A man who burned ‘from the inside out’ is said to have suffered the most excruciating death known to humankind.
Hisashi Ouchi, a nuclear plant worker from Japan, was exposed to a record-breaking dose of radiation in an accident that would lead to a slow and agonizing decline.
The 35-year-old’s body underwent horrific transformations as it lost the ability to regenerate cells, leaving him in a state of irreversible deterioration.
The accident took place on September 30, 1999, at a uranium processing facility in Tokaimura, about 70 miles northeast of Tokyo, How Stuff Works reports.
Ouchi and his colleagues, Masato Shinohara and Yutaka Yokokawa, were working together to prepare nuclear fuel.
In a critical mistake, the team added 16kg of uranium into a processing container – far exceeding the safety limit of 2.4kg.
Almost immediately, a sudden blue flash filled the room, a sign of a dangerous nuclear reaction.
Radiation alarms blared, and all three workers became instantly ill.
Ouchi, who had been standing directly over the processing container, received a staggering dose of 17,000 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation – the highest level ever recorded in a single exposure.
