The Most Radioactive Locations in Fallout

No one may know the rads like I do, but lets test your knowledge of the most irradiated places in the Fallout series.
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[@shelbylamprides8574]

It's good to see Pittsburgh survived the apocalypse unscathed

[@nogoodnames8612]

LMAOOO

[@Skullhawk13]

Honestly looks better

[@sea_triscuit7980]

​​@@Skullhawk13i hesrd it looks the same haha

[@someguy1865]

Even Centralia is more livable

[@Alastor1313]

@@sea_triscuit7980 yeah, it literally almost looks the same.i live close to Pittsburgh

[@blazeburner303]

the fact mass fusion has such high levels of alpha radiation (since your skin can block it out almost entirely) that you only get after ingesting is honestly the most scientific thing Bethesda has ever done and I am shocked

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

That's the ironic thing with alpha radiation. It's incredibly dangerous because it is incredibly reactive. So reactive, that it reacts with the air and your clothing and your skin and dumps all the energy into the surface. Which is also why you are safe indoors, since your windows protect you sufficiently from it.

[@MrZipZipZipButModeratlyCool]

IIRC mass fusion was falsely advertised as safe fusion power to the people even though it was fission

[@lukezeiolf6977]

Probably was originally a bug

[@TheCaptnHammer]

I’m pretty sure that was interplay. Bethesda took it over for fallout 3. Interplay did fallout 1/2 and tactics. I have been playing the games since the first one came out and still own them on CD. 😊

[@zerrierslizer1]

@@TheCaptnHammer ayo i have the OG Release CD's as well!! i got the Collection that Interplay sold for a limited time.

[@incredibleflameboy]

Environmental surveyor: "did you dispose of that waste safely?" Fallout contracts: "yeah we dumped it into a spring which provides a local water supply" Surveyor: I'll have to report you if you didn't open the barrels too"

[@jonathanpilcher337]

Yea people in fallout can be comically stupid at times. Maybe it's from all the radiation lmao

[@elvingearmasterirma7241]

​@@jonathanpilcher337 Corruption. I think its the corruption because thats when it happens irl... i hope. It could just be bad writing from bethesda too

[@jonathanpilcher337]

@@elvingearmasterirma7241 the series in general struggles with nonsensical actions by anyone and everyone. People are just crazier in fallout ig. That's why I'm bringing up the possibility of radiation rotting people's minds as an explanation

[@OutlandStation]

This is essentially what happened in the 50's in an area where some of my family lived. Lotta cancer in the area now...

[@TheSpookiestSkeleton]

Probably all the lead paint and leaded gasoline

[@azeria1]

The fact a malfunctioning nuclear plant is the lowest on the list shows how safe nuclear power is

[@guerilla_gorilla6267]

Because a fictional game involving nuclear wastelands is the best judge of nuclear power

[@dingledongus]

I mean I agree with you but that really is a bad way to prove it 😂

[@randomintrovertedspider7510]

@@dingledongus A game about nuclear war is probably the worst way in general to support nuclear power, honestly enough, lol

[@vulkanofnocturne]

A manned nuclear plant is the safest, and a derelict nuclear plant is the most dangerous. The rest are weapon and toxic dumps.

[@finnweihing4023]

Homie nuclear energy is one of if not the most safe forms of energy production.

[@gtr9s]

According to the wiki the water in the mass fusion reactor gives you 100000 rad/s if you drink it.

[@Keeperoffyre]

so....super spicy water? :D

[@punking5613]

after some brief research that would be 1000 gray and would cause instant unconsciousness and death within an hour

[@JacobBite]

Which is interesting because water is a great radiation shield. It's actually safe to swim in the water of a reactor unless you're going right to the bottom. Don't try it though

[@youdungoofed1]

​@@JacobBiteActually, swimming in the forbidden reactor pool is near instant death. No one would ever make it to the bottom on account of the bullets that start flying at you.

[@tOGGLEwAFFLES]

​@@youdungoofed1 you know people dive into those pools to carry out maintenance, right?

