14 July 2008 72 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

On the list of things that might still be alive after a nuclear war or a massive disaster on a planetary scale, the cockroach always seems to rank highest on what might be capable of surviving such a disaster.  This notion has been repeated by popular culture for many years.  However, the cockroach may not be the only bug that is suited for life on a radioactive world.

It is true that such a claim is not with out merit.  The cockroach is indeed capable of surviving much higher doses of radiation than a human.  This is partly true to the simplistic nature of their body and partly due to a slower rate of cellular division.  A lower rate results in a lower potential for potentially harmful mutations from broken or damaged DNA.

In 1962, H. Bentley Glass, a Johns Hopkins geneticist, told theNew York Times that in the event of nuclear war, “the cockroach, a venerable and hardy species, will take over the habitations of the foolish humans, and compete only with other insects or bacteria.”

A recently Mythbuster (check it out on youtube) episode exposed a number of insects to high doses of radiation to determine if there were others in the insect kingdom that were also resistant to radiation.  They determined that the flour beetle could handle 100,000 rads, while a cockroach can survive around 10,000.  Humans who receive a dose of 1000 or higher will almost always die.  Its seems in general simple organisms have the best change of surviving high doses of radiation.  Extremely simple ones such as bacteria, protozoa, mosses, and algae mentioned in the article will survive far longer when exposed to extremely high doses of radiation.  I’m sure we’ve all remember hearing about the black fungus that was found inside the old Chernobyl reactors.

[via slate]