system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How good are modern Radiation Suits at shielding people from radiation? And how could they be better?

I was watching Chernobyl and noticed that most of the scientists seemed to consider personal protection against radiation useless in the long term(and even short term exposure to high dosages).

Are radiations suits today better? Could they make someone immune to some levels of radiation? If not, why? Could they be better if the budget to make them was bigger?

I once read NASA had plans to use shields made with magnetic fields to protect space vehicles from radiation, could we, with sufficient tech make a "magnetic shield" suit(polarized?) that would shield the wearer from radiation?
gpt
The thing with protection from **external** radiation is that the human body is already about as good at it as it's practical to be. Alpha and Beta radiation don't penetrate things very well, and are mostly harmless to a person wearing even ordinary clothes. Gamma and Neutron radiation is highly penetrating and dangerous, and shielding it requires inches of water and lead and other heavy materials. Any suit light enough that you could actually move in provides no real protection from that.

Why wear suits then? Because **internal** radiation is a whole different matter. Alpha and Beta radiation poses little danger outside your body, as your skin and clothes blocks it. Another way to see this is that the radiation has a lot of energy, but little penetration, so it disrupts a lot of things right on the surface. Which means that these radiation sources are big trouble if they ever get into your body, such as by breathing or swallowing particles. There, they can blast your fast-reproducing and highly vulnerable lung and GI tract cells directly. It's particularly troublesome when these particles that emit this radiation settle on your skin and clothes, and later get brushed off and float around and get breathed in or swallowed. Most clothing fabrics tend to absorb particles and be very difficult to get them all out of. All of this means it's much safer to wear a suit of a material that prevents any particles from getting on your clothes, and is easy to wash off and discard if needed. And of course, breathe through a filter and don't eat or drink anything from a contaminated zone.