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>>>>How about tons of it on a huge airliner(vats) plowing into a ship carrying tons of fuel in port...

There are lots of kinds of radiation, you only need to worry about a few types, the others you have lived with for years.

You need to worry about "Ionizing radiation," these are little sub atomic particles that go whizzing along at the speed of light. They hit individual cells in your body, kill the nucleus and keep on going. That’s how you get radiation poisoning, you have so many dead cells in your body that the decaying cells poison you. It’s the same as people getting radiation treatments for cancer, only a bigger area gets radiated.

The good news is you don’t have to just sit there and take it, and there’s lots you can do rather than panic.

First; your skin will stop alpha particles, a piece of paper or your clothing will stop beta particles, you just gotta try and avoid inhaling dust that’s contaminated with atoms that are emitting these things and you’ll be generally safe from them.

Gamma rays are particles that travel like waves (quantum physics makes my brain hurt) and they create the same damage as alpha and beta particles only they keep going and kill lots of cells as they go all the way through your body. It takes a lot to stop these things, lots of dense material, on the other hand it takes a lot of this to kill you.

More good news for us is the contamination will lead cleanup crews (using a Geiger counter) to itself like a beacon. The government will probably be passing out badges that look like nametags. They signal when you've had a minor exposure to ionizing radiation (did you know you get exposed to this stuff naturally every day?). If your badge changes color, you've had a minor exposure that will have no discernible effect on you. The clean up crews will check the places where the most badges change the fastest after an initial clean up period. If you're exposed during the initial attack a warm shower and washing your clothes will erase the danger. You need long term exposure to a lot of this stuff to have it harm you twenty years from now.