After WWII, Professor Josiah Rhonne was looking for a way to end the threat of nuclear annihilation. He came up with the idea to transform people by changing their atomic structure to make them immune to radioactivity and durable enough to survive a nuclear explosion. He needed a human test subject, and he found one when he stumbled across William "Willy the Wharf Rat" Burns - a former merchant marine who has suffering from a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ever since his ship was hit by a Nazi torpedo. Feeling that he was too damaged to be any good at anything, Willy agreed to participate in Professor Rhonne's experiment. However, while conducting the experiment, Professor Pronne accidently triggered a nuclear reaction. The explosion destroyed his castle and everything in it, but Willy sur