big you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, you don't have this opportunity to see what
Speaker 1: it means for the ecology of that area and the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and like they found some things have like adapted and
Speaker 1: are thriving, and lately they've been reports that they're like
Speaker 1: animals they're living there. Yeah, like normal animals that aren't
Speaker 1: you know, three eyed bears and stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: the other difference was that, um, it was on the
Speaker 1: ground and these other you know, the bombs are detonated
Speaker 1: two thousand feet in the air, so while it's airborne,
Speaker 1: it just has a bigger impact obviously if it's like
Speaker 1: literally ground level. So that's sort of the deal on
Speaker 1: why you can not live in Chernobyl anytime soon. Yeah. Finally,
Speaker 1: in tumbing the reactor, that's it's just yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they tried before, but they did a pretty terrible job
Speaker 1: of it and it was already leaking and cracking. So
Speaker 1: now they're building I think other countries are helping them
Speaker 1: with it. They're building like this huge tomb to go
Speaker 1: around it, so nobody can enter for I think at
Speaker 1: least a century. Jeez. Yeah. Well there have been some
Speaker 1: scientists too though that had minor well not minor for them,
Speaker 1: but minor accidents and labs that were exposed heavily, like
Speaker 1: the stuff that that created there that led to their
Speaker 1: deaths were just so small. With anything else, you would
Speaker 1: probably even barely noticed that you'd messed up. But these
Speaker 1: guys died because of it. Yeah, two dudes notably working
Speaker 1: on the same core plutonium core, not at the same time,
Speaker 1: like a year apart, and it came to be called
Speaker 1: the Demon core for that reason because it killed two people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One guy was a physicist named Harry kay dag Lean Jr.
Speaker 1: He got a five point one severt exposure uh and
Speaker 1: died days later. Who's the other guy, Lewis Slawton Slaughton.
Speaker 1: Um he was. He was basically messing with the core
Speaker 1: with the screwdriver from what I read, and um, just
Speaker 1: the screwdriver just barely slipped just a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I guess came and allowed the cover to come in
Speaker 1: contact with the core and the core went subcritical for
Speaker 1: half a second. He luckily was like able to like
Speaker 1: throw the core off, so it didn't really lead to
Speaker 1: an even bigger problem that killed bore people, but it
Speaker 1: led to his death. And um, he got a twenty
Speaker 1: one severt dose. We've been saying ten is almost, you know,
Speaker 1: instantly fatal. He lost consciousness and threw up immediately, and
Speaker 1: he died I think nine days later. I can't believe
Speaker 1: it took that long, you know, but the air turned
Speaker 1: blue around him. Yeah, and there was like a visible
Speaker 1: wave of heat. Yeah, and he was Immediately after his death,
Speaker 1: I think he was kind of praised for containing the accident,
Speaker 1: but then later on, even after that, they were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but he did something wrong that led to it to
Speaker 1: begin with. Oh yeah, yeah, so it was kind of
Speaker 1: a you did a good job, but you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it. Well, what said? It also killed somebody else. Um,
Speaker 1: a guard who was in the room died years later
Speaker 1: from cancer. That they're like, that was definitely from exposure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't surprise me. So what happens if you, I mean,
Speaker 1: how can they treat this stuff? Surprisingly, they can't treat it.
Speaker 1: Like if you think about radioactive particles entering your body,
Speaker 1: you just think it'd be like, well, here's some morphine.
Speaker 1: I hope you had a nice life. But there's actually
Speaker 1: stuff they can do to treat it. Um. And one
Speaker 1: of the first things they do if you're contaminated. Is
Speaker 1: they wash you off. It seems like a good step
Speaker 1: one because you didn't get some of that stuff off.
Speaker 1: But if it's in your body, they have to give
Speaker 1: you drugs that are known to actually bind to radioactive
Speaker 1: materials and then flush out of your system. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: Prussian blue dye. It's actually good for um, caesium and
Speaker 1: thallium poisoning UM. It's like it's a blue dye that
Speaker 1: goes in and it binds to the stuff and um
Speaker 1: holds it so it's no longer going through your body
Speaker 1: making havoc. Since you're coming with me. Then you poop
Speaker 1: it out. There's another one. You're gonna try this one, Oh,
Speaker 1: dia thy leen, try a mind penatic acid band or
Speaker 1: d t p A been to acetic acid. That was
Speaker 1: the easier part. Yeah, let's call it that. So that
Speaker 1: one's good for plutonium among other things. And they inject
Speaker 1: you with that and it does basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: It seeks out those radioactive particles, binds to them, and
Speaker 1: then you pee it out. So it I mean, it
Speaker 1: is possible to treat people who have been contaminated with
Speaker 1: radioactive stuff. I just want to point out every time
Speaker 1: Josh said, binds to him. You hug your stomach. What
Speaker 1: is that all? I don't know. I hadn't really noticed.
