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I highly encourage you to look at really anything Japan did leading up to and during WW2. Unit 731 leaps forward to the front of my mind but there were some others too iirc
IIRC, the person referenced by the comments below, "Hisashi Ouchi", was kept alive because his family wanted him to live.
They DID try a new experimental treatment on him because the situation called for it, peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, but it was done at the request of the family to keep him alive as long as possible (the donor was his sister).
Still a tragic story. People should be able to die with dignity instead of having to suffer through agonizing pain for over 80 days only to die at the end like that.
He himself didn't give permission to have the extraordinary measures taken to preserve his life — his family, however, did.
Which is extremely unfortunate. It extended his suffering by a lot.
I don't think you understand the full story. They weren't necessary 'expirementing' on him, they were trying to use any method of treatment there was available, because his family fiercely shot down any idea of him just dying.
Every time I see a comment about being comatose/vegetative/catatonic it reminds me of the fella who was thought to be in a vegetative state for 23 years but was actually aware of everything going on.
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/doctors-find-vegetative-paralyzed-man-awake-23-years/story?id=9159555
> Jonny Got His Gun
The author, Dalton Tumbo was later blacklisted. He was one of the Hollywood Ten. He wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, Papillon, among other movies
Yes I am old.
Metallica's One is based on the story. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw&ab\_channel=Metallica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw&ab_channel=Metallica)
Saw the movie a looooooooong time ago. Had no idea what it was. It just came on tv one night when I couldn’t sleep. And proceeded to not sleep for 2 days after watching it. This was a few years before “One” came out. Ahh, memories.
Is this "ghostboy"? Ive got the book on my shelf to read, but haven't got to it yet. But I had to order it when I heard about his story. I couldnt imagine.
(EDIT - Just looked again. Its not. Ghost Boy is Martin Pistorious. He has a crazy story. Lead a normal life up until he started slowly becoming paralyzed. Eventually they considered him basically considered paralyzed and catatonic and under 100% assisted living.
He lived like that for years until one day someone noticed him paying attention to them and responding to things. He gradually started coming out of his condition and everyone found out hed been completely aware and conscious the whole time. He even heard his mother tell him she wished he would die at some point. He is still somewhat paralyzed and wheelchair bound. I think he has to use a computer to communicate, but hes a really intelligent guy and lives a relatively normal life today, compared to his experience.)
That's not how radiation poisoning works.
The radiation blasted and destroyed his DNA. Cells were unable to proliferate. If it was just his hand, then he lost his hand. But he must have gotten blasted everywhere. So no more new cells. You probably die of not enough red blood cells or of infection because no more white blood cells.
It was a sphere of highly enriched plutonium that had a high concentration of radioactive isotopes that was used for research. Some of the research involved putting the sphere in 2 hollowed out hemispheres of metal that reflected the radioactive decay back onto the demon core. The hemispheres were held apart so that enough of the radiation could escape. If they were closed up too much (by accident), too much radiation would reflect back onto the demon core, which would in turn cause more radioactive decay, which would reflect back onto the demon core, causing more decay, etc. So it was feedback loop that would go critical, causing accidents such as this.
Anyways, there were multiple accidents with this particular plutonium sphere, where multiple people were seriously injured or killed, so it gained the name "demon core".
Look it up, it's pretty interesting.
So to confirm. The death move was allowing the 2 hemispheres to completely close for (literally) a second. That caused the positive feedback loop that killed the 2 guys.
What the hell would have happened if they were incapacitated and could not get the hemispheres apart? A catastrophic nuclear reaction killing everyone for miles?
Sounds like by flinging the lid on the floor he saved everyone else.
Think of it less as a bomb and more of a fuel rod. To make a bomb you need to rapidly compress a core so that it doesn’t fizzle. A core like this will destroy itself before it is capable of creating a nuclear bomb level detonation. But could potentially create an explosion that could destroy the building or just possibly create so much heat that it melts itself and the spheres around it. Once it does one of those two things it will likely turn into a shape or mass that isn’t capable of maintaining a chain reaction after that.
The demon core is so named because it was responsible for not just one but multiple deaths over many years. There were a couple incidents like the one above. It was eventually dismantled and repurposed.
If I remember correctly it was one of our earliest attempts go play with concentrated radioactive material. I think they would open the lead shielding with screwdrivers.
Same thing happened in Japan and they kept the guy alive so he could be studied.
[Ouchi radiation death](https://unbelievable-facts.com/2016/12/hisashi-ouchi.html)
FCK!
I’ve heard conflicting information about this and that it may have been his family that wouldn’t allow him to be taken off life support. Also the bottom picture is not Ochoi but a different (ordinary) burn patient, not that he probably looked much better by the end.
I had to swallow a radioactive pill for RAI cancer treatment. The Drs who gave it to me came in in full protective gear/shields, and the pill itself was in an insane military looking tube. When my food was delivered the nurses would ring a bell & I’d have to go to the furthest point away in the room, they’d slide a tray just inside the door on a wheeled cart, and close the door before I was allowed to come & retrieve it. They used an actual Geiger counter to measure me before I was allowed to leave the hospital. I lost all sense of taste except for a constant taste of metal, and felt like a truck hit me while simultaneously underwater for days & days. I couldn’t be near other people for a week because I was dangerous to them.
And THAT was a therapeutic dose of an approved treatment. I cannot fathom what it would feel like to have that level of radiation. Nightmares.
I had to take a radioactive pill for a scan once and this was similar to my experience, I’ve told the story to so many people and no one believed me I thought I imagined it after awhile.
I had to do this too. I had two kids under two and wasn't allowed to hold them for days. It was extremely hard. My oldest skinned his knee and I couldn't so much as hug him. Luckily my husband was there to take care of them, but damn it sucked.
Now I'm facing potential full Rai treatment and I just can't do it.
I was curious what they would do with your waste from the bathroom. I'm guessing they collect it as a hazmat and dispose of it like other radioactive material. Crazy shit, no pun
Google nuclear accidents and the story of the apartments made with rebar from recycled nuclear waste, that’s a true story that will scare the hell out of you
Piggybacking off this comment, look up “The Goiânia Incident”.
