Wrong values for radiation

[Polkovnik Berezin]

Hello comrades, I have a complaint about the pollution-monitoring stations. The values for radiation there make little to no sense. A dose rate of 150 Sv/h is absurdly high. As an example from Wikipedia, the global average for annual background radiation is 2.4 mSv – 60000 times less than the hourly value in W&R. Typical radiation exposures aren't measured in Sv/h at all, that's way beyond the usual scope. Both the units and values should be adjusted to something closer to reality.

My personal suggestion? It's hard to say without understanding how the calculations behind radiation work in the game, but I would suggest these values:
Base ambient: 0.455 Roentgen annual (R/a)
Average warning: 1 Roentgen annual (R/a)
Peak warning: 1.5 Roentgen annual (R/a)

(Roentgen being chosen as, to my understanding, a unit typically used at the time for exposure to ionising radiation. The values were chosen to reflect base-game ratios for the warnings, assuming background radiation of 4 mSv/a.)

I am not qualified in radiology or anything related, my values may also be rubbish. They should at least be much closer to the right order of magnitude. I am very open to better suggestions, this is just something I've thrown together.

[Ljubic]

Literally unplayable, Peter pls fix

[Ternet18]

The people are literally melting in the streets of radiation lol

[Agoosha]

Good point, Haven't delt with radiation in the game yet. But the game does have some strange scaling when it comes to time. IDK im kinda drunk. So i guess im good against radiation if stalker taught me anything lmao.

[Sherman T. Potter]

Typical day in Soviet republic for nuclear worker: sees how his buddy turns in to red paste bcs of 150 Sv/h. Not great, not terrible

[Ternet18]

Average day in the East

[Silent_Shadow]

Originally posted by Polkovnik Berezin:

(Roentgen being chosen as, to my understanding, a unit typically used at the time for exposure to ionising radiation. The values were chosen to reflect base-game ratios for the warnings, assuming background radiation of 4 mSv/a.)

I am not qualified in radiology or anything related, my values may also be rubbish. They should at least be much closer to the right order of magnitude. I am very open to better suggestions, this is just something I've thrown together.

REM, Rads, Grays, and Sieverts are correct units for radiation exposure (depending on what you mean), and for radiation levels you'd want Roentgen, Becquerel, or Curies, though Sievert, Gray, and Becquerel were defined sometime in the 70's and would be out of place in the 1960's. Listing radiation levels in an areas as exposure over time (i.e. REM/hr, Sv/hr) is pretty common too, so having radiation levels presented to the player in Sv/hr is fine.

The amount of radiation present around a burning nuclear power plant in this game is pretty high, but readings of 150 Sv/hr are comparable to the levels found around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the reactor fire, so maybe that's what the developers were going for.

In real life the ICRP doesn't recommend living in an area with more than 100 mREM/year of background radiation (300 to 600 mREM/yr is the average background exposure), so readings over 0.01 mREM/hr would be cause for concern, but not likely to result in much higher chances of death, just chronic radiation syndrome. Something like 0.25 mREM/hr would probably raise a few eyebrows.