How Long Could You Stand in Chernobyl Without Melting?

Look, Chernobyl is very much a bad place to hang out. Thanks to the nuclear disaster of 1986, let’s just say the real estate market there has collapsed. Even now, almost 40 years later, the area is still much more radioactive than any non-cockroach body would prefer. You can visit the exclusion zone, but there are rules in place to keep you from getting radiation poisoning, and the people who work there on maintenance and cleanup have to follow strict allowances as well. 

All of which is to say, it’s maybe the world’s most dangerous place to loiter, even outside of the hottest areas.

I know all of this, too. Yet, I’m human, and my brain thirsts for knowledge. So I can’t help but wonder, if I were to stand smack-dab in the middle of the most radioactive part of Chernobyl, how would that day go? How many hours would my body still be not visually terrifying to observers, and at what point would I stop looking like your average middle-aged man and more like a ghoul from Fallout?

To start coming to some sort of conclusion, I needed to determine the most radioactive place in Chernobyl today, which was surprisingly difficult to research, probably to keep wannabe superheroes from seeking out possible power sources. Obviously, I began with Reactor 4, the site of the disaster itself, now stored inside two separate protective sarcophagi. The highest levels of recorded radiation I could find there — 18 Sieverts per hour — are in the spent fuel pools.

For how long it’s been, that’s still an incredibly gnarly amount of radiation. For context, normal levels of radiation are usually measured in milli- or even microSieverts, in which 18 Sieverts would equal 18,000 or 18,000,000 respectively. For even more context, it would be the equivalent of getting 45,000 mammograms in one hour. So, if I were to plop myself down dead center in one of these fuel pools, that’s how much radiation would be blasting through my body every 60 minutes. 

If I then hit start on some sort of very heavy-duty stopwatch and cracked open a good book, here’s how my immediate future would look, according to information on radiation exposure:

• 20 SECONDS: My chances of cancer have slightly increased.
• 3 MINUTES, 20 SECONDS: I now have Acute Radiation Sickness, specifically in my bone marrow.
• 6 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS: I’m going to develop what looks like a full-body sunburn, but is much, much worse.
• 8 MINUTES, 20 SECONDS: I have a 50 percent chance of dying within 60 days.
• 10 MINUTES: All of my hair will fall out within the next week.
• 16 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS: I am probably dying in the next few days.
• 20 MINUTES: Within hours, I will possibly see gastrointestinal symptoms including severe nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and cramps.
• 33 MINUTES, 20 SECONDS: My intestinal lining is breaking down, and I’m bleeding internally. I will definitely die within the next two weeks.
• 50 MINUTES: My skin is red and blistering. For the purposes of the title, we may have achieved “melting.”
• 1 HOUR, 6 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS: Possible symptoms of nervousness, confusion and loss of consciousness, and more burning of the skin.
• 2 HOURS, 46 MINUTES, 40 SECONDS: Definitely have the above symptoms, and I will be dead within three days. According to the CDC, “no recovery is expected.”
• 5 HOURS, 33 MINUTES, 20 SECONDS: I will be dead within hours.

Honestly, longer than I thought. I could probably get through a whole episode of prestige television before my skin started to slough off!