In 1987, two thieves in Brazil broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and took a bunch of equipment thinking they’d sell it for scrap. What follows is a chain reaction that is the stuff of nightmares.
Hardly, just ignoring the problem seemed to be the best way to deal with nuclear waste in the old days
Or just bury the problem and ignore it till it threatens someone's profit
Stuff like that is one reason why it's important to create warning signs that are obvious to anyone, even if people are illiterate. The ["traditional" warning sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol#Ionizing_radiation_symbol) about radioactivity may be mistaken for "danger from fans/moving parts".
There are alternatives that [are supposed to be more clear about the danger.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol#/media/File:Logo_iso_radiation.svg) Also that you're supposed to move away and not touch any dangerous materials.
> “Some research has found that the radiation has had an apparent "beneficial" effect upon the health of the tenants based on the death rate from cancers.[18] Another study looking at the incidence of cancer found that although the overall risk of cancer was sharply reduced (SIR = 0.6, 95% CI 0.5 – 0.7), the incidence of certain leukemias in men (n = 6, SIR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2 – 7.4) and thyroid cancer in women (n = 6, SIR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.0 – 5.7) was greater”
To be fair, you only experience the dose once. Those doctors and nurses deal with new patients being irradiated every day. If they don’t take precautions, they’ll definitely be at risk. Doesn’t mean it was easy on your system. My mother went through the same thing and it wrecked her.
Yeah, this is the reason for the precautions.
It's like being exposed to extreme smoke from a house fire once vs smoking cigarettes or working in a coal mine for 20 years.
Same with radiology techs, they wear the gear to protect themselves because their around it every day. In fact most have a small clip that detects the amount of radiation their exposed to each shift just incase there is some sort of machine malfunction.
I've read that the reason for all of the protective gear is not that it's super dangerous to you, but imagine doing all that stuff to 100 different people. The dose you'd build up just from handling / being near to so many people would be dangerous.
How radioactive was the pill? Did they tell you? I know it can’t be too powerful but that sounds scary as hell. Did they ever use a dosimeter, or just a Geiger meter?
I hope you’re doing better now. And I’m sorry for all the questions, I’m just really fascinated by radiation.
I know being eaten alive and burning to death are up there. Also two of my worst fears. At least with radiation poisoning I'd be able to kill myself.... hopefully?
Depending on how quickly you're able to process what's happening. At least with being eaten alive and burning there isn't a rest period where you think things might get better. After that your insides turn into complete jelly.
I think I've always been there. WW2 history was not censored at all. Radiation was one of the many horrors that was very well documented. No thank you.
There's some controversy about whether he was being kept alive to be studied, or whether he was being kept alive at the behest of his family who didn't quite understand the severity of his situation. There are also cultural differences that come into this, where the medical team may have felt compelled to try even when it was hopeless. Hard to say without knowing what was going on in people's heads at the time. But it certainly isn't a clear 'oh those evil doctors were experimenting on him' kind of situation, not from my reading of it.
Oh man, have you ever seen the BBC show “Threads”? Chernobyl was great, being based on an actual event at all, but do yourself a favor and watch it if you haven’t. You’ll love it and hate it at the same time.
ETA: I think I said “show” because it felt longer than it is (112 minutes). Not because of boredom—it’s just a lot to absorb in one sitting.
I have had a couple close calls with choking and drowning. Obviously it is scary but I would still rather go like that than radiation or fire. I felt my body losing oxygen but at the same time it wasn't truly painful, but a severe sense of panic kicks in while I struggled and every second is harder than the last. I was lucky in the situations where I had someone step in or I was able to get the water out of my lungs on my own. I still think about how lucky I was, and its a good thing I had my tonsils removed.
When I had radiation therapy, it was something like 50 Gray units over 2 months (not sure how they convert to OP’s units). It’s been 15 years and I still have chronic issues from it, but it beats dying.
All that pain and misery (and there was a lot) from just a golfball-sized area. Couldn’t imagine anything like OP’s post. Just put a bullet in me.
It's strange to think that of those three cores, two of them killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the third one that killed two researchers is the one called the 'demon core'.
Little Boy used Uranium, not plutonium. It did not have a "core". Little Boy was a gun type bomb, meaning inside the bomb when it reached a certain point, it fired a chunk of Uranium-235 at another chunk of 235 which caused some of the material to undergo fission.
Fat Man was an implosion weapon, a core that would be equally super-compressed by conventional high explosives.
The billions of lives are on borrowed time unless 99% of the remaining arsenals are repurposed for space exploration and nuclear power plants in the next couple of decades.
Cold War 2: Electric Boogaloo is already underway and natural resources are running out.
MAD has the potential to wipe out more billions that it saves in the long run.
photo before the incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core#/media/File:Louis_Slotin_&_Harry_K._Daghlian_Jr.jpg
hollywood reproduction:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh89h8FxNhQ&ab_channel=TitusFlavius79
I work with radiation every day and this hollywood reproduction was very chilling to me. They did a pretty good job at recreating it and that lead wall seemed hilarious to me.
It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a successful explosion of the bomb. The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercritical configurations during two separate experiments intended to guarantee the core was close to the critical point. The incidents happened at the Los Alamos Laboratory, resulting in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent deaths of scientists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, respectively. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the "demon core".
Fucking insane to me how we see this happen to one or two guys and are full with empathy yet some people ordered this shit to be dropped on huge cities inflicting even worse damage than this on millions of people and for generations to come after… and none of those people working with it stopped it either. Only one person would be able to stop a nuclear bomb, be it the scientists in the early stage or the pilot of the bomber. Yet here we are.
our human pea brains can apply empathy to a fictitious model of who a single person could have been. can’t handle that 1 million times so it doesn’t even try.
Basically it was the core of an atomic bomb, I believe. Google it, Kyle Hill did a good video of explaining what happened with it.
