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I like how everyone so far has talked about "radiation" as if there's just one type or that every variation can be stopped/mitigated by the same materials.

It's kinda like asking if someone's immune to bullets – sure, maybe, what caliber, what type, do energy weapons count etc.?

I do not think anyone has claimed that they are immune - just resistant.


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 Ankhalagon wrote:
Well.... My giant ap3 fleshbane-torrent-flamers laugh about Power Armour...

Except upgrade it to artificer armour (say, any sergeant, techmarines, suzerains, pyroclasts and so on) and your Irradiation Engine has all the anti-armor effectiveness of a scribe's pencil.

Game mechanics are game mechanics; this is a background forum.

 Psienesis wrote:
That implant is present in most/all Space Marines... and it is intended to protect the Marine from radiation, by increasing the skin's resistance to it. If a Marine enters an irradiated area, his skin darkens in response, as the melatonin in the skin is a natural barrier against radiation (we mainly use it as a barrier against solar radiation IRL).

1) Melanin, not Melatonin
2) Melanin can only protect against UV light / visible light. NOT gamma radiation or any electromagnetic radiation that is not visible light.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Keep wrote:
Why do people always want marines to be literally superman, immune to basically everything? It just seems super boring to me.

I suggest you read the thread next time before you start posting embarrassing things.

And i suggest you do not misread and misinterpret posts before you start posting embarrassing things.

I was not the one stomping into a thread roaring sass towards imaginary SM-invincibility-arguers.

Hyperbole has a tendency not to be an accurate representation of actual situation. Even so -

 Ashiraya wrote:
I was not the one stomping into a thread roaring sass towards imaginary SM-invincibility-arguers.

Why should i feel embarassed about that? It even says it on the tin ... "furios raptor". I'm just doing my job here.

World Eater, eh?

Carry on.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
I like how everyone so far has talked about "radiation" as if there's just one type or that every variation can be stopped/mitigated by the same materials.

It's kinda like asking if someone's immune to bullets – sure, maybe, what caliber, what type, do energy weapons count etc.?

It's mostly assumed we're talking about gamma radiation.

GW doesn't appear to have differentiated between different types of radiation in their fluff, either, so it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, Space Marines are resistant to radiation (of all kinds) far beyond that which would kill a regular human being, but are not, themselves, immune to its effects.

I always go into these discussions assuming we're talking about "hollywood" versions of stuff (i.e: pop culture idealized versions). Like where all acid apparently dissolves materials, emits fumes and occasionally can set things on fire, poisons are all green or purple and make you sick then die, or how every planet in the imperium speaks the exact same variant of "low gothic" despite the fact that in the US you'll get a completely different accent if you travel across just a few states, much less what kind of language you'd hear just over another continent.

And back on topic: again the fluff explicitly says Marines are not immune to "radiation", since the Terminator Armor was specifically developed for this.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
I always go into these discussions assuming we're talking about "hollywood" versions of stuff (i.e: pop culture idealized versions). Like where all acid apparently dissolves materials, emits fumes and occasionally can set things on fire, poisons are all green or purple and make you sick then die, or how every planet in the imperium speaks the exact same variant of "low gothic" despite the fact that in the US you'll get a completely different accent if you travel across just a few states, much less what kind of language you'd hear just over another continent.

And back on topic: again the fluff explicitly says Marines are not immune to "radiation", since the Terminator Armor was specifically developed for this.

Well, its entirely possible a universal language was developed long before the Unification Wars or the Great Crusade. English is widely spoken today, who's to say that in 500 years English won't be a requirement for every person on the planet and everything else relegated to regional dialect, and that it doesn't carry into the 41st Millennium in a form as every human in existance will speak it as a primary language?

English evolved so much that trying to read a Shakespearean play from a few hundred years ago is considered a difficult enough task to be a comedy sitcom punishment. And that's with us trying to preserve our heritage. And that's just direct words changing, implications can change rapidly too. Me getting dressed up in a Santa Costume on Christmas singing that song from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" would get me thrown in jail for attempting to kidnap children!

Realistically you can't keep a universal language and still have it functioning the way you'd expect across a galactic empire. But this is an acceptable break from reality for the sake of science fiction.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
English evolved so much that trying to read a Shakespearean play from a few hundred years ago is considered a difficult enough task to be a comedy sitcom punishment. And that's with us trying to preserve our heritage. And that's just direct words changing, implications can change rapidly too. Me getting dressed up in a Santa Costume on Christmas singing that song from "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" would get me thrown in jail for attempting to kidnap children!

