Fallout's Silent Apocalypse

[@cassievania]

Atom above I was scrounging for lead in 76 the other day so I tagged it for search and was soon horrified how every baby toy started showing up. Fallout's dark satire remains untouchable.

[@vexile1239]

Even pencils in that game has lead in it... when I was a kid I chewed on the ends of my pencils, let's not mention the paints

[@MrThc247]

@@cassievania farm the lead cave with an excavator power armour if you want bulk lead. Been a few years since I've played but I doubt the locations changed

[@cassievania]

@@MrThc247 yeah that's part of my regular rotation now that i know where it is, haha

[@AceH.-jk5kn]

@@vexile1239 my guy, pencils use graphite

[@anash11000]

@@AceH.-jk5kn Well now a days. There used to be lead in pencils long ago

[@OrsonFellstone]

I'm starting to think the lead belly perk is literal.

[@funki4896]

I'm sorry I gave the 70th like 🥲

[@dannydevito9056]

@@funki4896 “not nice”

[@Nikstanski]

@@funki4896 why you gotta be so rude you deserve all backlash

[@CyborgCharlotte]

@@funki4896 Shun! Shun! SHUN! :P

[@GoldenGuard-909]

Wouldn’t be the craziest thing in fallout…

[@thefuturist1867]

Two things to add 1. the existence of radaway and Radx probably contributed to this feeling of invinciblity 2. For me the Nuka Cola Bottles were contaminated as a result of the war itself

[@plaguenplay3516]

my theory is that Nuka Cola was irradiated even before the war, hence the name, like the real-world Coca Cola containing cocaine once. also, noticed how there were 3 brands of non-alcoholic beverages in Fallout Universe with the only the one with "Nuka" in its name being irradiated?

[@lumitylover5783]

Well nuka cola quantum glows so I always imagined that one was definitely radioactive before the nukes fell lol

[@insert_name_here6487]

@@lumitylover5783 yeah if memory serves quantum contains, STRONTIUM 90! which to quote the cdc "acts like calcium and is readily incorporated into bones and teeth, where it can cause cancers of the bone, bone marrow, and soft tissues around the bone"

[@thefancydoge8668]

Quantum was irradiated pre-war due to literally containing nuclear material, but I don't think regular nuka cola was, though.

[@twitchy_bird]

Radaway does exist, basically.

[@Kainlarsen]

While, in the real world, nuclear energy is incredibly clean and safe, with modern containment and disposal managed by strict regulations, the pre-war world of Fallout must have been the worst case of corporate greed, laziness and corner-cutting.

[@chill_will9816]

Remember what Coop said when chided for being a sellout? He said something like this is America and he wasn't ashamed because everyone had a sponsor. I imagine all the politicians were just blatantly bought out by corporations. Sentators literal doing the "brought to you by Carl's Jr" bit in their speeches

[@I-NINE93THREE-I]

**Iran, Russia, N. Korea, and Pakistan have entered the nuclear chat**

[@advicehydra6332]

I don't fully trust corporations to handle radioactive waste well irl either. My fear is, if the government doesn't regulate them enough, we'll ended up like this universe some days.

[@lizzten9490]

​@@I-NINE93THREE-I statistically it is saver than wind or solar energy.

[@generichumanname2420]

@@lizzten9490 Statistically, one of us will be eaten by a bear while burning and being struck by lightning.

[@Warrior-Of-Virtue]

The existence of medicines such as RadAway suggests that the pre-war world was aware of this problem and were taking steps to address it. Hell, the existence of people in the Fallout Universe, particularly among The Children of Atom, who are seemingly impervious to radiation may be the result of bioengineering experiments conducted on their ancestors prior to the apocalypse.

[@cassievania]

I love the Rad-X ad on Pirate Radio. In fact all those ads are GTA-levels of satire.

[@OfficialAbjeer]

@@Warrior-Of-Virtue the children of Atom might actually have “special”/magical powers thanks to some kind of radiation god

[@Umbra_Ursus]

Atom protects his flock, for some cases. For the others? Perhaps, just as ants and crabs swimmingly took to the rads, perhaps humans did as well, just not as pronounced: As RadKing describes, the world of Fallout is basically a deathtrap, so what if that trap caused a level of quick reactive evolution? We simply grew to survive, or rather endure, the hell we were crafting.

[@cjthebeesknees]

Where you see “Address it” I see “Monetizing” and compounding the problem.

[@MrHolodoc]

I've allways wondered... who made RadAway? Considering the Fact it's in a Blood Bag and usually has the Name scribbled on it, I'd say it's a Post-War Product, but... you just said it's Pre-War, so... who made it and why tf isn't it in a suitable Container that isn't meant to store Blood?

[@coyote76801]

My headcanon is the point of divergence of the Fallout world was shortly after World War II, an American doctor, working in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, invented RadAway. With less fear of radiation poison, there was a much greater focus on nuclear applications and carelessness of nuclear waste.

[@lakeside1168]

@@coyote76801 This makes perfect sense. One invention would thrust so many companies into investing in radioactive development and incorporating it into day to day products. It would be the bees knees XD

[@bobolobocus333]

I thought that it was because they didn't invent the transistor that was the POD? Although it is a similar time.

[@Destroyer_V0]

@@bobolobocus333 That is the cannon reason for the divergence, yes.

[@asteroidrules]

​@@bobolobocus333And instead they invented fusion ignition. So low-power solid-state electronics never became a thing, but availability of electricity went through the roof so the desire for such things was low.

[@Jkrocsko]

There is NO divergent point, this is a lie, sorry. But its a parallel universe, we didnt have the physics they have, we dont have the company they have and we dont even share history other than a few hundred year stretch, with things like the alien city found in the desert, guess what. Thats not there irl, we share SOME history, losely throughout the history of Britain and americas rule until somewhere around 1900s

[@nBasedAce]

Just to clarify. We don't dispose of liquid radioactive waste, we put it through vitrification which turns it into a solid black substance that is then put in barrels.

[@johnwinter2252]

You get super powers if you swim in that stuff. I watched the simpsons.

[@krystiankrewniak]

I think the waste is always solid IRL. Uranium rods are solid. The are put in a thing called the sarcophagus, which is basically a big lead and concrete structure, which is than transported deep deep underground. Though at the beginning is being kept at a special site at the powerplant.

[@jakethesnake4040]

What does liquid radioactive waste come from? Is it that radioactive materials actually produce some type of waste product? Or is it more so that the liquid materials used in conjunction with it becomes so radioactive and it isnt usable anyway, that it therefore becomes a waste byproduct? Also when radioactive material runs out if energy, how long does that take? And whats leftover? Is it just like a uranium rod that no longer emits radioactivity?

[@The_US_Doctor]

@@krystiankrewniak the sarcophagus is a specific structure that is used to contain the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Most nuclear waste is simply buried underground in designated areas.

[@BoredomItself]

​@@jakethesnake4040 There is some chemical processing of radioactive materials, such as dissolving some material to separate it form others, that produces liquid waste. I believe that the vast majority of liquid waste is from such processing. As far as what happens with a radioactive material runs out of energy, what happens is that unstable isotopes emit radiation as they follow a decay chain until it eventually becomes a stable isotope. So you never have uranium that won't emit radiation, because all isotopes of uranium are unstable. As an example, an atom of Uranium 232 emits an alpha particle(a form of radiation) as it becomes Thorium 228, which will itself eventually emit an alpha particle as it becomes Radium 224, which can decay by either emitting an alpha particle as it becomes Radon 220, or by splitting into Lead 210, and Carbon 14. If we then just follow the Carbon 14, it will eventually emit a beta minus particle(another form of radiation), as it becomes Nitrogen 14, which is stable and won't decay any further. I'm not going to bother going through the math on that to explain how long it takes.

[@MattnessLP]

Sugarbombs deserve their own in-depth analysis to be honest. They are component of so many dangerous and outright deadly crafting recipes across multiple games (mainly New Vegas and 76 coming to my mind, as they are the most recent I have played), there's got to be some insane chemicals in there that should normally be kept miles away from any kid's cereal bowl.

