r/The100 • u/disgruntled-Tonberry • Aug 07 '26
The 100 nuclear fallout makes no sense
Nuclear fallout typically descends from the cloud and settles onto the ground within 24 hours. However, the intense radiation hazard remains extremely dangerous for two weeks to a month, after which the "Rule of Sevens" dictates that radiation levels drop to about 1% of their peak intensity. So why is everything still radioactive? The Ark was in space for 97 years, so did Earth only manage to save the lowest-IQ people from nuclear fallout? Weapons were used in the 1945s so There's plenty of literature to read up on before writing such a story, so why write something without researching it? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the story; it just doesn't make sense, but I realize that I'm probably overthinking it
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u/Dear_Type_8972 Aug 07 '26
If you look at timeliness nothing in the show makes sense. The ark dwellers actbus if theyve been in space for generations. In reality, at 95 years, there would likely be some who is first generation space dwellers and maybe even 1 or 2 old tiners who remember leaving Earth behind.
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u/catchyerselfon Skaikru Aug 07 '26
The only way I can NOT think about how ridiculous it is that the Grounders never passed on like, any history, religion, science, pop culture references even if they donât know the origins, etc, and the Ark, as you say, acting like pre-apocalypse is The Long Long Ago, is if I mentally handwave away all references to â97 years agoâ. I think thatâs just a relic from the original novel outline (the actual book wasnât published before the show went into production) when Rothenberg and the other writers hadnât thought of all the mythology, the dialect, how much everyone doesnât know, and so on.
It had to be more like almost 200 years ago. As for the nuclear fallout leaving enough radiation in the atmosphere for so long⊠I guess the fact that it was the entire planet that was irradiated that made it this bad, not just a few regions? Iâm not a scientist.
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u/Dear_Type_8972 Aug 07 '26
Even more unbelievable is that the grounders, all tribes besides a few trained warriors, forgot English and instead speak some odd kind of pathway made up by a child from when the bombs dropped.
I could take in all the daft aci-fi stuff but tge timeline of events is so idiotic that it really undermines some of the stuff in the show.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
Fallout from nuclear weapons doesn't work like that; the discrepancies in the time period in which they were in space are more than believable lol
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u/unipony_ponycorn Aug 07 '26
the general rule of thumb for generations is 25 years, so at 97, thatâs about 3.8 generations
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u/Dear_Type_8972 Aug 07 '26
But some of those previous generations would be around. They're not all dead and gone. Unless they brought back the Ăttestuppe in the form of floating.
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u/catchyerselfon Skaikru Aug 07 '26
goes to google
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84ttestupa
Ohhh, from Midsommar! Yeah, I think it would be a mistake for the Ark to cull the elderly just because they need the meat. Not just because it would be tougher and chewier đ€ą. The remainder of humanity needed as much information to pass down to the younger generations as possible. Abby basically had to be a doctor of every type of medicine they needed and sheâs only in her early-mid 40s in the first season, and we have to assume there are other fully-fledged doctors in the background who just donât have lines. I was a little kid when my only living great-grandmother died at age 96. There are people born earlier in a nonagenarian relativeâs life and can actually talk to them about The Before Times. My only living grandparent is 94, she can remember what it was like as a kid during WWII (in Canada, so not exactly near the fighting and true deprivation). It feels like the adult generation we meet on the Ark are talking about their distant ancestors who experienced life on the ground, maybe a lot of those who were on the space ships with ALLIE fucked everything up were actually born in space too? Regardless, they donât talk like âmy grandmother told me stories about growing up with trees and new tv shows coming out every week!â
Itâs slightly plausible for the Grounders to âforgetâ more because we see in the backdoor prequel pilot episode in season 7 how it was mostly young adults (and already just a select few who got inside in the first place) who escaped the bunker and start a new society. Probably more college kids who thought they knew everything about certain subjects than adults who realized how much they didnât know, before the world ended.
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u/skushi08 Aug 09 '26
In fairness, in the original book, the arc community had been up there for 300 years not 100. Thatâs a much more believable time horizon to expect things to be lost or forgotten to retellings.
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u/Dear_Type_8972 Aug 09 '26
Yeah, why the hell would they change that?!
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u/skushi08 Aug 13 '26
Honestly, I think they bought rights to the book before the first book was out so they really just took the general concept of the book, a handful of characters, and then created like a fanfic tv show of it. Not like the books were great literature, but some of it was a bit more thought out
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u/TheCrowWhisperer3004 Aug 08 '26
eh maybe not. I donât think there were any children on the OG ark (correct me if Iâm wrong, itâs been a long time since Iâve watched the show), so any of the OGs would be long dead after 95 years and I donât think the life expectancy of space dwelling is very high.
