15 'Facts' You're All Wrong About

14. Cockroaches Will Be The Only Things To Survive A Nuclear War

€œNo, that one€™s true. Robin Williams did a bit on it a few years ago. Five cockroaches and Keith Richards, he said.€
Yeah, and Iggy Pop and Cher and David Crosby€ the joke€™s been going around for a good long while in various forms. The myth that cockroaches are immortal creatures, invulnerable to the firestorms, concussive shockwaves and collateral damage that Mutually Assured Destruction would cause in the first instance, and the effects of radiation and a nuclear winter in the second€ well, that€™s a weird one. A cockroach infestation is difficult to root out from beneath a cheap fitted kitchen, yes €“ that doesn€™t make them Captain bloody Scarlet. The fact of the matter is that cockroaches aren€™t even particularly good at surviving radiation €“ Bactrocera oleae can take three times as many rads as your common or garden €˜roach, but you don€™t see stand-up comedians making comparisons between David Bowie and a bunch of fruit flies. A better question would be why anyone else would want to survive a nuclear holocaust if this was the world left to them: various decrepit pop stars with cast iron constitutions, a selection of particularly tough insects and you. Where do we sign up for this version of the high life?
 
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Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.