Did anywhere NOT get nuked in Fallout?
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Correct, it is hard to make water naturally radioactive, however, the fallout would get in the water and that is radioactiveExterminas said:
Heavy Water (i believe that is what the byproduct of the water used to cool nuclear power plants), is not radioactive in its pure form, however, it is often considered radioactive because other isotopes are in it along with the water that are radioactive.
Heavy water is a different molecule then water, and is hard for living things to use properly as water
Though to have a significant effect, it seems as if you would have to drink nothing but heavy water for a good long time.
-check the wiki on heavy water, i skimmed it, may have missed something, but that is what i found
wow, I asked 2 questions on the thread and it somehow stemmed a couple sub-threads about cobalt nukes, water radiation and how Allistar Tenpenny managed to cross the atlantic. Granted, they're all interesting and probably deserve their own threads(except for the last one, my guess is England's as fucked up as the rest of the world in Fallout) but I should probably rename the thread ' Fallout's Nuclear Science And Other Trivia '
Taking a nod from Bob And George [http://www.bobandgeorge.com/], I say that Acapulco has been left alone, and that somewhere on some nice beachfront property, someone's calling Bob a genius for taking a vacation there.
Fallout 2 mentions that the Commonwealth (in the fallout universe the commonwealth is just another name for the British Empire + all the different parts of Europe that it controlled) is not as fucked as America or cChina, though still inhospitable, my guess would be that Europe has less open wasteland (like the Mojave) and more ruined cities (down-town DC). However as far as i know every country was nuked regardless of its location.
Yeah it did, there's a ghoul (or at least i think it was a ghoul) who talks about how greedy the Brits were and how they always wanted to make their "commonwealth" more powerful.Ultratwinkie said:
You find him in an encounter with some enclave soldiers, after you kill them the ghoul offers you an SMG and a minigun from one of the dead soldiers (it's broke he fixes it for you) as repayment. It sticks in my memory because as a Brit i found it quite offensive, though it was pretty funny.
I thought the commonwealth (as in where DR Zimmer is from) in fallout 3 was Canada, a genuine part of the real world commonwealth. Does the commonwealth control part of the US in F3?
I think a lot of places didn't get hit by bombs, but these countries and regions were still devastated by the consequences of the Chinese-American War, and fell apart as a result.
Take Australia, for example I don't know if there's any canon explanation for what happened there, but as an Australian, I have my own interesting theory.
I imagine that, with its major trading partners lost, and living in a state of constant fear of a second nuclear war (Australia being one of America's major military allies in the region would conceivably make them a possible target), the West Coast and the East Coast would have split from each other and the country would have descended into Civil War over resources, specifically uranium.
Presumably, the country would have descended into chaos at least in part because Australia would have suffered severely from drought, being unable to import food from other regions after the bombs fell. In 2077, Australia wouldn't have the self-sustaining agriculture we used to have, if only because of population growth. This would have resulted in a period of widespread famine and poverty, which I imagine would have helped trigger the Civil War.
Just my theory on Australia. Correct me if there's a canon explanation.
I also wouldn't be surprised if similar local conflicts broke out in other parts of the world that weren't hit. After all, I'm sure that, in a universe based on an alternate history of The Cold War, Russia would have invaded Europe not that long after America fell.
Take Australia, for example I don't know if there's any canon explanation for what happened there, but as an Australian, I have my own interesting theory.
I imagine that, with its major trading partners lost, and living in a state of constant fear of a second nuclear war (Australia being one of America's major military allies in the region would conceivably make them a possible target), the West Coast and the East Coast would have split from each other and the country would have descended into Civil War over resources, specifically uranium.
Presumably, the country would have descended into chaos at least in part because Australia would have suffered severely from drought, being unable to import food from other regions after the bombs fell. In 2077, Australia wouldn't have the self-sustaining agriculture we used to have, if only because of population growth. This would have resulted in a period of widespread famine and poverty, which I imagine would have helped trigger the Civil War.
Just my theory on Australia. Correct me if there's a canon explanation.
I also wouldn't be surprised if similar local conflicts broke out in other parts of the world that weren't hit. After all, I'm sure that, in a universe based on an alternate history of The Cold War, Russia would have invaded Europe not that long after America fell.
two things people are getting wrong about how nukes work in fallout and one thing about how radiactive fallout spreads in all situations
first, the nukes had much smaller explosion and much higher fallout than real life ones. specifically they seem to have the force of a MOAB or fuel air bomb with the radiation of a chernoyble incident. (case in point, megaton)
this is why in FO3 so many buildings are still standing and why the place is still so irradiated after 200 years. its the capital, at least 150 nukes must have hit it or more, even going by real life radiation rules 150 times the chernoyble incident occuring within the space of a single medium-sized city it going to take a LONG time to clear.
secondly radiation does not work as per phisics, it works as per "SCIENCE!" (hence all the random mutations instead of simple death in most cases) so its hard to predict the exact outcome constant radioactive dust would have on countries not nuked.
