Ravana
Istar
One thing we have found out over the years...radiation kills. While changes can be made through breeding, exposing someone to high radiation will pretty much kill them, and if not, they might wish they were dead.
Radioactive spider....sure....
Exactly. That spider bite would have had to rewrite the victim's entire genetic code–almost instantaneously. Every cell started working in a new way, as well as replicating accurately in that new way. So, "realistic," not even close. Of course, that's why we write fantasy: so we don't have to obey every law of reality.
The survivors would be the ones who were exposed only to moderate levels of radiation–at least unless there was something at the time that would aid persons who received high dosages, or which could protect against same: remember, this starts in a high-tech world. What they could do then has nothing to do with what they can('t) do now. There could have been treatments that reduced the overall effect of radiation exposure, or at least its consequences… which would allow more people to survive, and survive longer, while still being exposed to the radiation stimulus, which in turn would create more opportunities for mutations to arise and get established. (Assuming, of course, that the radiation treatment didn't specifically prevent this: I was thinking more along the lines of alleviating radiation sickness, perhaps along with some good early-stage cancer treatments. Can't prevent cancer completely, though, since it's the consequence of mutation, and that's what you want.)
And, yes, most of those would probably die as well; most of the cellular mutations that did occur would never survive to propagate through the host body–antibodies and other processes would recognize these as "intruders" and try to eliminate them… so the person would survive, but the mutation wouldn't take; many of these would be malign, with at least the potential of killing the host before he could reproduce; most of the mutations that did manage to perpetuate themselves would be trivial in individual effect; few of these would be beneficial, though any number of them could be neutral or possess effects that rarely mattered to the host's life one way or the other; a large number would probably be recessive, and fail to get reinforced–and remember, to reinforce a mutation, you want two beings with the same one. (Think about breeding dogs… or pigeons. You can find great background materials on both, to give you some idea of what it takes to "naturally"–that is, using only those mutations that arise normally in an organism–set a particular trait in a population (and allowing for the fact that breeders get to choose which animals to breed, unlike populations surviving in the wild: this would give you a baseline to compare to, at least). Believe it or not, the body of reference on pigeons is probably the more extensive of the two.…) Et many cetera.
On the other hand… organisms do evolve. We certainly don't look the way we did 50,000 generations ago. The radiation and bioweapons merely speed things up. So, by the way, do small, isolated populations: limit the amount of genetic interchange, and the odds of any given mutation taking increase. Competitive advantage (survival of the fittest) will weed out less well-adapted persons–mutated or otherwise–at a far greater rate in a post-holocaust wasteland than would be true in our well-fed, high-infrastructure society. And even among small, isolated human populations, there will be a certain amount of selective breeding, consciously or otherwise: you will be far more likely to seek a mate who you perceive as being better adapted to at least survive, if not prosper, in the conditions you find yourself in… and you'll want to pass that advantage on to your offspring.
So, really, all that the holocaust is doing is accelerating natural processes. As long as you don't want your mutants to be the first generation after it happened–or even the tenth–there shouldn't be much of a problem. Especially if you're thinking of this as fantasy rather than SF.
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