Preparing for Nuclear War - Units of Radiation Dose

Before we can discuss the effects of nuclear radiation, it's necessary to get a handle on the units used to describe it. There are a whole lot of weird ones out there; you can be probably guess that a Curie is a measure of radiation of some sort, but what's a Sievert? It sounds like a type of cat. And what about a Becquerel - that sounds like a cute little marsupial. A REM? Is this something to do with sleeping?

Today's lesson is a basic guide to the two most important quantities that we will be discussing; Radiation Dose and Radiation Dose Rate. To keep this post a manageable length, I will only write about the units used to describe these quantities and won't go into how to measure them or what the effects of various doses are. (BTW, while I will mention various specific doses and dose rates for the purposes of illustration below, you can ignore the actual numbers for the time being.)

Preparing for Nuclear War - Answers to the Quiz Questions

Here are the answers to the questions I posed last time.

I should point out that this information doesn't really come under the heading of "Preparing for Nuclear War", as it's not especially relevant to the sort of things you'll have to deal with after the bomb goes off.

The intent of bringing this up was to illustrate that the sort of nuclear physics you get taught at high-school can potentially lead you astray, and, more importantly, it shows why seemingly knowledgeable people pontificating on the subject on the net are more often than not talking complete bollocks. This stuff is harder than it seems and it's easy to think that you know more than you do.