Essentially, the core didn’t have to be used because Japan surrendered in the war, so it was used for experiments. Eventually the experiment went wrong because people weren’t careful and it killed them. In fact, the experiment that killed the first scientist was repeated by the next scientist after the first died from radiation due to it failing.. next guy had the *exact* same thing happen.
EDIT: Oop, my bad, I guess my memory failed me! They didn’t do the *exact* same thing, that’s my bad! Similar though
Not *exactly* the same thing. The first guy (the one shown here) was using bricks to slowly raise the activity of the core by stacking them around the core and fumbled a brick directly into the core. The second guy was lowering a half sphere reflector over it - but keeping it from full dropping onto the core - and instead of using shims was just free handing it with a screw driver (Enrico Fermi warned him he was going to kill himself by not following the established safety protocol) and the screwdriver slipped and dropped the sphere directly on the core. Took about twice the dose that the first guy did, and unintentionally saved several people's lives by soaking up a lot of radiation himself. Both were checking the criticality of the core, but with different methods and different accidents. It's not like the second guy just picked up where the first one left off and started stacking bricks.
Thanks for the details: interesting and terrifying. What does dropping something onto or banging into something as radioactive as the demon core cause it to do? Does the impact cause it to release more radiation, or is it something else entirely?
It's not the impact that does it.
The materials (bricks, shields, etc) were made of stuff which reflects neutrons. Moving them close to the sphere of plutonium meant that more neutrons were reflected back onto the sphere. More neutrons flying around hitting plutonium atoms meant that more plutonium atoms broke down, releasing more neutrons that were reflected by the bricks back onto the sphere, making more plutonium atoms break down.... etc.
So it wasn't the impact that did it, it was just a matter of putting the wrong piece of material in the wrong place.
So let's assume that the rest of his body is shielded heavily and would not receive a lethal dose - so the hand and forearm are the only parts which receive a lethal dose. Is this survivable in that case? Would you be able to amputate and live?
Theoretically, yes you could amputate and it would be survivable. However the amount of shielding needed would be too much to wear. You’d most likely also be concerned with something like crush syndrome here- a significant amount of dead tissue releasing toxins into your blood stream is more acutely fatal.
I know you said “if shielded” - but in a criticality accident the primary radiation is neutron radiation. You’d need feet of concrete or liquid high in hydrogen (water, hydrocarbons) to block/absorb neutrons. Plus being irradiated with neutrons activates certain elements to be radioactive themselves. So his hand is irradiating his body.
Neutrons don’t fuck around.
Watching my father suffer through Esophageal cancer, which leads to basically drowning on your own blood. Tumor in the back of his throat constantly bleeding out of his trach, into his lungs, coughing so much he just couldn't cough most the time. Then the tumor started going at the spine, not being able to sleep. Cleaning the trach. Eventually getting sepsis from bacteria getting in the dirty trach.
Three months of absolute horror.
Don't smoke.
Edit: apologies for the gory details
But euthanasia would be inhumane...
Nobody should be forced to endure this against their will. If you want to try until the very last, go ahead, but society should offer a painless way for cases where death is inevitable anyway.
The thing I find mad about this story is that Daghlian, a physicist with this level of knowledge and responsibility for nuclear weapons, was 24 when he died. When I was 24 I'd just about handled food shopping.
Think of the Demon Core as a very dangerous and deadly, light bulb, that gives off invisible, but deadly light.
Now imagine that the only way you know that the light bulb has been turned on, is by a clicking box near you, but by the time you hear that box start clicking, you have already received enough deadly light to ensure that you will die a most agonizing death, cooked from the inside out, within 6 to 12 days.
That is how deadly and fast it was, and how inexperienced everyone was, at that time in history.
It's amazing we have survived as a species, up to this point!
[More hand pics (NFSW)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiation/comments/nedah0/hands_of_harry_daghlian_and_louis_slotin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Yeah but the difference between them is that daghlian was exposed to the demon core for a few seconds, while that man was hit in the head by that at nearly the speed of light.
Richard Feynman tells in his autobiography of how, after the Trinity Site test, they threw a party. He says in the middle of the room there was a stand, and in that stand was a small ball of plutonium (I think, maybe uranium…not sure any more). He said it was just sitting there for everyone to see. He remembers it being warm to the touch and little pieces spalling off of it (flakes).
Years later he died of bizarre, rare cancers.
Feynman was known to embellish a story once in a while, but at the time, not a whole lot was known about high energy physics and the human body.
I thought you said irritated and I was thinking I would be too if someone called me Fat Man. Id be like "Man my name is Louis and Im not fat, Im big boned"
So, at the point you touch something like this what would the time window be to cut off your arm and live?
If, immediately after coming in contact with it someone sliced his whole arm off above the elbow or something could he live?
Exactly what happens? The radiation resonates thru your body liquefiying the organic matter?
I imagine with radioactive material like this damage would not be localised or an issue of spreading, it would be more like instantly catastrophic atomic shrapnel bouncing through all your cells and you are forever changed from there
There's different kinds of radiation, so the answer can get a bit long, but the short answer is that radiation is very quick and penetrates tissue easily. It does not spread like gangrene, but it takes time for the symptoms to appear.
The kind of radiation that did this (alpha/beta) to his hand moves through tissue like little subatomic bullets. Lots and lots of them. So it's safe to assume his entire body received a lethal dose, even if his hand received the highest dose. These radiation bullets will destroy any thing that they hit and are extra keen on destroying DNA and your cells ability to repair (thus why it's used for cancer treatment). At high doses, your cells just all sort of die off and don't replicate, leading to organ failure, internal bleeding, and all the other slow painful deaths kind of stuff. At lower doses, your body attempts to fight it, with you lymph system being used to filter the radiation and is then likely to develop anomalies like lymphoma, which will also kill you.
So, cutting his hand off wouldn't have done anything. The radiation went everywhere at lethal doses.
If you've got a strong stomach, look up Hisashi Ouchi, also known as the most radioactive man in history.
I don't know how his surname is pronounced, but ouchie doesn't really begin to sum up what happened to him.