[@poromafia]

Vault 87 was directly hit with a nuke during the Great war according to a cut Overseer's terminal log.

[@GemmaLB]

I think they mention it in the Citadel too? Anywho, if you TGM to it you can see the damage and a pair of dead scientists outside the door wearing radiation suits..

[@Chaostheory1980]

Pretty sure it fused the door shut too which I suppose was lucky in some ways although also lucky they ended up with a way out through Little Lamplight.

[@mikoto7693]

I wonder where I heard that if it’s cut content.

[@Chaostheory1980]

Either it is all in the terminals in the vault or the Prima guide maybe

[@masteroutlaw100]

@@mikoto7693 Probably read it on an old wiki, or just deduced it from common sense.

[@justanotheraccounthere2014]

Fallout 4 is also 200 years after the Great War, so a nuclear bomb crater is likely to have much less rads as a lot of the elements have already decayed into stable isotopes. A pool of water near a reactor designed to power a couple million homes in the Boston metropolitan area is going to be very deadly, especially given how blue it is.

[@8vantor8]

A bit over 210 actually. Give or take a little for the Earth's rotation and some minor dings to the ole' chronometer. - Codsworth

[@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystem]

​@@silent_hunter515 After 3

[@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystem]

@@silent_hunter515 Before, but yeah.

[@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystem]

@silent_hunter515 FNV is in 2281, F4 in 2287.

[@8vantor8]

@@silent_hunter515 my guy, it is a literal quote from the game, if it was wrong we would have a problem

[@mukuplays]

"Drinking the water in the reactor room will inflict 15 physical and *100,000* rad damage, killing the player character instantly unless they have the Lead Belly perk at its maximum level. Having the Ghoulish perk does not mitigate any of this damage. The Robes of Atom's Devoted from the Far Harbor add-on will protect from this damage; however, without the Lead Belly perk, radiation will still increase to a significant level." "Touching the agitator receptacle or the blue beam emitting from it in the reactor room will inflict 1 million damage irrespective of any perks, instantly killing the player character." - Fallout Wiki, Mass Fusion building TLDR; Mass Fusion water deals 100k rad damage.

[@Skullhawk13]

Finally spicy water

[@valkeitos]

That's absolutely mental. That means that the greys would sit at 2 million per second which would be enough to kill instantaneously if not in a few seconds.

[@rocktoo7603]

Forbidden blue kool aid

[@Haispawner]

I like that detail, it's insane levels of alpha radiation so it can't harm you from the outside (a sheet of paper and human skin completely blocks alpha radiation), but getting it inside you is a death sentence.

[@r.ndomperson]

😋

[@DemonBlanka]

This video is just reminding me of how absolutely horrifying radiation death is. Invisible energy that makes your flesh fall apart and your bones disintergrate.

[@4m4n40]

We understand radiation as much as a peasant understood diseases in the medieval times.

[@elvingearmasterirma7241]

​@@4m4n40 .... no? We understand it pretty well?? We know what causes it. The different particles and their effects and strength. How to block it (lead. Its lead) And what it does to the body and why. We know how much dosage the human body can take etc. We know a lot actually! Because frankly, radiation is an important part of science. Physics, chemistry, biology, medicine. Even anthropology and archeology because guess what? Radiocarbon dating relies on know how of how the radioactive isotopes decays in carbon 14! We know way more about radiation than medieval peasants did about disease.

[@lordofrims]

Hisashi Ouchi's case comes to mind...

[@elric5371]

@@lordofrims Hisashi Ouchi is too well known, he suffered horribly yes but for most of that he was in a coma. He didn’t suffer as bad as those from Chernobyl and is nowhere near the most irradiated person in history.

[@lordofrims]

@elric5371 pretty sure he was claiming to be let die in his painful last hours while he was brought back to life and treated with infusions, graftings, and medule transplants... he passed to unconsciousness more due to the pain than the narcotics I'd say.

