JuJooGuppy Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Ants have a bone structure of sorts-- they have an exoskeleton, which is quite hard. A mutated, larger than life ant could theoretically support quite a bit of weight. As for muscle, ants can support and lift many times their own weight.. a recent test on a specific ant showed that its neck joint could support pressure equal to 5 THOUSAND times its own body weight before giving in. Now scale that up and mutate it, and you have a beast.Large insects CAN exist and HAVE existed. Giant dragonflies, for example, existed. Maybe not to the scale of Fallout, but, its not impossible at all. These things had wing spans up to and past 2.5 feet wide... thats a pretty good size dragonfly! They also had quite large mandibles and were thought to prey on decent size creatures...Anyway, my point was that in our own history there have been incredible insects before, and in a world where mutations like the Deathclaw happened, ants are really not far fetched and could've even happened on our own planet, had nature and evolution taken a different course :)Also note that I am not posting this to flame or call you wrong, I just was pointing out it may not be as far fetched as you might think :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhoenixKnight13 Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 The thought of riding a Deathclaw reminds me of the Poundfist mount from WoW, maybe not such a bad idea after all lol... (yes I know, hanging my head in shame right now... f***ing black hole of life that game). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minngarm Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 The size of the insect relates directly to the oxygen content of the air. So somehow the great war resulted in a massive upscale of O2? Maybe by stripping the ozone layer down into O2? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boombro Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Ants have a bone structure of sorts-- they have an exoskeleton, which is quite hard. A mutated, larger than life ant could theoretically support quite a bit of weight. As for muscle, ants can support and lift many times their own weight.. a recent test on a specific ant showed that its neck joint could support pressure equal to 5 THOUSAND times its own body weight before giving in. Now scale that up and mutate it, and you have a beast. Large insects CAN exist and HAVE existed. Giant dragonflies, for example, existed. Maybe not to the scale of Fallout, but, its not impossible at all. These things had wing spans up to and past 2.5 feet wide... thats a pretty good size dragonfly! They also had quite large mandibles and were thought to prey on decent size creatures... Anyway, my point was that in our own history there have been incredible insects before, and in a world where mutations like the Deathclaw happened, ants are really not far fetched and could've even happened on our own planet, had nature and evolution taken a different course :) Also note that I am not posting this to flame or call you wrong, I just was pointing out it may not be as far fetched as you might think :PThe shame, I forgot ants are really strong!Still, can then balance a person on the back? Do they have strong spines? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PoliteRaider Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Ants have a bone structure of sorts-- they have an exoskeleton, which is quite hard. A mutated, larger than life ant could theoretically support quite a bit of weight. As for muscle, ants can support and lift many times their own weight.. a recent test on a specific ant showed that its neck joint could support pressure equal to 5 THOUSAND times its own body weight before giving in. Now scale that up and mutate it, and you have a beast. Large insects CAN exist and HAVE existed. Giant dragonflies, for example, existed. Maybe not to the scale of Fallout, but, its not impossible at all. These things had wing spans up to and past 2.5 feet wide... thats a pretty good size dragonfly! They also had quite large mandibles and were thought to prey on decent size creatures... Anyway, my point was that in our own history there have been incredible insects before, and in a world where mutations like the Deathclaw happened, ants are really not far fetched and could've even happened on our own planet, had nature and evolution taken a different course :smile: Also note that I am not posting this to flame or call you wrong, I just was pointing out it may not be as far fetched as you might think :tongue: The problem is that you can't scale an ant's strength up. This is a result of the Square Cube Law. Ants are strong because they're small. The bigger you make them, the weaker they are. They would also be unable to breathe at any sort of large scale as Minngarm mentioned above because unlike humans, insects simply directly pull their oxygen out of the air which only works at a small scale. During the Carboniferous period of our planets history bugs were able to grow bigger due to the higher levels of oxygen, that's true. However even at their biggest Meganeura, the giant dragonfly, was only around the size of a small bird. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
