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I'm trying to create some more original monsters for a fantasy story and I was wondering...
Assuming you couldn't die, what would happen to your body and how would you appear if you were exposed to radiation (equivalent to refined Uranium) for 12 hours a day?
I understand this probably isn't exact enough to make real, educated decisions. I'm just trying to get a rough idea.
Assuming that by magical means that you (assuming that "you" are human) suffer all the deleterious effects of radiation exposure aside from total-organism death, that something reverses or prevents just enough damage to keep you alive, then the effects of radiation exposure would - in the short-term - be nausea, lethargy, hair loss, and burns.
In the middle term, there could be blindness, deafness and/or loss of other senses. There may be skin bleaching, and the skin and bones would be likely to become fragile and muscles would weaken. Healing would be slowed. A related effect would be weight loss due to loss of appetite and vomiting.
In the longer term, I would expect cancers and abnormal growths, and if the agency responsible for preventing death prevents these from being fatal too, they could still be quite disfiguring and/or crippling.
In short, quite a miserable existence. I'm not sure that death wouldn't be preferable. Either the miners are being paid fantastic sums for this ore that makes it worth sacrificing their health in return for the benefit it could provide their families, or they are prisoners or slaves, in which case someone obviously thinks that their profits make the sacrifice of these unfortunate miners' health worth-while, or that criminals have done things that justify this horrendous punishment..
Radition kills cells and mutates the cells it doesn't kill outright.
Assuming these powerful beings do just enough to keep you alive without reversing all affects of the radiation then you could expect quite a lot of nasty symptons.
Hair loss. Weakness and constant lethargy from dead cells and your bodies constant need to repair itself. Nausea, skin burns and even premature aging could occur.
Check out this epa link for even more info.
On the German Wikipedia there is this list of symptoms:
Dermatologische Symptome:
1 Erythema (juckende Hautrötungen)
2 Purpura
3 Bullae (Blasen)
4 Geschwüre
5 Haarausfall (bei starken Dosen z.T. dauerhaft)
6 Nekrosen
7 sonstige Hautschäden
Gastrointestinale Symptome:
8 Übelkeit
9 Erbrechen
10 Diarrhoe (Durchfall)
11 Appetitlosigkeit
Hämatopoetische Symptome (Myelosuppression):
12 erhöhtes Infektionsrisiko aufgrund weniger weißer Blutkörperchen (Leukopenie)
13 verstärkte Blutungen aufgrund weniger Blutplättchen
14 Blutarmut aufgrund weniger roter Blutkörperchen
15 Arterielle Hypotonie
Neurologische Symptome:
16 Schwindel
17 Kopfschmerzen
18 Benommenheit
19 Störungen des Zentralnervensystems (Krampfanfälle, Tremor, Ataxie)
Sonstige Symptome:
20 Fieber
21 Müdigkeit
22 Unfruchtbarkeit
This list is as far as i can see not present on the English wiki. so i point out the Symptoms that are effected by the "could not die" factor.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will have this "sunburnlike" itchy spots.
would not occour - has something to do with nekrotic blodpipes.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will be spamed with blisters.
would not occour - has something to do with nekrotic body tissue
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. All your Miners are boldy.
would not occour - Nekrosen are necrotic so... yeah... next!
Could or could not - this is some imagenary stuff you can desside for your self.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will have no appetid, spraycheese for the pottyrun and cube tussis after lunch. And they will feel very bad in the stomach all the time.
IF your miners bloodproduction is effected by the radiation, all of them will occour. Less blood, bloodings out of nose, ears, eyes, genitals... They are not directly related to dying cells so if the bloodproduction is effected they will mess up every dress of your miners. Also your miners get more sick because of less White bloodcells.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will most of the time not be able to walk a straight line.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your women miners will not be in the mood.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will often feel out of place, sometimes one can fell into a coma at extreme.
This one i am not sure... fever is helpfull to get dameged biological mass out of the system by boosting the immune system. So if bacteria and stuff in the bodys of your miners will not be immune against the Radiation - the immune system will start to collect thier dead bodys and let them go the way of everything what goes in. Like the Diarrea i think it would not be occour, but not everytime a bacteria is kicked out of the body a fever starts - tough call.
would not be effected by the "could not die" factor. Your miners will be very sleepy all the time.
also not sure. The Spermium or the Eg is crafted fine. But the storage is than again influenced by the "is the body not dying or everything in it"... your choise - cloning is a good alternative.
So your miners will have a poor live in the radiated enviorment but they will live. I think it will be very tricky to come around some of that stuff (the blood everywhere for example).
Several other answers have offered symptoms and long term effects for a minimal implementation of the "You can't die" magic, so I will take a happier (higher magic) approach...
The spell doesn't allow cell death, therefore any radiation-induced change which would cause either immediate or even accelerated cell death is immediately repaired. Nonfatal changes would persist despite the magic and would accumulate over time, causing you to look less and less like your original species but all of your fundamental life functions would continue to function.
A astronomically small percentage of the changes might be beneficial to you, giving you survival advantages over your species' original design. Over deep time, these beneficial changes would accumulate much quicker within your magically-assisted, radiation-accelerated evolution than they do in natural evolution.
Eventually, assuming that you remain genetically compatible with your origin species and assuming that advancing age doesn't leave you impotent and/or disinterested in procreation, you might become the next step in your species' developmental path.
The parent of a new generation, who are better than you were originally born to be.
