What Amazon's Fallout show gets right about how life would mutate after nuclear bombs drop

• Nuclear fallout could cause charred skin and mutated animals and plants
• A fallout releases up to 100 different radioactive elements as it spreads
• READ MORE: How radiation exposure has forced animals to mutate

Amazon's new series Fallout paints a picture about how life could mutate following nuclear bombs being dropped on the world.

The eight-part show features a toxic wasteland overrun by mutated species, including humans, which is a reflection of historical nuclear disasters like Chernobyl, Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Fallout is purely science fiction, mutated animals have been found in real-life fallout zones that are similar to the show's giant creatures and monster-like salamanders. 

When it comes to humans, those in a real-life blast zone would suffer severe burns, much like Fallout's ghouls that lost their skin when the bombs dropped.

Scientists at Rutgers University estimated that a worst-case full-scale nuclear war would result in the deaths of five billion people, but that still leaves more than three billion on Earth.

And that seems to come into play in Fallout that was released on April 10.

The eight-part series largely focuses on 200 years after bombs are dropped across the US, with some flash backs to right before.

Some Americans had spent the time in underground bunkers, called vaults, while others were left to wonder the desert wasteland that is left on the surface.

Both humans and creatures on top of the ground have experienced mutations because of the fallout, which lasts much longer than the initial nuclear blast.

The sheer number of mutated salamanders and giant cockroaches 'Fallout' is not out of the realm of possibility, according to Pran Nath, a university professor of physics at Northeastern University, who said radiation can cause numerous kinds of abnormalities.

'Radiation can create mutations, which are similar to spontaneous mutation, in animals and humans,' Nath told Northeastern Global News (NGN), adding: 'In Chernobyl, for example, they are discovering animals which are mutated.'

Since the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in 1986, scientists have discovered black-colored tree frogs that typically have green pigmentation and a rare genetic mutation in wolves that could have cancer-curing abilities.

Color changes in animals are another possible mutation, although they won't glow like cartoons illustrate, but instead will take on a duller plumage in the case of birds.

However, plants tend to absorb the lion's share of the radioactive material by absorbing it into the soil, causing the leaves to change shape and the trees to turn from dark green to a rust color.

'If you're an organism living in one of these highly radioactive areas, it's not a great place to be,' Prof Timothy Mousseau, a biology scientist at the University of South Carolina, told BBC Science Focus.

Nuclear blasts affect the surrounding area in three stages, starting with the impact zone - where the blast occurs - which emits gamma rays, also called gamma radiation, which incinerates everything in its wake.

'When the nuclear blast occurs, because of the chain reaction, in a very short period of time, a lot of energy and radiation is emitted,' Nath told NGN.

'If you are exposed to it, people, for example, in Hiroshima were essentially evaporated, leaving shadows.'

People who are partially protected from the blast will still be affected as their body heats up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit and cause severe burns - much like the ghouls' burned skin in 'Fallout.'

Ghouls are mutated humans who have been transformed into feral monsters due to being exposed to severe radiation. 

The second phase of the nuclear blast is called a 'fireball,' much like the first shockwave scene in the sci-fi show, but it would travel much faster than its cinematic portrayal, extending outward at the speed of sound, about 760 miles per hour.

Everything within the blast area is destroyed - humans, buildings, and wildlife are all obliterated, but the radioactivity that occurs during the fallout can last for just a few seconds up to millions of years.

'In a nuclear blast, up to 100 different radioactive elements are produced,' Nath told NGN. 

'… It causes pollution and damage to the body and injuries over a longer period, causing cancer and leukemia, things like this,' he added.

Yet in places like Fukushima which was the site where the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, some people were born with microcephaly which is when radiation damages an embryo so it develops a smaller head.

An estimated 146,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and another 80,000 died in Nagasaki as a direct result of the atomic bombs dropped by the US. 

'We're living in an increasingly radioactive world,' Mousseau told BBC Science Focus.

'So anything we can learn in places like Chornobyl, Fukushima and atomic bomb test sites will be relevant to humans in the end.'