Are the Fallout games a believable interpretation of post-nuclear life?

[sarahtasher]

Fallout is characterized by weapons with very limited destructive power versus the eponymous fallout. That Washington is still perfectly recognizable after a global nuclear war show that pretty well. IE, the weapons have relatively little brute destructive power while leaving massive amounts of fallout.

[Rhaide]

Why would it be insane and what isn't plausible about mutated wildlife and people resorting to raiding to survive?

Think about the game for a second, everyone in the entire world would have actual, real, PTSD within like 10 hours of entering the wasteland. The world would be miserable, why in the hell does that sound fun to you?

[Putin-Chan]

Hell no. It's a video game.

[Miyagie]

Nope they are not. Fist of the north star is only realistic post-apocalypse scenario.

/thumbs up
wutawutawutawutawutawutawuta

[The One Percent]

The reality of nuclear war and the aftermath of it is thousands of times more grim than anything entertainment media portrays. The lucky ones will be those who died instantly in the blasts.

[Archon14]

While it's cool shooting Super Mutants and watching furniture making itself from parts, the reality is that you'd probably be dead on day 1 in that kind of scenario.

I also feel really strong when a health bar is protecting me for experiencing getting shot, infected, poisoned, maimed or just starving..

[Deleted]

mainly, is the probability of becoming a zombie from too much exposure to nuclear radiation probable or would you just die

If you truly played Fallout and paid attention, you would know humans don't become ghouls just because of radiation. To the point that not even the writers agree with each other.

So, yes, that's the level of BS in Fallout.

[Vakna]

This has been scienced by multiple distinguished people/shows and it has been said time and again that even if you detonated every single nuclear weapon on Earth the radiation levels wouldn't be remotely close to what you see in Fallout after 200 years. In fact places like the Capitol Wasteland and the Commonwealth instead of being irradiated ruins would likely be teeming lush forests 200 years later.

[Sorshen]

Fallout nukes are unrefined, and more like dirty bombs - less shockwave/fire destructive power, more radioactive fallout.

[Afrospinach]

This has been scienced by multiple distinguished people/shows and it has been said time and again that even if you detonated every single nuclear weapon on Earth the radiation levels wouldn't be remotely close to what you see in Fallout after 200 years. In fact places like the Capitol Wasteland and the Commonwealth instead of being irradiated ruins would likely be teeming lush forests 200 years later.

Well it is theoretically possible to make salted nuclear bombs. However, in regards to radioactive fallout these would be much much worse that fallout. In theory a cobalt bomb could extinguish life on earth.

Theoretically, a device containing 510 tons of Co-60 can spread 1 g of the material to each square km of the Earth's surface (510,000,000 km2). Radiation output from 1 g of Co-60 over one half life is equivalent to 44,000 GBq, which is sufficient to kill any inhabitants. If one assumes that all of the material is converted to Co-60 at 100 percent efficiency and if it is spread evenly across the Earth's surface, it is possible for a single bomb to kill every person on Earth. However, in fact, complete 100% conversion into Co-60 is unlikely, as 1957 British experiment at Maralinga showed that Co-59's neutron absorption ability was much lower than predicted, resulting in a very limited formation of Co-60 isotope in practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

The decay of the fallout is pretty interesting. You would have to live in a bomb shelter for ~50 years. Getting closer, lol.

[Mormolyce]

The Fallout games aren't intended to be realistic, they're a pastiche of 1950s science fiction tropes and a strong raygun gothic aesthetic. And it's only semi-serious.

[sarahtasher]

This has been scienced by multiple distinguished people/shows and it has been said time and again that even if you detonated every single nuclear weapon on Earth the radiation levels wouldn't be remotely close to what you see in Fallout after 200 years. In fact places like the Capitol Wasteland and the Commonwealth instead of being irradiated ruins would likely be teeming lush forests 200 years later.

