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How long would a large amount of polonium take to kill?
- Thread starter MrHiTech
- Start date
Acolyte
goldhawk
Troubadour
A very, very long time.
"A single gram of 210Po generates 140 watts of power.[12] Because it emits many alpha particles, which are stopped within a very short distance in dense media and release their energy, ..." Polonium-210 - Wikipedia
Alpha particles can be stopped by the air, a piece of paper, or the outer layer of skin.
"A single gram of 210Po generates 140 watts of power.[12] Because it emits many alpha particles, which are stopped within a very short distance in dense media and release their energy, ..." Polonium-210 - Wikipedia
Alpha particles can be stopped by the air, a piece of paper, or the outer layer of skin.
CupofJoe
Myth Weaver
From what limited knowledge of radiation poisoning I have Polonium 210 is fairly safe if it is not ingested.
this page has a lot of detail:
Polonium-210: Effects, symptoms, and diagnosis
An online search should turn up more.
this page has a lot of detail:
Polonium-210: Effects, symptoms, and diagnosis
An online search should turn up more.
- Thread starter
- #4
CupofJoe
Myth Weaver
Well it took Alexander Litvinenko about three weeks to die after he drank some in tea...
Alexander Litvinenko - Wikipedia
Is this for a story or are you planning a dirty bomb?
Alexander Litvinenko - Wikipedia
Is this for a story or are you planning a dirty bomb?
- Thread starter
- #6
Chasejxyz
Inkling
I don't think you answered that correction correctly, MrHiTech.
Ionizing radiation kills people by breaking proteins/DNA. A sunburn hurts/kills your upper layers of skin from that tasty UV radiation because the living cells get messed up. You get skin cancer from polonged sun exposure because some of those messed up cells reproduce, and sometimes they had some of their DNA messed up, and at some point the stars align and the "no stop making copies of yourself" bit of code gets borked and now you have cancer. Radiation kills you Really Fast the same way that setting someone on fire or throwing them into a pressure cooker kills them: kinda hard to be alive when your proteins get denatured and your cells are dead. Radiation kills you slowly the same way your sex hormone-producing organs are conspiring to kill you, or nicotine, or alcohol, or many compounds known to the state of California.
When it comes to burns in general, most people die because of things like infection, because your skin is really, really good at keeping out germs. Without your skin, you are one big mucous membrane (which is why you shouldn't touch your eyes during flu/covid times) and all your water is getting out, so you're dehydrating, too.
Here is the story of Hisashi Ouchi, who is the person known to have received the highest dose of ionizing radiation of anyone. This is a good article because there are no pictures. Do not look up videos/additional articles unless you want to see pictures, which you do not, trust me. He received such a high dose that his DNA essentailly melted, it was useless, there's no coming back from that. He still lived 83 days, mostly because they kept pumping him full of chemicals and performing life-sustaining measures for scientific curiosity.
You CAN do some things like pass out iodine tablets to combat radiation poisoning...but as they say, you can't uncook an egg*. The tabs need to be handed out very quickly and only help with certain kinds of cancer. Due to things like immune systems and underlying conditions, some people are going to sicken and die faster than others. It also depends on how quickly the authorities realize this is polonium/a dirty bomb and not just a regular bomb or anthrax or something. There's radiation sensors all over Japan so they'd notice this right away. It would take awhile for them to figure this out in Corntown, Kansas, though. But you are the author, you can put whatever time limit you want on these people to kick the bucket. It could be a few days, a few weeks, or a few decades. Depending on where a person is in relation to the bomb, the clothes they're wearing, the direction they're facing, if they're downwind....there's a TON of factors involved in calculating the effective dose they'd get. So you, as the author, have a ton of leeway to Make Stuff Up.
