I’m sorry it’s hitting you so hard! I find my dread comes and goes. I went through a more doom-y stage about this a few years ago, and currently I’m able to make practical plans without getting sucked into the dread.
[content: health effects of nuclear exposure]
>planning on ways to end things quickly if we don’t
If you mean what I think you do, this part seems really mistaken to me. There are probably some circumstances where I could imagine this being the right call (e.g. if you’re definitely dying of radiation poisoning and only have a few days left.) But even if you’re very sick, it’s going to be impossible to know whether you had a fatal dose.
I find hope in the fact that a lot of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were surprisingly ok afterwards. “In essence, survivors having received 1 Gy irradiation (∼1000 mSV) have a significantly elevated rate of cancer (42% increase) but a limited decrease of longevity (∼1 year)....the dominant present-day image of the aftermath of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, in line with the general perception of radiation risk, is that it left the sites heavily contaminated, that the survivors suffered very serious health consequences, notably a very high rate of cancer and other debilitating diseases, and that offspring from these survivors had a highly increased rate of genetic defects. In fact, the survivors have been the object of massive and careful long-term studies whose results to date do not support these conceptions and indicate, instead, measurable but limited detrimental health effects in survivors, and no detectable genetic effects in their offspring.” (source)
On the anecdotal side, this interview with a 92-year-old Hiroshima survivor who was knocked down and burned by the blast. Due to stigma against survivors, he changed his name and just went on about his life without even his wife knowing he was a survivor.
Thank you, definitely appreciate this perspective—to be clear I was referring only to an extreme situation like obviously, acutely, and painfully dying of radiation poisoning. I absolutely agree that situations that appear hopeless might not be.
I’m sorry it’s hitting you so hard! I find my dread comes and goes. I went through a more doom-y stage about this a few years ago, and currently I’m able to make practical plans without getting sucked into the dread.
[content: health effects of nuclear exposure]
>planning on ways to end things quickly if we don’t
If you mean what I think you do, this part seems really mistaken to me. There are probably some circumstances where I could imagine this being the right call (e.g. if you’re definitely dying of radiation poisoning and only have a few days left.) But even if you’re very sick, it’s going to be impossible to know whether you had a fatal dose.
I find hope in the fact that a lot of survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were surprisingly ok afterwards. “In essence, survivors having received 1 Gy irradiation (∼1000 mSV) have a significantly elevated rate of cancer (42% increase) but a limited decrease of longevity (∼1 year)....the dominant present-day image of the aftermath of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings, in line with the general perception of radiation risk, is that it left the sites heavily contaminated, that the survivors suffered very serious health consequences, notably a very high rate of cancer and other debilitating diseases, and that offspring from these survivors had a highly increased rate of genetic defects. In fact, the survivors have been the object of massive and careful long-term studies whose results to date do not support these conceptions and indicate, instead, measurable but limited detrimental health effects in survivors, and no detectable genetic effects in their offspring.” (source)
On the anecdotal side, this interview with a 92-year-old Hiroshima survivor who was knocked down and burned by the blast. Due to stigma against survivors, he changed his name and just went on about his life without even his wife knowing he was a survivor.
Thank you, definitely appreciate this perspective—to be clear I was referring only to an extreme situation like obviously, acutely, and painfully dying of radiation poisoning. I absolutely agree that situations that appear hopeless might not be.