I doubt there would be any permanent damage although I'm not certain about that but I guess it would be a bit of a shock and natural reflexes would probably turn you away straight off. From there on you wouldn't need anything to help you see it.
A good little explaination of Betelguese' peak luminosity can be found here...
http://space.about.com/b/2011/01/24/...va-in-2012.htm
Quote:
Typically Type II supernova (a supernova resulting from the collapse of a massive star) of this size have a peak luminosity (integrated over all wavelengths) approaching about 1 billion times the power of our Sun.
Because the apparent luminosity (effectively the amount of energy that arrives at Earth per second) falls off with the square of the distance. In Laymen's terms, if our Sun were ten times further away from us, its apparent luminosity would be 100 times less.
So given the 600 light-year distance to Betelgeuse (about 40 million times further away from us than our Sun), the apparent peak luminosity of the supernova explosion will be roughly 0.00006% of our Sun's apparent luminosity. Clearly that is such a small percentage that the additional flux will have zero effect on our planet.
What is perhaps more interesting is the optical peak brightness (how it will appear to the naked eye). It should appear noticeably brighter than Venus on a clear night, perhaps significantly so. (I've seen reports that would indicate the brightness might rival that of the full moon, but I am somewhat skeptical of this; the numbers just don't seem to add up in my estimation.) Short story is that it will be noticeable even to those without scientific training.
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The same would be said for any particles reaches us, I think?