*tho some scientists did do that and won an Ig Nobel prize for it. But it's not something easily replicable
Ionizing radiation kills people by breaking proteins/DNA. A sunburn hurts/kills your upper layers of skin from that tasty UV radiation because the living cells get messed up. You get skin cancer from polonged sun exposure because some of those messed up cells reproduce, and sometimes they had some of their DNA messed up, and at some point the stars align and the "no stop making copies of yourself" bit of code gets borked and now you have cancer. Radiation kills you Really Fast the same way that setting someone on fire or throwing them into a pressure cooker kills them: kinda hard to be alive when your proteins get denatured and your cells are dead. Radiation kills you slowly the same way your sex hormone-producing organs are conspiring to kill you, or nicotine, or alcohol, or many compounds known to the state of California.
When it comes to burns in general, most people die because of things like infection, because your skin is really, really good at keeping out germs. Without your skin, you are one big mucous membrane (which is why you shouldn't touch your eyes during flu/covid times) and all your water is getting out, so you're dehydrating, too.
Here is the story of Hisashi Ouchi, who is the person known to have received the highest dose of ionizing radiation of anyone. This is a good article because there are no pictures. Do not look up videos/additional articles unless you want to see pictures, which you do not, trust me. He received such a high dose that his DNA essentailly melted, it was useless, there's no coming back from that. He still lived 83 days, mostly because they kept pumping him full of chemicals and performing life-sustaining measures for scientific curiosity.
You CAN do some things like pass out iodine tablets to combat radiation poisoning...but as they say, you can't uncook an egg*. The tabs need to be handed out very quickly and only help with certain kinds of cancer. Due to things like immune systems and underlying conditions, some people are going to sicken and die faster than others. It also depends on how quickly the authorities realize this is polonium/a dirty bomb and not just a regular bomb or anthrax or something. There's radiation sensors all over Japan so they'd notice this right away. It would take awhile for them to figure this out in Corntown, Kansas, though. But you are the author, you can put whatever time limit you want on these people to kick the bucket. It could be a few days, a few weeks, or a few decades. Depending on where a person is in relation to the bomb, the clothes they're wearing, the direction they're facing, if they're downwind....there's a TON of factors involved in calculating the effective dose they'd get. So you, as the author, have a ton of leeway to Make Stuff Up.
*tho some scientists did do that and won an Ig Nobel prize for it. But it's not something easily replicable
Mad Swede
Auror
OK, Polonium is radioactive, not toxic. It emits alpha particles, but these don't travel very far, nor do they penetrate the skin. So in practice you have to ingest or inhale polonium for it to have any effect. The median lethal dose when inhaled is calculated to be 10 nanograms. In theory, one gram of Poloium would be enough to kill 20 million people. However, that is is the instantaneous lethal dose and in reality that much Polonium wouldn't kill you as the radiation half life means that you wouldn't easily come up to that dosage.. Its the long term radiation effects which are the problem, and that is more of an issue in areas with radon (for example, areas where the rock is mostly granite) - polonium is a daughter product of radon, and is thought to cause most cases of cancer attributed to radon.
To spread Polonium out over a large crowd you'd either have to spray it in some way or use a bomb to spread it out. Using a bomb would require quite a large weapon, which in turn means that the blast would kill far more than the Polonium itself. Dirty bombs look good on paper, but in practice they're not very efficient except as a way of spreading panic.
To spread Polonium out over a large crowd you'd either have to spray it in some way or use a bomb to spread it out. Using a bomb would require quite a large weapon, which in turn means that the blast would kill far more than the Polonium itself. Dirty bombs look good on paper, but in practice they're not very efficient except as a way of spreading panic.
- Thread starter
- #9
OK so maybe I should give more background. The idea is that chronomancers can rewind lead into polonium and the process also causes the resultant polonium spread into the air (because magic), so people can die of inhaling it.
The question is how quickly a bunch of lead that is targeted by that spell (so it's polonium in the air now) would kill people.
The question is how quickly a bunch of lead that is targeted by that spell (so it's polonium in the air now) would kill people.
