Radiation and zombies

[Faran Brigo]

It's been said that since radiation mainly causes cancer, it would be useless against zombies since they don't have live cells and thus can't develop tumors. I disagree. Yes, lethal doses of radiation in humans usually cause death through tumors but that's not the only way radiation causes damage.

Radiation pulses are used to sterilize materials and even some foods. Higher energy bursts of gamma radiation are already used to inactivate/denature viruses, go higher and cell walls are destroyed and on the highest end (unpractical though) it causes damage to concrete and steel over time.

Gamma radiation also has a huge advantage, it's highly penetrating. In theory, a "projector" of sorts could be used to clear buildings without the need to step in them (though the radiation might cause some materials to become radioactive).

[Senecal]

Hmmmm tricky. Could cause cellular degeneration sure, but more likely, would sterilize the corpse so "helpful" decomposers would be killed/inactivated, in effect lengthening the "life" of Zed.

[Faran Brigo]

True, but I was thinking if what is causing them to rise is a microbe, then it would also destroy it along with the decomp organisms.

[Trebek]

Possible, but you'd have to get most of whatever microbe was causing the infection, and even then you're talking about extremely high doses of radiation. I would think it would pose a greater threat to humans than the zeds.

[Faran Brigo]

How high would these dosages of radiation be?

[ashley]

Hmmm, good idea in theory but severely flawed by the fact that it'd be too dangerous for the living.

[RockJock]

Radiation, being the degree of energy put out by a parent turning to daughter isotope can cause great deals of heat and in addition to causing sterilization, it can cause things to decompose quicker as well as extreme heat shears things apart. (There's a connection of the two of heat / energy in put into a biological or formerly organism.)

But over all it'd seem to be hit or miss. But I'm afraid the only real use there'd be out of it would be making zed's mildly radioactive and using that as an early warning.

[mattdettorre123]

Uh tumors are a long term symptom of low dose radiation, they develop after years of certain types of radiation. So let's stop and look at what radiation is. Radiation is caused by radio active substances, anything radio active is basically unstable atoms, when things are radio active they shoot off stray particles that penetrate the cells of your body, and basically tears them apart. So when you are hit with oh say a nuke, the radiation is so high you wont have enough time to develop tumors. Your liver, kidneys and other organs will fail before you get a tumor.

So radiation would help zombies by destroying all the bacteria on them and preventing them from rotting away. So you will have long lasting clean zombies

[mattifikation]

The point is, it would also destroy the virus that reanimated them. In addition, maybe you've forgotten this, but brains are made of cells also.

[Screwballgunnut]

Originally Posted by mattifikation

The point is, it might could destroy the virus that reanimated them.

Fixed that for you. As there hasn't been an acknowledged outbreak for us to test this theory, we don't know what might or might not work.

Besides that, the focused radiation zombie blaster is still just an idea in the back of Faran's mind. Couple that with the fact that even an Xray machine (hospital use) is large enough that you have to have 2 or 3 ppl to move it, and a quality power supply, it doesn't seem like a practical battle weapon, or am I comparing apples to oranges, as I don't know much about radiation guns

[ashley]

Originally Posted by mattifikation

In addition, maybe you've forgotten this, but brains are made of cells also.

That's freakin hilarious. Almost made me spit out my coffee.

[Faran Brigo]

Originally Posted by Screwballgunnut

Fixed that for you. As there hasn't been an acknowledged outbreak for us to test this theory, we don't know what might or might not work.

Well not exactly. Enough radiation causes spalling in building materials and transmutes elements (of course that much radiation is unwieldy, any device of that magnitude would take massive amounts of shielding), so it's not a matter of whether or not radiation will kill a microbe (IF that's what rises zombies, this is no sure bet) but rather how much radiation it would take, and doing a comparative cost/benefit overview.

True, it's just an idea on my mind. The microbe (if it's a microbe) could be so resistant to radiation that the high doses would make shielding impractical for a mobile weapon. In that case, radiation could very well work as a standard area denial weapon, a sort of silent mine that lasts years and takes minimal effort and resources to set up.

An Xray machine uses power to generate Xrays, so yes that would be quite impractical. I was thinking about a simple gamma projector with a dense obturator (imagine a cathode ray tube like the ones used in TVs, but with a thick layer of lead all around the screen instead of the usual material) fillled with cobalt-60 mounted on a vehicle. Cobalt-60 is an intense gamma emitter used in medicine with a half life of 5.27 years, that's 46,165 hours of continous killing power without reloads or electricity (it's not instant death though, so that takes some of the edge off it) and without the need for bulky cooling equipment.

[mattifikation]

If it works, it'd make a cool gadget on top of a supply raid vehicle.

[Faran Brigo]

Yup. IF it works. It still wouldn't be easy to make though, it'd require substancial resources (mostly the making of the projector itself) and expertise to build one safely, and like I said before, for all we know the "virus" could be an extremophillic, radiation resistant microbe, which means it would be so tolerant of radiation the doses necesary to destroy it (at range and through walls mind you) could be prohibitive in terms of the materials (both isotopes and shielding) required.

If I may say so, even considering the difficulty of making one it wouldn't be just "cool", it would be absolutely devastating, and it would make clearing cities A LOT easier. You would need zed tissue (and isotope) samples to see how much radiation the pathogen can tolerate before being destroyed. Any body part would do, but I'm thinking it's best to take a head and break off the jaw just to be safe.

[Trebek]

Originally Posted by Faran Brigo

How high would these dosages of radiation be?

You were talking of using Gamma to penetrate buildings. even in a concentrated projection, that's hi-level stuff. In order to get through a building, and skin, and be sufficient to wipe out a body wide infection blind, it would have to be pretty serious.

Unless I misunderstood you.