Could a person safely wear a dress that was around for an atomic blast?

[researchotaku]

Searches: "would clothing be safe after atomic blast?" This brings up a lot of pages about what to do about the clothing a person is currently wearing during the blast (the answer is to change out of them before entering the shelter and get the dust off in a ventilated area, mostly) but not about clothing inside the home

Comments

[lilacsigil]

It depends on the kind and size of bomb more than on the dress itself, plus the location and how the bomb detonated. Different radioactive materials will affect materials and people differently. In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example, background radiation returned to normal fairly quickly. In Chernobyl, this is still not the case (obviously not a bomb, but as a contrast) but the rest of Europe is pretty much back to regular levels.

So, if it's the 1940s and there's an atomic blast similar to Hiroshima or Nagasaki, odds are that the dress would be fine 18 years later, and probably much sooner.

[bopeepsheep]

I was coincidentally reading about the difference last night! Prompt radiation is the immediate radiation, and what the bomb is made of alters how prompt radiation affects people and property (the majority of casualties at Hiroshima were from physical bomb damage, not prompt radiation). I have no idea what material might make an item in the blast zone still radioactive 2 decades later (an unobtanium bomb?), but presumably it'd have killed the heroine before that!

Fallout is the one that would affect the dress in a real world scenario. The higher up in the atmosphere the detonation happens, the 'safer' the fallout is i.e. in Japan the bombs were high up and dispersed over a very wide area, making it little worse than everyday background radiation. In Chernobyl and Fukushima the leak at ground level meant fallout was more concentrated and therefore more dangerous. Former atomic testing sites have the same issue, though on a smaller scale.

[ffutures]

Most of the highly radioactive fallout tends to lose its radioactivity fairly quickly, with half life in days and weeks rather than years. I'm guessing that a wedding dress kept for 18 years would have been bagged at the start and probably vacuumed or washed / dry cleaned before use, especially if anyone involved thinks that there's a chance of radioactive contamination; all of those would tend to remove radioactive contaminants. The dress, on its own, would probably not be radioactive.

[marycatelli]

Exactly. The intensely radioactive stuff has to decay swiftly or it won't be intensely radioactive.

Follow up question

[researchotaku]

When you mean "bagged at the start" do you mean before the blast or shortly thereafter? How shortly thereafter would my main character need to store her dress (she is physically harmed in the blast and that dress is going to be low in her priorities in the following days) to avoid radioactive dust?

I don't want the dress bagged prior to the blast as another character needs to see it in her bedroom. There is no logical reason that the other character would go through her closet nor that my main character would show the dress (as my main character is afraid of the other character).

[reapermum]

Agreeing with Ffutures about the dust. So it could come down to the style of the dress.If it's just hanging in a wardrobe with no extra covering for 18 years then dust will get into the fabric and that will need to be removed. But as Ffutures said you'd have the dress cleaned thoroughly after 18 years of storage. But it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that it was folded carefully and stored in a cedarwood chest. My neighbour used to store her best fabrics in one and insisted that not only did the wood kill clothes moths but the lid was such a good fit that no dust could get in either.

[reapermum]

And my previous comment was marked as spam though it didn't contain links. Anyone know why?

[orange_fell]

Unfortunately I don't know why the spam filter flagged that, but it's visible now.

[reapermum]

Thanks, nice to know I'm not alone in puzzlement.

[phyloxena]

Yes, the dress will be safe to wear. No scenario will put a source of such lasting secondary radiation in dress material.