Kurt Feltenberger wrote:
 > The characters being 'adventurer types' boarded... and found
 > that the ship was largely intact, had an atmosphere, and was
 > one that was lost about 100 years earlier.
...
 > Wouldn't the radiation have killed the bacteria that would
 > cause decomposition?

Not necessarily; bacteria are hard to kill with radiation.

Food irradiation standards specify 'high dose' as north of 10 kGy or 1
million rads. NASA has used doses as high as 44 kGy or 4.4 million rads
to sterilise meat; apparently similar levels are used to make sure
hospital food is clean in some places.

This is far higher than the LD50/30 for man (50% chance of death in 30
days) of 4.5-6 Sv (i.e. 4.5-6 Gy with a quality factor of 1).

 > Wouldn't the radiation have gone down given the time
 > (~100 years since the ship was attacked)?

Yes, unless there is active production of the equivalent of high-level
fissile waste on-site, or an enormous quantity of same (?smuggling?).

Per Glasstone and Dolan, induced radiation from nuclear (ObTrav: and
meson?)  weapons will fall by a factor of about ten times for every
thirty hours post attack.

Rob O'Connor