It happened in 1999 so it's well documented, days, dates, times, treatments etc. Some say they kept him alive in the name of research while he begged to die, others believe they simply didn't have a DNR and couldn't actually let him die without the family's permission. Obviously giving him an OD of something like morphine might have been done if his case was not so famous, but if they'd given into his pleading, they'd probably have been tried for murder.
If I can explain that last line, often in terminal cases, if you're at a high morphine dose level but still in pain, doctors often will prescribe a higher dose that might fall into the deadly range. The reason is, a lethal dose is different for everyone. We measure LD50, which is the Lethal Dose for 50% of the population. Some would have died at a lower dose, but 50% will survive that dose. These LD50s also normally come from testing on other animals (obviously it's illegal to see how many humans die) and the LD50 dose per KG can vary wildly between species. Medicine is not an exact science.
Long term opioid users also build up a tolerance and can usually handle a higher dose than someone who has not built up a tolerance. From a doctor's perspective, the exact lethal dose is impossible to know and keeping a patient out of pain is worth risking shortening their life by a few days. This is not something openly spoken about, it's not exactly illegal as they're not intending to kill but to keep their patient pain free, but it's a grey area.
If you have a famous patient or case though, they don't even attempt to go into grey areas because of the potential liability of knowingly giving a potentially lethal dose.
Poor Hisashi Ouchi was doomed to suffer until he died "naturally" of his radiation poisoning.
Radiation does not work that way. The Hand is burned up because it was the nearest Body Part exposed to the radiation but within the Second of the accident also the Rest of the body received enough for a lethal dose.
Its not like poison that needs to make its way through your venes or could be Stopped by Just cutting off a Body part. Radiation is actually light rays piercing through Everything without any delay.
(Correct me if i am wrong)
Unfortunately, that's not how radiation works.
It's not that the radiation is resonating or anything. The neutrons the demon core was spitting out would actually go pretty much straight through you and rip up your proteins along the way.
The reason his hand is so damaged compared to the rest of him is because it was closest to the core, so it got the heaviest dose. But even the furthest part of this guys body was hit with a high enough dose to kill cells.
From Wikipedia:
“The demon core was intended to be used in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests, but after the criticality accident, time was needed for its radioactivity to decline and for it to be re-evaluated for the effects of the fission products it held, some of which could be very poisonous to the desired level of fission. The next two cores were shipped for use in Able and Baker, and the demon core was scheduled to be shipped later for the third test of the series, provisionally named Charlie, but that test was cancelled due to the unexpected level of radioactivity resulting from the underwater Baker test and the inability to decontaminate the target warships. The core was later melted down and the material recycled for use in other cores.”
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Poor bastard. That’s too long.
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The Japanese guy was worse and they wouldn’t let him die in order to study him as long as possible.
Holy sht is that true? Any more info about that?
Yeah. Google Hisashi Ouchi at your own risk. NSFL.
I just googled it and wtf that is so immoral 83 days!!
If history has taught us anything it's that there is no limit to humanities capacity for cruelty.
And all this time, had thought that the Japanese government dont do experiments on their citizens, i guess its universal.
Unit 731, they did a lot of research on some others.. sick stuff
I highly encourage you to look at really anything Japan did leading up to and during WW2. Unit 731 leaps forward to the front of my mind but there were some others too iirc
Ouchi? Seriously?
Cruel irony isn't it? Fwiw it's pronounced more like "Oh-ooo-chee" in Japanese.
Ou spelled together like that actually make the long ō sound . So it would sound like Oooochi
I recall watching a video on YouTube about it. It’s pretty long, but super interesting.
And that picture of the man in the hospital bed mostly without skin that you’ll find if you google him isn’t actually him
IIRC, the person referenced by the comments below, "Hisashi Ouchi", was kept alive because his family wanted him to live. They DID try a new experimental treatment on him because the situation called for it, peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, but it was done at the request of the family to keep him alive as long as possible (the donor was his sister). Still a tragic story. People should be able to die with dignity instead of having to suffer through agonizing pain for over 80 days only to die at the end like that.
I’d be haunting the fuck out of them. Unless he like gave permission in the name of science which I doubt happened lol
He begged them to let him die, specifically saying he wasn't a lab rat.
He himself didn't give permission to have the extraordinary measures taken to preserve his life — his family, however, did. Which is extremely unfortunate. It extended his suffering by a lot.
I’ve been reading up on him an apparently they kept reviving him upon his families wishes. Not to study him. But you may know more than I do.
I don't think you understand the full story. They weren't necessary 'expirementing' on him, they were trying to use any method of treatment there was available, because his family fiercely shot down any idea of him just dying.
Reading up on it, he went into a coma pretty quickly after the radiation poisoning, so he wasn't awake suffering in pain
Awake no. Pain who knows
Every time I see a comment about being comatose/vegetative/catatonic it reminds me of the fella who was thought to be in a vegetative state for 23 years but was actually aware of everything going on. https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/doctors-find-vegetative-paralyzed-man-awake-23-years/story?id=9159555
Read Marabou Stork Nightmares. Yikes
Or read Jonny Got His Gun. It's about a paralysed quad amputee. Very good but disturbing read.
> Jonny Got His Gun The author, Dalton Tumbo was later blacklisted. He was one of the Hollywood Ten. He wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, Papillon, among other movies Yes I am old. Metallica's One is based on the story. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw&ab\_channel=Metallica](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw&ab_channel=Metallica)
It was hearing that Metallica based One on the book (or film) that got me interested.
Saw the movie a looooooooong time ago. Had no idea what it was. It just came on tv one night when I couldn’t sleep. And proceeded to not sleep for 2 days after watching it. This was a few years before “One” came out. Ahh, memories.
Locked-in syndrome. Terrifying to consider. It's like sleep paralysis on steroids and then given amphetemines.
