A professional athlete drank 1,400 radioactive energy drinks that could have come from fallout

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After the chemist and physicist Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, the radioactive elements were processed into numerous everyday objects. This cost a professional athlete his life after he drank 1,400 energy drinks that could have appeared in Fallout 76.

What kind of energy drink was that? In the 1920s and 1930s, radioactive everyday objects and foods were a new fad.

  • There was toothpaste containing radium and thorium, whose radiation was supposed to massage the gums to keep them healthy.
  • In a watch factory, workers painted wristwatches with luminescent paint containing radium. Because they moistened the brush with their tongue several times a day, they came into contact with the radioactive substance.
  • The deadly radium was also used in Burkbraun radium chocolate. Its own advertising claims said that radium had a rejuvenating effect and made you healthy.

    • The energy drink Radithor was one of the foods that were mixed with radium. It contained distilled water and the isotopes radium 226 and 228. The drink was described as a cure for the living dead and as eternal sunshine that would cure numerous diseases.

    Golfer Eben Byers became the brand ambassador for this energy drink. But the doctors at the time had no idea what had happened to him over the years.

    Radioactivity also plays a big role in Fallout. Check out the trailer for Fallout 76 here:

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    Golf athlete dies from radioactive energy drink

    What happened to Eben Byers? The man sought medical attention after breaking his arm. There he was recommended the radioactive radithor. Byers then consumed around 1,400 bottles over about two years.

    This resulted in him ingesting three times the dose that would kill a human. The consequences were cruel:

  • The radium deposited in his bones, making them porous
  • Byers initially lost weight and developed headaches
  • His teeth gradually fell out and he eventually even lost a large part of his lower jaw. Even in his skull, more and more holes formed over time.
  • Byers developed cancer as a result of the immense cell damage and died at the age of 52.

    • Even Byers’ corpse emitted so much radioactivity that his body was buried in a lead coffin. Lead is a material that shields radioactive radiation and is still used in nuclear medicine today (via Röhr+Stolberg).

    Nowadays it is fortunately unthinkable for radioactive substances to be used in food or everyday objects. Instead, we are left with video games like Fallout, which deal with radioactivity and give us an idea of ​​how sick the deadly radiation makes us.

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