Realistically you can't keep a universal language and still have it functioning the way you'd expect across a galactic empire. But this is an acceptable break from reality for the sake of science fiction.

But that's also with simplification of words and thousands of other languages trying to implement themselves, including different dialects, such as American english. If from today we said "There will be a universal language that everyone in the world must learn," and they picked American English, and everyone learned that, the chances of it altering to the degree as Shakespearean and modern english have diverged is minimal. If one area starts using a slightly different version, no one else will be able to understand, so they'll still have to retain that universal standard.

It could also be that High Gothic is the universal "English," so to speak, that uses proper British grammar and spelling, and Low Gothic is a variety of different English dialects and common terms, such as American, Canadian, etc, but is generally understandable to other Low Gothic variations. For example, a Canadian using Canadian style English can understand an American English conversation. Anything else, such as native Cthonian (Horus' homeworld) language or Colchisian (Lorgar) are the equivilents of French and German, and only spoken by certain regions of space.

Realistically, even "Colchisian" would have a dozen, if not hundreds, of different dialects. We have a huge number of languages on one planet, and that's just counting the official ones and not regional or tribal dialects. My home Country of China officially speaks Mandarin, but there's so many variants and dialects on it that me simply travelling to the wrong part of my home town ends up with me hearing gibberish.

Considering the Imperium is galaxy-spanning, realistically the actual languages would be numbered in the millions. There's no way that you can even keep a consistent meaning of words across all of that, much less actually being able to speak it. There might be entire regions of space where they speak generally the same thing, but even then the inhabitants would more likely be communicating with the equivalent of "Me washroom get"

In the old fluff, high gothic was the universal, official language taught in all Imperial institutions and low gothic is the term for the local dialects of the same root language, while many worlds /also/ had native languages of their own.
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't), and for much the same reason, while the local languages of each planet would require more than a phrase book to comprehend.

The third part, about the native languages, seems to have either been dropped or rolled into low gothic by mistake lately.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't).

As I recall someone who took Latin in school will often be able to understand Italian (and Spanish etc), but the locals won't understand him so well. He has the benefit of knowing all the root words and theory while they just speak as they've done since whenever.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
In the old fluff, high gothic was the universal, official language taught in all Imperial institutions and low gothic is the term for the local dialects of the same root language, while many worlds /also/ had native languages of their own.
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't), and for much the same reason, while the local languages of each planet would require more than a phrase book to comprehend.

The third part, about the native languages, seems to have either been dropped or rolled into low gothic by mistake lately.

I'm talking about how in real life the idea of a single language across a galactic empire is utterly impossible, which is why you should never look any further than "hollywood" level of plausibility at anything in the fluff. I was only using the dialects and whatnot to illustrate why it would not be feasable realistically.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
In the old fluff, high gothic was the universal, official language taught in all Imperial institutions and low gothic is the term for the local dialects of the same root language, while many worlds /also/ had native languages of their own.
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't), and for much the same reason, while the local languages of each planet would require more than a phrase book to comprehend.

The third part, about the native languages, seems to have either been dropped or rolled into low gothic by mistake lately.

In the Roleplaying games, like Dark Heresy, Hight Gothic is Latin. To understand that question you must think in the pre-renacentist history, before the XVI century the books, the "literature" and the "science" was only writed and readed in latin and greek mostly. Even, long after Dante, Shakespeare, Cervantes and other writers developed their own languages the latin was the language for the science and handbooks.

As I understand, the Latin is still in the official administratum and ministorum language in the medieval futuristic Imperium. Even if most people couldn´t understand it or spoke it. That´s the same status that the latin had in the european history. If you are a monk copying a codex from Saint August you don´t need to understand that words, you know that are sacred and you won´t change it.




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Spetulhu wrote:

 Mr_Rose wrote:
Essentially high and low gothic should be mutually intelligible in the same way Latin and Italian are(n't).

As I recall someone who took Latin in school will often be able to understand Italian (and Spanish etc), but the locals won't understand him so well. He has the benefit of knowing all the root words and theory while they just speak as they've done since whenever.

As spanish from the mediterranean coast I could understand Italian, Portuguese and French reasonably well. Romanic languages from other countries (Romania e.g.) evolved far from my understandment.

The original Latin, nowdays, could be understanded in lot of points but the Latin had a big problem to us. The latin, like the Russian, use the declinations to connect the words in a sentence. That´s the reason because the Google Translator sistem that the Black Library writers use to translate english to latin is very very bad.

