250 years later?

[rebalious]

Never hear about the nuclear summer theory anymore, was it debunked?

Anyway whichever happens fairly certain the oceans would rise for some reason or another.

[Kendo 2]

A few things strike me as seriously flawed with the FO3 game world.

 

1) Buildings: The first thing I saw that made me say, "What the..." was the presence of all of the wooden rural buildings. If any of you have taken a drive in the country you'll understand what I mean. Wood frame and clapboard buildings do not stand the test of time. Within 20 years plants would invade the buildings and nature would start reclaiming them. In 250 years you'd find nothing but overgrown foundations. If you were moving fast and blinked you'd never know a building once stood there. If tornados, brush fires and MAN are added to mix the buildings would be gone for sure. People would scavenge what they could or move in. Then there are those who would burn them down just for laughs. I can see Raiders as they are presented in the game torching things just for smiles.

 

2) The Weather: Weather is global, not isolated in one pocket of space. We all know this. They did it for Oblivion, after all.

 

3) The Radiation: already addressed several times.

 

4) The Firearms & Ammo: already addressed but I'd like to add something. One of the first modern things to be used up would be guns and ammo as people scramble to survive. Within a few decades all of the readily available modern firepower would be gone. Of course there are those who know how to hand load, machine parts and so on to keep things going for a while but eventally the hardware would go. The logical step down from that would be people resorting to black powder and percussion caps. Hell, I can make powder and caps from stuff at the hardware store and junk in scrap yards. Charcoal, sulfur, urine and some other goodies I won't mention and I'd be back in business. But modern warfare and black powder warfare are not the same. Surivors would adopt 'Mountain Man' tactics. Shoot once, drop the weapon, pull your knife and rush in to finish them off. Scalping optional.

 

5) Modern Goods: Clothing, armor, packaged food, medicine, drugs and so on would not be around. Even with the advances made now giving goods a shelf life of hundreds of years, all of that stuff would be used up as people would be too busy trying to live for ONE DAY. They wouldn't have time to grow crops or raise stock other than dogs. *Dogs would be on the menu. They'll eat almost anything and are socially associated with humans. When the Aztec army marched to war they would have packs of chihuahuas following them. When they camped at night they would dump all of their trash into a pile and the dogs would eat that. The dogs followed the army on their own because that's who was feeding them. When the army ran out of food, guess what they ate? Look at a standard chihuahua. It's enough meat for one man for one day.

 

The other game anachronisms I could ignore no matter how far fetched, Megaton being the worst of the lot. But the things I mentioned really jumped out at me at the first.

 

And as far as the trees and plants go, look at Chernobyl for how the planet will continue on after radiation. The forests are reclaiming it bit by bit.

[vincer]

Wait there guys. Come on, i cant believe you're all arguing about that!

 

Its FALLOUT UNIVERSE! Lets start:

 

-Its based on the idea people had in the 50's about the future, nuclear war and radiation effects. Its a fictional world that gets every scientifica advancement since the 50's and throws then out the window. Fallout universe isnt our world and our science; its what would happen if the wrong theories of the past were true. They're not, so its pointless looking to actual data about nuclear war for comparison. Zombie-like survivors of radiation, gigantic ants and such arent even close to real world radiation effects.

 

-Someone said about advanced AI but no proper vocal cords... Well... in the 50's the very concept of AI wasnt clear, and if i recall, even the term didnt exist. For then, talking robots(even with strange voice) was something so far in the future that it fits. Dont forget that cyborg mission and President Eden: they're examples of top notch AI and robotics in Fallout Universe. The sort of technology the average housewive didn't had walking around her house washing her dishes. Mr.Handy's and protectrons are civil robots. Sentry bots and robobrains were average mass producted robots, cheap and not updated.

 

-I agree Bethesda's depction of 200 hundred years after a fallout is wrong. But i disagree with most of the "why". The after-efects of a nuclear blast werent know in the 50's, not the entire extent and recovering. For them the stuff would stick around for a loooong time... fallout uses its own science, dubbed in pop-culture as "Science!", the kind mad scientists in old non-speaking movies used. What i see as wrong is how the DC area changed since the bombs: very few. Fallout 1 and 2 didnt had piles of rubble averywhere, they depicted it well. Bethesda's interpretation looks like 5 years or so after the bombs, regarding the wastelands layout and eyecandy.