[@cellulanus]

22:30 That sign isn't actually pre-war. That's a sign erected by the National Guard in the days or weeks following the Great War. You can see the same signs placed at numerous Military checkpoints across the wasteland. I think the Scientist seen at the entrance of the Vault was actually someone the military sent in to see if Vault 87 was still intact. It is easy to forget that the National Guard did make an attempt to follow protocol and maintain order. For a little while at least.

[@superspies32]

I read terminals and found that they tried to use the police station (which infested heavily with Super Mutants later in FO3) as camp to treat radiation sickness people. The terminal of the commander shown that they quickly ran out of cancer-related medicine and then her troops just volunteer to go to next hospiral to salvage that medicine but no one returned. On the last entries its shown that she too got radiation sickness but was forced to go outside to find medicine.

[@AndrooUK]

Ah, he's not going to read these comments or respond to them. Just the 'fun' ones.

[@alexshinra6722]

People do tend overlook that fact which sucks as it really shows the team wanted to do a freash like few days after the bombs sorta game.

[@Benic1991]

One time playing fallout 3 I loaded up on Radaway, maybe 200 or so, hot keyed them and ran towards vault 87. I was convinced I could get inside and with the help from my brother, who was furiously pressing the hot key button, I made it to the door and was so devastated when I couldn't make it into the vault. Good times 😂

[@Haispawner]

My man turned his blood into 99% radaway

[@tkhero7045]

@@Haispawner and *still* got vaporized

[@roddydykes7053]

I’ve also made it to this door back in the day, it’s nice to get the fast travel thing

[@blackhawks81H]

My goofy ass little nephew watching this video: "Fallout 76 can't be way in the past before New Vegas , the graphics are better." 😂

[@soun.slayer]

To be fair I thought the world was black and white in the past when I was little

[@jamieknight326]

Seems legit. I like the way he see’s it :)

[@davidragsdale5047]

It's to bad radiation is just a minor mechanic despite how important it is to the game's atmosphere.

[@Manfromthenorth0551]

What could they use radiation for other than a source of damage/debuff and niche weaponry/perks?

[@holo7070]

@@Manfromthenorth0551Ghoulification

[@Platnuimviper]

@@Manfromthenorth0551like In fo76 mutations ghoulification etc

[@trutwhut6550]

​@@Manfromthenorth0551alter the player character overtime, being able to absorb more whilst having stuff that removes it be far less common.

[@buwad523]

Glowing sea in survival with no hazmat suit and power armor is a nightmare

[@Haru-spicy]

RadKing: "Shame on those Fallout Tactics devs for saying Radiated instead of Irradiated" Also RadKing: "Ulyssis."

[@ErectedGasCan]

Lol 😂😂

[@RazorsharpLT]

Also RadKing: GAYUS MAGNUS

[@shipu948]

Zlmao

[@jh047o]

fallout 1 and 2 said radiated too

[@samsizer2919]

GAYUS MAGNUS, "dosometer" instead of "do-si-meter".

[@thomasgibbons3226]

*Gecko Plant:* I'm like... super dangerous for your health. Got a lot of radiation. *Disposal site in Fallout 76:* That's nothing. You should see my radiation levels! *A Vault Tec Door in The Capital and some water in Massachusetts laughing in RADS.*

[@dynomitejec]

Then the Pittsburgh River just ghoul coughs...

[@0lionheart]

The Glow will always be my favourite, it's basically a rite of passage for first time Fallout players. The first time you realise, far too late, that your character is lethally irradiated.. it's horrifying. They captured the terror of it better than any of the later games, where you get a handy accurate number on-screen and can immediately flush it out by spamming Rad-Away..

[@sjfs231]

when I first played fallout 4 they spent a lot of time hyping the glowing sea as extremely radioactive so I spent a long time making rad resistant armor and power armor only to be disappointed by the fact that I could walk through the glowing sea naked and be just fine. Later when playing OG Fallout I, after my experience with 4, assumed the Glow would be just as weak and went unprepared, BIG mistake.