For example, Aaron Demsky Bowden is one of my favourite writers and their Night Lords novels are awesome. But the famous motto "AVE DOMINUS NOX" is very very wrong. In Latin the declination determine that to connect the two words of the sentence, and explain that the Lords are lords of the Night (not in the night, or lords by night) the sentence must read AVE, DOMINI NOCTIS.

I see the romans they go the house?

It says romans go home.

No it doesn't

Radiation is a really nasty guest. You can well survive it if you're strong and healthy like a marine, but you will have damage to small stuff like the cells used to reproduce. And a marine isn't just sitting in front of his Win10 PC like I do - he's out there in multiple star systems, confronting the xenos and heretics while getting a healthy dose of solar radiation.

The reason we haven't sent someone to Mars yet is twofold. It takes several years to be in the perfect position for a short journey, and the rad count is thought to be horrible if the ship isn't heavily shielded.

Spetulhu wrote:
Radiation is a really nasty guest. You can well survive it if you're strong and healthy like a marine, but you will have damage to small stuff like the cells used to reproduce. And a marine isn't just sitting in front of his Win10 PC like I do - he's out there in multiple star systems, confronting the xenos and heretics while getting a healthy dose of solar radiation.

The reason we haven't sent someone to Mars yet is twofold. It takes several years to be in the perfect position for a short journey, and the rad count is thought to be horrible if the ship isn't heavily shielded.

In that case, Astartes are effectively immune, as they don't reproduce.

 Deadshot wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
Radiation is a really nasty guest. You can well survive it if you're strong and healthy like a marine, but you will have damage to small stuff like the cells used to reproduce. And a marine isn't just sitting in front of his Win10 PC like I do - he's out there in multiple star systems, confronting the xenos and heretics while getting a healthy dose of solar radiation.

The reason we haven't sent someone to Mars yet is twofold. It takes several years to be in the perfect position for a short journey, and the rad count is thought to be horrible if the ship isn't heavily shielded.

In that case, Astartes are effectively immune, as they don't reproduce.

Hardly. They don't have [genetic-reproduction functional] traditional reproductive male/female organs, but the progenoid glands are, for the purposes of a colloquial use of "cells used to reproduce", reproductive organs. Even if you wanted to work within a more formal definition, you'll notice that Spetulhu stated "small stuff like the cells used to reproduce" and did not specify ONLY cells used to reproduce, and there's nothing at all suggesting progenoid glands have some sort of immunity to radiation's destructive effects.


Generally speaking, I wouldn't be surprised if the raw physical damage resulting from severe radiation would be mostly manageable due to a Space Marine's superior immune system and enhanced healing overall. That is to say, I think radiation poisoning's non-genetic damage would be less debilitating for a Space Marine than it would be for a normal human.

However, I see no particular reason why Space Marines would be resistant to damage to their genetic structure, as referenced by Spetulhu and others, and such damage on a genetic level may well make Marines MORE vulnerable to such damage's deleterious effects. I should probably explain that...

Consider normal cancer, which if I understand it (and I probably don't, except at a basic layman level) is effectively the result of your own biological processes running amok. As a result of the enhanced nature of Space Marine physiology and genetic makeup, a Space Marine's cancer would almost certainly involve ENHANCED biological processes running amok.

The stronger your ally, the more dangerous if that ally turns. I see no reason why a Space Marine's enhanced immune system wouldn't follow a parallel reasoning here.

That doesn't touch on the nature of progenoid glands, some of which may have been passed down over all 10000 years of exposure to potentially-gene-damaging radiations part and parcel of existence, let alone a life of constant warfare and battlefields, and the rest of which are cloned from the genetics (including the damaged ones) of the original progenoid glands. Even small amounts of damage to the genetic structure of such a gland, being the genetic source of practically ALL of the Space Marine's enhanced genetic and physiological makeup, would have horrifying implications... and every single progenoid has effectively been subjected to 10000 years of the most extreme warfare in the most extreme battlefield conditions and maintained by technicians who lack the sort of knowledge needed to maintain or repair genetic damage.

TL;DR: Individual marines can handle radiation poison better than humans, but risk damaging an impossible-to-reproduce-with-40k-tech genetic legacy. No wonder they send in Terminators first.

 Keep wrote:
Why do people always want marines to be literally superman, immune to basically everything? It just seems super boring to me.

Its much more dramatic when a god dies than a man.