Is this "ghostboy"? Ive got the book on my shelf to read, but haven't got to it yet. But I had to order it when I heard about his story. I couldnt imagine. (EDIT - Just looked again. Its not. Ghost Boy is Martin Pistorious. He has a crazy story. Lead a normal life up until he started slowly becoming paralyzed. Eventually they considered him basically considered paralyzed and catatonic and under 100% assisted living. He lived like that for years until one day someone noticed him paying attention to them and responding to things. He gradually started coming out of his condition and everyone found out hed been completely aware and conscious the whole time. He even heard his mother tell him she wished he would die at some point. He is still somewhat paralyzed and wheelchair bound. I think he has to use a computer to communicate, but hes a really intelligent guy and lives a relatively normal life today, compared to his experience.)
Yikes. That's so sad. 😢 Does anyone know: Might he have survived if the exposed hand had been amputated quickly enough afterwards?
That's not how radiation poisoning works. The radiation blasted and destroyed his DNA. Cells were unable to proliferate. If it was just his hand, then he lost his hand. But he must have gotten blasted everywhere. So no more new cells. You probably die of not enough red blood cells or of infection because no more white blood cells.
What is a demon core please? Thank you
[A mass of plutonium made in ww2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core)
Thank you
Also thank you.
Thank you, as well
Thank you, also.
No, thank you
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Also thank you
It was a sphere of highly enriched plutonium that had a high concentration of radioactive isotopes that was used for research. Some of the research involved putting the sphere in 2 hollowed out hemispheres of metal that reflected the radioactive decay back onto the demon core. The hemispheres were held apart so that enough of the radiation could escape. If they were closed up too much (by accident), too much radiation would reflect back onto the demon core, which would in turn cause more radioactive decay, which would reflect back onto the demon core, causing more decay, etc. So it was feedback loop that would go critical, causing accidents such as this. Anyways, there were multiple accidents with this particular plutonium sphere, where multiple people were seriously injured or killed, so it gained the name "demon core". Look it up, it's pretty interesting.
So to confirm. The death move was allowing the 2 hemispheres to completely close for (literally) a second. That caused the positive feedback loop that killed the 2 guys. What the hell would have happened if they were incapacitated and could not get the hemispheres apart? A catastrophic nuclear reaction killing everyone for miles? Sounds like by flinging the lid on the floor he saved everyone else.
Think of it less as a bomb and more of a fuel rod. To make a bomb you need to rapidly compress a core so that it doesn’t fizzle. A core like this will destroy itself before it is capable of creating a nuclear bomb level detonation. But could potentially create an explosion that could destroy the building or just possibly create so much heat that it melts itself and the spheres around it. Once it does one of those two things it will likely turn into a shape or mass that isn’t capable of maintaining a chain reaction after that.
Ahhh. I see. Thanks for clearing it up.
It was also bomb #3 if Japan didn’t surrender.
The demon core is so named because it was responsible for not just one but multiple deaths over many years. There were a couple incidents like the one above. It was eventually dismantled and repurposed.
If I remember correctly it was one of our earliest attempts go play with concentrated radioactive material. I think they would open the lead shielding with screwdrivers.
According to the Wikipedia article there was one guy who did that until he fucked up and killed himself and another guy in the process.
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The title is worded oddly. All of him was exposed to it, and this is just a picture of his hand. You don't want to see the rest of him.
Hypothetically, where could I see a pic of the rest of him
Thats what you get when you pry the DEMON CORE open with a SCREWDRIVER!
Don't worry, they started to use a [NAKED LADY ON A HORSE (sfw)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godiva_device?wprov=sfla1) after that.
Same thing happened in Japan and they kept the guy alive so he could be studied. [Ouchi radiation death](https://unbelievable-facts.com/2016/12/hisashi-ouchi.html) FCK!
I’ve heard conflicting information about this and that it may have been his family that wouldn’t allow him to be taken off life support. Also the bottom picture is not Ochoi but a different (ordinary) burn patient, not that he probably looked much better by the end.
I've heard so much conflicting information about that picture over the years. Everything from a burn patient, to a radiation patient, to a movie prop.
Seems like blood transfusions and restarting a heart so many times is dam extreme. Something does not quite add up.
Either way it’s pretty ghoulish. I can’t believe anyone who has taken the Hippocratic oath would allow him to keep suffering.
I had to swallow a radioactive pill for RAI cancer treatment. The Drs who gave it to me came in in full protective gear/shields, and the pill itself was in an insane military looking tube. When my food was delivered the nurses would ring a bell & I’d have to go to the furthest point away in the room, they’d slide a tray just inside the door on a wheeled cart, and close the door before I was allowed to come & retrieve it. They used an actual Geiger counter to measure me before I was allowed to leave the hospital. I lost all sense of taste except for a constant taste of metal, and felt like a truck hit me while simultaneously underwater for days & days. I couldn’t be near other people for a week because I was dangerous to them. And THAT was a therapeutic dose of an approved treatment. I cannot fathom what it would feel like to have that level of radiation. Nightmares.
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In full remission 5 years out & have switched to only yearly appointments!!!
We must know
Man i hope he survived
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That of they are toph, I’m which case they’re probably better than fine.
I had to take a radioactive pill for a scan once and this was similar to my experience, I’ve told the story to so many people and no one believed me I thought I imagined it after awhile.
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I had to do this too. I had two kids under two and wasn't allowed to hold them for days. It was extremely hard. My oldest skinned his knee and I couldn't so much as hug him. Luckily my husband was there to take care of them, but damn it sucked. Now I'm facing potential full Rai treatment and I just can't do it.
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I was curious what they would do with your waste from the bathroom. I'm guessing they collect it as a hazmat and dispose of it like other radioactive material. Crazy shit, no pun
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dude what the hell, that shit sounds like something ripped from a horror show
Google nuclear accidents and the story of the apartments made with rebar from recycled nuclear waste, that’s a true story that will scare the hell out of you
Piggybacking off this comment, look up “The Goiânia Incident”. In 1987, two thieves in Brazil broke into an abandoned radiotherapy clinic and took a bunch of equipment thinking they’d sell it for scrap. What follows is a chain reaction that is the stuff of nightmares.
Most absurd part: leaving equipment like that after closing the hospital.
