The Meek

The first reports that cockroaches will inherit the Earth in the event of nuclear warfare, surfaced shortly after the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Reports from Japan claimed that the 300 million-year-old insects were among the razed Japanese cities' only survivors. During the Cold War, anti-nuclear activists and scientists spread the idea far and wide, as a cautionary tale of the atom bomb's destructive potential.To test whether this...
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The first reports that cockroaches will inherit the Earth in the event of nuclear warfare, surfaced shortly after the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Reports from Japan claimed that the 300 million-year-old insects were among the razed Japanese cities' only survivors. During the Cold War, anti-nuclear activists and scientists spread the idea far and wide, as a cautionary tale of the atom bomb's destructive potential.To test whether this doomsday scenario had any basis in reality, the Myth Busters subjected German cockroaches to three levels of the radioactive metal, cobalt 60. They started with a baseline exposure of 1,000 radon units (rads) of cobalt 60, capable of killing a person in 10 minutes, and followed it up with 10,000 and 100,000 rads exposures on separate guinea pig - er, roach - groups. (As a comparison, the bomb on Hiroshima emitted radioactive gamma rays at the strength of 10,000 rads.)