That the Capitol and the Pentagon are still recognizable is a textbook proof that the weapons at least used by the Chinese were sorely lacking in destructive power (I mean, the Pentagon and the Capitol were certainly amongst the most vital targets...)

[Adam Jensen]

No.

For one thing, nuclear radiation isn't going to turn anyone into Super Mutants or Ghouls (granted, this was in-game also related to the FEV virus, but still.) A nuclear bomb 2 miles from Boston isn't going to leave that many structures standing. And how the hell do the BoS manage to build a state of the art zeppelin in an era where manufacturing is non-existent? How does the Institute keep itself supplied? How does Doc Mitchell patch up someone who gets point-blank shot in the head?

They're great escapist fantasies, if morbid, but they're in no way realistic.

[Mellrod]

Why would it be insane and what isn't plausible about mutated wildlife and people resorting to raiding to survive?

Mutation is possible, but Fallout really embellishes it all. Death Claws are genetically engineered chameleons created by the military to replace human soldiers. Ghouls only come from people with a specific gene that allows them to survive the radiation (although burned and scarred) and somehow continue living until the end of time. Already you see how much of that is just made-up fantasy shit, right?

People might resort to raiding to survive, but that implies there would be anyone left who is surviving. Since Fallout takes place 200 years after the bombs, It implies people would have to had reproduced and been able to support their young in a shitty world full death and radiation. This would be more plausible if we were translating any other apocalypse scenario into real life. But nuclear winter would just have a lot of dead people, and people who are generally too weak, sick, and starving to create organized raiding groups. Vaults wouldn't be a place where a secret organization experiments on people (That organization would probably have collapsed after the apocalypse event anyways), they'd have ludicrous prices and be a place that only the rich could afford to buy a space in.

In real life, Chernobyl was one of the worst nuclear disasters in the world. There are indeed mutated wildlife specimens and people found there, but it did not turn them into giant, glowing versions of their former selves, it gave them defects and made them weaker; under-developed. Radiation does not give you super powers. It can, however, make you incredibly ill, mutate your body, make reproduction harder for you, and if you've suffered genetic mutations, it will affect your next children too. (There's a really cool article listing and showing pictures of mutations from Chernobyl here: https://chernobylguide.com/chernobyl_mutations/).

TL;DR - It's okay to enjoy fantasy and media, but just remember that Fallout romanticizes post-apocalyptic life as much as Call of Duty romanticizes war. A lot of media is highly exaggerated; A lot of it is embellished. You shouldn't let it get you thinking that life after an apocalyptic event like a nuclear war would be enjoyable or fun in any kind of way. That's an incredibly naive train of thought if you don't have that separation of fantasy from reality.

[Deleted]

No. Theres a decent bbc show called threads (if you can stomach 1980's tv acting). Its more realistic, everyone dying horribly and if you don't die you get to live in barbaric conditions where you spend all your time looking for food and water while dying, not much else than that.

[VyersReaver]

Mad Max is real and I will not hear otherwise

Well, Mad Max might be. Not Fallout.

[Traveler Voltin]

The Fallout games aren't intended to be realistic, they're a pastiche of 1950s science fiction tropes and a strong raygun gothic aesthetic. And it's only semi-serious.

and yet if you read the lore. it takes place in like 2200s.

[Independent voter]

If anyone's played them, just wondering. The prospect of a nuclear apocalypse is a lot less frightful with how I've enjoyed these games over the last few weeks and their interpretation of post-nuclear apocalypse life.

Fallout New Vegas is, Fallout 3 and 4? Not so much.

[Jastall]

I'll assume that we ignore stuff like radiation zombies, aliens, mutated monsters and laser guns?

It would probably be quite a bit less fun than in the game. I never understood the fetishism for post-apocalyptic life. Who actually wants to eke out a living amidst ruins and shitholes? Go to the worst parts of Africa if that's somehow something you really want.

[xChurch]

Sure...if you keep in mind the game takes place over 100 years after the actual event, so unless we have giant underground vaults, I wouldn't count on anyone surviving that far.