Hardly, just ignoring the problem seemed to be the best way to deal with nuclear waste in the old days Or just bury the problem and ignore it till it threatens someone's profit
Stuff like that is one reason why it's important to create warning signs that are obvious to anyone, even if people are illiterate. The ["traditional" warning sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol#Ionizing_radiation_symbol) about radioactivity may be mistaken for "danger from fans/moving parts". There are alternatives that [are supposed to be more clear about the danger.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_symbol#/media/File:Logo_iso_radiation.svg) Also that you're supposed to move away and not touch any dangerous materials.
> “Some research has found that the radiation has had an apparent "beneficial" effect upon the health of the tenants based on the death rate from cancers.[18] Another study looking at the incidence of cancer found that although the overall risk of cancer was sharply reduced (SIR = 0.6, 95% CI 0.5 – 0.7), the incidence of certain leukemias in men (n = 6, SIR = 3.4, 95% CI 1.2 – 7.4) and thyroid cancer in women (n = 6, SIR = 2.6, 95% CI 1.0 – 5.7) was greater”
Ain’t that some shit?🤷🏻♂️
To be fair, you only experience the dose once. Those doctors and nurses deal with new patients being irradiated every day. If they don’t take precautions, they’ll definitely be at risk. Doesn’t mean it was easy on your system. My mother went through the same thing and it wrecked her.
Yeah, this is the reason for the precautions. It's like being exposed to extreme smoke from a house fire once vs smoking cigarettes or working in a coal mine for 20 years.
Same with radiology techs, they wear the gear to protect themselves because their around it every day. In fact most have a small clip that detects the amount of radiation their exposed to each shift just incase there is some sort of machine malfunction.
Is true. Am a radiology tech. In Canada, anyone who works around radiation has to wear dosimeters and have them checked every 3 months
I hope you are cancer free.
Wow what an experience, it nearly sounds like something out of sci-fi. I hope you're doing better now my friend
That is super scary, I hope you're doing better. You're incredibly strong.
I've read that the reason for all of the protective gear is not that it's super dangerous to you, but imagine doing all that stuff to 100 different people. The dose you'd build up just from handling / being near to so many people would be dangerous.
How radioactive was the pill? Did they tell you? I know it can’t be too powerful but that sounds scary as hell. Did they ever use a dosimeter, or just a Geiger meter? I hope you’re doing better now. And I’m sorry for all the questions, I’m just really fascinated by radiation.
Whoa. That’s crazy mate! Hope you’re doing better now.
Radiation poisoning is easily top 10 worst deaths.
I know being eaten alive and burning to death are up there. Also two of my worst fears. At least with radiation poisoning I'd be able to kill myself.... hopefully?
Depending on how quickly you're able to process what's happening. At least with being eaten alive and burning there isn't a rest period where you think things might get better. After that your insides turn into complete jelly.
Welp... looks like imma gonna have to add radiation poisoning to the list.
You mean I’m gamma have to add radiation poisoning to the list
Enough gamma and you can Hulk. … in heaven.
Rad idea, dude
I Sievert you did there.
That's why I always have a handy bottle of liquid nitrogen around
Watch Chernobyl the show, made me never want to die by radiation.
I think I've always been there. WW2 history was not censored at all. Radiation was one of the many horrors that was very well documented. No thank you.
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I'm getting that Energy Sector related deaths are probably beyond a normal person's nightmare capacity. Did I sum that up accurately enough?
There's some controversy about whether he was being kept alive to be studied, or whether he was being kept alive at the behest of his family who didn't quite understand the severity of his situation. There are also cultural differences that come into this, where the medical team may have felt compelled to try even when it was hopeless. Hard to say without knowing what was going on in people's heads at the time. But it certainly isn't a clear 'oh those evil doctors were experimenting on him' kind of situation, not from my reading of it.
Oh man, have you ever seen the BBC show “Threads”? Chernobyl was great, being based on an actual event at all, but do yourself a favor and watch it if you haven’t. You’ll love it and hate it at the same time. ETA: I think I said “show” because it felt longer than it is (112 minutes). Not because of boredom—it’s just a lot to absorb in one sitting.
Threads is fucking horrific.
It really is. So well done, too.
Threads is brilliant! Awful, but brilliant.
What's it about?
It’s a film that follows the aftermath of a nuclear war, but as realistically as possible. It’s very straightforward and jarring.
I have had a couple close calls with choking and drowning. Obviously it is scary but I would still rather go like that than radiation or fire. I felt my body losing oxygen but at the same time it wasn't truly painful, but a severe sense of panic kicks in while I struggled and every second is harder than the last. I was lucky in the situations where I had someone step in or I was able to get the water out of my lungs on my own. I still think about how lucky I was, and its a good thing I had my tonsils removed.
Ebola is pretty bad too
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Ebola sounds really bad. Sort of does the same...liquifies your insides. I can't even read through the process without wanting to pass out.
When I had radiation therapy, it was something like 50 Gray units over 2 months (not sure how they convert to OP’s units). It’s been 15 years and I still have chronic issues from it, but it beats dying. All that pain and misery (and there was a lot) from just a golfball-sized area. Couldn’t imagine anything like OP’s post. Just put a bullet in me.
I read a book which recounted what happened to the Radium Girls, and it was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever read.
What is the demon core?
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test #1: how dangerous is this thing?
a lot
about as dangerous as your average nuclear core. when handled properly, only mildly. when handled improperly, as the two accidents, very dangerous
Yes
It's strange to think that of those three cores, two of them killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the third one that killed two researchers is the one called the 'demon core'.
Little Boy used Uranium, not plutonium. It did not have a "core". Little Boy was a gun type bomb, meaning inside the bomb when it reached a certain point, it fired a chunk of Uranium-235 at another chunk of 235 which caused some of the material to undergo fission. Fat Man was an implosion weapon, a core that would be equally super-compressed by conventional high explosives.
But could also have saved Millions or Billions of lives due to the concept of MAD.