minngarm Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Ants have a bone structure of sorts-- they have an exoskeleton, which is quite hard. A mutated, larger than life ant could theoretically support quite a bit of weight. As for muscle, ants can support and lift many times their own weight.. a recent test on a specific ant showed that its neck joint could support pressure equal to 5 THOUSAND times its own body weight before giving in. Now scale that up and mutate it, and you have a beast. Large insects CAN exist and HAVE existed. Giant dragonflies, for example, existed. Maybe not to the scale of Fallout, but, its not impossible at all. These things had wing spans up to and past 2.5 feet wide... thats a pretty good size dragonfly! They also had quite large mandibles and were thought to prey on decent size creatures... Anyway, my point was that in our own history there have been incredible insects before, and in a world where mutations like the Deathclaw happened, ants are really not far fetched and could've even happened on our own planet, had nature and evolution taken a different course :smile: Also note that I am not posting this to flame or call you wrong, I just was pointing out it may not be as far fetched as you might think :tongue: The problem is that you can't scale an ant's strength up. This is a result of the Square Cube Law. Ants are strong because they're small. The bigger you make them, the weaker they are. They would also be unable to breathe at any sort of large scale as Minngarm mentioned above because unlike humans, insects simply directly pull their oxygen out of the air which only works at a small scale. During the Carboniferous period of our planets history bugs were able to grow bigger due to the higher levels of oxygen, that's true. However even at their biggest Meganeura, the giant dragonfly, was only around the size of a small bird. Well it does work at larger scale but the amount of O2 required is the issue. If they were 50 feet tall with all chitin and like a eyeball sized amount of living flesh/organs with direct access to the air, it could work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVampireDante Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 Remember that the Fallout world works around the '50's sci-fi theme - so real world definitions of how and why something works usually gets thrown out the window. Real world: Giant ant created - collapses under its own weight and/or suffocates. Fallout: Giant ant created - stomps around like nothing's wrong and sometimes breathes fire. So, you want a giant ant as something you can ride around? Go for it, the Fallout world isn't going to complain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Klipperken Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 The shame, I forgot ants are really strong!Still, can then balance a person on the back? Do they have strong spines?Saddles, brother, saddles. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhoenixKnight13 Posted March 11, 2016 Share Posted March 11, 2016 (edited) H The shame, I forgot ants are really strong!Still, can then balance a person on the back? Do they have strong spines?Saddles, brother, saddles. :tongue: Indeed, if horses can manage I don't see why an ant couldn't. And as Dante pointed out, when did the hypothetical world of Fallout start caring about the science behind giant mutated bugs and animals being legit or not?It's like going to a Godzilla movie and walking out halfway through complaining about it not being realistic. Seriously? lol Edited March 11, 2016 by PhoenixKnight13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JuJooGuppy Posted March 12, 2016 Share Posted March 12, 2016 Well, as mentioned there are problems with a real world ant of that size, but I believe that is where the whole "mutations via radiation" comes in to play, to sort out the problems :). So instead of pulling oxygen in the way they currently do, perhaps they have a more mammal like option, or perhaps they need very little oxygen in general. We are already finding that current lifeforms exist that are radically different than what we are used to seeing. As a recent-ish example, there was the big announcement by NASA a bit ago about them finding an arsenic-based lifeform that had replaced phosphorus with arsenic, which isnt seen in ANY other life.. I heard some people ask "why is this such big news" at the time, which is crazy, but simply put it means life can exist in forms we didn't imagine, and thus could exist in even more radical forms. Perhaps instead of oxygen, they relied more on radiation of some form..Anyway, its all just a video game, if I want giant ants, I dont need to really make them logical :P But I think in a world where radiation mutates creatures to be larger and deadlier, I think giant ants are actually somewhat reasonable in that world. And relatively large ants would be possible in our own world, given different conditions. Fire ants literally breathing fire, though... that may slightly be far fetched :PThis has been an interesting topic to me, regardless :P I think with the new hardcore mode coming, that overhauling the game to have less stimpacks / food available, and adding in these small creatures like squirrels / iguanas would be an excellent idea -- giving other means to survive the wasteland. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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