Why Don't Cockroaches Get Killed In Nuclear Attacks? | Are Cockroaches Resistant To Nuclear Radiation?

Everyone knows that the biggest nuclear attacks that the world has ever witnessed, were occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing almost everyone except the cockroaches. Yes, cockroaches were the only survivors that did not get even a single scratch in those terrible nuclear attacks. But how can it be possible for any creature to escape nuclear radiation? Are cockroaches resistant to nuclear radiation?

Initially, it didn't seem true that a tiny cockroach can survive in such a situation with a nuclear bomb that could blow up an entire city and the entire civilization. So some scientists decided to know the truth behind it. After a long experiment, it came to know that about half of the cockroaches could withstand the kind of nuclear radiation that killed people in Japan. It has also been proved that cockroaches have a remarkable ability to endure radiation. But if the intensity of radiation is increased ten times, then all the cockroaches will die.

The survival of cockroaches in a nuclear attack is a half-truth, in fact, a nuclear explosion releases a lot of heat and radiation. Cockroaches or any living creature cannot endure that much heat, so if a cockroach is exposed to heat, it will definitely not survive. If the cockroach is underground and has escaped the heat, then it also has some ability to tolerate the radiation. 

Cockroaches definitely tolerate high radiation, but they can also be destroyed by extreme radiation. Let's say that radiation of 1000 radon units (rad) can kill humans when exposed for 10 minutes, but to kill cockroaches, up to 100000 radon units of radiation would be needed.

The reason for their ability to withstand radiation is their body. The body of every organism is made up of many cells and these cells are always growing, and old ones keep on dying. The human body is more hi-fi, so the cells of our bodies keep on growing by dividing rapidly. Nuclear radiation causes the most damage to the body whose cell reproduction cycle is fast. Where cells in the human body divide rapidly all the time, in the body of cockroaches this happens once a week. Therefore, the body of the cockroach is protected from nuclear radiation to an extent and hence, with a much slower cell reproduction cycle, they can withstand radiation.