[@Chewywrinkles]

I mean sugar burns hot and fast which when contained means explosive. They barely need more chemicals than that to be used in homemade explosives, just a really high sugar content.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@Chewywrinkles it's a carbohydrate, the stuff burns well enough to power rockets.

[@tim_the_traveler]

If the Fallout world has a Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that patch would become a whole god damn continent.

[@asteroidrules]

It's called China, the US was literally at war with it in Fallout lore.

[@plaguenplay3516]

​@@asteroidruleslmfao

[@daehr9399]

5:50 can confirm - my father grew up in the early 1960s and said it was normal to throw garbage out your car window on the highway as you drove. Oftentimes this would be fast food bags, junk in your car, whatever. Highway ravines were full of garbage, piled above the ravine by a foot or two. Trash everywhere - out of sight, out of mind. Or at least, out of car, not my problem. This wasn't in California, New York, Texas, no, this was in rural SW Iowa. I can't even imagine what it was like in more populated areas.

[@B-zk9bt]

Blu Flu, Eldritch Horrors, Radiation and The Great War all sat at a conference on the 23rd and decided how 2077 should end.

[@kotzpenner]

And aliens

[@FieldAgent-D]

Wake up samurai we got more than a city to burn

[@yogabumm]

I guess radiation won...

[@CelestialCaesar]

Considering that the Pre-War world in Fallout is modeled after a cartoonish rendition of the 1950s, it's easy to see why everything is so dangerous.

[@circleinforthecube5170]

safety was invented in 1970s/late 60s along with disco and funk

[@joeking9760]

So disco and funk were invented by scientists?

[@asteroidrules]

It goes well beyond any believability though, there's a point where it stops being satire and just starts being stupid.

[@spartanonxy]

@@asteroidrules Sadly Fallout in a lot of places past that point long ago.

[@decrulez]

@@asteroidrules you should look into our actual history. There’s a ton of things that sound insanely stupid to us yet people did.

[@nekotyrant1629]

Sounds like the Legion caused a criticality event in Lamplight. Enough radioactive material together, especially in a shielded container, can react with itself and unleashe a MASSIVE amount of energy. In such a large amount in Lamplight, they basically Demon Cored the town. Edit: This would also explain the "wave of energy."

[@stevensmith-r7w]

Do you mean Camp Searchlight?

[@ATF-]

All I can imagine now is little lamplight getting absolutely obliterated by the megaton bomb

[@EnemyAtom65]

​@@ATF-fingers crossed 🤞

[@kotzpenner]

@@ATF-I wish

[@fraggelofthewastes]

@@ATF- I've had dreams about this

[@claytonbarham8755]

The heavy water in Cram is doubly interesting, seeing as heavy water is normally at least somewhat expensive to obtain (you have to filter it out of larger volumes of normal water), and it wouldn't seem to make much sense to spend that extra money to obtain heavy water for a food product. However, it does have one major application that I'm aware of, which is as the working fluid in a fission reactor, so that heavy water in cram could be some kind of waste water from nuclear reactors...

[@spartanonxy]

It is mostly used as a moderator for neutrons. But neither make it being in Cram make sense. I think its purpose is a little more nefarious. I think heavy water was used to allow Cram to become a dual use product. Heavy water can help make the fusion fuels of Deuterium and Tritium. I think Cram was a way to smuggle it for use in secret weapon deployments. Sure you wouldn't get a huge amount from even a pallet worth of Cram but it would be something no one thinks about. It could also be the heavy water in Cram is used for moderating breeder reactors to allow the secret production of fissile material as well.

[@gadgetboy4717]

I know next to nothing about how a reactor works but is there a possibility that the water has to be replaced and some shady energy corporation just decided to see if they could make a quick buck selling used heavy water?

[@spartanonxy]

​@@gadgetboy4717 So beyond the realm of possible? No. Within the realm of reasonable even by Fallout standards? Also no. Its possible that it could be a byproduct of the sheer scale of their nuclear industry. As they likely produce far more heavy water then us. And it could be Cram simply needed high purity water and it was the cheapest option for their operations. Doubtful but an option. Also why is heavy water even mentioned? It is chemically pretty much the same. It isn't toxic or radioactive. It is weird to include it just straight up. Hmm further reading has the ingredients being from promotional material for the show. So sounds like they are just fools who found something related to nuclear technology and threw it in there.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@spartanonxy heavy water being advertised seems believable. In the real world you used to be able to buy radium water as health tonic. With how much more corporate and greedy things are in the Fallout timeline, I could imagine some the link between radiation and health issues never went public and the producers of cram simply advertise the heavy water because it's vaguely nuclear-related. Sort of a scam that turns out to be less dangerous than the real thing.

[@spartanonxy]

@@HappyBeezerStudios Except that still doesn't make sense. To the Fallout Universe nuclear wasn't like "green" is in our world where seeing it triggers "good thing" association. And heavy water would be INSANELY expensive for use in an mass produced food. It really is the writers being terrible and probably spending 30 seconds on google searching for things related to nuclear.

[@TDenterpriser]

I think the thing with sugar bombs is a reference to the fact that sugar can literally be used as an explosive

[@plaguenplay3516]

also, sugar bombs were used with rocket fuel to mess up the rockets' launch in New Vegas

[@starcollider6804]

@@plaguenplay3516ya he mentioned that in the video

[@ctdaniels7049]

Hold up--

[@danielkrohn4980]

I'd just like to mention that baby powder/talcum powder is still commonly used, despite trace asbestos content and being demonstrably carcinogenic. Johnson &Johnson has been sued over this, but the product is still on the shelves and used for babies. Edit: perception reflection is right. Johnson &Johnson stopped selling talc powder last year. I don't think it's been banned, but the biggest supplier has moved over to cornstarch.

[@b4tman_and_Rob1n]

plus it's a powder, so it's easy to breathe in... yikes

[@Perceptionreflection]

No? This is blatantly false. The baby powder currently on shelves after the lawsuit - at least in America - is cornstarch now. Source: an actual mom who used the first kind with my first and the new kind with my second.

[@danielkrohn4980]

@@Perceptionreflection I'm glad many companies have moved over to cornstarch. I use cornstarch myself. I just looked up Johnson &Johnson baby powder on Walmart's website and it says that it's made from talc, which is linked to ovarian cancer.

[@Soberum]

@@danielkrohn4980 It had trace amounts of asbestos, but trace amounts of asbestos aren't really that harmful. Most people would be surprised how much Absstos is still around us every day and the only thing keeping it "contained" is a dude looking at it once and a while and checking a box saying "this has not been disturbed."

[@jonaspete]

We lived in Fallout world

[@kaciekk]

FINALLY someone is covering this! I see many people say the amount of radiation 200 years in the future is unrealistic, but they dont take into account that nuclear energy was in EVERYTHING

[@EksaStelmere]

It's even more unrealistic now because nuclear fission is far too efficient to be putting out THAT many barrels. The real question is what the heck were they powering?

[@kazumablackwing4270]

It's also only possible because fallout is based on anti-nuclear fearmongering. If it was actually based on some degree of realism, nuclear contamination would be a non-issue, and it'd be pretty silly to call the IP "Fallout"

[@BoneWalker]

​@@kazumablackwing4270It'd likely also be a less interesting setting.

