Irradiated Soil
Summary
Irradiated Soil is what is left where a reactor accident happened. It cannot be crafted: it appears in exactly one situation — a blast has torn the surface open, and what used to be the core has settled on the bare ground. Otherwise it is an ordinary block: dig it, hold it, carry it, put it back down. And it keeps irradiating the whole time, out of a backpack as readily as out of the ground.
It is not decoration. Irradiated soil irradiates everything alive nearby, under the ordinary rules of radiation: the dose falls off with the square of the distance and a wall stops it completely. Walking across a crater is survivable; working in one without a shielding suit is not.
Four steps
The block has four contamination steps, and they are visible at a glance: the fresher the scar, the more poisonous its tint and the denser the bright specks on its surface. The step is both the strength of the radiation and the timer.
| Step | Look | Radiation |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | acid green, dense specks | full dose |
| 2 | duller | two thirds |
| 1 | almost brown | one third |
| 0 | soil with a memory | none |
Every random tick gives it a chance to drop one step; from zero it turns back into ordinary dirt. The crater keeps its shape — the contamination leaves, the hole stays.
Decontamination
Waiting is optional. Two ways to hurry it:
- Water on top doubles the decay chance. The same water the reactor was asking for all along.
- A shovel. A contaminated cell can be dug with bare hands, and what you get back is the soil
ITSELF — contamination and all. It has not gone anywhere; it has moved into your inventory, and it irradiates from there just as well. Carrying it without the suit is a poor idea; a shielding chest is the way to move it.
How much it irradiates
A whole crater does not sum up: the dose is taken from the nearest cells and stops at a ceiling . Without that ceiling a forty-cell scar would be lethal from its far edge; with it, a fallout field is dangerous to stand in and safe to walk past. The numbers live
Where it will not appear
Fallout settles only where the blast actually reached — in the cells it genuinely destroyed. One consequence is worth knowing in advance: if the accident happened inside an intact reactor room and the shell held it, not one contaminated cell appears outside. The containment protects against the scar as well.
It settles on ground: dirt, sand, gravel, stone and their like (the tag). A floor of planks or concrete will not take it.
How much it irradiates in hand
The item sits in # — one step below refined uranium and fuel rods, and above ore. A single block in the inventory presses on the dose bar noticeably; a stack does so seriously. A shielding chest silences it completely, as it does any other source.
Turning it off
in the config — accidents still happen, they simply leave no scar.