Do you guys ever play Fallout like THIS?

[charwo]

Well, there's easy answers to most of those questions:

 

1. The only FEV leaked to the surface was at the West Tek Research facility east of San Diego. That MINORLY inoculated most of California population against full strain FEV. This required the Master to raid Vaults in his operational area of southern California. However, this was a regional thing and it went completely unnoticed. Any person living east of the Sierra Nevada chain would be unaffected. There wasn't enough FEV to cover the continent, not nearly. The local EEP variant has never been leaked, but it's got slightly different effects. Presumably, any Capital Wastelander exposed to true FEV would be as sane and intelligent as First Generation supermutants like Marcus and Niel.

 

The Deathclaws were a US Army close quarters program. Molerats were an invasive, infrastructure destroying species that was initially deployed in China, and presumably specimens escaped into the wider North America because of the war. The large insects have no clear origin, but it's not hard to surmise: they were the Chinese equivalent to molerats. I had another conversation where a gentleman told me that the Chinese have a thing for shellfish and scorpions. Given the pre-war bio tech, it's likely that the Chinese weaponized a growth mutigen that had been used domestically to increase meat yields of these kinds.

 

There is a distinct method in the mad science if you accept that as in real life, the mutations seen in Fallout cannot be caused as a random radiation exposure. The US decided to undermine Chinese infrastructure. But with these large insects and such, the Chinese were doing two things: psychological terrorizing and more importantly, using bioweapons to systemically disrupt American agriculture, leading to the infamous food riots. The problem with using this as an argument for the lack of plant life in DC, is that to get those kind of results, for any length of time, require horrific defoliants like Agent Orange that would kill off the humans faster than the total plant life. And then it would have to expand and be permanent.

 

The conversation we are having is essentially a metafictional debate. Simply put, the dead world concept seen in so many post-apocalyptic movies is utter garbage, it doesn't make any sense at all, and it needs to go away as a trope. It's Fallout's one great mistake, and frankly they either need to retcon it out or reboot the franchise.

[7thsealord]

I had another conversation where a gentleman told me that the Chinese have a thing for shellfish and scorpions.

 

Hmm, that'd be me. :whistling:

 

Simply put, the dead world concept seen in so many post-apocalyptic movies is utter garbage, it doesn't make any sense at all, and it needs to go away as a trope.

 

There are enough idiotic / inaccurate / obsolete tropes out there already, that I doubt this particular one will disappear anytime soon.

Edited February 1, 2013 by 7thsealord

[Tiglover]

After doing months and months of searching round the net, with a long hiatus for playing New Vegas, I finally got all the environmental mods I need to make my game MINE. Let me show you the fruits of my labors:

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img28/6112/screenshot1nyx.png

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img705/7003/screenshot0n.png

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img541/9127/screenshot6an.png

 

http://imageshack.us/a/img89/3412/screenshot3xp.png

 

 

There was a reason I waited four years before buying Fallout 3. Because I'm a Lore Freak, and THIS is what the DC Wasteland should look like given the how the Great War went down. Deserts are for the Mohave. Don't be fooled by the verdant growth and blue skies: you can't see the Fire Ants in Greyditch until its too late. Deathclaws emerge from forest cover to wreck humanity's junk, and their are boars and bears waiting to end you. The Grass makes firefights much more intense: they tend to be closer and far more brutal. Also, the Potomac will screw you up if you drink it, no matter how pretty it looks. Now if only I could find a mod that keep the rads from drinking river water, but not for swimming in it.

 

Still, I waited for a reason. And I think the method in my madness paid in spades. What say you?

 

Looks really cool I would like to play it .

Seems it's have a cool graphic detalization .

[7thsealord]

Yes. The only quibble I have is that the car in Picture #2 seems remarkably pristine. Unless it has actually been kept in working order - and just happened to be parked there when that picture was taken.

 

Then again, there is LOTS of small stuff that somehow remains completely usable despite a century-plus of total neglect. So one perfectly preserved automobile is no biggy.

Edited February 1, 2013 by 7thsealord

[charwo]

Well, Sealord, you'd be right in most circumstances. If the war happened to day, that car wouldn't even be there, it would have rusted away completely. However, the pre-war world was not ours. Not just in any divergence of alternate history: it had a 65 year lead on us, AND a wonderful penchant for extreme overenigneering. The Vaults in theory were designed to last 900 years. The Hidden Valley bunker system in New Vegas, full capacity power generation for 700. The T-51b Power Armor was designed in the pre-war era to have a power source good for 100 years of continuous use. We'd be thrilled to get 100 hours of continuous use out of anything today. The pre-war was building in mid century modern style, but they were building, by very conscious decision, a static society to last forever. That's why civil society is so suspiciously low tech despite sapient AIs and such. Fallout 3 has a theme park feel because the entire pre-war society, at least in the Resource Wars was a theme park version of the 1950s. Not by Bethesda's command, but by the greater Enclave. If Bethesda intended this all along, and the case can be made either way, it's one of the most brilliant examples of environmental storytelling ever, from a company renowned for it's environmental storytelling.

