the.com/fallout
the radioactive afterthought that drifts down long after the boom takes a bow
means The lingering consequences of an event — originally the radioactive particles that settle from the sky after a nuclear explosion, now any drifting aftermath of a disaster or decision.
from A 20th-century compound born of the atomic age, stitching plainly together 'fall' and 'out' — the dust that literally falls out of the air after a nuclear blast. The word entered wide use in the 1950s as bomb testing made the phenomenon a public dread. From that literal cloud, English quickly let it drift into the figurative, so that arguments, scandals, and bad decisions now have 'fallout' too.
- silent spread
- Carried by wind for thousands of miles unseen
- nuclear winter
- Enough fallout could darken skies for years
- dental record
- 1950s baby teeth tracked global strontium-90 levels
- game empire
- Bethesda's series sold tens of millions of copies
- shelter craze
- Cold War families buried backyard bunkers stocked with canned beans
radioactive fallout hiroshima — nuclear weapons testing and bombing atmospheric contamination 1945-1963
chernobyl fallout — radioactive debris dispersed across europe from 1986 reactor explosion