Is project purity a stupid idea?

[TheOriginalEvilD]

The funny part of all this is...there really should be rain, considering there IS water in the region, so there would be some kind of evaporation going on and some kind of condensation. Or, in other words there would definitely be acid rain.

 

If the basin was purified by PP, wouldn't acid rain just pollute it again or....?

[marharth]

There is obviously clean water, humans are still alive 200 years after the war without some magic water plant.

 

If there wasn't clean water how are there humans that are not mutated, and humans who can live the same life span as before the war?

 

You can clean a bit at a time, you can just store the water for later purposes once you clean a bit at a time.

 

 

Also you need to remember the game was made in the views of people from the 1950s, think of it as the game designers being from the 1950s.

 

Most people didn't know how nuclear bombs, radiation, and other things worked, the bombs could of caused the natural water process to stop in some parts of the world...

 

 

Also if the GECK is just for growing crops, how did it help with the purifier?

[LadyMilla]

As I said, read the wiki entry for GECK here: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/GECK and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler

 

There was a GECK component that was designed to rebuild the environment, and not just purify it. It breaks down everything to quantum particles and rebuild matter so it is suitable for supporting life. PP used this component to purity water instead of creating a livable area for a town. But the LW's mother did not want a single livable town, she wanted 'clean water for everyone' (supposedly, everyone in the DC area).

 

And no, clean water was scarce. You can see that the skin of raider tribes is rotting or riddled with stains (it is not just dirty). There are water beggars near Megaton and Rivet City. People at the settlements do not look mutated or ill, but the game fails to explain how they get clean water. In Little Lamplight Eclair explains that they use cave fungus to reduce their radiation levels that builds up because they have to drink irradiated water.

 

But in the end, it is entirely pointless arguing about Project Purity. It is the premise of the game, you just need to let go of your disbelief. There are a bunch of contradicting elements in Fallout 3 (why are there highly advanced technologies that obviously require micro-circuits, anti-gravitation (e.g. the floating eye-bots), and advanced AI, why were the metro tunnels and utility rooms not stripped of anything usable during the past 200 years (you still find random usable items, like stimpacks, etc.), how is it possible that water is still flowing from drinking fountains inside destroyed buildings when public utilities should not be operational after 200 years (either because of the lack of maintenance, or due to nuclear bursts breaking the up the pipelines, gas is still escaping from pipes, and so on).

[TheCalliton]

OK let me explain this...

 

1. The water itself is not radioactive, there are small particles in the water that makes it that way, if you use a filter system it can be removed. (as shown in the settlements)

 

2. There is clean water already, its not really as a big of a deal as other things, using a GECK to do this was pretty insane, when a GECK has a much better use.

 

3. Sure project purity could clean a lot of water at once, but if you just clean it a bit at a time it will have the exact same effect...

 

1. It's pointless arguing about the science because science in Fallout 3 stands on clay legs (television and radio sets use tubes, but there are advanced technology like intelligent robots and stealth devices that are unimaginable without miniaturization). As to radioactivity, If you know the rule of sevens, radioactivity should be well below the safe levels 200 years after the Great War, not counting a few radioactive waste dumps. If you want to reason, you should stay within the 'scientific' framework of the game.

 

2. Where is the clean water? From the story it is apparent that Rivet City is struggling to provide clean water to its residents, everybody is talking about Doctor Li's efforts. Megaton is struggling to keep its water purifier running. In Vault 101 there is only one remaining water chip for their purifier plant. Also, read the Fallout wiki a bit about GECK and apparently it's not that wonderful at all. From what I read there it's more of an agricultural magic wand that is suitable for establishing a livable area for a town-size settlement.

 

3. You can't clean a bit a time for e.g. irrigation, producing concrete in massive amounts. Water from taps and drinking fountains is irradiated (another debatable feature of the game: utilities still working 200 years after the war without maintenance) if you want to ensure that water flowing from those taps and fountains is clean, you should clean it at the source (river).

the point of the older technology is retro futurism

in the fallout world, technology progressed differently

TVs and computors didnt get tat far, but robotics and weapons did

[LadyMilla]

the point of the older technology is retro futurism

in the fallout world, technology progressed differently

TVs and computors didnt get tat far, but robotics and weapons did

 

Yes, I know about "retro-futurism". My point is that it is useless to debate the logic of the game because its logic is granular. The developers lay out a certain premise, and they build a series of "cause-effect" relationships on that premise, and they are not really bothered if the individual premises themselves contradict each other or go against reality.

 

As you say, "computers did not get far (which is not true, by the way, because President Eden is a highly advanced computer and artificial intelligence), robotics and weapons did". I'd rephrase that sentence as "miniaturization did not get far" but then again, how do you explain advanced robotics without miniaturization and advanced computers? E-DE's circuitry cannot contain electron tubes because they would be shattered into tiny bits upon bullet impact.

 

My conclusion: any debate about the feasibility or unfeasibility of anything in the Fallout universe is moot. The creators who shape the story are fairly liberal when it comes to dealing with 'consistency issues'. Just look at the conditions in the Capital Wasteland. They show an environment that would be realistic about two or three years after the Great War. In reality, after 200+ years radioactivity would be gone, you would not stumble into pockets of lethal radiation (unless you wander into a radioactive waste dump), the sky would be clear (and not green as in the vanilla game). The atomic bomb in Megaton would be dud because in reality, weapon-grade fissile materials need to be replaced periodically (radioactive decay would otherwise render the bomb unusable).

 

So my solution: sit back, forget reality, forget logic, and simply enjoy what is laid out before you.

[marharth]

That's the thing though, the game was made in the views of a average person in the 50s.

 

People in the 50s would have thought of a nuke as the best thing ever, a weapon so great it would never really wear off... The average person didn't understand anything about it either...

 

But in the case of project purity, you can see people are living without much issue in terms of water.

[TheOriginalEvilD]

There's a reason there aren't many elderly people in the game...people don't live that long. Either something/someone kills you, or radiation/starvation/dehydration kills you.

[marharth]

What matters is that there are any elderly people at all...

 

By even having one normal elderly person it is made clear it is possible to survive for a long time.

[LadyMilla]

There's a reason there aren't many elderly people in the game...people don't live that long. Either something/someone kills you, or radiation/starvation/dehydration kills you.

 

Yep, that's the thing. In Rivet City there is a discussion where the NPCs talk about an immigrant who died because he (or she, can't remember) drank too much irradiated water. People who drink contaminated water will sooner or later feel the negative effects, but it is a probability game. Just like in the case of smoking, the probability of cancer increases with the passing of time, but it is not a certainty. In Chernobyl, there were people who received high doses of radiation and still live, and there were others who were exposed to much lower levels of radiation, and have already died, or now suffer from cancer.

 

In FO3, elderly people, with the exception of Agatha, live almost exclusively in settlements, in relatively safe environments. There are almost no elderly people among free roaming folks, like raiders. So it seems, people are born, most of them live a short life: the few exceptions are almost all wealthy people (like Tenpenny, or the old Voodoo guy at Point Lookout) or people who live in a protected environments (Megaton, Rivet City, Citadel).

 

So... no... people living near or in the capital wasteland is no proof that there is clean water, and even if there is clean water, only few people have access to it. Project Purity is about 'free water for everyone'.

[LadyMilla]

What matters is that there are any elderly people at all...

 

By even having one normal elderly person it is made clear it is possible to survive for a long time.

 

The fact that somebody lived a long life is no proof of living in a healthy environment, or having access to clean water. There are people who live in harsh environments, and still manage to survive long enough into their senior years.