What does a lethal dose of radiation actually do to the human body, hour by hour?
In 1958, Los Alamos worker Cecil Kelley was standing beside a plutonium processing tank when it suddenly went critical. In less than a fraction of a second, he was blasted with an enormous dose of neutron and gamma radiation. At first, the damage was almost invisible. Within minutes, Kelley became confused, collapsed, began vomiting, and developed severe skin redness. His blood pressure crashed, his body started swelling, and his nervous system began to fail.
Then something strange happened. He appeared to get better. The vomiting stopped. He became lucid. His temperature returned to normal. But inside his body, the systems keeping him alive were shutting down. His lymphocytes disappeared, his bone marrow was almost completely destroyed, his blood vessels began leaking fluid, and the rapidly renewing tissue inside his digestive system could no longer replace itself.
Over the next 34 hours, doctors watched radiation sickness unfold in real time.
This is the hour-by-hour story of what happens when ionizing radiation damages DNA so severely that the human body effectively loses its ability to repair itself.
Narrated by: Josh Risser
Source: The Infographics Show