Chasejxyz
Inkling
Lol we have no way of knowing that. In chemistry, you can do math to figure out how long a chemical process would take, based on various factors (air pressure, presence of a catalyst etc). You can do the same thing via experience, like I can tell you that chocolate chip cookies take about 12 minutes to bake (though things like type/color of baking sheet used and where you put it in the oven and if there's another tray of cookies can affect it).
But with magic...man I dunno how long it'll take! You're the author you get to make it up! It can be instantaneous (or at least perceived to be instantenous because you're screwing around with time stuff) or it can take days. I assume they're speeding things up, cause the half-life of Po-210 is is 140 days. So again, it can be whatever the heck you want it to be. Also stuff being in the air has a lot of things that can change the rate of stuff moving around. I mean, you're living in Covid times, you've seen a ton of stuff about being around other people, wearing masks, the importance of fresh air...you can reckon these factors. The KGB guy who was killed with Polonium took 3 weeks to die after suddenly becoming ill.
But you got magic users that screw around with time. They could fastfoward the radioactive decay so it kills faster. They can freeze the air so an (invisible probably?) cloud just kinda sits there and everyone who passes through it gets a good lungfull of the stuff. You can make it be whatever you want with the system you have set up. I assume this is an important scene in your story, so what's the most dramatic? Do you want people dropping dead right away? Or do you want them mysteriously getting sick weeks later? Go with whatever time frame is the most dramatic and say "time wizards" to explain it away.
But with magic...man I dunno how long it'll take! You're the author you get to make it up! It can be instantaneous (or at least perceived to be instantenous because you're screwing around with time stuff) or it can take days. I assume they're speeding things up, cause the half-life of Po-210 is is 140 days. So again, it can be whatever the heck you want it to be. Also stuff being in the air has a lot of things that can change the rate of stuff moving around. I mean, you're living in Covid times, you've seen a ton of stuff about being around other people, wearing masks, the importance of fresh air...you can reckon these factors. The KGB guy who was killed with Polonium took 3 weeks to die after suddenly becoming ill.
But you got magic users that screw around with time. They could fastfoward the radioactive decay so it kills faster. They can freeze the air so an (invisible probably?) cloud just kinda sits there and everyone who passes through it gets a good lungfull of the stuff. You can make it be whatever you want with the system you have set up. I assume this is an important scene in your story, so what's the most dramatic? Do you want people dropping dead right away? Or do you want them mysteriously getting sick weeks later? Go with whatever time frame is the most dramatic and say "time wizards" to explain it away.
If speed is of the essence, your chronomancers maybe should go for creating a prompt criticality event, causing a massive gama burst. You'll need a fissionable element for this - uranium, plutonium or thorium. Getting a critical geometry in mid-air would be tricky but has been done underwater for real, as the people at the Tokaimura plant in Japan found out. Massive amounts of gamma radiation will incapacitate people right away and likely cause death within the hour but we are talking massive amounts - about 1000Gy. For comparison, 4Gy of radiation causes death in 50% of an exposed population (cause of death being organ failure over a period of days/weeks).
If you're looking for something easier and more lethal, a thermobaric (fuel/air) explosion is your go-to guy. Or a nerve agent like VX. The wonderful things our taxes have been spent on down the years...
If you're looking for something easier and more lethal, a thermobaric (fuel/air) explosion is your go-to guy. Or a nerve agent like VX. The wonderful things our taxes have been spent on down the years...
Mad Swede
Auror
No, the best way to produce Polonium of the sort you want would be use Bismuth as a starting point - its quicker and easier. That wouldn't turn it into a powder though, you'd have to find some way of doing that.
As for spreading it out in the air, you need a lot of Polonium dust, partly because the alpha radiation needed to kill people doesn't travel far and partly because Polonium is so dense that it doesn't travel far as dust before settling. Lead is too heavy to spread effectively as dust, and so is Bismuth, so there's also no realistic way of turnning those into dust and then converting them into Polonium. In short, your idea is interesting but unrealistic to anyone who knows anything about metals.
I'd suggest finding som other way of killing people or, if you insist on using some deadly dust, not saying what sort of dust it is.
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