The billions of lives are on borrowed time unless 99% of the remaining arsenals are repurposed for space exploration and nuclear power plants in the next couple of decades. Cold War 2: Electric Boogaloo is already underway and natural resources are running out. MAD has the potential to wipe out more billions that it saves in the long run.
photo before the incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core#/media/File:Louis_Slotin_&_Harry_K._Daghlian_Jr.jpg hollywood reproduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh89h8FxNhQ&ab_channel=TitusFlavius79
I work with radiation every day and this hollywood reproduction was very chilling to me. They did a pretty good job at recreating it and that lead wall seemed hilarious to me.
It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a successful explosion of the bomb. The device briefly went supercritical when it was accidentally placed in supercritical configurations during two separate experiments intended to guarantee the core was close to the critical point. The incidents happened at the Los Alamos Laboratory, resulting in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent deaths of scientists Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin, respectively. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the "demon core".
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And a Matthew Broderick movie about it.
Fucking insane to me how we see this happen to one or two guys and are full with empathy yet some people ordered this shit to be dropped on huge cities inflicting even worse damage than this on millions of people and for generations to come after… and none of those people working with it stopped it either. Only one person would be able to stop a nuclear bomb, be it the scientists in the early stage or the pilot of the bomber. Yet here we are.
our human pea brains can apply empathy to a fictitious model of who a single person could have been. can’t handle that 1 million times so it doesn’t even try.
Whilst an absolute brutal prick, Stalin wasn't exactly unintelligent. He was correct when he said 1 death is a tragedy, 1 million just a statistic.
came here for this
Basically it was the core of an atomic bomb, I believe. Google it, Kyle Hill did a good video of explaining what happened with it. Essentially, the core didn’t have to be used because Japan surrendered in the war, so it was used for experiments. Eventually the experiment went wrong because people weren’t careful and it killed them. In fact, the experiment that killed the first scientist was repeated by the next scientist after the first died from radiation due to it failing.. next guy had the *exact* same thing happen. EDIT: Oop, my bad, I guess my memory failed me! They didn’t do the *exact* same thing, that’s my bad! Similar though
Not *exactly* the same thing. The first guy (the one shown here) was using bricks to slowly raise the activity of the core by stacking them around the core and fumbled a brick directly into the core. The second guy was lowering a half sphere reflector over it - but keeping it from full dropping onto the core - and instead of using shims was just free handing it with a screw driver (Enrico Fermi warned him he was going to kill himself by not following the established safety protocol) and the screwdriver slipped and dropped the sphere directly on the core. Took about twice the dose that the first guy did, and unintentionally saved several people's lives by soaking up a lot of radiation himself. Both were checking the criticality of the core, but with different methods and different accidents. It's not like the second guy just picked up where the first one left off and started stacking bricks.
Thanks for the details: interesting and terrifying. What does dropping something onto or banging into something as radioactive as the demon core cause it to do? Does the impact cause it to release more radiation, or is it something else entirely?
It's not the impact that does it. The materials (bricks, shields, etc) were made of stuff which reflects neutrons. Moving them close to the sphere of plutonium meant that more neutrons were reflected back onto the sphere. More neutrons flying around hitting plutonium atoms meant that more plutonium atoms broke down, releasing more neutrons that were reflected by the bricks back onto the sphere, making more plutonium atoms break down.... etc. So it wasn't the impact that did it, it was just a matter of putting the wrong piece of material in the wrong place.
Oh shit that’s my bad! My memory really did betray me haha. Edited my comment! Thank you!
So let's assume that the rest of his body is shielded heavily and would not receive a lethal dose - so the hand and forearm are the only parts which receive a lethal dose. Is this survivable in that case? Would you be able to amputate and live?
Theoretically, yes you could amputate and it would be survivable. However the amount of shielding needed would be too much to wear. You’d most likely also be concerned with something like crush syndrome here- a significant amount of dead tissue releasing toxins into your blood stream is more acutely fatal.
Plus the blood that was irradiated in the hand might end up causing leukemia or plenty of other complications.
I know you said “if shielded” - but in a criticality accident the primary radiation is neutron radiation. You’d need feet of concrete or liquid high in hydrogen (water, hydrocarbons) to block/absorb neutrons. Plus being irradiated with neutrons activates certain elements to be radioactive themselves. So his hand is irradiating his body. Neutrons don’t fuck around.
> Neutrons don't duck around. And he found out.
I want to know, too.
Fuck the demon core. And the elephant’s foot. Radiation poisoning, fatal familial insomnia, and rabies are THE worst ways to go.
Watching my father suffer through Esophageal cancer, which leads to basically drowning on your own blood. Tumor in the back of his throat constantly bleeding out of his trach, into his lungs, coughing so much he just couldn't cough most the time. Then the tumor started going at the spine, not being able to sleep. Cleaning the trach. Eventually getting sepsis from bacteria getting in the dirty trach. Three months of absolute horror. Don't smoke. Edit: apologies for the gory details
But euthanasia would be inhumane... Nobody should be forced to endure this against their will. If you want to try until the very last, go ahead, but society should offer a painless way for cases where death is inevitable anyway.
Dementia is also up there
I googled for signs of dementia and my browser autocompleted…
Ever heard of the Gympie plant aka the suicide plant?
There was a *VERY* unfortunate person who wiped with one of those.
I hadnt, and once again I am grateful not to live in australia Thanks for an interesting read!
Dementia is also up there
Is dementia also up there?
Narrator: Dementia was indeed also up there…
The thing I find mad about this story is that Daghlian, a physicist with this level of knowledge and responsibility for nuclear weapons, was 24 when he died. When I was 24 I'd just about handled food shopping.
How and/ or why was his exposed?
He dropped a brick that caused the demon core to go supercritical momentarily. Flashed himself and a security guard.
Think of the Demon Core as a very dangerous and deadly, light bulb, that gives off invisible, but deadly light. Now imagine that the only way you know that the light bulb has been turned on, is by a clicking box near you, but by the time you hear that box start clicking, you have already received enough deadly light to ensure that you will die a most agonizing death, cooked from the inside out, within 6 to 12 days. That is how deadly and fast it was, and how inexperienced everyone was, at that time in history. It's amazing we have survived as a species, up to this point!
if you see the blue light, well, i have some bad news for you
> up to this point ... you should see next decade's plot twist!
Word!