...in Hollywood layman's terms, which is all of what GW writes anyway, sure, marines can be more resistant because warp shenanigans and GW says so.

In the real world, I don't actually think they would be more resistant than the average human being - at least if how people are desceibing the source of that supposed resistance is true. Sure, they have more white blood cells, redundant organs, etc. But the way radiation poisoning works generally would ignore most of that because it kills internal organs (esp squishy ones like lungs and anything in the gastro-intestinal tract), blood cells, lymph nodes, bone marrow, and in high enough acute doses nervous system cells. Hence, it kills both the body and the body's ability to heal itself.

Amusingly, the human body is incredibly good at fighting radiation, and even highly dosed individuals will get sick, then show some signs of recovery, and then get sick again and die. Some parts of the healing system still work, but others do not. Unless we are going to claim magical gobbledygook, I do not see marines as being all that highly resistant.

But then again, no one should really apply logic to GW's writing. No author can be an expert on everything... and if someone really went through the process of researching how to perfect the human resistance to radiation, I am sure we could come up with it.

We don't know exactly how Marine organs work, biologically. They may well have antiradiation effects built in; in fact, I believe the skin-changer implant does just that. We do not know how, but we know that it does.

 Red_Ink_Cat wrote:
...in Hollywood layman's terms, which is all of what GW writes anyway, sure, marines can be more resistant because warp shenanigans and GW says so.

In the real world, I don't actually think they would be more resistant than the average human being - at least if how people are desceibing the source of that supposed resistance is true. Sure, they have more white blood cells, redundant organs, etc. But the way radiation poisoning works generally would ignore most of that because it kills internal organs (esp squishy ones like lungs and anything in the gastro-intestinal tract), blood cells, lymph nodes, bone marrow, and in high enough acute doses nervous system cells. Hence, it kills both the body and the body's ability to heal itself.

Amusingly, the human body is incredibly good at fighting radiation, and even highly dosed individuals will get sick, then show some signs of recovery, and then get sick again and die. Some parts of the healing system still work, but others do not. Unless we are going to claim magical gobbledygook, I do not see marines as being all that highly resistant.

But then again, no one should really apply logic to GW's writing. No author can be an expert on everything... and if someone really went through the process of researching how to perfect the human resistance to radiation, I am sure we could come up with it.

Well the key thing you need to remember about the majority of Astartes organs is that they are redundancies. For example, the multi-lung is just in case the regulars lungs aren't working or can't work (due to water or gas for example). The secondary heart just boosts the blood pressure if needed or the first heart is damaged. So even if their heart is working at half efficiency, they have another one. Or if both are at half, that still gives them a full heart's worth, or a full lungs worth. Plus, Marines have enough pain threshold and determination to fight through the common symtons of radiation poisoning such as physical weakness, they'll literally keep going until they die or get treatment (probably a common sickness in 41st Millenium that treatment is over the counter pills)
Then, as mentioned, they have the Melachromatic organ which alters their skin to protect against the majority of radiation such as solar radiation, one of the potent radiations there is.

 Deadshot wrote:
Well the key thing you need to remember about the majority of Astartes organs is that they are redundancies. For example, the multi-lung is just in case the regulars lungs aren't working or can't work (due to water or gas for example). The secondary heart just boosts the blood pressure if needed or the first heart is damaged. So even if their heart is working at half efficiency, they have another one. Or if both are at half, that still gives them a full heart's worth, or a full lungs worth. Plus, Marines have enough pain threshold and determination to fight through the common symtons of radiation poisoning such as physical weakness, they'll literally keep going until they die or get treatment (probably a common sickness in 41st Millenium that treatment is over the counter pills)
Then, as mentioned, they have the Melachromatic organ which alters their skin to protect against the majority of radiation such as solar radiation, one of the potent radiations there is.

Seems a thing we are missing from this discussion is exactly what kind of dose are we talking about here? I'm talking upper levels - the ones that kill people regardless of treatment because there is a very, very obvious cut-off between "this sucks, but you will be ok with the right stuff" and "sorry, nothing we can do, you are going to die a horrible death."

Also UV radiation? Pfft. Small cookies compared to the other common four. Real radiation that is not already stopped by your clothes/skin does not care how much melanin is in the way. It only cares about how much space is atomic nucleus (unless it's neutron radiation, but that is a whole different can of worms), which is not a lot, even with super dense material there. Hence why lead is used, but not a lot of people will remember that lead only reduces the amount of radiation you get. So, unless this silly gland thing is actually capable of changing the density of a marine's atoms, in real life, that gland is entirely worthless.