[@domaxltv]

@@kazumablackwing4270 The original games literally went out of their way to ensure that there was an in lore explanation as to why the world would be not that radioactive, but just burnt to a crisp... Bethesda just ignored it, and you can tell by the fact that nuclear impact craters in FO3 are extremely radioactive with no other nuclear contaminants, nuclear bombs actually produce some of the least dangerous radiation but you get instantly cooked if you walk in there, its not science, just Bethesda wanting to set their games 20 years after the war instead of 200 without consequence. If you are wondering as to what said reasoning was, it was... The lower average size of nuclear warheads compared to what one might expect. What this does mean is that most of the contamination was contained in the lower parts of the atmosphere and were allowed to settle and quickly be disappated, instead of lingering in the upper parts more thus prolonging the time where nuclear fallout was an issue. (Even then, nuclear fallout from bombs is only something that would be a consideration in most cases for at most like, a hundred years, the isotopes produced have pretty short half lives) So uh... Yea. As always Bethesda just had an entirely different idea for the series compared to the original vision for it, back in those days radiation was only an active threat in a few major locations, but its effects in form of mutations and the general loss of biodiversity are everpresent People just generally do not even understand what makes fallout fallout, its not vaults, its not radiation and slums everywhere, its just a series about a world that has surivived and is trying to cope with the fact that humanity failed at basic self preservation due to rampant greed. You could very well make a compelling fallout video game or other media set in the pre war times because holy shit was the place a dystopia that isn't talked about enough despite being home to some of the wackiest shit you've seen

[@larryblake842]

​@@EksaStelmereyeah, they faked fusion with fission. I have read it in the game, they couldn't get the cleaner one working and published a lie to scare the Chinese.

[@Wolf05227]

I bet you that lawn darts are still a thing in the fallout universe. Because if there's one thing that this video taught me, it's that in this universe, letting your kids throw weighted spikes around the lawn is probably a perfectly safe thing to do.

[@sparkeyjames]

I had those lawn darts as a kid. When the shiat hit the fan and it was all over the news my dad threw them out.

[@Wolf05227]

@@sparkeyjames Lawn Darts are still legal in the European Union, so I guess I'm going to go play a game later.

[@sparkeyjames]

@@Wolf05227 I guess the lawyers haven't worked on that one over there like they did here.

[@mattfox2716]

Micro plastics. The parallel is micro plastics 😂

[@simplyhoodie]

The worst part is, we don't even know the extent of how much microplastics have infested our world. And worse yet, we don't know the negative effects of it.

[@I-NINE93THREE-I]

​@@simplyhoodie So might as well assume the worst case scenario, right? Lol

[@therev2100]

​@simplyhoodie we know some of the effects of microplastics on the human body.

[@JustJove]

@@mattfox2716 George Carlin's Environment rant comes to mind. When all is said and done and our species hits a wall of our undoing, we'll look back at earth and wonder what our entire existence culminated to, only to be met with "PLASTIC, ASSHOLE" Before being shunted out from our garden of eden, another biological dead end.

[@PalleRasmussen]

@@I-NINE93THREE-I if you ever commanded men in combat, or trained for it, you are trained to always expect and prepare for the worst. That way the enemy cannot screw you over. I would think it safe to assume the same here.

[@mothman6378]

emmet mountain is the funniest to me because, yes, there was coverups, but from an environmental perspective, they have one of the cleanest waste disposal sites in the fallout series; only real hazard being the groundwater leaking in. what makes the site funny to me is that, the scrappers that inhabit the site are trained on using hazmat suits, but some still go into the waste site without helmets. (not even the ghoul scavengers, random humans)

[@AutismIsUnstoppable]

Fun fact Emmet means ant in Cornish. The term is also used to describe tourists because they swarm the county like ants every year.

[@lyras.9161]

It's one of the few things Fallout portrays relatively accurately; the most dangerous spot for rads exposure aren't the ground zero craters of the nukes, it's the massive, poorly stored waste that's been left to seep and ooze for decades to centuries, depending on the game.

[@sunflower_sappho]

I don't know much about radioactivity, what's something Fallout does wrong? I mean except the stuff bordering on Science Fiction such as ghouls...is there something they messed up that *should* be realistic? :)

[@lyras.9161]

@@sunflower_sappho Mostly just the duration of fallout from the bombs; Nagasaki and HIroshima were more-or-less back to normal only five years after being dropped by the bombs, and while the yields of the bombs after WWII got stronger, I doubt the half-life of the radiation increased on a scale of centuries.

[@sunflower_sappho]

@@lyras.9161 Ohh yeah that's true I never thought of that! Interesting!

[@bobolobocus333]

@@lyras.9161 Might've been made dirty bombs, I suppose.

[@MagiconIce]

Though I'm no scientist, I've seen simulations of what would happen, if a thermonuclear global war would happen, which all contain that radioactive waste is blown into the atmosphere, irradiating the whole planet, but that gets filtered out after a few months by raining down on Earth in Radioactive Rain. While that happened afaik in the Fallout World too, there are still Rad Storms at the very least in the Boston Area over 200 years later (haven't played 76, I guess it would be the same there, since they probably wanted to re-utilize their weather system?), not containing Rain that rains down onto Earth but when a lightning occurs, you receive a spike of radiation... from where? I get it, they look cool and scary, but unless a scientist can explain to me, how a nuclear war and the after effects would create a world, where nuclear reactions happen in an instant in our atmosphere, that then transmit Radiation back to Earth, the Radiation Storms seen in Fallout 4 are probably very unrealistic, if not outright impossible, but that is common for many things in the Fallout Universe, like Radiation mutating creatures in a way that makes them bigger and stronger instead of slowly killing them with cancer and that seemingly on a dice roll, while some living beings die due to radiation exposure, including the player, others transform into Ghouls. But the whole genetics/medical science is basically magic in the Fallout Universe. Like Radiation is just particles rushing through the body and destroying cells and genetic strains, thus causing radiation burns, cancer etc. So the ingame depiction of a red bar lowering your health is only plausible if you translate it to caused damage, not radiation somehow accumulated in your body, but e.g. the Decontamination Arch make it seem like it is some kind of radioactive dirt, that you just can wash away to instantly cure you of any radiation damage. So basically then RadAway (or a Decontanimation Arch) would more or less instantly repair all cells to a basic state by reversing exactly the damage, that the Radiation caused before. In Fallout 4 in Realistic Mode it also surpresses your immune system, so it seemingly takes out the Immune System and resets it, taking over as a quick immune reaction. As said I'm no scientist, but what is Radaway then? Fluidized gigantic amounts of Stem Cells? That is about the only thing that quickly comes to my mind, that would repair such damages and even then, don't they require to be compatible, hence the whole searching of Stem Cell Donors is a thing? So in no way this could be a factory line-produced commodity. And why then is it a seperate item from Stimpaks, that actually heal? Like Radaway instantly repairs radiation damage but that is then not considered "healing" by the games? That also makes imho no medical sense. But the damage is done, if they'd revert that now with Fallout 76 or a future Fallout 5, that would render the items in the previous Fallout Games non-canonical. And yeah I know about Arthur C. Clarke's quote, that any technology sufficiently advanced, that we don't understand, seems like magic to us, but the Fallout Universe contains so many highly advanced, borderline "magical" technologies, researched with subpar means, that we're far away from IRL... they might as well merge Elder Scrolls and Fallout at this point, they're using the same engine for both anyway and similar game concepts. Like their computing technology, afaik they don't have anything resembling the Processing Units (CPU, GPU, NPU etc.) that we have IRL yet somehow they built intelligent robots and even synths with inferior Computing Technology? How? I think that is what irks me, the actual scientific means they have in the Fallout Universe seems not like Advanced but sideways and backwards, since they didn't develop microconductors and had to deal with this, yet somehow this sideways, stunted research still developed things in all fields, that are far more advanced than what we have IRL and some fundamental physics, like how Radiation actually works in biological matter, is highly unrealistic. Of cause, one can argue that it is a different universe, so even fundamental levels of physics, like how radiation works, can work differently, like radiation can outright destroy genetic materials or on a random chance mutate it, then the in-universe science would make sense. But compared to RL science much stuff in Fallout is highly unrealistic or impossible.

[@klezmerdisco]

if you haven't read the text conceit of the Sandia warning project, it goes so fucking hard and it's as beautiful as it is ominous. if you've heard/seen the phrase "this is not a place of honor," that's where it's from

[@kotzpenner]

Longterm nuclear waste storage signals are fascinating

[@TheSchultinator]

Didn't they find out that the best way to keep people away from nuclear waste was to make it as un-extraordinary as possible, because all the methods discussed ended up drawing attention and curiosity?

