The Horror Stories of Radiation Poisoning - It Doesn't Get Much Scarier Than This

 

THE DEMON CORE 

On May 30th, 1946, Canadian Physicist, Louis Slotin, died at a Los Alamos, New Mexico Hospital. His hands were blistered, burned and swollen and his body full of radiation. 

Nine days prior, Slotin was in a lab with seven other scientists experimenting with a device they nicknamed Rufus. After that fatal day, the device would no longer be called Rufus, it would now be referred to as The Demon Core. 

Slotin was a scientist working on The Manhatten Project, the same project that had created the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

After Japan surrendered, there was no need for anymore Atomic Bombs so the government changed their focus. Slotin performed experiments with Uranium and Plutonium cores to determine their critical mass values. 

On May 21st, 1946, an accident caused one of Slotin's experiments to go Supercritical. A bright blue flash was seen for only a fraction of a second before Slotin moved in to stop it. But the damage had been done. Slotin recieved a fatal dose of radiation. He died nine days later. 

The year before Slotin's death, one of his colleagues, Harry Daghlian, also had an accident involving the Demon Core. He too recieved a fatal dose of radiation and died 25 days later. Both men suffered severe abdominal pain along with vomiting and Diarrhea. Eventually their skin blistered over from radiation burns. Needless to say, both men suffered severe painful deaths. 

THE WALKING GHOST 

On September 30th, 1999, Hisashi Ouchi was working at a Nuclear Facility that supplied fuel for a nearby Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. 

Ouchi was mixing radioactive chemicals in a bin with another co-worker, Masato Shinohara, to prepare them for shipping. They were behind schedule as it was, so corners were cut to not only save time, but also came at the expense of safety. 

Around 10:30 am, the bin they were filling, which was the wrong kind of bin for the chemicals they were using, causing a  Nuclear Fisson. A large blue flash was seen, resulting in Ouchi and Shinohara both receiving lethal doses of Radiation Poisoning. 

Immediately, both men lost consciousness, when they came to, they were vomiting and complaining of abdominal pain. Since Ouchi was standing over the bin when it hit criticality, he was flown to a nearby hospital. Ouchi was responsive and was even joking with the paramedics and hospital staff. 

 In total, it was calculated that Ouchi had recieved 17 Severts of Radiation from the accident, far more than what is considered non-lethal. In fact, hospital staff couldn't believe he was even still alive when he arrived. That kind of exposure should have killed him instantly. 

Unfortunately for Ouchi, things were about to get a lot worse. So much so that he would be begging for death by time it was all over. 

Ouchi's case is horrific and hard to read about, let along write about. In short, the radiation killed his immune system and mutated his chromosomes. His body was no longer able to produce healthy cells. 

When the accident happened, Ouchi's body had already produced new cells which still functioned properly. But when those cells began to die and were unable to produce new cells, Ouchi began to turn into a corpse, while still being alive to see it happen. This is called The Walking Ghost Phase. 

Much has been written regarding Hisashi Ouchi's case. He finally died 86 days later on December 21st, 1999. His co-worker, Masato Shinohara, who recieved 13 Severts of Radiation, died on April 27th, 2000. 

THE ELEPHANT'S FOOT 

To be in the same room as an Elephant's Foot when it is still newly formed is a death sentence. You could ask the man who snapped this photo, but unfortunately, he's dead. 

This particular Elephant's Foot (it gets its name from the shape it forms, resembling an Elephant's Foot) was taken at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant a few months after the accident in 1986.  The man who snapped the photo, a Ukranian Man working for the government to assess the site of the disaster, was only in the room long enough to snap this photo. And as you can see, the radiation was so high it affected the film in the camera. A few days later, the man would be dead due to radiation poisoning. 

Today, almost 40 years after the Nuclear Power Plant Meltdown, The Chernobyl Elephant's Foot is still radioactive and still very hot. To stand next to it, without protective gear, could still make you very sick, if not dead. 

EBEN BYERS 

Eben Byers actually has his own blog post on this site, but to give a brief description of Eben's story, he drank a whole bunch of Radium over a three year period. He died in the early 30's and his body is still radioactive. 

THE RADIUM GIRLS 

In May 1922, Twenty - Four Year Old Mollie Maggia visited with her dentist, yet again, regarding another tooth ache. By this time, Molly had lost almost all her teeth and in place of those missing teeth was a mysterious infection. Her bottom jaw and the roof of her mouth were filled with painful ulcers that bled and were filled with pus. By this time, Molly complained of a having agonizing pain in her jaw, as well as in other places of her body. The pain eventually got so severe in her legs she could no longer walk. 

But things were about to get a whole lot worse. As the dentist gently prodded around Mollie's Jaw, it disintegrated under his fingers and he was able to remove it by just pulling on it. Mollie's Jaw would be surgically removed a couple of days later, but by then it was too late for Molly and she would pass away a few months later. 

Sadly, Mollie would not be the first victim of this strange infection. There would be others, and they all had one thing in common. They were all employees of The United States Radium Company (USRC) 

The company made clocks and watches with hands that glowed in the dark. By achieving that, the employees, mainly women, had to paint the hands with Radium infused paint. 

The women were hired at the company during WW1 when many men were off fighting. Years later, after ingesting the paint (by putting the brushes in their mouths to smooth it down) for many years, the effects began to show themselves. 

In the beginning, things seemed harmless, the women working at the factory got a laugh that they glowed after every shift. Little did they know that this Ghost Effect, was the beginning of the end, for them. 

As horrible as all this was, there was something good to come from it. The first women to become ill took their case public and hired a lawyer to plead their case. In the end, although their employer tried to cover up what it already knew, they would win to have labor laws changed and to finally hold the employer accountable.