[@Jaceblue04]

That's probably the in-universe reason the Vault Dweller is sent to The Glow; it's HIGHLY unlikely that the Brotherhood of Steel actually expects the Vault Dweller to come back from that fool's errand.

[@Jaceblue04]

@@sjfs231 I like to imagine that someone on the Fallout 4 dev team played Fallout 1, remembered how dangerous The Glow was, and said "Yeah, if we're gonna have the player go into ground zero for a nuclear explosion, let's NOT mandate the use of more Rad-X than exists in the game."

[@sjfs231]

@@Jaceblue04 not probably, definitely, they literally tell you they expected you to die

[@sjfs231]

@@Jaceblue04 it only takes 2 rad-x to make it through the glow, are you insane? The glow will kill you ins seconds if UNPREPARED, if you get there with any rad-x at all you will be fine. The glowing sea requires no prep at all to survive. I've gone there naked with no drugs and made it to Vergil and back

[@lulxors1235]

Worth noting that alpha particles cannot pass through most matter. a thin sheet of paper is enough to stop a lot of alpha radiation, same with a persons skin, clothes and armor.

[@mikoto7693]

I was wondering if I was misremembering that. Alpha radiation is only dangerous if it gets inside you. And that gamma radiation is the deadly one.

[@blackosprey2219]

Weird thing is, the vid acknowledges alpha radiation must be ingested to really hurt you while talking about drinking reactor water. I guess a script error?

[@RazorsharpLT]

Alpha and Beta radiation are the reasons we use Gasmasks. @@mikoto7693

[@crptpyr]

you can inhale it though, so depends on how dusty that area was too.

[@RazorsharpLT]

Yeah, that's my point (and the reason we use Gasmasks too) That's also why it's recommended that you use goggles + mask instead of just a basic filter masks, since they can get in the eyes too. If radioactive dustk would get into an eye - you would most likely lose the eye, if not worse considering the time of exposure. Aaaand considering the half-life of alpha particles is in the billions of years... dust storms in Chernobyl can STILL be quite deadly up until now. Scary to think that during a nuclear war - nuclear reactors WILL be invetibably hit, and we WILL have dozens of Chernobyls in the world WITHOUT the resources of an entire nation to fix 'em.

[@WastelanderSky]

As the list continued, I was confident the Glowing Sea would be somewhere. Needless to say, I was astonished as RadKing drank the water and showed the amount of instant rads. Now if only the Children of Atom found out about the Blessed Water.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

Now that is one kind of holy water that will DEFINITELY kill a vampire. Better warn Vance's people not to follow the coast north, no matter how thirsty they get.

[@ryelor123]

I'm actually wondering if that cult exists to create a new type of human that's immune to radiation exposure so that humans can once again take over the world.

[@itsshawn1265]

When I saw the 9999 rads I was like “😳”

[@Skullhawk13]

@@ryelor123canonically some of them are immune. They never die of rads. Despite looking like a nutter cult Atom might be real. Like ACTUALLY.

[@Skullhawk13]

@@ryelor123rad immune ones exist. Atom is legit real

[@dafoxxo]

And as far as Fallout 3 having some of the highest radioactive areas in the series, I've always head canoned it as use of cobalt bombs since it was the capital and also a major strategic steel supply regarding The Pitt

[@klaykid117]

That's also the same reason I came to as to why there's so much t45 it was a little outdated for the front lines but perfect for civilian riot control in the nation's capital. You might be able to overpower a line of cops with plastic riot shields but no one's getting through a bunch of dudes in t45

[@FatrickAteman]

The Mojave had *77 Nukes* shot at it, in a world where China has had a nonstop nuclear buildup for a little over a century i can totally see DC being hit with an utterly absurd number of nukes alongside the cobalt bombs you mentioned.

[@kingofhearts3185]

​@Gyrfalcon312Indeed they are. Basically designed to spew radioactive dust over a large area, the kind that stays around for decades. Nasty doesn't begin to describe it.

[@Valsorayu]

@@kingofhearts3185 Mutually assured extinction...