[@everythingsalright1121]

@@TheSchultinator something like that. Theres no simple solution. Unassuming makes people think nothings there/safe to build there. Ominous stuff makes people investigate.

[@genexplore]

It's so awesome how many people learn about atomic history because of Fallout.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@TheSchultinator the big problem is not just preventing accidental discovery but deliberate discovery. Who knows what kind of post-post-apocalyptic dictator of the grizzly kingdom decides to dig up some ancient weapons.

[@chubbydinosaur9148]

The 10000 years project is just so ridiculous to me. Humans of today: "We gotta make it scary so no one touches it in thousands of years" The pharaos thousands of years ago: "If 't be true thee disturb this tomb, thee shalt kicketh the bucket in a cruel and painful manner, ev'ryone thee loveth shall be cursed, pets included" Some Victorian dude reading the inscription: "bet" It just doesn't work, we're assholes.

[@lukedoesbutter]

Good post never thought of it like that

[@Jkrocsko]

The difference is, either A). Basic geometry isnt scary, and we know that bc we did actual research that Egyptians didnt do. B). they DID know what the sign said and the sign literally said tomb. As in king, as in rich, as in treasure

[@RangerJackWalker]

You say that as if that was the only proposed measure. In real life, the idea was to have an interestingly complex set of warnings. It would begin with basic supernatural fear-mongering duck would hopefully ward off primitive cultures which would not understand science. As you go deeper, the warnings would increase the complexity of the warnings and start explaining the science behind number nuclear waste so that higher development cultures not afraid of ‘primitive’ warnings would hopefully understand as well.

[@VictorJulioHurtado]

Perhaps they didn't care much about slow radiation poisoning due to Radawayand Rad-X. It's possible they took these just like they would take vitamins

[@shawnwolf5961]

Yeah, people are using IV bags like they would vitamins. HUGE eyeroll.

[@Inuyashagirl2015]

@@shawnwolf5961 it's a video game chief, it's not that deep. Go touch a bit of grass and talk to a real person, you'll stop feeling quite so aggressive about inconsequential internet comments that trigger you 😊

[@OfficialJuke]

@shawnwolf5961 bro got mad over a random comment on a video game. Relax brother, you're better than this

[@caav56]

@@shawnwolf5961 Rad-X is pills, tho. Just get IV drip of RadAway at a morning Saturday and you''re good for the until next Saturday!

[@warmstrong5612]

How Sierra Petrovita hasn't already turned into a 'Quantum Glowing One' I'll never understand.

[@caav56]

She's a secret Child of Atom

[@superjesse645]

'Quantum Glowing One' I don't even wanna know what fighting that would be like.

[@plaguenplay3516]

​@@superjesse645pain. a whole lotta pain.

[@Brandelwyn]

Radiation is afraid of her

[@ctdaniels7049]

@@superjesse645 Like a regular Glowing One, but blue, and they flex a lot. 💪

[@sethstewart9704]

I always wonder. Why are people in the Fallout games storing nuclear waste in steel 55 gallon drums? You may as well store acid in a paper bag. It's a popular image thanks to the Simpsons, but you'll never see nuclear waste products stored this way.

[@deathjoker666]

Only because of regulations, though. Without regulations, companies would cut corners to save money.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@deathjoker666 guess wastelanders can be lucky that there were at least regulations to use barrels. But that might as well be more convenient than using open bathtubs to bring the waste to the dumping site.

[@yogabumm]

To be fair, with low level nuclear waste we do that irl (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#/media/File%3ATINT_Radioactive_wastes'_barrel.jpg ) so with Fallout's *1950s²* level of lax regulations, wouldn't be supprised if they did it with all nuclear waste.

[@chaoticsindri]

Actually we do know what Festus is referring to in Sunset Sarsaparilla, it's a reference to something that happened in the real world. It's Sassafras, which was banned for causing cancer in rats. The thing is, theres not really any evidence that it causes cancer in humans, only rats. But if you look up the history of that whole thing, it matches what Festus is saying enough to be clear that's the joke there

[@kanrakucheese]

And the "study" that determined it caused cancer involved feeding the rats an utterly absurd amount of the stuff, equivalent to a human drinking double digit bottles every day by weight. That tracks with Festus's statement about how much it would take to cause issues. Same kind of "study" is used to claim MSG is hamrful by feeding rats so much normal salt would be fatal.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

the big problem is testing if it causes cancer in humans. "looking for volunteers for medical study that might give you cancer"

[@chrissinclair8705]

Hey the engine oil came out of the ground, it might as well go back in there. Seal the hole with a bit of lead, hey you're good to go. That's why I drive my e-bike on the weekends towing some burning bicycle tires, I believe in a balanced approach with the environment.

[@dennisthefivestarman8177]

@@chrissinclair8705 unironically yes, I run a steel mill ( not saying where ) but some of our equipment like our smokestacks are considered too old for modern regulations as they were built in the mid 1800s. Because of this I can keep them pumping constantly without a care and it eases a lot of stress off of upper management since we don’t care about the environment or any of that BS

[@Drakith90]

@@dennisthefivestarman8177 Because who needs breathable air, am I right?

[@warmomo12]

@@Drakith90 up top woooooooooo

[@doktorhabilitowanystanczyk]

@@dennisthefivestarman8177 bait used to be believable but okay

[@Yostuba]

*Ghost of uncle Ted artistically screaming bloody murder*

[@biostemm]

I wonder if prewar people simply used chems and stimpacks to treat the side effects of all those contaminants. Suffering mental issues, take mentats. Have wracking pain? Med-x. Weakness? Buffout. Unusual or excessive bleeding? A stimpack's got you...

[@jasonjohnsen6645]

On the topic of ghouls; some people might like to think ghouls look like Goggins from the fallout show. Not that bad right? Haha, it's more like what happened to the firefighters at chernobyl. Much more horrifying. Could you imagine walking around like that? Bleeding from your entire body, looking like a corpse. Bits of skin falling off until your body just gives up..

[@zerrodefex]

Yeah my first comment upon seeing his character was "he's way too pretty for a ghoul."

[@bobolobocus333]

@@zerrodefex Might be, at least in-part, because of the fact that American film prefers pretty people. At least, more than British film.

[@AquariumGravelEater]

Honestly, it always bugged me that the water was radioactive even in places like Massachusetts and Appalachia, maybe the rivers and streams even in DC are all radioactive because of those barrels of radiation in the water table is causing most of it.

[@richardarriaga6271]

Once it gets into the atmosphere, it would spread with rain on everywhere that gets it. Especially from fallout-induced rain like what happened in Hiroshima.

[@AquariumGravelEater]

@@richardarriaga6271 Indeed, I'm starting to think that most of the rads from the bombs likely faded away in a few months to a year or so, and the rads we deal with are actually mostly pre-war leaks, or leaks caused by the war but not directly from the bombs.

[@schwingedeshaehers]

or leaks caused because of the bombz, that they destroyed containmens/... of radioactive waste ​@@AquariumGravelEater

[@CamaroAmx]

@@AquariumGravelEaterhard to say since we’ve never dealt with that many nukes going off all at once and in concentrated areas.

[@44WarmocK77]

It's quite a bummer that this issue of pre-war pollution hasn't been fully addressed in Fallout 4 as the effects would have had quite some consequences for the gameworld. I always wanted to edit the Commonwealth in Fallout 4 to reflect how pre-war waste disposal would still affect the environment 200 years later. Problem is that this is quite an undertaking, and I still got a ton of other mods to wrap up. :P

[@Manfromthenorth0551]

I would think the irradiated animals/creatures, pools of unsafe water, and a large amount of ghouls would be enough evidence of the rampant toxic waste dumping.

