If a nuclear bomb was detonated, how would the radiation poisoning/sickness manifest itself among "survivors"?

Question

Just thinking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Answer 1

Radiation sickness manifests itself as dysfunction or injury to the fastest growing tissues in the body. Notably,bowel, skin and immune and blood cells.

The bowel injury leads to vomiting diarrhea and dehydration.

The skin injury leads to sores that do not and heal.

The immune cells injury leads to severe infections from minor causes.

The blood cell injury leads to anemia, but that is a later effect.

Old Doc

See: http://www.drphysics.com/syllabus/time/t...

Answer 2

Lol, "the heat"!

Radiation poisoning is the introduction of radioactive "free radicals" to the cells of the body, these radicals knock chunks out of your D.N.A. therefore a corrupt copy is made when the cells reproduce.

The symptoms of radiation sickness are hair falling out in clumps, bleeding from the eyes, ears and gums, teeth falling out, bleeding sores that do not heal, internal bleeding, death.

The bombs dropped on Japan are babies compared with the ones currently waiting to be used!

Answer 3

The heat will cause a chemical change in the biology of the body. This ultimately lead to unusual growth, creation of bad cells and cancer.

Answer 4

the radiation will get in your body and effect it and if u have kids them to in the future and can cause u to have deformed kids its a very bad invention lets just hope and pray they stop using them

Answer 5

There is a fairly accurate and grim description of radiation sickness in "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute.  It is also described in gruesome detail in "Hiroshima" by John Hersey.  Both books are readily accessible.  

Here is the Mayo Clinic description of symptoms:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/radiati...

If you are talking long-term effects, googling around for the long-term health implications from Chernobyl gives you a pretty good idea.