And I cannot really see anything making humans more resilient towards radiation. The only way to combat the doses that just will not outright kill you is to take the broken gak and replace it. And no, it does not do this half working thing. Organ failure. You lose, game over, levels of dead. And the stuff that gets replaced? Bone marrow and your blood - the core building blocks of your body. And what fails is not primarily your lungs and heart, although they can definately start hemorrhaging to add to the awfulness. It is the gastro-intestinal system that slowly disintegrates that really does you in. Or, if we are high enough to get "immediate" death, you just microwaved your brain and nerves and blood vessels. Your entire cardiovascular system slowly collapses in on itself and your brain gets squashed by too much pressure.

 Red_Ink_Cat wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Well the key thing you need to remember about the majority of Astartes organs is that they are redundancies. For example, the multi-lung is just in case the regulars lungs aren't working or can't work (due to water or gas for example). The secondary heart just boosts the blood pressure if needed or the first heart is damaged. So even if their heart is working at half efficiency, they have another one. Or if both are at half, that still gives them a full heart's worth, or a full lungs worth. Plus, Marines have enough pain threshold and determination to fight through the common symtons of radiation poisoning such as physical weakness, they'll literally keep going until they die or get treatment (probably a common sickness in 41st Millenium that treatment is over the counter pills)
Then, as mentioned, they have the Melachromatic organ which alters their skin to protect against the majority of radiation such as solar radiation, one of the potent radiations there is.

Seems a thing we are missing from this discussion is exactly what kind of dose are we talking about here? I'm talking upper levels - the ones that kill people regardless of treatment because there is a very, very obvious cut-off between "this sucks, but you will be ok with the right stuff" and "sorry, nothing we can do, you are going to die a horrible death."

Also UV radiation? Pfft. Small cookies compared to the other common four. Real radiation that is not already stopped by your clothes/skin does not care how much melanin is in the way. It only cares about how much space is atomic nucleus (unless it's neutron radiation, but that is a whole different can of worms), which is not a lot, even with super dense material there. Hence why lead is used, but not a lot of people will remember that lead only reduces the amount of radiation you get. So, unless this silly gland thing is actually capable of changing the density of a marine's atoms, in real life, that gland is entirely worthless.

And I cannot really see anything making humans more resilient towards radiation. The only way to combat the doses that just will not outright kill you is to take the broken gak and replace it. And no, it does not do this half working thing. Organ failure. You lose, game over, levels of dead. And the stuff that gets replaced? Bone marrow and your blood - the core building blocks of your body. And what fails is not primarily your lungs and heart, although they can definately start hemorrhaging to add to the awfulness. It is the gastro-intestinal system that slowly disintegrates that really does you in. Or, if we are high enough to get "immediate" death, you just microwaved your brain and nerves and blood vessels. Your entire cardiovascular system slowly collapses in on itself and your brain gets squashed by too much pressure.

Thing is though, Space Marines already walk off internal haemorrhaging and clots and organ failure. They have the pain tolerance to keep going despite the fact their guts have just exited via their rectum. Again, bone marrow and blood are something that they have more powerful versions of, their secondary heart alters their blood composition, I sure its capable of (temporarily) handling rad poisoning. The cut off you mention between "you'll be ok with some iodine or something" and "you're going to gak out your lungs" is, I'm fairly confident, more akin to "Eh, walk it off" and "The apothecary will deal with you eventually" for Space Marines.

Also, the solar radiation I was talking about was direct, vacuum solar radiation on zero-atmosphere environments like moons or ships. In atmosphere, that's not really a problem, but there is a reason astronauts have big shields on their visors for operating in open space.

Once you start getting into the "instant death" region you have a different matter, but again, it all depends on whether or not the armour is capable of keeping out radiation. That to me seems a basic function of the armour, after all, another franchise with prominent power armour is Fallout, and we know there that Power Armour is extremely useful for radiation, I very much doubt that power armour in 40k wouldn't have rad-proof Space Marine armour given how common radiation would be in 40k (liberal use of nukes, space, direct rad weapons, etc), but agreed, if you get to that level unprotected you are looking at Marine skulls exploding like popcorn.

 Deadshot wrote:
Thing is though, Space Marines already walk off internal haemorrhaging and clots and organ failure. They have the pain tolerance to keep going despite the fact their guts have just exited via their rectum. Again, bone marrow and blood are something that they have more powerful versions of, their secondary heart alters their blood composition, I sure its capable of (temporarily) handling rad poisoning. The cut off you mention between "you'll be ok with some iodine or something" and "you're going to gak out your lungs" is, I'm fairly confident, more akin to "Eh, walk it off" and "The apothecary will deal with you eventually" for Space Marines.

