SYS (Save Your Spouse!)

[SargeWashington]

Medicine has come an incredible distance in the past 50 years. People are surviving (and even completely recovering from) injuries that would've been a straight-out death sentence in any other era. Prosthetics, GenEng, everything. We've even started to experiment with Cryonics and in one case, a total head transplant. Based on comments in various threads and forums (as well as some guess work, given that Bethesda didn't put a bullet decal anywhere on their body), I am left to assume that the SS' spouse was shot either in the upper chest or upper stomach (Based on angle and such, somewhere between Upper Left Chest and ULQ of abdomen), which would give a high chance of mortality. But consider this: The PC and other characters can survive massive trauma (I have lost count of how often my Nate has gotten the living hell shot out of him) with only a stimpak injection to return them to normal- even from the very brink of death. Lazily, however, Bethesda decided that this character, who we've had about 5 minutes to get to know, should die for an emotional strike. Additionally, you have access to a massive cryogenics facility. Yes, it's in need of repairs to the Life Support System, but with an Intelligence Check (7-10?), could be repaired.

I put it to you that they could in fact survive the injury they were dealt, based on a variety of factors. As a note, though, when unfrozen, medical attention would be necessary, nay, imperative to her survival. Since your character at this time (which I disagree with, given the backstories) has no medical experience (will discuss later), you would only have one option to prevent them from passing into the afterworld; Stimpak and re-freeze (after, of course repairing the systems (Intelligence check). Then, with all the haste your body allows (which is really wonky, considering the PC can jog across the Commonwealth with at least 95 pounds on their back no issue), you would set about finding a competent doctor. Curie. SOMEONE with a modicum of medical training and experience.

Now, as a note, soldiers entering the United States Army go through BCT, a segment of which is called CLS, short for Combat Life Saver. In this, they are taught very basic combat medicine, including the use of tourniquets, combat pill packs, bandaging, assisting with IVs, and even QuikClot Combat Gauze. With the predominance of stimpaks in the Fallout universe, I find it quite believable to think that the PC would at least understand (or have training on) the use of such a device enough to allow their loved one to be at least somewhat stabilized. From there, searching out a doctor would be quite an easy experience.

However, this is where I would love to see more options (modders, please) as far as character specialization. As a (failed) 68W (Health Care Specialist) for the US Army and a moderately successful AEMT (Advanced Emergency Medical Technician), I would like to believe that my Nate was an Army Medic (who was discharged after receiving extreme facial and therefore airway burns sequel to rescuing a comrade in downed power armor). Therefore, he would at least understand how to stabilize a GSW victim long enough to find definitive care (for the most part). I feel this, combined with a longer/more in-depth intro sequence, would give much more life to the game. The longer intro so we have a chance to learn about Nate and Nora and their relationship beyond the 10 minutes pre-War, and this, so that we get back one of the fun/frustrating/hair-raising experiences from Fallout 1: a definitive goal. Perhaps, like Fallout 1's main quest, it would become a cascading questline, with you returning to the Vault/Home after major events (Water Chip, Master), instead of going back constantly to check the mail (aka talk to Preston/Father/Desdemona/Maxson) Each quest in Fallout 4 felt (to me) more like 'Hey! You need to do this!' where in 1 it felt more (to me) like, 'Hey, we understand what you're looking for, and we can help if you help us.' This was slightly subverted with Preston offering the support of the Minutemen, yet sadly fell short when it fell to you to completely rebuild the entire faction.

TL;DR: SS' spouse quite possibly could have survived. However, laziness/bad writing/whatever-you-want-to-insert prevailed, and we ended up with a rushed-feeling, emotional moment that felt as important and climactic as stubbing my toe- I forgot about it about five minutes later.

Hell, even letting us bury/cremate the SS' spouse would have felt more emotionally important than this.

Supporting Documentation/Examples:

Newscientist.com

Edited August 4, 2016 by SargeWashington

[Chaophim]

I have thought of the same idea (lack the skills to really pull it off though) and love your logic behind it - only reason I abandoned the thought, though, was the SS was the only one whose cryo life support was restarted correctly - the rest were all freeze-dried either by accident or due to Kellogg wanting them to die along with the SS's spouse. No matter their causes of deaths, though, Kellogg knew the shot spouse was dead and wouldn't re-start the life support needed to stabilize him in stasis till medical help could be applied. :(

With the way your mind works, though, I think you could account for that. :)

[SargeWashington]

And see, I have been trying to give that some thought. First guess would be, that:

 

Vault-Tec isn't stupid. They're near (if not beyond) Nazi-level evil, but not stupid. They have backups of backups, and where Vault 111 was meant to test EXTENDED cryostasis (timeframe unknown), it is ridiculous to assume that they wouldn't have proper backups in place. I put it to you that rather than a total LS failure, basically the instant the intruders left, backups kicked in. The computers went into an 'intrusion mode' to fool anyone trying to kidnap their specimens (outside of the Enclave), and listed all Vault Residents as deceased due to failures in LS systems. So not only are they alive, they're just waiting to be cracked back open.

This, of course includes Nate/Nora.

We live in an age of multiple redundancy, and even for the computers of Fallout being vacuum-tube or incredibly crude transistor, there are backups upon backups. Hell, even for the moon landing, where they had to weave the memory by hand. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory )

[PoppaSmirk]

Another very similar thread here, where we have been talking about this same subject. You might enjoy the reading there.

 

https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/4883230-resurrect-your-spouse/&do=findComment&comment=42652485