 

-I dont supose we would recover from a world-wide nuclear blast of weird 50's science that fast with giant monster roaming about. We can assume society is slowly recovering, THAT SLOW, because of super-mutants, non-scientific magical radiation, giant ants, zombieish guys that irradiates green stuff and all the other dangerous stuff all around.

 

"Finally, weve finished recovering all these books about civil enginering and the materials, now we can start rebuilding society!"

 

"Sir, we must get out! A bunch of green giant-like guys carrying anti-aircraft guns that shoot lasers are at our door! They seen angry! I thin-" (dies in a small smoking pile of goo)

 

-Unrealistic damage, armor and such: Thats a little bit affected by modern day graphics and how bethesda made fallout in a new style. In fallout 3, when you shoot a beggar with your fps-like controls and hit him in the head, you expect some realism on its effects. Older fallouts were isometric view from afar and a console described for you the effects of your atacks. For anyone who played a table top rpg before, that's well know common place: Lots of missing shots and overall damage representing scratches and such, not actual direct hits. Get the older games stats and put then in a modern day fps-like rpg and you can notice the incongruencies. Plus, considering fallout lore, it isnt clear how much the humanity from the games is like us. Made more clear in fallout 2 and told by Enclave in fallout 3, almost EVERYONE is a mutant, on the real sense of the world. You may not see it visually, but the wastelander genes arent what they were before the war. Even stimpacks, pre-war existent in far more abundance, have unknow and dangerous side effects on human health(took too many and you die, in older games) and clearly show that 2077 paralel universe of Fallout had medicine technology far beyond realistic... And fallout isnt meant to be realistic after all. Miniguns are carried by helicopters and no man could use one with his bare hands, nor a bozar could be shot while santding without kicking you back to the ground. It's likeHolywood unrealism in this regard, like Arnold in predator using a mini-gun. Its all fictional fun, so we can see and do things that we cant in reality.

 

-Bombs everywhere: Actually theres enought nuclear power on earth to blow itself a few times. Truth is, regarding actual science, you dont need to cover the entire world to blow it: things like phisics and the force feedback of so many blasts at once would crack earth apart without covering more then a half. One single explosion at a mining factory, that i cant recall now the date of the events, caused tremors across continents, and it wasnt a nuclear blast. A not so powerfull bomb can cause more or less havoc depending on were it deployed, since continental blocks and their layout have weaker and stronger spots. We cant compare Fallout bombs with our most modern ones also because...

 

IT'S THE FUTURE!Not our, but the future our grandparents and people before thinked of. Despite being based on 50's beliefs, some people thinks that Fallout world was mostly 50tish like when the bombs went off. Nope. They had blasting lasers, beam-like canons on earths orbit and such. Maybe even a few of 2077 weird science Fallout bombs would be enought to cover most of the world, if not it all.

 

-About plants: Fallout 1 and 2 depicted it better. In fact, Bethesda could have did a little better in this regard.

[Kendo 2]

@Vincer

Taken in the context you've described, the FO3 game world is spot-on. I pulled my oldest sister away from the Lifetime Channel long enough to show her about 30 minutes of FO3 play. She was a teenager in the 1950's (cat-eye glasses with rhinestones, the poodle skirt, the boyfriend with a ducks-ass hairdo, a leather jacket and a hot rod). After talking with her, the game's vision mirrors those of American 1950's pulp culture. The red commies were poised to strike at any moment, destroying the wholesome suburban American way of life. Movies depicting giant bugs rampaging across the countryside and irradiated mutants capturing human girls for their own vile needs were very popular. In my 1950's teenaged sister's future everyone would be eating wonder-food and be cured by wonder-drugs.

 

You have made a very valid point and it needs to be recognized. :thumbsup:

 

 

If anyone is interested, the book 'Warday' by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka is a good read. It's the 1980's Reagan era take on what comes after the bombs fall.

Here's the wiki link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warday

 

EDIT: kudos given....myrmaad beat me to it. :P

[myrmaad]

That's why I gave him a kudo (his first)! :D