Radiation Can Kill, but Not as Easily You Think
Studying survivors of America’s atomic attacks on Japan have helped scientists better understand radiation—and how we fear it.
This article is for subscribers only.
The horror of the U.S. atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately and forever molded public thinking about nuclear energy. Some 200,000 people were killed, and thousands upon thousands more were sentenced to shorter lifespans.
Among the sane, nuclear weapons are unthinkably dangerous without hesitation or ambiguity. That message of cataclysm is so straightforward that it also shaped how people think about their key byproduct—radiation.