[@44WarmocK77]

@@Manfromthenorth0551 yet there's a ton of chances for improvement. Once I got to finish my pipe weapon mod I might give it a shot and turn the most obvious parts of the Commonwealth into a massively scorched and mutated wasteland myself. Prob is the amount of rebuilding precombines/preVis data, which is always a BIG issue in terms of mod compatibility.

[@alexanderwilliams1721]

@@Manfromthenorth0551 those are all consequences of the war's radiation and FEV exposure, and the fact that those features are staples of the games just show that they could have done a lot more with the Commonwealth's pre-war pollution

[@owenbatchelder6230]

Whats your name on nexus? ​@@44WarmocK77

[@squisher_of_noggins]

At some marine lab place in fallout 4, don't know the name but it's south east. There are logs which describe coast marine life mutating and growing before the bombs dropped, I presume they are explaining the predecessor of the mirelurks. (Haven't watched the video to completion, so I might just be echoing what the video says somewhere

[@istrumguitars]

This definitely helps explain why the radiation is still so prevalent after 200 years

[@angusmacfrankenstein7227]

This makes sense-- knowing that the area near Chernobyl has grown green and lush (albeit still unsafe) many years after the disaster and patch, I've always wondered why the Fallout 4 world remains so crapsack. The perpetual disaster was seeded beforehand.

[@CamaroAmx]

@@angusmacfrankenstein7227probably because all other other pollutants as well.

[@DarrenSnider]

The true apocalypse was the friends we made on the way

[@kitkatbreaker1270]

@@DarrenSnider Hah, clever!

[@EyeOfMagnus4E201]

I always thought it was odd that 200 years after the bombs went off that the world would still be a wasteland because by then most of the fallout would have been gone and the world would have recovered. However, the slow leak of radioactive waste even after 200 years would easily explain why after 200 years the world is still a wasteland and even causes the fact that in Fallout 76 the world still looks fairly normal while 200 years later Boston is a wasteland to make sense, and also causes me the think that Father’s statement that the world above ground is doomed might not have been an overstatement after all. It wasn’t the war that’s destroying the world, it’s the slow poisoning of nuclear waste that’s destroying it.

[@PilkScientist]

To be fair to the original & obsidian devs, in california and the mojave it's not... that much more of a wasteland, than it would be in real life without irrigation. The Bethesda games turned it up a lot, but out west everything just kinda sucks like that as-is.

[@Horst_Radish]

To be fair, The Fallout would has incredible, inconceivable, and improbably amazing medical breakthroughs!

[@NoTimeAllTime]

The existence and widespread availability of RadAway suggests that the dangers of wide spread fission waste was well known

[@mostcoolkid78]

Isn’t radaway homemade tho? It was probably a rare medicine prewar and was just much more prevalent post war

[@CyborgCharlotte]

@@mostcoolkid78Yeah, I thought Radaway…or at least the stuff we find postwar was homemade too. Isn’t the in game model just a blood pack with “Rad Away” scribbled on it with sharpie? It definitely looks makeshift

[@Cheesedawg997]

A lot of the more modern games have the makeshift rad away but in Fallout 1 and 2 they seem to be more prewar in make so it could be that the prewar supply is mostly used up and more homemade remedies are being made.

[@CyborgCharlotte]

@@Cheesedawg997 Hey that’s a cool headcanon, I might use that one :P

[@Cheesedawg997]

​@@CyborgCharlotte thank you. I also just looked up the 76 version and it also is in a more prewar container likely as it's only 25 years postwar

[@jesseharlan2884]

I imagine sitting to close to the TV was just bad for your eyes in Fallout.

[@tf2keller398]

You’d need more than just prescribed glasses after doing that for years, that’s for sure.

[@catelynh1020]

All those old tvs that leaked minor radiation weren't super bad for you, as far as i know. But as tvs got better, the warning stayed so now it's just "why? Because....it's bad for your eyes. Yeah, that's it"

[@bobolobocus333]

@@catelynh1020 Not surprised, since they were literal, at-home particle accelerators.

[@LegendStormcrow]

Quick correction. NukaCola doesn't naturally have rads in them. If you ever find an Ice Cold Nuka Cola, it's rad free.

[@guilhermehank4938]

Then why sunset sas. doesnt have rads ? Outside of certain circumstances that is

[@daled0ugh949]

@@guilhermehank4938I don’t believe any of the alcohol contains rads.

[@gratuitouslurking8610]

@@daled0ugh949 Of my memory of Fallout (it's been an age since I been in the modding mines for such) I do believe you are correct. Only in the case of Irradiated food does anything fermented retain radiation, tho I'd not be surprised if some esoteric Fallout 4/76 recipe proves me wrong there.

[@viren_jalkun]

The Ice Cold Nuka Cola being Rad-Free could easily be an oversight of the creators though. Hard to use one piece of Evidence from one game mechanic as a source of irrefutable proof. lol

[@LegendStormcrow]

@@viren_jalkun except even food kept in cardboard and most water has rads after the blast.

[@drakko26]

What's even more interesting is that IRL we more or less mastered the safe transportation and storage of nuclear waste.

[@BlaireSnorlax]

This really needs more attention.

[@joeypizza2761]

A sentence literally written less a year ago about Sellafield: "The leak of radioactive liquid from one of the “highest nuclear hazards in the UK” - is likely to continue to 2050. That could have “potentially significant consequences” if it gathers pace, according to an official document." Or the 400,000 gallon Tritium leak in the US 2 years ago, where they intentionally hid it from the public for 7 months, on record? Have they mastered it, or have they mastered hiding it from public view?

[@FullLengthInterstates]

nuclear is the bogeyman and its used in very limited sites so of course there's extra care. other hazmats with much more video-gamey effects tho...

[@xxxxx-iu4fw]

@@FullLengthInterstates ooh, can you give a few examples? I’m not a scientist or anything so id have no idea where to start researching which materials lol

[@madprophet6891]

@@xxxxx-iu4fw The presence of lead in gasoline reduced the average American IQ by anywhere from 10 to 25 points prior to being banned in 1996. Fossil fuels in general, really, they don't even need to be spiked to poison you. Coal and its side effects is a fun one too. Cobalt, titanium, and other metals. Horrific chemicals used in industrial-scale food production and food preservation (hello again, titanium, how'd you get here?). Plastic exposure causing major genetic defects, yadda yadda. Almost every convenience in the modern world is designed to an almost comical degree to kill you but only after sucking every penny out of your pocket and the pockets of your loved ones. Uncle Ted tried to warn us.

[@RDFoXTheSequel]

The perfectly preserved pie being surrounded by moldy food and still not being moldy itself adds another layer to the conundrum for me

[@leandersearle5094]

Radiation basically wasn't present in 1, only being encountered at THE glow. The devs realized this bit of realism didn't play nice with their themes, and so ramped up the radiation in 2. Bethesda, desperate to have their first installment be accepted as Fallout, turned up the dial to near-parody level, where it has largely remained.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

To some degree I can accept that the specific locations are as irradiated as they are. Big centers of population, industry and military would be focused, while some cave in a mountain in the middle of nowhere wouldn't even see a nuke. The bigger problem is the timespan. Sure, we don't have a post-global-thermonuclear-war area to compare to, but looking at places that were (and still are) irradiated, they do remarkably well.

[@seanromine3932]

As for why asbestos is found in the board game, i would guess for the same reason you get it from scrapping cardboxes. Its in the cardboard as a fiber fill for fire prevention. Or so i would guess.

[@joeypizza2761]

Not far from my home, this week it was announced that an energy company accidentally spilled 1 million gallons of coal ash wastewater without even knowing about it. Yesterday they announced that they got it wrong, it was actually 5.5 million gallons spilled and it's connected to the Mississippi River 🙃🙃🙃 we're not always doing much better in the real world

[@kazumablackwing4270]

Not so fun fact: coal mining produces far more radioactive waste than the entire actual nuclear energy industry.. so, not only was that spill jam-packed with toxic chemicals, it's likely also radioactive.

[@BoneWalker]

One has to wonder, were humans always this clumsy and the internet just makes it all more visible? Or are we somehow getting worse as the generations come and go?

