TIL Fungi in Chernobyl appear to be feeding off gamma radiation and are growing towards the reactor core.
Today I Learned@kbin.social – 159 points – 
thebiologist.rsb.org.uk
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Today I Learned@kbin.social – 159 points – Today I Learned@kbin.social – 159 points –
It depends on the amount. A little... like a really small dose? Maybe.
If you get blanked it with radio active fall out in a high enough dose you will die or be so terribly sick you will want to be dead. So it kind of depends. Between me and you I hope I'm caught right in the blast radius. Instant death is fine by me.
You either want to be really far away from a nuclear explosion, or right next to it.
I think the better way to understand this is to know that the melanin difference between the fairest skinned person and the darkest skinned person is way smaller than you think. Something like 2x. It makes a big difference to our eyes, but it makes almost no difference to deadly radiation.
Imagine your skin magically became twice as thick, twice as tough. This would be convenient to avoid minor scrapes and scratches, but if you get stabbed or shot you will die just like anybody else. Hence, darker skinned people fare better when fighting off sunburn, but their skin melts off just like anybody else's when the rad levels get truly dangerous, with basically no difference at all.