"If there was a nuclear war, only the cockroaches will survive," do you remember hearing this as a child? Perhaps, you simply replied with "Oh, cool." This theory is completely wrong, there are other insects and bacteria that are far more prepared for a nuclear war, but there are some amazing cockroach facts that will allow you to reiterate the "Oh, cool" that you once used so liberally as a child.

From the time they’re born, the cockroach lives an exciting life. The journal of nature published that during sex the male cockroaches transfer sperm to a female's genital pouch in a gift-wrapped package called a spermatophore. Some males smother the sperm package in a protein-rich wrapping that the female cockroach can later eat. Before the female takes a bite she also covers the sperm cluster with her urates as she excretes the package. She can then eat it to obtain nutrients when other sources of food are unobtainable.

Although cockroaches can’t survive a nuclear war they are still quite hardy insects and are difficult to kill. A cockroach can live an entire week without its head. The cockroach will eventually die because without a head it doesn’t have a mouth to drink water and ends up dying of thirst. Furthermore, although cockroaches can only survive a week without water, they can survive an entire month without food. Some female cockroaches can mate only once but can reproduce for the rest of their lives. A million eggs will be laid throughout her lifetime after a single sexual encounter.

These strong survival techniques that cockroaches have adapted are probably what helped create the myth that they can survive a nuclear war. To address the question on who can survive the holocaust, the most likely being is a putrid bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans, that can survive levels of 1,500,000 rads, the amount of energy absorbed from radiation, and twice that when frozen. To put that in perspective, consider the fact that, Drs. Wharton and Wharton found that it took 64,000 rads to kill the fruit fly. It takes only up to 6,500 to kill a cockroach. However, this is still better than humans who die after being exposed to only about 400-1000 rads.