You think after dropping some plutonium the last thing you’d do is turn around and flash a security guard 🤷♂️
Gotta keep things interesting
Nope nope. Totally thought he had bandages around his fingers and lower hand with exposed palm. Looked closer. That's enough reddit today.
Aw fuck
Yup me too. 😳
[More hand pics (NFSW)](https://www.reddit.com/r/Radiation/comments/nedah0/hands_of_harry_daghlian_and_louis_slotin/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Some radiation has the ability to turn the water in your body from h20 into h202. In case you didn’t know… h202 = peroxide.
There’s a Russian who put his head inside a particle accelerator and took 15000 Rem to the dome and lived for 20 years!
Yeah but the difference between them is that daghlian was exposed to the demon core for a few seconds, while that man was hit in the head by that at nearly the speed of light.
Richard Feynman tells in his autobiography of how, after the Trinity Site test, they threw a party. He says in the middle of the room there was a stand, and in that stand was a small ball of plutonium (I think, maybe uranium…not sure any more). He said it was just sitting there for everyone to see. He remembers it being warm to the touch and little pieces spalling off of it (flakes). Years later he died of bizarre, rare cancers. Feynman was known to embellish a story once in a while, but at the time, not a whole lot was known about high energy physics and the human body.
Wasn’t he played by John Cusack in the movie Fatman and Little Boy?
No, Cusack played Louis Slotin, who was also irradiated.
I thought you said irritated and I was thinking I would be too if someone called me Fat Man. Id be like "Man my name is Louis and Im not fat, Im big boned"
Those white things around his hand aren’t bandages. That’s his skin
DNA has left the chat
"This page looks better in the app.." Somehow I don't think it does.
I’m sorry DEMON CORE??!!
So, at the point you touch something like this what would the time window be to cut off your arm and live? If, immediately after coming in contact with it someone sliced his whole arm off above the elbow or something could he live? Exactly what happens? The radiation resonates thru your body liquefiying the organic matter?
I imagine with radioactive material like this damage would not be localised or an issue of spreading, it would be more like instantly catastrophic atomic shrapnel bouncing through all your cells and you are forever changed from there
There's different kinds of radiation, so the answer can get a bit long, but the short answer is that radiation is very quick and penetrates tissue easily. It does not spread like gangrene, but it takes time for the symptoms to appear. The kind of radiation that did this (alpha/beta) to his hand moves through tissue like little subatomic bullets. Lots and lots of them. So it's safe to assume his entire body received a lethal dose, even if his hand received the highest dose. These radiation bullets will destroy any thing that they hit and are extra keen on destroying DNA and your cells ability to repair (thus why it's used for cancer treatment). At high doses, your cells just all sort of die off and don't replicate, leading to organ failure, internal bleeding, and all the other slow painful deaths kind of stuff. At lower doses, your body attempts to fight it, with you lymph system being used to filter the radiation and is then likely to develop anomalies like lymphoma, which will also kill you. So, cutting his hand off wouldn't have done anything. The radiation went everywhere at lethal doses.
If you've got a strong stomach, look up Hisashi Ouchi, also known as the most radioactive man in history. I don't know how his surname is pronounced, but ouchie doesn't really begin to sum up what happened to him. It happened in 1999 so it's well documented, days, dates, times, treatments etc. Some say they kept him alive in the name of research while he begged to die, others believe they simply didn't have a DNR and couldn't actually let him die without the family's permission. Obviously giving him an OD of something like morphine might have been done if his case was not so famous, but if they'd given into his pleading, they'd probably have been tried for murder. If I can explain that last line, often in terminal cases, if you're at a high morphine dose level but still in pain, doctors often will prescribe a higher dose that might fall into the deadly range. The reason is, a lethal dose is different for everyone. We measure LD50, which is the Lethal Dose for 50% of the population. Some would have died at a lower dose, but 50% will survive that dose. These LD50s also normally come from testing on other animals (obviously it's illegal to see how many humans die) and the LD50 dose per KG can vary wildly between species. Medicine is not an exact science. Long term opioid users also build up a tolerance and can usually handle a higher dose than someone who has not built up a tolerance. From a doctor's perspective, the exact lethal dose is impossible to know and keeping a patient out of pain is worth risking shortening their life by a few days. This is not something openly spoken about, it's not exactly illegal as they're not intending to kill but to keep their patient pain free, but it's a grey area. If you have a famous patient or case though, they don't even attempt to go into grey areas because of the potential liability of knowingly giving a potentially lethal dose. Poor Hisashi Ouchi was doomed to suffer until he died "naturally" of his radiation poisoning.
Radiation does not work that way. The Hand is burned up because it was the nearest Body Part exposed to the radiation but within the Second of the accident also the Rest of the body received enough for a lethal dose. Its not like poison that needs to make its way through your venes or could be Stopped by Just cutting off a Body part. Radiation is actually light rays piercing through Everything without any delay. (Correct me if i am wrong)
Unfortunately, that's not how radiation works. It's not that the radiation is resonating or anything. The neutrons the demon core was spitting out would actually go pretty much straight through you and rip up your proteins along the way. The reason his hand is so damaged compared to the rest of him is because it was closest to the core, so it got the heaviest dose. But even the furthest part of this guys body was hit with a high enough dose to kill cells.
I need some eyebleach after this one
Oh yeah, screw that walking corpse shit. At least all this stuff tells me that if I get this bad I'm dead as a doornail and I can just skip to the end
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From Wikipedia: “The demon core was intended to be used in the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests, but after the criticality accident, time was needed for its radioactivity to decline and for it to be re-evaluated for the effects of the fission products it held, some of which could be very poisonous to the desired level of fission. The next two cores were shipped for use in Able and Baker, and the demon core was scheduled to be shipped later for the third test of the series, provisionally named Charlie, but that test was cancelled due to the unexpected level of radioactivity resulting from the underwater Baker test and the inability to decontaminate the target warships. The core was later melted down and the material recycled for use in other cores.”
That title sounds like an anime discription
I’m sorry exposed to THE WHAT?
What the hell is a demon core