For comic book characters, big doses of radiation are a surefire way of acquiring awesome superpowers, but in real life, the results aren’t quite as glamorous. A victim of acute radiation poisoning can look forward to hair loss, bleeding, the destruction of their white blood cells and bone marrow, and severe damage to their spleen, stomach and intestines.

Radiation doesn’t kill cells directly, but it can cause so much damage that they commit suicide, by enacting a failsafe program called apoptosis.  Now, Lyudmila Burdelya and colleagues from Roswell Park Cancer Institute have found a way to block this cellular kill-switch, using a drug inspired by the unlikeliest of sources – the tail of the food-poisoning bacterium, Salmonella.

In early