Speaker 1: I hadn't done that, but it's both times. Uh. What
Speaker 1: else can they do? They can prevent infection. Uh. If
Speaker 1: your immune systems compromise because of the bone marrow, you
Speaker 1: could have a bone I'm sorry, blood transfusion. If you
Speaker 1: only have a little bit of bone marrow damage, um,
Speaker 1: that could help you out. But if it is too severe,
Speaker 1: you would have to have a complete bone marrow transplant.
Speaker 1: And then and even then you're not guaranteed to be Okay,
Speaker 1: you're in pretty bad shape if that's going on. Um.
Speaker 1: Did you read about this Goyana, Brazil accident? I did.
Speaker 1: It is nuts, It's crazy. So back in there were
Speaker 1: I guess some people who were just wandering around an
Speaker 1: abandoned hospital in Guyana, Brazil. Yes to two dudes, Uh,
Speaker 1: scrap salesman, like scavenger salesman. Okay. So they found I
Speaker 1: guess maybe an X ray machine or something like that,
Speaker 1: and cracked it open and there was a cake of
Speaker 1: glowing blue caesi um inside and they said, well, this
Speaker 1: looks pretty let's take it with us and they did,
Speaker 1: and they sold it to people, including some children who
Speaker 1: rubbed it on their skin so that they would glow
Speaker 1: in the dark. Yeah, and a lot of these people
Speaker 1: died very shortly afterwards. Yeah, they took I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't just the raw stuff. They took the machine in
Speaker 1: a wheelbarrow and then spent the next few days like
Speaker 1: trying to take this machine apart to get to this
Speaker 1: glow because they, I mean, they thought it was like supernatural.
Speaker 1: They didn't know what it was. Um, these dudes started
Speaker 1: vomiting and stuff. Of course, went to the doctor and
Speaker 1: they're like, it's food poisoning. Um, here's a here's a coke,
Speaker 1: go home, clam. Uh. So one of the guys finally
Speaker 1: freed some of this glowing blue goo. He thought it
Speaker 1: was gunpowder and tried to light it on fire. It
Speaker 1: didn't light. It's not flammable. Uh. And then he sold
Speaker 1: it to a scrap yard, like you said, for bucks. Um.
Speaker 1: And this guy, the owner of the scrap rd I
Speaker 1: think was his uncle, was like, man, everyone come and
Speaker 1: see this, and he invited like for three days, like
Speaker 1: family and guests could all come over and look at
Speaker 1: They called the carnival glitter and like you said this,
Speaker 1: I mean it's really sad. But this guy's daughter was
Speaker 1: like rubbing it on her skin and her bed sheets,
Speaker 1: and uh, they were just enamored with this stuff. So again,
Speaker 1: a lot of people died from this. Um well, four
Speaker 1: people died for still, it's a lot, you know, four
Speaker 1: people died, but they two people had significant levels of
Speaker 1: material in their body. And hundred and twelve thousand people
Speaker 1: were examined and they demolished several square city blocks, just
Speaker 1: gone like this is contaminated, we have to get rid
Speaker 1: of it. They just leveled parts of that city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was crazy, all because some guys like broke into
Speaker 1: an X ray machine because somebody just left it in
Speaker 1: an abandoned hospital. Yeah. I think there were guards, but
Speaker 1: the guard was off duty or something. There still shouldn't
Speaker 1: be like X ray machines in a hospital. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was I think. I think they ended up there being
Speaker 1: lotsuits and I would hope so, man, So that's it, right,
Speaker 1: I got nothing else I don't either. That's a radiation sickness.
Speaker 1: We hope that this save you or someone you love
Speaker 1: if you're ever going through an abandoned hospital and you
Speaker 1: come across an extray machine. Don't crack it open, just
Speaker 1: observe it from afar. Well, we always talk about exploring
Speaker 1: abandoned structures and it's super dangerous. Oh yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: fraught with dangers. They definitely are, and probably when you
Speaker 1: wouldn't think about something like this, you know, have I
Speaker 1: ever talked about Grossingers? I don't think so. Man, there's
Speaker 1: this one side about Grossingers. It's just it's a it's
Speaker 1: a cat skills resort that was abandoned in the eighties.