[@windhelmguard5295]

doesn't even need to be salted nukes really, just looking at the mojave there are very few actual craters, so most of the nukes dropped there must have been air bursts, which minimizes actual fallout. on the east coast however we find a lot more craters, implying that a larger number of nukes were detonated at, or below ground level, which causes much more radioactive fallout. this also makes sense, since underground infrastructure, such as subways, are much more common on the east coast.

[@priitmolder6475]

"Its not 9999 rad... its 15 000" "What does that number mean?" "It means its Quantum Syrup"

[@jadesaber99]

You should also take into account how fast time flows in game. Like how most games like this have 24 minute days. Which means if the rads in the drywells crater could instantly kill you in 4 minutes it would make sense you only last 4 seconds

[@TheDiner50]

It most likely at the end of the day is just gameplay reasons. And really since the mechanic do not consider a dose to lead to death after many in game days? You can really just expect that the 4 seconds exposure would be enough to seal your death. The time it takes to truly tell the consequences seems to not be a thing in the games.

[@AndrooUK]

​@@TheDiner50It's too difficult for games, especially with aged engines like Bethesda keeps using, to keep track of effects over time, and to apply them accurately, beyond a crude dose meter and arbitrary penalties to stats.

[@Sychyov]

​@@AndrooUKit's not difficult. The time just passed 20 times faster and that's it. The effects applied over time are usually bound to the real-time, not game time.

[@Death_Is_Magic]

You can survive the 9999 rad water from the Power Plant if you have the Lead Belly perk maxed out

[@june9914]

How many rads do you get after lead belly?

[@Blox117]

still wont help you with todd howard's bathwater

[@wybub]

@@june9914 maxed out lead belly makes you immune to rads from eating and drinking

[@haka-katyt7439]

Can't you also fill a bottle with it and drink it for much less rads? Idk I don't play survival

[@notjebbutstillakerbal]

There's a pool of water that kills the player instantly via giving them 1m rads, no matter what perks you have

[@Inigo626]

the screen going black in #4 could be the instant "coma" as you'd most likely die in game before it finishes

[@cursedhawkins1305]

I think the reason why Camp Searchlight only has a max rads of +18 per second is because unlike a fresh nuke going off radiation does have a half-life point and the barrels that were in Camp Searchlight likely were at that point but were still deadly enough if tampered with like they were by the Legion to kill someone. Just an example Eben Byers ended up getting an injury or something in his left arm after rolling off his bed, because the pain from whatever injury he got was still shooting from his left arm someone suggested he try this "miracle" medicine called Radithor (the name alone should probably be enough to tell you what this man was drinking) this man drinks over 1400 bottles of this Radithor medicine over a course of three years before his body literally falls apart from all of the radiated water he consumed and you can even find the photo that was taken of the man when his jaw fell off (now you can put a name to the radiated water bottles in the Fallout games, because Radithor was literally just that Radium and water) Edit: oh, and it's suspected that his body is still producing radiation to this very day since Radium's half-life point is 1600 years and this man died in 1932 seven years before WW2 would officially begin.

[@theatagamer90]

Good. Lord. That's a LOT of radiation. And 100% that grave is probably going to be giving off radiation unless he's in a lead casket.

[@cursedhawkins1305]

@@theatagamer90 They did bury him in a lead casket. Edit: but if I recall correctly, the officials did try to see if he was still producing radiation which would have meant unearthing the casket which is how they found out that yes, his body was still producing the same amount of radiation when he was buried, you probably have to think about how much of a risk just replacing his casket has to be because I doubt lead caskets can last forever.

[@samsizer2919]

Yeah, Searchlight was far more recent which is why it's pretty radioactive, but, the radiation source wasn't as nutty and still, some time has passed. Half-life being a thing and all.

[@katiemckinney9456]

@@cursedhawkins1305 Would making a second, bigger lead casket, then figuring out a way to put the first casket inside the second work as a possible solution? That way the body doesn't need to be removed, and now you have two layers of lead keeping the radiation from leaking out.