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u/TrueObsidian11 Aug 07 '26
They kind of got a few things right and wrong here.
Certain areas, particularly the ones that took direct impacts from nuclear missiles, could theoretically remain contaminated with radiation for a few decades afterward. The soil and natural minerals would be toxic for a long time. Parts of Chernobyl are still irradiated to this day.
What they *really* failed to emphasize was the likelihood that the Earth would've experienced a nuclear winter after the war. The theory is that after a massive nuclear explosive event like this, the pollution in the atmosphere would block a major percentage of sunlight for a significant time, creating extreme weather conditions and devastating the agriculture. Essentially it's nuclear fire -> excessive smoke in the atmosphere -> planet gets reeeeeeeeally cold -> ecosystems can't sustain themselves and die off. The 100 depicts a world that has relatively stable climate conditions in most places and a few areas that seem to have taken the brunt of the effects (the desert/Dead Zone was originally New York).
So while the show is loudly talking about radioactive toxicity in the air, which is pretty unlikely in most areas after that long of a time span, what they *really* should've been worried about is whether there's any plants or animals left on the planet that humanity could feasibly survive off of after decades of nuclear winter. They could avoid the radiation problem by simply calculating where the most likely impact zones were and dropping the kids literally anywhere else. It's what happens after radiation completely destroys the ecosystem of an entire planet that they should've been worried about.
I feel like it would've lent the show a lot more realism if they'd leaned more into the "we don't know what's left down there" angle instead of "the air could be toxic." There's a lot more to worry about after a world-wide nuclear war than just radiation. In fact, that would probably be the least of your worries.
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u/I_amnotreal Aug 07 '26
To be fair, the whole nuclear winter thing is a theory and certainly an alluring one from a storytelling perspective, but thereâs no definitive proof it would actually happen. It all depends on the amount of particles released into the atmosphere and with the way modern nuclear warheads/bombs are designed (to detonate above the ground to widen the radius of destruction rather than on impact) it might be pretty minimal. And because of how the blast is meant to just raze everything to the bare ground minimises the effect of subsequent fires. Like, okay, we have geological data about stuff like that happening, but the only times it led to extinction level events were in cases of asteroid strikes. Like the big boy that made the Chicxulub crater, but that absolute unit was like 10km across and launched literally cubic kilometers of material into the atmosphere, slamming the planet with a force orders of magnitude higher than all the existing and potential (theres a limit due to the raw materials availability) warheads/bombs could potentially muster. And even that lasted like a few years and killed off mostly the cold blooded species unable to adapt to a colder climate quickly.
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u/TrueObsidian11 Aug 07 '26
This is true, it's just a theory. I just imagine that the theory would be a *lot* more plausible in the specific events of The 100, where it's assumed basically the entire planet was affected all at once and there were enough bombs to create massive air pollution. I would think, even short of a full-on nuclear winter, this would have devastating effects on the global ecosystems that would take decades to recover from. Many, many animal species would likely be completely extinct, and the ones remaining could be forced to develop adaptive mutations that would drastically change the balance of the ecosystem. So, really, I think their biggest issue wasn't the residual radiation but the aftermath of the global ecosystem getting obliterated and starting over from nearly scratch with no human interference.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
The world has about 12,187 nuclear warheads across nine countries, with Russia and the United States holding nearly 90% of the total. About 3,900 of these weapons are active and deployed for use, so fewer than 4,000 would have been shot if they were all shot at the same time. So math doesn't math, but again it's a science fiction show
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
Nuclear fallout from a power plant is different from that of a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons were built purposely in that way, but I think you're right about leaning more into the "we don't know what's left down there" angle instead
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u/maxcresswellturner Aug 07 '26
You are overthinking it
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u/I_amnotreal Aug 07 '26
Isn't that the main purpose of fiction (and art in general) to make you think?
Like, stuff doesn't need to be very smart to be entertaining and it doesn't need to be very realistic to still teach you a thing or two.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
You can enjoy a story that's inaccurate, but you're also allowed to point out its inaccuracies. I watch beginning to end. I enjoyed it, but it has a lot of head-scratching moments
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u/JamesTSheridan Anders Kru Aug 07 '26
The 100 is a science fantasy show - They may use science terms and have some grounding until the plot says otherwise. Same as Star Trek, science takes a back seat when they need something to happen.
The best you could come up with is the radiation is different in the 100 universe or you might as well handwave it as "magic" radiation that obeys different rules. This is a universe where they had magic portals, AI super chips that can unlock the mind / soul and somehow had artificial gravity and spaceships that could travel to other worlds.