[@ThickRedPaste]

Yeah it's just so easy to miss 5.5 Million gallons of waste. How could nobody think of that??

[@joeypizza2761]

@@ThickRedPaste I mean ...Google is your friend here, but it's connected through underground reservoirs at one point and it was the drop in pressure that made them realize. The same company spilled 400,000 gallons of Tritium two years ago and hid it from the public for nearly 7 months.

[@everythingsalright1121]

@@BoneWalker rarely is there ever one answer. Likely a combo of both as well as cost cutting corruption. Its like the boeing plane failure reports. People only started reporting them way more in the news and on social media once all the bad news about boeing got reported on headlines. More people were monitoring boeing and thus more incidents were being caught. The worlds a big place but everyone is so connected these days + smartphone cameras and social media lets anyone capture a story

[@hiddentruth1982]

A funny thing about nuclear waste. Most of it stuff like gloves and what not that has to be stored because it used in a power plant but really is harmless. Only a small percentage is radioactive and dangerous. Even with that beings stored there isn't really that much waste. There's far more from making solar panels and wind mills. The blades of wind mills have to be replaced every 25 years at the longest and can't be recycled since they are fiberglass and epoxy. Which are made from petroleum.

[@mcraft5559]

You could use CKF instead of GFK, but that would be more expensive.

[@EliteValor1003]

I was going to say lead and asbestos are pretty prevalent in fallout and the health laws that formed in tge real world never happened for one reason or another.

[@t84t748748t6]

the never left te 50's but things dont die from pollution the mutated and global warming is a myth

[@deathjoker666]

I think greed ruled over everything in Fallout that's why you set no regulations. Just my opinion.

[@ryelor123]

I'm guessing they found the cure for cancer.

[@t84t748748t6]

@@ryelor123 yes and it was easy u take out the brain and put it into a robobrain and u got no more cancer unless u got brain cancer

[@spartanonxy]

@@deathjoker666 Thing is the opposite is usually what happens. Greed and government power usually end up with hyper regulation (big corporations LOVE regulations). So that can't be that unless author fiat humanity as a whole. For those who are wondering corporations love regulations because it tends to hurt the little competitors more then the big guys.

[@gwebb680]

I feel fairly confident that in a universe where a broken door is adequate protection from a near miss with a mini-nuke and lethal doses of radiation can be cured with a single injection, these turn out to be minor problems.

[@mrs-chief]

Stumbled upon this video randomly and it's such a great recc--I'm certified in radiological emergency management and dosimetry by FEMA, and previously worked for my state EMA in a radiological mitigation role. This is something I would do--go through all the games any study the radio sources lol Great video, you got a new sub immediately lol

[@jack-q8y8b]

Something interesting related to this concept that I learned about playing Fallout 76 and researching the IRL cryptid lore about the Mothman, is that it's an old long held theory that the TNT area from where the first Mothman sighting took place was known for storing a lot of hazardous material and it was believed that the Mothman could have realistically been a mutated bird effected by the hazardous material storage. Of course in Fallout 76, the Mothman is just one of many large mutated insects but lives up to local legend by being an actual man-sized moth.

[@I-NINE93THREE-I]

Hey RadKing ☢️👑 Would you do a video about the architecture/music/visual design of the various FALLOUT games? The 'Atmosphere' of the different FALLOUTs, if you will. How each game is represented differently by the music and world design and what is carried on from game to game, and what is in just one game?

[@noahhudelson2447]

This☝🏻

[@brushdogart]

I have to say that anyone who thinks marking a place with big, ominous monoliths will keep humans away has never met a human. "Wow, look at that big creepy field of rocks over there! It looks like they were man-made." "Awesome, if they wanted to keep people away that badly there must be some really good loot buried over there!" "Let's dig it up!"

[@gruntskilling]

cool video, I didn't think about all those waste barrels and how the possible lifestyle was with so much radioactive waste from usage by normal people. How it was inevitable for normal to people to become sick, maybe that's how all these ghouls were predisposed to the x-factor were going to transform either way.

[@hazeltade3679]

Super not fun fact: sloppy uranium mining is why, in real life, the Navajo Nation doesn’t have safe water. I wish this fiction didn’t reflect reality.

[@MattnessLP]

At around 14:00 you showed the trailer dangling over the cliffside above Cottonwood Cove, and that one is just a prime example of the pre-war negligence with nuclear material. That trailer was the last of three that were sent to the Searchlight Fire Department and the one that could not be housed in their building, forcing the driver to go somehwere else with his hazardous cargo. You can find all about it on the Searchlight fire chief's terminal, including a bewildered comment on why the truck was heading towards a recreational area like Cottonwood Cove.

[@uncledoctor6920]

Man, this really invalidates the Enclave's presupposition that they're the only untainted humans left in the world. Their actions were already unjustifiable, now their ideology is as well.

[@brianskee]

Ironically it's only the older type 1 reactors that produce a lot of waste. The type 2 reactors produce about a gram of waste per year, *but* they can also be used to produce weapons-grade material, so the US and other countries keep a tight control on them. The type 2 reactors are also significantly more expensive, so that limits their usage even where it is allowed.

[@mogo5055]

If you think dumping engine oil into the ground is a wild thing we used to do, then you should look up the Radium Girls and what they went through.

[@Jodie-G198]

That story dropped my jaw, it was so bad.

[@tOGGLEwAFFLES]

The waste disposal companies lying about what they do kind of reminds me of what some recycling companies have been busted for, claiming they were recycling but instead shipping stuff to third world countries to be put in landfills or burned.

[@matchesburn]

29:46 *_To be fair:_* Sugar itself can be used for rocket fuel. These are called "sugar rockets" or "candy rockets" in amateur rocketry. The fuel mixture is a combination of sugar and an oxidizer of some sort. These pack one hell of an exothermic reaction and produces a lot of gas. And it's just regular old sugar, nothing fancy. So the idea that this would play havoc with actual rockets and their fuel is just basic chemistry. I don't know *_why_* Sugar Bombs might have an oxidizer combined with it's super sugary cereal, but it could be perfectly safe to eat (outside of diabetes and whatnot, but this applies to any sugary substance in large quantities).

[@ChartreuseDan]

Could be the resource demands of the ongoing great war, and/or ongoing labour shortages after the new plague, interfered with ordinary nuclear waste disposal: concrete shortages, inflating goods and services prices etc.

[@FelixValentiCh.]

I was thinking it was due to the construction of a lot of new reactors after the oil shortage for power needs and containment facilities just couldn’t keep up with demand

[@FRAAANKYSUUUPER]

The pre-war world was more dystopian than the post.

[@timothyharris1125]

Just like Caesar said "Clean Slate"

[@kazumablackwing4270]

The fallout pre-war world is also a parody

[@NurseAmamiya]

It does. Never was a fan of the 50-60s aesthetic, so I honestly didn't really cared about the pre-war world when I first played the games, especially with FO4

[@spejic1]

I think Fallout 4 shows this - they don't hide that the benefits of the atomic world was for the very few and most people were struggling. It's not an accident so many bank robberies were going on when the bombs dropped, and I don't think all those houses had their doors boarded up after the bombs fell.

[@timothyharris1125]

@@spejic1 Yep, A LOT of makeshift shelters must've been in place before the Bombs dropped probably due to the Very insurmountable cost of affording a section in any Vault. Then the massive looting that probably happened afterwards Immediately after the Bombs or the thought of made people shelter in place but then they either died of fear of the outside and starved or extreme radiation sickness inside their own cage. There's probably way more stories to uncover inside of a boarded up house or building.

[@SirAroace]

Super mutants and deathclaws are are born from FEV and Ghouls are a product of Radiation, but Its unclear what other mutations are from atmospheric-fev, radiation, or both.

[@tannermaxwell7321]

I’d like to mention that I believe Fallout’s nature realizes that the earth is heavily irritated and has evolved ways to clear it. I.e. Punga Fruit, which grants reduced radiation.