Also, the solar radiation I was talking about was direct, vacuum solar radiation on zero-atmosphere environments like moons or ships. In atmosphere, that's not really a problem, but there is a reason astronauts have big shields on their visors for operating in open space.

Once you start getting into the "instant death" region you have a different matter, but again, it all depends on whether or not the armour is capable of keeping out radiation. That to me seems a basic function of the armour, after all, another franchise with prominent power armour is Fallout, and we know there that Power Armour is extremely useful for radiation, I very much doubt that power armour in 40k wouldn't have rad-proof Space Marine armour given how common radiation would be in 40k (liberal use of nukes, space, direct rad weapons, etc), but agreed, if you get to that level unprotected you are looking at Marine skulls exploding like popcorn.

This is just going to come down to how much stock each of us puts in Marine fluff, which can generally be summarized as Marines=Superman, so... yeah...

And I am not saying they are better at persevering through the symptoms of Acute Radiation Sundrome, which takes days to weeks to kill you anyway (afformentioned cardiovascular failure and brain squashing takes from hours to about 3 days). They can keep going, but ARS does not behave like a cut or common injury. High levels can destroy or damage the cells' ability to replace themselves - thus effectively rendering all but magical processes of repairing cells useless. My overall argument is that because Marines still are portrayed as simply having "better" but still "human" ways of repairing or ignoring damage, they are still just as susceptible to death by radiation. They would just show the other symptoms of ARS much less than a normal human being would.

And you would be surprised at how good medicine is as far as treating radiation. The "you are deff going to die" range is after bone marrow transplants and blood transfusions, not iodine pills (which are more in the area of oops, a thing busted, and we don't want you to maybe get cancer somewhere down the line so have a pill). The general public's perception of where "awfully horribly bad" radiation starts is much lower than actual, likely because even mild radiation poisoning that you can fully heal from wreaks havoc on a person and is just about the fastest way to earn so much bad PR that whoever caused it will make Satan look like a good employer.

Solar is almost entirely (99%) UV, visible, or infrared light. What gamma radiation is produced in the core of the sun slowly loses energy as it travels to the sun's surface, at which point most of it is reduced to the UV, visible, or infrared spectrum of light. What is not is generally very low energy and thus much less harmful. Solar radiation =/= gamma radiation.

As for armor, that is an immeasurable fluff argument. All of the magical materials you like can exist, so whatever I say does not really matter, beyond radiation is not like a smell or gas that can be removed from a system or kept out. Gamma is simple energy that can pass through most things. Even reduced behind layers of armor, it is still giving you some kind of dose, so armor is only effective up to a certain radiation level. Hence the terminator argument, but exactly what their armor is made of that is not some hilarious magical construct has me stumped since it would have to deal with neutron radiation, which is not actually dealt with the same way as gamma.

They could survive a higher dose - simply because they have better immune system, better blood clotting etc. But since this is exactly what high doses of radiation destroy, it's just a matter of dose to bring down a marine the same way as a human.

A dose that could kill a human in 3 days could make marines significantly weaker (no "super blood clotting anymore", less endurance through less oxygen transport capability in blood, weakened immune system from decimation of white blood cells. Skin etc would still get burned the same.

Their auto-injector system might make them immune to the pain and illness side effects (vomiting, nausea, servere headaches), but the damage to the body can't be prevented.

So compared to humans they could still fight and would be less likely to just "pass out" or be combat ineffective.

but agreed, if you get to that level unprotected you are looking at Marine skulls exploding like popcorn.

exploding skulls? Did some B-movie impression stick with you?

Considering that this continues to go in circles, may I ask if it actually says that Marines are actually more resistant to radiation, or is this just assumed because of their described upgrades?

Because we are talking about radiation as if it is just some other wound and a dose capable of killing a normal human in 3 days is something that can viably be shrugged off. Did you not read that this 3 day dose is what kills neurological cells? Your brain cells lose the ability to repair themselves and start to die. Last I checked, marines do not have some backup brain system, and honestly, if they have super-clotting, the "3-day fatal" dose would kill them faster because then we are losing blood to lots of brain matter and killing more cells faster.

Also, OP, if no one answered the standing in a functioning reactor bit: No. Just no. They are dead.