water radiation and ships

[sexualjesus]

so while thinking about surviving a zombie apocalypse aboard warships i thought of a game called fallout 3, which you board a docked ship, grounded yet still in radiated water, this massive ship is inhabitated as a city while the water is cleary irradiated, the bottom few floors are sunken in the water.

before i get to my point i will hit you with another example, theres a 1960's movie called on the beach, about a submarines journeys after a nuclear war, the water is irradiated, everywhere else is irriadiated, yet the people in the submarine are perfectly okay in there metal coffin.

last i checked metal becomes irriadiated, so therefore both the submarine, and the massive ship, should be irriadiated, killing everyone on board.

i just thought of that and i think both stories are killing science which i thought someone on this board would clarrify that im right or wrong.

(on the beach is a great movie btw, the original is black and white and i would have loved it had i been born earlier but luckily they made a remake, and the remake is fantastic and i urge anyone to see it, enuff said about fallout 3 im sure everyone here has already played it)

[Virus]

Originally Posted by sexualjesus

so while thinking about surviving a zombie apocalypse aboard warships i thought of a game called fallout 3, which you board a docked ship, grounded yet still in radiated water, this massive ship is inhabitated as a city while the water is cleary irradiated, the bottom few floors are sunken in the water.

before i get to my point i will hit you with another example, theres a 1960's movie called on the beach, about a submarines journeys after a nuclear war, the water is irradiated, everywhere else is irriadiated, yet the people in the submarine are perfectly okay in there metal coffin.

last i checked metal becomes irriadiated, so therefore both the submarine, and the massive ship, should be irriadiated, killing everyone on board.

i just thought of that and i think both stories are killing science which i thought someone on this board would clarrify that im right or wrong.

(on the beach is a great movie btw, the original is black and white and i would have loved it had i been born earlier but luckily they made a remake, and the remake is fantastic and i urge anyone to see it, enuff said about fallout 3 im sure everyone here has already played it)

I never spoon feed things to people because they don't think if I do.

You need to look up the following:

Alpha particles
Beta particles
Gamma rays
Half-Life of radioactive isotopes

When you do so, your questions will be answered.

[comrade george]

it's a movie dude

[BaconPie]

Originally Posted by Virus

I never spoon feed things to people because they don't think if I do.

You need to look up the following:

Alpha particles
Beta particles
Gamma rays
Half-Life of radioactive isotopes

When you do so, your questions will be answered.

What this guy said.

[Mantikore]

i always thought that radiation only had a tiny range (much less than a meter)?

[LiquidIce]

Originally Posted by Mantikore

i always thought that radiation only had a tiny range (much less than a meter)?

Depends what kind. From what I remember alpha has a few mm/cm, beta some 1-20cm (taking this shit outa my ass now) and gamma... well gamma has a lot more range.

[Rainycity]

who gives a shit

[comrade george]

Originally Posted by Mantikore

i always thought that radiation only had a tiny range (much less than a meter)?

Radiation from the Sun can reach Earth, so, no.

Originally Posted by Rainycity

who gives a shit

excellent post

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by Mantikore

i always thought that radiation only had a tiny range (much less than a meter)?

Without intervening forces, radiation reduces as a square of distance. Double your distance from the radiation source, and you divide your radiation dosage by 4. Triple the distance, and you divide it by 9.

Different forms of radiation have different properties.

Alpha particles, basicly a high speed helium nucleus (2 protons and 2 neutrons) have very little penetrating power. It is often said that it can be stopped by a sheet of paper. Enough of anything will stop it, and being composed of ionized particles, even a magnetic field can deflect or slow the particles.

Beta particles are high speed electrons or positrons (which are both leptons) emitted during beta decay. Easily stopped by dense matter. Metals and such. Also magnetically charged, and capable of being deflected by magnetic fields.

Gamma radiation is the fun stuff. Straight high energy photons. Very high energy, billions of times more energetic than your typical mass media broadcast. Way up there in the exahertz range. The more energetic, the more penetrating power. Will slice right through lead, if it's thin enough.

Of course, enough of anything will stop anything. There is not such thing as an irresistible force.

[comrade george]

Without intervening forces, radiation reduces as a square of distance. Double your distance from the radiation source, and you divide your radiation dosage by 4. Triple the distance, and you divide it by 9.

Is this because radiation is emitted in all directions, ie a sphere, and the formula for a sphere is 4πr^2, ie the area increases by the square of the radius (distance from radiation source) and you are exposed to a smaller percentage of surface area of the "radiation sphere"? (no idea what the actual term would be) I've never thought about it before but this seems the likely explanation, can you confirm?

[BoilingLeadBath]

is this because radiation is emitted in all directions, ie a sphere, and the formula for a sphere is 4πr^2, ie the area increases by the square of the radius (distance from radiation source) and you are exposed to a smaller percentage of surface area of the "radiation sphere"?

Yes. You'll note that if the radiation source is not a point object, shell, or sphere, that this D^2 rate doesn't apply. (well, unless you treat it as an integral of point emitters...)

[Revvy]

Originally Posted by Mcrjtn

Fallout 3 is a piece of shit you spend longer watching load screens than you do playing the fucking game.

Yank ADHD faggot.

[Prometheus]

Originally Posted by BoilingLeadBath

Yes. You'll note that if the radiation source is not a point object, shell, or sphere, that this D^2 rate doesn't apply. (well, unless you treat it as an integral of point emitters...)

Oddly enough, I was referring to it as an integral. Good call. Yay calculus!

[Lord_Awesome]

The sub should be fine, IIRC, a bomb shelter under 8 foot of dirt will cut radiation to easily survivable levels even if close to the nuclear blast. The average density of soil is 100 to 110 lbs/ft^3, water has a density of 62.4 lbs/ft^3 at 32°F or 61.9 lbs/ft^3 at 100°F, for erring on the side of caution let's use the 61.9 lbs/ft^3. The soil has a density of about 1.62x that of water, so to achieve the same density of shielding the sub only has to be 12.9 feet under water, so hundreds of feet underwater, there should be very little gamma radiation from a nuclear blast. I don't remember the numbers on how long you'd have to stay under until radiation levels were back to normal, but there should be survivable levels fairly quickly.

As for the ship sitting in water, the radiation that hits metal hull shouldn't make the ship radioactive, unless the ship is made of a fissionable material, I think most metals just give off heat when in contact with radiation. I read somewhere about metal being radiated, and not being allowed to be used as scrap for melting down and reusing, but all the how they became radiated was from radioactive materials being used in the making of them, deposits of radioactive material form on the metal like the drills and piping used in oil drilling and wells, and when the metal was made radioactive materials that were too low in levels to be considered dangerous.

tl/dr: Submarines can go below water where they are protected from radiation, and I don't think metal becomes "radioactive" from exposure to radiation, unless it is a fissionable metal.