[@wesleycolvin7158]

I don't know the canon behind either of these, but the existence of Radaway and Rad-X makes sense from a corporate standpoint. Other people created the problem so, someone would come up with a cure, whether that cure was an obscenely expensive corporate creation or one meant to be distributed for free is what I want to know.

[@ingrid9635]

In the meantime, a truck containing radioactive material was stolen here in São Paulo Brazil, in July 2024. The thieves discarded the containers and stole the radioactive material. People's stupidity still baffle me, specially because we had the whole Cesium 137 incident, internationally known as the biggest radiological accident

[@ScotiaLynn]

This may be one of my favourite videos you've done. Your reference to T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men was on point! Great job man

[@ChrisTucker3701]

Destruction was and always is inevitable. All isotopes fissle out eventually.

[@ptorq]

Heavy water's danger mainly comes from something called the "kinetic isotope effect". Chemically, deuterium is just like protium (normal hydrogen) in terms of what it reacts with, but simply because it's twice as heavy it moves more slowly, which means the reactions involving it also go more slowly. Which is not a good thing when those reactions are the ones keeping you alive, such as cellular respiration.

[@Santo_Buzo_89]

Check out the severe lead soil toxicity issue here in Lancaster County, PA. Lead is toxically infused in the soil, pipes and paint of old buildings and not a single person gives a crap. So Fallout doesn’t surprise me at all. I mean corn is grown here in lead soil and sold across the country and world so neither does the government.

[@chaoticsilver8442]

10:28 That's a reference to a real life thing, btw. I forget if they actually created them, or if it was just a concept, but spike fields like that isn't just made up in a video game.

[@chaoticsilver8442]

11:30 Oh, you actually talk about the real world thing. Cool. But yeah, I was just listening to the video- (I like listening to vids like this when doing other things, like going on a walk, or playing minecraft), and as soon as I heard "Cement spikes, jutting out of the ground at odd angles", I recognized the concept.

[@crawdadandtheboilers]

You have to understand, prior to WWII, and even into the 1950s, America was pretty "meh" about the effects of radiation. They had x-ray booths in shoe stores for a short period of time, so parents could judge whether a new pair of shoes were fitting their child's feet! The use of radium to make watch faces glow in the dark, and later during WWII, other dials and indicators, meant that people were exposed to deadly radioactive materials without their knowledge, while at the same time, others in the industry would wear protective clothing while handling that material, which meant the "radium girls" were being purposefully lied to about their working conditions. But the worst was the sheer incompetence of some who otherwise should have known. Take the "tickling the dragon's tail" "experiment" conducted with the demon core. I label it like that, because there was no scientific discovery to be gained by such an experiment, other than to measure the participant's luck vs. the law of FAFO.

[@Cyberc50x]

Lead is used for radiation shielding, given how common radiation was I could see leaded paint being a attractive option for houses. Give it some measure of protection against external radiation sources. The increased demand for leaded paint would eventually end up with a market shift - More companies making leaded paint, less making non-leaded, eventually anyone using non-leaded paint would switch for cost reasons. And then Mentats were created to mitigate the neurological effects of lead toxicity.

[@sski]

Got my first Perfectly Preserved Pie at Farahs Department Store last night! It's in my inventory now. All those times of trying and this one just popped right out.

[@juniorsanchez4157]

You also have to take into consideration that in this universe they also had drugs to combat radiation prewar unlike modern times so I’m sure personal assigned to these facilities or jobs (transportation and such) that these workers would of been provided and dosed up on rad away and radx and other chefs so it was probably like any other workplace hazard we’d see today

[@youmukonpaku3168]

we have them IRL too. Rad-X is a preventative dose of iodine supplements and prussian blue, Radaway's real equivalent is a chelating agent like EDTA. They're just much more effective in Fallout than reality.

[@drahcir8402]

With pre-war radiation, your forgetting the twin blessings of Rad-X and Rad-Away.

[@JohanSkotkonung]

Honestly I feel like things are better after the bombs, cause the stuff we were developing before hand was straight up crazy, there's also the town in Appalachia where they just straight dumped fev into the towns water. There's also the fact with normal life too and being slowly replaced with autonomy

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

and looking how the world is currently going, we might need a clean slate like that as well.

[@MattnessLP]

Sure, Hornwright's excavator is a huge affront to the environment, just like the "Bagger" excavators destroying my beautiful home country, but in my opinion Hornwright's rival, Atomic Mining Services did far more damage with their methods of detonating underground nukes, not only polluting the deep soil with insane amounts of radiation, but also causing the mutation that resulted in the Scorchbeasts that terrorized all of Appalachia and caused hundreds of deaths through the Scorched Plague

[@MeDicen_Rocha]

Im fairly confident radiation was part of the day to day of the citizens of the Fallout universe. If post war doctors can perform radiation removal treatments, why couldnt pre war ones? Perhaps they even had more effective treatments or ones that could be done on a regular basis like flu vaccines. The fact that rad away exists and is seemingly "home-made" seems to further imply that medicines existed before the war to treat radiation poisioning and that the knowledge of how they worked was so widespread that even after the war they could figure out how to make more without the tools or supplies. Also, as a side note, radaway on the early games shows up more like an industrialized product. Who says that in the Bethesda games the entire supply of industrialized RadAway wasnt used and the only stuff that remains is the home made stuff?

[@docholtzful]

If they were unaware they wouldn't know to use it. It would still would not help everything else exposed to radiation.

[@THATGuy5654]

Is it just me, or are those nuclear "stay away" sites overly abstract? Make a bunch of large statues of humanoid figures trying to crawl away from the epicenter, seemingly in terror and agony as they succumb to petrification. I wouldn't be the caveman brave enough to venture past THAT, but I promise you I would be the kind of caveman stupid enough to go into the "field of thorns" if I thought it looked like a good place to set up a hammock or tan some hides.

[@DigitalNomad88]

One of your best videos! Especially the FO3 Soundtrack!

[@PatGunn]

I assume radiation just doesn't work the same way in the fallout universe

[@Manfromthenorth0551]

It doesn't, Fallout Radiation is what the 1950-70's thought radiation was like. Like how the Hulk got his powers from a gamma experiment or Spiderman being bitten by a radioactive spider. In the Fallout universe radiation can mutate animal life to become enormous, and humans can become near immortal ghouls. Real life radiation will just kill you, slowly and painfully.

[@tubacollossus9619]

@@Manfromthenorth0551 Real Life is boring man, I drink Irradiated Water, instead of being stronger and more durable I get Kidney cancer :/

[@cyrus6461]

​@@tubacollossus9619 mmmmm.... Cancer juice

[@gwebb680]

@@Manfromthenorth0551 Nobody but incredibly stupid people believed that in the 60s and 70s, I was there. But if you go back another 30 years or so, they really just didn't know what they were messing with, kinda like AI and the troon craze now. Funny how seldom mentioned is the fact that Madame Curie died of acute radiation poisoning.

[@CyborgCharlotte]

@@cyrus6461”Introducing NEW Diet Cancer Juice! Now with 25% less calories and harmful radioactive isotopes. Warning, consumption of diet cancer juice can lead to: hair loss, muscle degradation, blood thinning, blood poisoning, total organ failure, headaches, blindness, depression, skin peeling, teeth decay, teeth loss, gum disease, stomach pains, cardiac arrest, vomiting, nausea, dizziness, muscle pain, muscle atrophy, joint pain, skeletal degradation, kidney failure, leukaemia, tumours, cancer, and death”

[@JuliusKingsleyXIII]

God I love this channel. Such quality and genuine content, and without sponsorships. I wish Bethesda cared about Fallout half as much as you do.

[@funnyyoutubeman4814]

if the great war didn't happen i wonder how pre-war America would react to the increasing number of mutants, especially ghouls, both feral and non-feral.

