What is that rad symbol and why do i die almost any time i see it?

[Leek]

Just to preface i'm not playing on steam, not that it matters and i am only a couple hours at hard difficulty at this point. I thought i'd start some b missions and get an early economy going for myself.
I'm loving it, the mech boys are scary af but are easy enough to evade, and the ogryns are good at teaching you strafes, but so far when ever i die it's almost always because i'm getting irradiated, and it seems to be from the shielded enemies.

Idk if other people are scratching their head like I am, but obviously radiation damage didn't get explained to me, and it sucks hard when i use 2 stims on a single encounter or have a panic attack trying to kill them before i get irradiated. equally i'm only just starting and i probably learn strategies later on.

TL:DR- whenever shield guys turn up i usually die to radiation damage and it's sorta annoying, i don't know whether i need to learn it in the main quest line or that it's just poorly done, cause the other enemies are pretty intuitive.

This game is real good, this is just another small thing in the way of me making it my top 10

[Stone]

Items can give you resistance. Also anyone with shield? Crush+Shock = instadead.

[Leek]

Originally posted by Stone:

Items can give you resistance. Also anyone with shield? Crush+Shock = instadead.

thank you, this isn't really explained well by the time side missions open up, so in reality i had no idea how to play against it, kind of seems like they want you to finish the main story first