Let me tell you something the doctors never tell anyone.

In our curriculum, we are secretly taught how much radiation, what powers can one get.

10 rad - lightweight.

100 rad - superhuman speed.

1000 rad- superhuman strength.

10000 rad - invisibility.

1000000- radioactive eyes with lasers.

100000000 rad - invincibility.

But these are not tried ever in humans because of side effects.

 BULLSHIT. RAD IS NOT EVEN THE SI UNIT OF RADIOACTIVITY.

But what can radiation give us?

Can radiation really give humans mutant powers like in comics? Absolutely not. Radiation can have any of three effects on living things:

When it comes to mutation, we are only concerned about #3.

When chromosome damage occurs in somatic cells (that is, any cells except eggs and sperm), it also has one of three effects: 1) nothing, or 2) the damage gets repaired, or 3) broken cell metabolism.

The latter amounts to tissue damage, because it screws up the proteins and enzymes the cell is making, or screws up the genes that regulate the cell. The most likely result of this is that the cell dies, and when this happens to a large number of cells all at the same time, we call it radiation sickness.

If you recover, it means all the most severely damaged cells have died, but those that remain have a small chance of going wrong in the future, the biggest effect of which is an elevated lifetime risk of cancer.

All of this is also true when chromosomes are damaged in gametes (sperm and eggs) and again, the most likely result is that the damaged cells will simply die. If they don’t, there is a chance that mutations may affect the development of future generations, but this doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Why? Because contrary to widespread misapprehension, the vast majority of mutations are harmless. Most biological processes are highly immune to variations in the exact form of most proteins and enzymes, and sexual reproduction ensures that we all carry two copies of most of our genes, so even if one copy isn’t up to snuff, the other can generally pinch-hit.

When most people think of mutation, they think of three-headed cows and other monstrous developmental defects, but in fact, most of these are just that—developmental defects. Genetic mutation can sometimes cause such profound and obvious deformities, but for the most part, such gross errors never survive to become embryos.

So you can put aside your fears that nuclear war will give rise to a race of one-eyed, Tripple-teated boogie-men. That cannot happen. What would happen is that cancer and stillbirth rates would rise for the duration of exposure to the radiation, and otherwise, life would go on as before.

So what about superpowers?

Sorry, no. First, most of 
the superpowers shown in the
comics are impossible(flying
without wings,laser vision,
telekinesis, etc.).

Some others are not, but are 
beyond the reach of mutation.

For example, if you have red hair and green eyes in your family and consider that a superpower (it is, right?) then there is a very small chance that exposure to radiation might toggle a control gene and give you a ginger child that otherwise might not have been. But radiation can’t give your child the snake-haired head of medusa—you don’t have the raw materials for such a change in your genome.

There is one superpower that radiation conveys. By increasing the mutation rate, it increases the variation within living populations, and that gives nature more raw material to select from. This can accelerate evolution, but don’t get too excited. You already have an evolutionary superpower that does this—sexual reproduction.

Sex vastly increases the variation within a population and does it without relying on mutation. Radiation will increase the variation among your kids, but equally among simple life forms which—because they breed by the trillions—are better suited to take advantage.

That is to say, radiation favours simple life, it is a superpower for microbes, including those that prey on us.