Could any animals survive a nuclear explosion? Ellen Husain investigates <\/p>
At the blast\u2019s epicentre, the vaporising heat is like the centre of the sun, so it\u2019s safe to say no life could withstand that, says Ellen Husain.<\/strong><\/p> Further out, organisms able to hide in cracks and crevices would naturally be more protected, but there is then the penetrating power of radiation to deal with. <\/p> The animals best able to handle this apocalypse would be tiny tardigrades, or water bears<\/a>, which are about 1mm in size. European Space Agency<\/a> experiments have shown that these micro-organisms can withstand the vacuum and radiation of space, and we also know they can practically rise from the dead after years of desiccation. All useful attributes for surviving a nuclear bomb. <\/p> In terms of radiation resistance, tardigrades comfortably beat the fabled cockroaches. Their lethal dose is 5,000 grays (the unit by which radiation impact is measured), compared to 480\u2013680 in German cockroaches and a mere 4\u201310 in humans.<\/p> Meet more fascinating masters of survival<\/strong><\/p> Could any animals survive a nuclear explosion? Ellen Husain investigates <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":43010,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion.jpg",1885,1591,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion-300x253.jpg",300,253,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion-768x648.jpg",768,648,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion-1024x864.jpg",800,675,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion-1536x1296.jpg",1536,1296,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/10\/would-any-animals-survive-a-nuclear-explosion.jpg",1885,1591,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Could any animals survive a nuclear explosion? Ellen Husain investigates","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/43009"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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