On Fringe, Radiation Ghoul is Pure Fiction

• Fringe
• Hollywood Sci-Fi vs. Reality
• science fiction
• television
• Digital Hollywood

"Earthling" begins with a husband who comes home to surprise his wife for a wedding anniversary, only to be killed by ghostly shadow. A card that reads, "I know how you like surprises…" awaits his wife when she returns home, but when she does, he's no longer in great shape. As she nudges her eerily still spouse, he crumbles into ash. Cue the screaming—and the entrance of the Fringe team.

Though the mad scientist Walter Bishop, his son/handler Peter and FBI agent Olivia Dunham are stumped as to what could have caused an otherwise healthy man to turn to ash, Agent Phillip Broyles has seen this paranormal phenomenon before. It's a cold case from four years prior. (He's got a strong personal connection to this one—he was so obsessed with the case that his wife left him.) Apparently, the suspected killer needed Broyles and his team to crack a molecular puzzle, which the suspect announced could "make it stop." Broyles was unable to crack the model, and there were five unexplained "dust deaths" as a result. The only clue: Each victim had visited a hospital on the day he or she was killed.

As the shadow lurks through the halls of an area hospital, the Bishops examine the remains of the first victim back in Walter's lab—and find that the remaining ash pile has no radiation whatsoever. Which is odd, because, as Walter points out, there is radiation in every living organism on Earth. Meanwhile in the hospital, another victim is "dusted." After footage of the shadow appears on the hospital's security camera, we learn that it's radiation that the shadow needs to survive, and our suspect assumes the identity of an on-the-run Russian who abducted his cosmonaut brother from a Russian lab after he returned from a mission in a coma. The shadow is likely something the cosmonaut acquired in space, where radiation levels are much higher than on earth.

However, there are no known living organisms that are drawn or feed off of radiation, says expert Andrew Karam of the Rochester Institute of Technology. "Yes, radiation levels are higher in space," Karam says, "Yes, we try to protect astronauts from them, but we know how to control the risks. There may be a sliver of truth to a radiation effect, but there's not a lot of validity."

On Fringe, the scientists make a reference to Russian radiation experiments during the Cold War, but Karam says that there were radiation experiments on both sides of the battle, mostly to discover what would happen to the population in the event of a nuclear war. And while there were side effects, nothing was paranormal. "They didn't turn into mutants or superheroes," Karam says.

According to the Fringe hypothesis, the cosmonaut would have experienced some DNA-altering dose of cosmic radiation that not only left him in a coma, but also let him play host to a radiation-thirsty parasite. But radiation doesn't mutate DNA so much as it destroys it, says Karam. "It breaks bonds in our DNA and causes cells to die. It shreds the DNA to the point where it doesn't work anymore."

The true effect of too much radiation is likely a high risk of cancer—and sometimes death. "The long-term health effect is cancer, but it takes a lot more radiation to cause it than people think," Karam says. The average amount of human radiation exposure is about .35 rems a year. Karam says it takes about 5 to 10 rems to cause something like cancer. "It's like drowning," he says. "You can drown, but not until there is enough water. A little bit of water won't hurt you." He says the same of radiation, which is used in obtaining X-rays. "The little bit of risk is far outweighed by the benefits of medical radiation exposure."

Comment Title
Your Name
Email Address
Website	make public
Comment
Please enter the characters shown below:
	Make sure your comment is relevant to the topic discussed. Comments not relevant to the topic will be deleted. Neither you nor Popular Mechanics has the ability to make your e-mail address public. However, we ask that you submit your e-mail address to us just in case we need to contact you. Thank you for your understanding--The Editors.