It is widely acknowledged by most people and society as a whole that radiation poisoning is a terrible thing that can happen, but in my personal opinion it is often misunderstood and dramatized by the media. You won’t immediately get cancer or die from just by being near something that is radioactive for a relatively short amount of time, but I am not saying it’s safe either. How sick you get mainly depends on exactly how radioactive the object is, for example the different levels or syndromes of radiation are as follows: hematopoietic (doses >2–3 Gy), gastrointestinal (doses 5–12 Gy) and cerebrovascular syndrome (doses 10–20 Gy). There is no possibility to survive after doses >10–12 Gy. Furthermore, it is important to consider the fact that the radiation dosage will also increase by a large factor with the amount of time and the proximity the person has been exposed to the radioactive object in question.
In a continuation of the previously stated facts in the above paragraph the time it takes for said radiation sickness to set in are as follows: prodromal (preceding the more obvious, diagnosable symptoms of an illness or disease): 0–2 days from the point of exposure to radiation, latent (existing but not yet developed or manifest): 2–20 days, and a radiation sickness is usually manifested between 21–60 days from exposure to the radioactive object or substance in question. You may be wondering exactly how fast somebody has died of radiation poisoning, If that does in fact happen to be the case then I have just the answer for you; two of the control room workers in the Chernobyl, Ukraine nuclear power plant died the very night of the nuclear reactor four failure from radiation related health problems after the reactor exploded.
To sum up everything that has been stated so far; radiation poisoning could theoretically kill you immediately, although still extremely dangerous, it would be hard to be killed immediately by radiation poisoning.
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