Speaker 1: It's just now it's almost completely reclaimed by the forest.
Speaker 1: But about five ten years ago somebody went and documented it.
Speaker 1: I like peak decay where the structures are still there
Speaker 1: because it's totally coming in so fascinating. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's there. There's I can't remember what the name
Speaker 1: of the site is, but it's grossing Jersey. And this
Speaker 1: guy went many many years, like over many times over
Speaker 1: the years and documented it. And I think his dad
Speaker 1: was the caretaker there as the place was shutting down,
Speaker 1: so he knew the place really well. And he has
Speaker 1: like old photos from while it was still in use
Speaker 1: to compare and contrast. It's just amazing. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: you were gonna say it was completely overtaken now by
Speaker 1: forest fairies, and that's what I meant. And the Hulk.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen Hulk Hodgeman? It's a Twitter account
Speaker 1: where it's like stuff Hodgeman says that. I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but as the Hulk. I mean, I've heard the Hulk
Speaker 1: for other things, but not there's one for I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how he feels about it. Sounds you gotta check
Speaker 1: it out. Well, mind is swirling? Alright? Uh did you
Speaker 1: say listener mail? Oh no, If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about radiation sickness, you can type those words in
Speaker 1: the search bar. How stuff works. And since I said
Speaker 1: search parts, time for listening. Now, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: something I've never really thought about before. Hey, guys, my
Speaker 1: loyal listener from the very beginning, I've listened to every
Speaker 1: podcast and watched all of your TV shows episodes, um,
Speaker 1: and most, if not all, of your Internet roundups. How
Speaker 1: about that this person is Yeah, yeah, I'm writing about
Speaker 1: a very serious topic and one that is dear to
Speaker 1: my heart. Uh. The high rate of physician and medical
Speaker 1: students suicide. Uh. This one of the highest stress careers
Speaker 1: in terms of training, debt, work schedule and trying not
Speaker 1: to take on the stress of every one of your
Speaker 1: patients that you see. You are not allowed. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: We she's speaking first person. We are not allowed to
Speaker 1: have any mental health weaknesses where we risk being labeled
Speaker 1: a liability by medical board, employers, are peers, and even
Speaker 1: our own patients. Um, I really thought about that. You
Speaker 1: know you can't like stoic doctors. Whateverybody wants our school
Speaker 1: I see, I want a wacky doctor Adams. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: a whoopie cushion or joy buzzer. Every now and then
Speaker 1: our schooling and training or grueling, it can be emotional
Speaker 1: roller coaster. We're sleep deprived, made to feel inadequate on
Speaker 1: a daily basis, and often humiliated and belittled in front
Speaker 1: of our peers. She said it was tougher than eleven
Speaker 1: years in the army. We're supposed to convince our patients
Speaker 1: to seek help when they need it, but we are
Speaker 1: certain to harm our own careers if we personally reach
Speaker 1: out for help. So she said that in recent years
Speaker 1: she had a hit close to home. Classmate committed suicide
Speaker 1: before graduating, and his parents have spoken out UH and
Speaker 1: have gotten together with a filmmaker to create a documentary
Speaker 1: called Do No Harm UH exposing the silent epidemic. So
Speaker 1: they have a lot of support. Um, you can go
Speaker 1: to their Facebook page UH Facebook dot com slash do
Speaker 1: No Harm the film, and um they have a Kickstarter
Speaker 1: that you can look up if you just google kickstarter
Speaker 1: do No Harm documentary there really close. That's just a
Speaker 1: couple of thousand away from their benching funds. So I
Speaker 1: think they are going to maybe even by this time
Speaker 1: it will be done. But if anyone out there felt
Speaker 1: like phone a few dollars their away, they'll be great.
Speaker 1: So that's from Brooklyn Bertel's, a fourth year medical student.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Brooklyn, It's really that was a great email.
Speaker 1: It took a really a turn at the at the beginning, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So thanks for that. Um. And if you guys want,
Speaker 1: you can go help that kickstarter out. If you want
Speaker 1: to hang out with us, you can hang out with
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at s y s K podcast in
Speaker 1: the same for Instagram. You can join us on Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash stuff. You should know. You can send
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and as always, joined us at at Home
Speaker 1: on the Web Stuff you Should know dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
Speaker 1: staff Works dot com. MHM