[@notsusanna7485]

To be honest, the cartoony glow of nuclear materials in the fallout universe might GENUINELY be Atom’s glow, because nuclear shenanigans are at least a _little_ realistic in the Fallout series

[@Craxin01]

Greed destroys everything.

[@DeneuveYT]

Some of the widespread handling of those nuclear barrels could be forgiven if it happened to be that pre war entities would use robots for transfer but it’s clear there was rampant mishandling and dumping even if that was the case. The contamination of the food supply and how radioactive material can be found in so many places (not to mention the lead and asbestos) are clear criticisms of a world in which regulation and public safety take a back seat to profits or any other malicious attitudes. But it does mirror how real companies have acted before in the US prior to tougher regulatory law being enacted and it’s reminiscent of the attitudes of the government/military towards excessive testing and contamination of the country back when we were detonating so many test bombs. Also of phenomena like what happened to the “radium girls” injured in their work related to radioactive paints and such for products. Somewhat worryingly it does seem as if there are still a number of radioactive materials still in circulation of modern products and it’s not unheard of to hear about lead contamination either. Seems we can’t treat these depictions in game as just fictional commentary

[@yournotjimmy]

☢ Thank you for this list from our RadKing of The Great and Minor Holy Sites to those who follow Atom's Glow this is our great guide to help feel Atoms touch on our pilgrimage ☢

[@bocktordaytona5656]

Asbestos in fallout should be also on gasmask filters, power armor systems, and friltration/hermetic subsystems for tanks, Apc,s and submarines with NBQ. Becuz asbestos in real life cam be found on those things usually respiratory systems for machines used them due to hermetic seals i guess. But also Flammemwerfer operators in ww1 used suits made completely with asbestos in order to avoid burning themselves. So i can imagine the same in fallout but for firefighters wich probably had the best job in the planet: Extinguishing nuclear fires carring an asbestos suit with lead plating.

[@Scoobystyle2]

The irony of lead being used as a sweetener irl in lunchables and apple sauce

[@richardarriaga6271]

It stopped being used as a sweetener hundreds of years ago. Lead in those is from environmental contamination, but nowhere near the amounts used by ancient Romans as a sweetener.

[@Scoobystyle2]

@@richardarriaga6271 yeah it’s unintentional, I probably should have worded my original comment better. But still Lead in them nonetheless.

[@tacticalmanatee]

@@richardarriaga6271 it has been found being used as a sweetener in CN-made US-distributed applesauce as recently as this year

[@cyrus6461]

​@@tacticalmanatee to be fair, China isn't exactly known for above board business practices... Thanks CCP

[@jakethesnake4040]

​@@richardarriaga6271i thought recently when they found it in lunchables, it was actually a very large amount? And that it was being added for some purpose? Granted i mostly hear bits and pieces of these things because not everyone talks about it, and i just file them away in my brain to keep in mind in case i can find more info later. So i dont know the most updated info on it.

[@Posty-vw9jc]

16:21 the real life lake is heavily contaminated with arsenic, a bunch of companies were dumping into it.

[@robe3836]

day 5: when will we get the trash of fallout pt 2

[@ChrisTucker3701]

There isn't enough for a part 2

[@loveli420]

The endless harassment of this man's channel 😂😂😂

[@loveli420]

​@@Jvid752 it's a joke not a dick, don't take it so hard

[@j2c695]

MORE TRASH

[@j2c695]

@@Jvid752you’re TRASH

[@thundercheckov9782]

I assume some of the barrels, especially in DC might be (immediate) post-war. We know that some level of public institutions kept functionning for a few days after the war, like Germantown police HQ's relief center or the Hospital in central DC, some military checkpoints and some of the environmental storytelling in Our Lady of hope hospital... It is possible that some of the nuclear waste was packed and dumped by emergency services, like the national guard and civil guard, in a fated effort similar to liquidators in Chornobyl. For a few days and in the middle of the burning chaos of DC they would have tried to apply the response plan they had been rehearsing for so long: locate and contain hazardous radioactive material to avoid a widespread and un-mangeable contamination. Pile these containers in some temporary locations before sone other service can move them away to permanent sites. This would explain some of the weirder locations for radioactive barrels in fallout 3 like those which are just randomely piled in metro stations and tunnel rubbles. Then these emergency workers would soon run out of rad-x, die of radiation poisoning or turn into ghouls. Maybe the roamers with their combat armors are what remains of the DC national guard after they ended their last mission. Of course I also believe the overwhelming majority of nuclear waste is prewar in fallout and everything mentioned about the careless mentality of the timeline sounds extremely coherent with fallout universe and the creators intentions.

[@nBasedAce]

We still have lead in diesel fuel and airplane fuel and asbestos is still being used in construction products like flooring.

[@duanekc]

While it is true that a small amount of leaded fuel is used in older aircraft, diesel does not contain lead - it uses sulfur for the same purposes lead was used in gasoline. And, the asbestos used in manufacturing now is long-fiber asbestos, as opposed to short-fiber which is cheaper and bears the hazard of inhalation silicosis. Another place you'll commonly see long-fiber asbestos is in concrete exterior house tiles, although those have been largely supplanted by aluminum and vinyl siding in the modern day.

[@nBasedAce]

​@@duanekcThere is currently no legislation banning lead or asbestos from any products other than a select few. I don't care about what the conglomerates tell us, I care about what they are forced to do.

[@morrigankasa570]

As long as the Asbestos remains undamaged it's actually fairly safe.

[@matthewrayborn8557]

I think the sunset sasperilla wearing was referencing the fact that real sassafras root are "technically" carcinogenic in large quantities, but like the funny robot says you need to drink a whole lot

[@spartanonxy]

Funny thing is it isn't. The horrific thing about the sassafras root ban is that it was based on tests done with mice. The mice had metabolic paths we humans don't that specifically are why it was carcinogenic. What makes it horrifying you may ask? The root hijacks a path in our body that already tends towards carcinogenic and may in fact reduce the chances of that path causing us cancer. Yes it may protect us from cancer but because it caused cancer in mice it needs to be banned. Welcome to Idiocracy what the world has been living in for over five centuries.

[@UnluckyGunner]

For the record for those terrified of Radioactive waste IRL there's really no need! Nuclear reactors IRL are not only extremely safe, but also are glorified steam generators. Nuclear reactors are the most safe form of energy due to gov oversight and safety systems, and theres only been a handful of incidents. Look into it, the green barrels of radioactive waste is a hollywood trope they push out very little waste, and depleted uranium is used in military vehicles, ammunition, and other engineering feats!

[@williswillardmagayhe]

And we’re seeing the effects of using depleted uranium shells in the rise of birth defects and deformities of all those middle eastern countries we “liberated.”

[@cmdfarsight]

I think that the majority of dumping sites have come from the many dodgy businesses that are in the FO universe, but I think that a lot of the barrels in random places came after the war during an attempted clean up by local authorities trying to keep some kind of order. Maybe, as in real life plans, people who were able to work in clean up were the ones to get rations.

[@CaligoCastra]

As an European I gotta say: Most of us view the current food in the US with much of the concern that this video did on the virtual products. Why is chicken bleached? Why wash and bleach eggs? Why is the "cheese" so weird and plastic-y? You use WHAT for colouring of foods? Why is your "bread" like that - that's no bread. And so on.

[@Crona858]

To be honest i always thought the sunset sarsaparilla warning was a reference to obesity and diabetic complications. Especially the loss of vision and renal failure part

[@Crona858]

And an edit too, about why packaged foods dont have expiration dates (the bar code part is still unusual) is because that wasnt a common trend until the 70s and 80s. Later on bar codes started being developed too

[@MikefromTexas1]

Asbestos mustache.

[@magicpyroninja]

14:26 there was a point in time in our history where radiation was seen as a good thing and people would willingly ingest radiation daily thinking it was healthy for them. Of course that all very quickly changed when a well-known Rich TV personality had his jaw literally fall off because his body was falling apart due to radiation poisoning. The dude was buried in a lead lined coffin and he's still radioactive Some pretty stupid mistakes have been made