 

By all means, if you want to challenge it, challenge it.

[TorrentialDefect]

I prefer something in between the barren wasteland and a forest. Realistically, if you nuked Washington D.C, grass, trees and such would've grown back in two centuries but, for some reason, I can't see Fallout without at least a lick of barren feeling. Mojave Wasteland is kind of like that for me, not completely destroyed but has a pinch of barren wasteland in it.

[Talwyn224]

[play youtube for atmosphereic sound :thumbsup: ]

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkM_C33Etgg

 

 

 

Another very interesting discussion here :thumbsup:

 

Ok then... I happen to agree with charwo & 7thseaload in that plant life WOULD have returned and probably quite vigorous after a few years of a full blown atomic exchange/nuclear war. And that's even taking into account a nuclear winter, blocking out 90% of sunlight.

 

Arguing that radiation and pollution etc destroys plant life just flies against the massive weight of evidence as shown by the shots that charwo included earlier on.

 

I can add a few as well.

 

In the 1950's, the British government used 2 sites for testing in Australia for the own nuclear weapons program: Maralinga & the Monte Bello Islands.

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/AusNucTestSites.svg/300px-AusNucTestSites.svg.png

 

 

Fast forward 60 odd years and these sites are no different now [aside from having a higher than normal background radiation count] than the rest of the land that was unaffected by the atomic blasts as seen here:

 

http://images.theage.com.au/2011/11/11/2768360/maralinga-420x0.jpg

 

 

http://www.naa.gov.au/Images/7818706_250px_tcm16-50719.jpg

 

 

http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/288/312/288312827_640.jpg

 

 

http://ih3.redbubble.net/image.4350747.6285/flat,550x550,075,f.jpg

[Talwyn224]

And now the Montebello Islands [which I've actually been to btw]

 

 

http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/45469606.jpg

 

 

http%20%3A//t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRVruzvto57kCjef3aJ7RLsz0eqc8kF0dKEoI4T9IXKkd4r_a76xQ

 

 

http%20%3A//t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQe_YDzouN77KpG1MacP14GY8s2-26tI5f-MsSL8My0PlHWAJD9

 

[that's not me btw]

 

 

http://www.australiaforeveryone.com.au/images/Montebello_today.jpg

 

 

Alright... those are just a few images you can find via google which clearly show that life returns after nuclear testing. In fact The Montebello Islands are one of the best places to go fishing! I kid you not and testing of the fish caught shows that they are safe enough to eat. It's really quite an amazing place especially when you consider what happened there 60 years ago.

 

 

Anyhow, I think the designers of the Fallout series wanted to show an atmosphere of destruction, a world devoid of the things we're familiar with thus giving a greater impact on an emotional level to the player. In addition, do remember that the Fallout universe is an expression/extrapolation of how 1950's America envisioned life after atomic war.

 

[edit: 2 of the links where blocked by the boards for some bizzare reason - if you want to view them, just remove the space I inserted in the http code]

[7thsealord]

@ TorrentialDefect. Fair enough. Say something like "post-nuclear wasteland", and I think pretty much all of us instinctively picture a blasted desert.

 

@ Talwyn224. Some VERY nice pictures there.

 

Noting too, those "hot spots" or (as I call them) "Rad Pits" scattered around the DC Wastes. Unsure what The Lore says of them, but my guess is that these are where nuclear powerplants Chernobyled during The War and immediate aftermath. Their cores melted down (destroying remaining aboveground structures in the process) and are now cooking away and slowly decaying below ground level. It may be too "hot" (in both senses of the word) for plantlife to endure too close to those specific locations, and this might also help explain the ongoing problems with contaminated water in the Wastes.

 

In a sense, these "Rad Pits" have become something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor

Edited February 5, 2013 by 7thsealord

[psycros]

I go for a semi-realistic look, too: a few large trees here and there, a good number of mid-size and small ones, and probably 75% of the land covered with grasses of varying heights. I can't get a good setup for shrubs, though..it seems like their hardly around or there are far too many depending on what mods and settings I use. If I could somehow make shrubs grow in clusters that would be ideal but I'd settle for them being about as common as small trees. Probably the single biggest problem I have with greenery mods is the fact that while they block the player's vision don't seem to affect NPCs. Not only can they see through the added plants but they can also shoot right through them most of the time. I'd love to know a solution for this.

 

Regarding the lore: from what I've read, the real "wasteland" effect after an atomic exchange is caused by the massive decline in the populations of bees and other pollinators. Farming seems to be fairly tough in the FO universe but still viable even in the arid zones with primitive irrigation. That tells me that pollination is stable in the ecosystem, so plant life should be abundant in most areas. Another thing to consider is that humans who were born a century or more after the War have probably developed a slightly higher tolerance to radiation. If that wasn't the case deformities and birth defects would be common. There's every chance the FEV could have played a role in making increased rad resistance a common trait in humans and other animals. (Note that I never finished original FO and haven't played any of the ones between it and FO3. I have read a fair bit about them, however).