Countries Untouched by the War Would Loot "Dead America"

[Dubbyk]

The radiation alone didn't make ghouls or super-mutants, FEV + Radiation did, and while you can look the other way about what should and should not give you cancer in fallout they go out of their way to beat you over the head that water is SUPER radioactive, so it draws people's ire.

[Ethreon]

The radiation alone didn't make ghouls or super-mutants, FEV + Radiation did, and while you can look the other way about what should and should not give you cancer in fallout they go out of their way to beat you over the head that water is SUPER radioactive, so it draws people's ire.

 

Necropolis. FEV doesn't have much role in this, though the writers are not entirely clear on it after a while. But initially it was just rads doing it.

[TheSpaceShuttleChallenger]

In the years directly following the war, the United States would be one big microwave, so anyone trying to loot it would die. That creates plenty of time for the rest of the planet to experience the far-reaching effects of radioactive fallout and domino environmental destruction, which would the collapse of economies followed by the collapse of populations.

[drach]

 

 

(given how in FO water seems to hold onto rads forever)

one of the goofiest thing bethesda did, water itself has no capacity to hold rads for long*, so whole Project Purity on which they'd built F3 story is wrong at it's core, ROTFL'ed myself during first playthrough

 

* silt, sand, clay etc are another matter, therefore lakes and riverbeds would probably still be a deathtrap anyway, but water itself wouldn't be irradiated, even suitable for for supporting life like fish etc.

there are numerous such "mistakes" telling us beth did not do her homework at all, pre-war wood we seem to chop for everything in F4 for one - another deathtrap, sawing planks from a irradiated tree trunk may kill in a matter of hours, days maybe

it's even more weird given all they needed to do is ask for Czenobyl research documents to see what's like after fallout, there is data on rads dissolution in certain materials/condition and all

 

Seriously? Radiation also doesn't cause people to turn into ghouls and a virus can't turn people into super mutants, but those are in game. Is irradiated water really more goofy than those things?

 

yep seriously, the point of Sci-Fi is to mix what we know with what we might know,

the rads dissipation and all stuff we know all to well, the FEV, shooting lasers, ultra-sophisticated AI running on somehow miniaturized vacuum-tube computers etc is a fiction part,

unless you do your homework on science it's no Sci-Fi, just pure nonsense, especially when setting is supposed to be Earth with spices from different tech tree, not some alternate universe where physics does not apply, because author is an ignorant and he prefers that way

 

PS there is nothing wrong in pure fantasy, but it's wrong to do it in Sci-Fi setting

[Rethrain]

In the years directly following the war, the United States would be one big microwave, so anyone trying to loot it would die. That creates plenty of time for the rest of the planet to experience the far-reaching effects of radioactive fallout and domino environmental destruction, which would the collapse of economies followed by the collapse of populations.

 

Yep, not every country had to be hit just enough of them for the rest to feel it anyways... a lot.

[TheSpaceShuttleChallenger]

 

PS there is nothing wrong in pure fantasy, but it's wrong to do it in Sci-Fi setting

 

 

There is such a thing as soft-core sci-fi, which is characterised by alternative facts and rapid waving of the hands ; compare this to hard-core sci-fi, in which the author has done all their homework and shows it. Both are sci-fi. Most beloved sci-fi names fall somewhere in the middle.

There are also such things as apocalyptic fantasy, future fantasy, and even space fantasy, which overlap heavily with soft-core sci-fi. Personally I would classify Fallout as an apocalyptic fantasy, as it does have several features that don't even try to pass off as science. It's also distinctively alternate-reality, as I Fallout's developers clearly weren't going for authenticity with their projection of a Cold War 2077. That is okay. It's still a fun game, and they never once tried to convince us that it was a scientifically sound depiction.

[drach]

oh but I agree, nevertheless such a neglect simply stings my eyes, Black Isle never tried to convince us to completely ignore physics in Fallout

[gamefever]

Anyways,

 

America fell, and when it did....

 

Super Mutant Armies arose,

Ghouls came about,

Robot armies went nutty,

Deathclaws,

Giant Ants,

Radscorpions,

The rise of other forms of intelligent life,

Man eating plants (they were in the lore and the games!)

a whole slew of other radioactively enhanced beasts happened on America....

 

With little to no idea of what happened outside of the places any of the games happened in or just snippets really.

 

Yet 3rd rate countries of the time are going to brave all of that to plunder America while the ground is still deadly enough to kill normal men.

 

When the first Fallout hit shelves in 1997 our collective knowledge of Nuclear or Radioactivity allowed for characters such as Peter Parker to have been biten by a radio-active spider causing the teenage boy to become Spider Man.

The trouble about bringing science to this game is that our understanding of it has changed quite a bit since the lore of this game series was laid out back in 97, yet the lore hasn't really adapted very well has it?

 

Today's Spider Man isn't biten by a spider suffering from radiation, and other characters the Lizardman and Hulk both of whom the entire world was fine with being created with Radiation at the time back in the 90's well now they are changed by special knowledge of DNA tweaking.

 

The real issue is that players attempt to come at Fallout armed with current ideas rather than attempting to think about it from the very same perspectives that young people in the 90's had of science and accepted idea's of 90's science fiction.

Edited August 28, 2017 by gamefever

[CaptainPatch]

 

The trouble about bringing science to this game is that our understanding of it has changed quite a bit since the lore of this game series was laid out back in 97, yet the lore hasn't really adapted very well has it?

Actually, Fallout is derived from an earlier Interplay videogame titled Wasteland, which was released in _1987_. That game was set in the Mojave and covered much of the AZ/NM/NV area. Much of the initial lore was based on 1950s SciFi movies like Them!, even though by 1987 the mutations depicted in those movies were pointedly impossible. (King Kong? Godzilla? Giant ants?) The idea was impractical but nonetheless FUN! to play with. Being a transformation from an Interplay concept to an improved gaming platform, it isn't at all surprising that Interplay carried over A LOT of their 1987 lore into the 1997 Fallout.

 

Besides, one of the current day SciFi is embodied in TV shows like Walking Dead and movies like World War Z. Where's the realistic Science foundation for zombies?

 

Science Fiction doesn't have to be Hard Science to qualify as SciFi. Quite often just being Science Make Believe is enough.