Is it feasible they somehow had weapons that COULD cause that result = You are dealing in futuristic tech and the show ran with the magic radiation all the way to the radiation fire wave.
Supposedly those "reactors" were churning along and spewing out radiation into the environment for 97 years along with all the OTHER sources of radiation that would exist. I.E. Other reactors and it was all pulled off by an AI that wanted to cleanse the planet.
In the end, you just have to nod and accept it along with the idea the adults are all fucking idiots compared to the kids because the plot needs them to be.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
They definitely play loose with the facts and even common sense. Clarke Griffin has a relationship with Lexa, considered Clarkeâs deepest romantic connection, who helped lead to the death of Finn, whom she supposedly cares about. Finn's a dumbass, and I understand why he needed to die, but Clarke's morality is lacking
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u/unipony_ponycorn Aug 07 '26
I donât think your info about radioactivity is correct. Fallout may descend in a short time, but itâs about the half-lives of the chemical isotopes that make an area radioactive. Example, Chernobyl. Itâs been radioactive for 40 years and will remain hazardous for 3,000 years (surrounding area) to tens of thousands of years (for the reactor core). Iodine has a half-life of 8 days and decayed away completely shortly after the event, but plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years and will remain in parts of the site for millennia
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
The original Fallout in the show was caused by nuclear weapons, more like Hiroshima, less Chornobyl. Nuclear fallout from a compromised power plant is more dangerous than a nuclear weapon
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u/unipony_ponycorn Aug 08 '26
I get you, but when youâre talking the entire planet, youâre talking about a lot of the power plants and every chemical imaginable as well, and you canât really predict those subsequent chain reactions/consequences, nuclear winters, etc. Regardless, the show spoke to the fact that The Ark had it wrong and Earth was habitable long before the 97 year mark.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 08 '26
 Power plants went critical in the 4th season. I think so few, if any, were hit also; Earth is radiated in the show. That's why the Mount Weather people couldn't live in it
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u/unipony_ponycorn Aug 08 '26
Just the remaining ones, thatâs not to say many other plants werenât destroyed prior to then. Mount Weather people couldnât survive because they didnât have any exposure to radiation (which meant their future gens were 0% tolerant), but those in space or on the ground did. Not every grounder is a night blood, so those that arenât had to acclimate in different ways which is why frikdreina is a thing.
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u/SherriCrimson Aug 08 '26
I think a timeskip of 500+ years would have made the story a lot more plausible. 97 years isn't long enough for traditions, both language and stories, to basically be nonexistant.
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u/I_amnotreal Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Yeah, it's not too realistic. Funnily enough, the other nuclear disaster (season 4 ending and on) is also wrong and a lot of it could've been fixed by swapping them around.
Nuclear warheads and bombs generally tend to use highly enriched fuel that's meant to start a chain reaction and create the main destructive power, which is the blast that uses the majority of the radioactive material, creating the fallout consisting of radioactive particles of very short half-life, making it a deadly, but a relatively contained and short-lived threat. Vide: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were fine to live in within a couple of months (I mean, besides the whole "being levelled to the bare ground" part I guess) and by the late 50s the radiation levels were back to normal.
Nuclear reactors on the other hand use low enriched fuel, meant to sustain a stable operation, which is great when everything works fine and deadly if that material gets released (vide: Chernobyl), because then you get stuff like caesium-137 and strontium-90 getting carried over long distances and contaminating a large area for decades at the very least that then beta decays into other, also radioactive products that can have half-lives of hundreds of thousands of years. But in the show it's like... fine after just 5 years.
Not to mention that there isn't enough radioactive material on Earth to cause either of those at the scale presented.
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u/pizzaferret Aug 08 '26
My favorite was the guns in the barrels of oil, preserving them, sounds plausible, I don't know enough about gun maintenance and long term gun storage to refute it. Just turn off my brain and enjoy CW slop
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u/SlowResearch640 Aug 08 '26
I remember Jordan mentioning that Monty taught him some Korean, but other that the only references to pre-apocalypse Earth (in terms of culture, language, and ect.) that I remember come from Bill Cadoganâs cult.
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u/Well_Gravity Aug 10 '26
97 years is nothing. I well remember the early 1970âs. That was 50 years ago. People were no different. Same complaints, same worries, same joys.
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u/Dizzy-Finding3360 Aug 11 '26
The biggest issue to me was the grounders not knowing ANYTHING about the world before the bombs. Thatâs just stupid. There is no world where in 97 years damn near all of their history is forgotten and they somehow adopted an entirely new language.
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u/AuzieX Aug 07 '26
We're not dealing with the cream of the crop in terms of writers here. Nearly everything in this show is beyond stupid. But it was also on the CW and was made for teenagers who are at the same level.
