Living

Aug 1, 2012 5:20 PM   I love these images—created by photographer Clay Lipsky—and their premise: "Imagine if the advent of the atomic era occurred during today's information age. Tourists would gather to view bomb tests, at the 'safe' distances used in the 1950s, and share the resulting cell phone photos" on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. When I was a little kid I saw The Day After . I had nightmares for months and lived terrified, thinking that nuclear war could happen at any time (War Games only reinforced that thought). But now these mushrooms are so iconic that, even while I know they are terrible for the planet and its inhabitants, I have a tiny secret desire to watch one in real life. And instagram the hell out of it with the tag #uraniumfireworks. Perhaps they should open an atomic park in Bikini Island, where tourists can go and see simulated nuclear bombs detonating in the distance. Until that happens, enjoy Lipsky's photomerging work in his Atomi...

Say some maniacal world leader finally hits the big red button. Or maybe a terrorist takes out the local nuclear reactor. You survive the initial attack, and you're left to endure a world poisoned by nuclear radiation. How's that gonna feel? When nuclear reactions get going, they spit out particles with enough energy to rip electrons off of atoms or molecules. The altered bonds produce ion pairs that are extremely chemically reactive. This is known as ionizing radiation, and it's where the problems start. There are many types of ionizing radiation. Take your pick from cosmic, alpha, beta, gamma or X- rays, neutrons, or from a handful more. What really matters is how much an organism is exposed to—a concept called absorbed dose. One way to measure absorbed dose is in units of Grays (Gy). Another common unit is the sievert (Sv), which takes the Gy measure and multiples it by the type of radiation to calculate the effective dose in living tissue. The average radiation exposur...