Question about radiation damage

[infinitypanda]

Hey guys, in the Campaigns book, players begin rolling for radiation damage when they get one rad or above, and terminal radiation sickness becomes possible at 20 rads. However, the Wikipedia page says that radiation sickness doesn't really start until 100 rads, and death isn't likely until 200 rads. What gives?

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by infinitypanda

Hey guys, in the Campaigns book, players begin rolling for radiation damage when they get one rad or above, and terminal radiation sickness becomes possible at 20 rads. However, the Wikipedia page says that radiation sickness doesn't really start until 100 rads, and death isn't likely until 200 rads. What gives?

The Wikipedia talks about 100-200 rems, not rads. 1 rem = Q x 1 rad (with Q between 1 and 20... So with an average of 10).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad_%28unit%29

GURPS is very well documented. Which doesn't prevent all errors, of course... But it has been reread and reread again for about 20 years.

[infinitypanda]

Originally Posted by Gollum

The Wikipedia talks about 100-200 rems, not rads. 1 rem = Q x 1 rad (with Q between 1 and 20... So with an average of 10).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rad_%28unit%29

GURPS is very well documented. Which doesn't prevent all errors, of course... But it has been reread and reread again for about 20 years.

Ah. My source was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning, which says that radiation damage begins at 1-2 Grey, which corresponds to 100-200 rads.

[KjetilKverndokken]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome

To have 100% leathality with care you need to get into 6 Gy.

Gy is better to use then Rad as rads are kind of an obsolete scale. But everybody knows the term rads :)

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by infinitypanda

Ah. My source was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_poisoning, which says that radiation damage begins at 1-2 Grey, which corresponds to 100-200 rads.

It looks like there is no consensus.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by KjetilKverndokken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome

To have 100% leathality with care you need to get into 6 Gy.

Gy is better to use then Rad as rads are kind of an obsolete scale. But everybody knows the term rads :)

Have you got some conversion between rad and Gy?

[Anthony]

1 rem is 1 rad when dealing with gamma rays; it's a bit more with other radiation types, but you can probably assume that when GURPS says 'rads' it means 'rems'. In any case, lethal radiation effects, realistically, don't hit until around 100 rem (1 Sv), but non-lethal effects occur at lower levels. There isn't a lot of data on radiation poisoning of humans, because it's very rare and we usually don't have good measures of the doses the victims actually received, but I'd have to agree that the scaling in Campaigns is rather odd; it should be something like -/-/A/B at 10-50 rem, -/A/B/C at 50-100 rem, A/B/C/D at 100 rem, -1 to HT checks per +50 rem (so 800 rem = -14...).

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Gollum

It looks like there is no consensus.

It's worse than that.

[KjetilKverndokken]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Have you got some conversion between rad and Gy?

its on the same page

These symptoms may occur at radiation doses as low as 35 rad (0.35 Gy)

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

It's worse than that.

How is that worse? That thread boils down to "There are 2 types or radiation, the stuff that acts close enough to gammas rays to be lumped together without a problem, and everything else which is too weak to treat as radiation unless you eat or inhale it." If anything it means you can simplify stuff easily, as you don't need multiple scales for different radiation types.