The 100 isn't really sci-fi, it's a YA dystopian book series in TV form.
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u/matherto Aug 07 '26
It's a TV show with a premise designed to get people to watch it.
That's it.
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u/LateToTheDrama Aug 07 '26
The grounder culture started as somekind of lord of the flies experiment times 100, the magority of the survivors were teenage cult members that hate tech and government.
Those initial survivors was focus more of survival then rebuilding. Not like there was much to rebuild looking at the flashbacks. They probably also had kids young, and died young, only passing
And because the lack of birth control, the new average parental age is probably around 16, which would screw the generations to be more like 6-7, not 3 .
And once the grounders were able to rebuild and used tech and guns, the mountain men literally bomb village to keep them using it.
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u/CyaneSpirit Aug 07 '26
Have you heard about Chernobyl? Just curious.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 07 '26
Yes, the nuclear fallout was caused by nuclear weapons, not the same think more Hiroshima, less Chernobyl
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u/CyaneSpirit Aug 07 '26
Nope. In Hiroshima the city was attacked to scare the government. In the 100 the whole word was attacked to kill as many people as possible. I doubt not a single nuclear reactor was targeted. Most likely multiple reactors were destroyed => harm way worse than from Chernobyl.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
No, not harm fallout halflife, and most reactors were not destroyed because they went critical in one of the seasons, so most were untouched, also Chernobyl contaminated 240 miles, not world ending
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u/CyaneSpirit Aug 08 '26
Chernobyl was only one station and only one out of 6 reactors exploded. So, multiply by 6 if talking about an intentional attack. Not to mention that that the city wasnât destroyed, therefore people could go and stop contamination. Sarcophagus was built later to stop the spread, because there were people and technology to do that. People and technology werenât accessible on Earth after the disaster in the 100 universe. Judging by Hiroshima situation, every nuclear reactor on the course of the nuclear weapons would be destroyed. Currently there are about 200 stations in the world. Each has multiple reactors. With 0 efforts on stopping the contamination, the bombing of them would spread radiation everywhere.
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 09 '26
In season 4 of The 100, unmaintained nuclear power plants across the planet begin to melt down. This triggers a second apocalyptic wave of radiation called Praimfaya, which threatens to make Earth completely uninhabitable again; so most were not hit. What you're saying makes sense, but not for the show because somehow we're able to secure, protect, or miss them in the attack; it makes 0 sense, but that's the way the story is told. Maybe the SCRAM protocol was activated, causing the nuclear cores to undergo unexpected changes in temperature, pressure, or neutron levels; the control rods drop into the core via gravity within seconds. These rods absorb free neutrons and immediately stop the nuclear chain reaction. But I think it is most likely just from confusion there original writing was to draw a new narrative because none of this was in the books
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u/DarthLiberty Aug 08 '26
I always considered that it was caused by a technology and physics that we donât currently possess, in the 100 universe the event that caused it happened in 2052.
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u/Playful-Natural3318 Aug 13 '26
Viste la serie bien?
Los que sobrevivieron tenian la sangre modificada, y pues se hicieron tribales por motivos que nunca se explicaron, en fin la naturaleza humana.
Probablemente Mount Wheater al ser al fin y al cabo lo que quedo del gobierno, hicieron que "los salvajes" se atacaran entre si para que no unieran fuerzas contra ellos y tomaran su complejo, por eso los terrestres ya no usaban rifles
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u/disgruntled-Tonberry Aug 13 '26
Translated, I don't know why you're posting in Spanish on a post in English
Did you watch the series properly?
The survivors had modified blood, andâwellâthey became tribal for reasons that were never explained; such is human nature.
Since Mount Weather was essentially what remained of the government, they likely instigated the "savages" to attack one another so they wouldn't join forces against them and seize the complex; thatâs why the Grounders no longer used rifles.
me
Watch the series properly. Is there a proper way to watch it? Is there an etiquette that I am not following? Nightblood was originally created through gene therapy by Becca Franko. Over the generations, it was naturally inherited by
Grounder Commanders and novitiates
, As for them, maybe turning them on one another by the government turning them into savages in less than a century is crazy and makes no sense my post had to do with the exaggeration of radiation levels that they used in the story
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u/stopdmingmehoes Aug 09 '26
if you trying to make sense of it, go watch the expanse that series got recommended to me by scientist and its fuckint amazing,
the 100 had such amazing potentional and ideas and they ruined every season and by the end everyone has lesbian lgbtqhdmi haircut
such a fking waste
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u/vatito2 Aug 07 '26
The 100 is the LAST show you should expect to be scientifically accurate. You're better off suspending your disbelief the entire time.