  Reliability is fundamental for developing large-scale quantum computers.
Since the benefit of technological advancements to the qubit's stability is
saturating, algorithmic solutions, such as quantum error correction (QEC)
codes, are needed to bridge the gap to reliable computation. Unfortunately, the
deployment of the first quantum computers has identified faults induced by
natural radiation as an additional threat to qubits reliability. The high
sensitivity of qubits to radiation hinders the large-scale adoption of quantum
computers, since the persistence and area-of-effect of the fault can
potentially undermine the efficacy of the most advanced QEC.
  In this paper, we investigate the resilience of various implementations of
state-of-the-art QEC codes to radiation-induced faults. We report data from
over 400 million fault injections and correlate hardware faults with the
logical error observed after decoding the code output, extrapolating
physical-to-logical error rates. We compare the code's radiation-induced
logical error rate over the code distance, the number and role in the QEC of
physical qubits, the underlying quantum computer topology, and particle energy
spread in the chip. We show that, by simply selecting and tuning properly the
surface code, thus without introducing any overhead, the probability of
correcting a radiation-induced fault is increased by up to 10\%. Finally, we
provide indications and guidelines for the design of future QEC codes to
further increase their effectiveness against radiation-induced events.