the third thing is that radioactive fallout travels with air currents as dust instead of spreading around the planet evenly (hence why europe was the only place with problems due to chernoyble, air currents at that lattitude travel towards the west.
all major stratophere air currents (the ones fallout trravels by) go from east to west or west to east, since there are no prime targets at the same lattitude as australia (new zealand?, sounth america?) australia would likely recive very minimal ammounts of fallout, barring taking a direct hit due to an american base or two.
first, the nukes had much smaller explosion and much higher fallout than real life ones. specifically they seem to have the force of a MOAB or fuel air bomb with the radiation of a chernoyble incident. (case in point, megaton)
this is why in FO3 so many buildings are still standing and why the place is still so irradiated after 200 years. its the capital, at least 150 nukes must have hit it or more, even going by real life radiation rules 150 times the chernoyble incident occuring within the space of a single medium-sized city it going to take a LONG time to clear.
secondly radiation does not work as per phisics, it works as per "SCIENCE!" (hence all the random mutations instead of simple death in most cases) so its hard to predict the exact outcome constant radioactive dust would have on countries not nuked.
the third thing is that radioactive fallout travels with air currents as dust instead of spreading around the planet evenly (hence why europe was the only place with problems due to chernoyble, air currents at that lattitude travel towards the west.
all major stratophere air currents (the ones fallout trravels by) go from east to west or west to east, since there are no prime targets at the same lattitude as australia (new zealand?, sounth america?) australia would likely recive very minimal ammounts of fallout, barring taking a direct hit due to an american base or two.
No, Nevada's doing really fucking well for having practically NO maintenance for nigh on a quarter of a millennium. I'm rather surprised towns still have running water and electricity if you do that one quest. Working radios? Who the fuck remembered how to make radio stations from scratch? AND HOW WAS THE MUSIC INFORMATION KEPT?! Even CD's will degrade in under two decades, and they are some of the longest-lasting media storage devices.Josh12345 said:
With an 84-year half-life, even after 200 years 20% of the radioactive material remains.Altorin said:
Of course, technically speaking, the largest component of nuclear fallout is short-lived radioisotopes resulting from nuclear fission, not unexploded Pu-239 - for comparison's sake, the fallout from the Chernobyl disaster has a half-life of roughly 4 years. After 200 years, the radiation from such fallout would be practically undetectable.
Not that any of this matters, considering the science in Fallout is intentionally fairly soft.
It would take way more than 55,000 bombs.Altorin said:
Planets are surprisingly sturdy things, and take vast amounts of energy to destroy or even seriously damage. For example, the Earth's gravitational binding energy 224,000,000 YJ (i.e. 2.24e32 Joules) - this is the amount of energy required to flat out explode the planet. (Any less that that and the resulting fragments would recombine due to their mutual gravitational attraction.) And even just cutting the planet is harder than it sounds, because most of the Earth's volume is liquid, and the crust is not one single piece, but several smaller sheets of rock held in place by friction.
Even if every single one had a yield of 100 megatons (the theoretical maximum yield of Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested), 55,000 bombs adds up to only 230 ZJ (i.e. 2.30e23 Joules) - only one billionth of the Earth's gravitational binding energy. That's about half the energy released by the Chicxulub impact (aka "the one that killed the dinosaurs") - and while that impact caused massive tsunamis and triggered earthquakes and volcanic eruptions all around the world, it's only lasting influence on the Earth's structure is a 110-mile-wide crater. A ring of 55,000 100-MT weapons would dig a hell of a trench (and probably trigger global seismic activity), but that trench wouldn't even break through the thinnest parts of the crust, much less go all the way through the Earth. Nasty planetary scar yes, planet cut in half no.
And of course very few, if any, of those bombs would have yields anywhere near 100 MT. The highest-yield weapon currently in the US stockpile is only 1.2 MT. Even the single Tsar Bomba that was ever built only had a yield of 50 MT.
Its not that everything got nuked its that everything was horribly affected by the fallout from the massive nuke exchange, in the new Vegas guidebook it even says that Mr House saved Vegas from getting hit, then everyone went outside to celebrate, and everyone died from the fallout from all of the other nuke strikes up wind/surrounding areas.
Erm, Vegas and the surrounding area WAS nuked, just not as badly as DC. Seriously, bombs did drop. However if you look at Jacobstown, for example, their is far less radiation. I would assume that the smaller and more remote areas near mountainous terrain or other more inaccessable areas like the Gobe desert wouldn't be nuked, for obvious reasons. (ie. cost of bomb > relative deaths)
The commonwealth isnt Europe, its made up of a lot of the countries that were still in the British Empire. Places such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, India, etc.Lord Kloo said:
EDIT: AH! WAIT! You mean the European Commonwealth in the Fallout universe? Yeah, that is the games version of the EU. However I dont know where you got your info from because the UK is the only confirmed member of the EC in Fallout, I guess by default that does make them the most powerful but the EC is now one giant state instead of individual ones. The war leading to the Fallout games was basically between super continents and not countries, the European Commonwealth being the one that started the resource wars by waging war on the Middle East because they were destroying their economy through oil prices.