[@cursedhawkins1305]

@@katiemckinney9456 The body itself would just rot the casket meaning it would still need to be replaced unless it's just being left to rot now a days.

[@Dank-gb6jn]

The Nevada Test Site from NV, and the blast furnace from Fallout 3 deserved to be honorable mentions. *edit: Hell’s Motel/Mesquite Mountain Crater as well.

[@east4246]

I was thinking Hells Motel should be on there

[@Dank-gb6jn]

@@east4246 right? Definitely not the *most* irradiated spot, but definitely worthy of at least an honorable mention.

[@tyberzahn7398]

So, upon some research, the Mass Fusion Reactor's water source hits you with 100,000 RADS. And the blue beam hits with one million damage in one instant.

[@Japixx]

This is from G.E.C.K?

[@Fro_Jangles]

"Like my hope to buy a house" I felt that

[@DigitalNomad88]

Right? Now it's just a dream

[@garrettmetting6938]

Me when worldwide housing crisis

[@irExron]

The #2 spot sign was likely scavenged somewhere, and placed there, i also believe that the ".5 seconds" was added by either the same, or another wastelander who found the sign as you can see what looks like a piece of paper written on it

[@Manfromthenorth0551]

It could have also been some post-war soldiers or volunteers. For some time after the Great War there were people still trying to keep order and keep things running for a time before ultimately disbanding. It could be possible that some soldiers/volunteers were trying to protect survivors from the worst radiation hotspots and placed the warning there.

[@masteroutlaw100]

It was almost certainly put there by remnants of the army, you can find abandoned checkpoints everywhere and that terminal in Germantown that explains how the army tried to maintain order after the bombs fell only for everything to slowly fall apart due to radiation. Army remnants likely put the sign there to warn off travelers without geiger counters that might get too close and inadvertently give themselves radiation poisoning.

[@ryelor123]

I never understood the capital wasteland. Why didn't everything rot away? I sadly know how fast a house turns from a home to a pile of rotting wreckage once the roof fails. Even if all the bacteria and fungus were somehow all killed off in the area, that stuff would just come back quickly especially when there are special bacteria colonies that use large multi-cellular creatures to acquire food and disperse excess bacteria population growth. Another issue is why does anything painted still remain? If the grass and plants in the area were all irradiated to death, then sandy dust would pretty much sandblast everything. Windows would all be fogged up and cars wouldn't even exist as they'd slowly blow away as they rust.

[@jcohasset23]

@@ryelor123 It's theorized that unofficially both Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 were planned to be set around the time of or even before the original Fallout instead of over 100 years later, which would explain a lot of the aesthetics and the relative lack of progress in recovery of society, though for some reason it was changed to occur after Fallout 2 (for Fallout 4 it's likely it was changed so they could make references to Fallout 3 even if that required canonizing certain parts of what happens in 3). It's part of the argument that Bethesda doesn't understand Fallout originally being a post-post apocalypse game featuring retro futurism and instead made it post apocalypse with culture stuck in the 1950's.

[@MysteryCookie006]

@@jcohasset23 That theory was fake

[@gagaplex]

In the games with a 3D engine, the "rads per second" applies to realtime seconds, I believe. Despite the ingame clock/day-cycle running much faster. That'll mess up the comparison to the earlier titles... basically, you would have to account for ingame seconds as opposed to realtime seconds.

[@AndrooUK]

He's not gonna bother changing anything.

[@Caine_42]

Interplay did a hell of a job with both fo1 and fo2 with all their research on both atomic, radioactive and virology when they created the fallout universe

[@jackp.richardson6415]

It’s very weird how you can walk into the crater of the nuke blast in the Glowing Sea, but right above Vault 87 is (almost) impossible to reach without dying despite the same circumstances

[@the11382]

Wasn't it a nuclear reactor? The real nuke detonation we see is Cambridge Crater.

[@jackp.richardson6415]

@@the11382 Could be, but it also isn't as deadly as Vault 87

[@exantiuse497]

In real life neither of those places would be so irradiated. I mean, there are actual real world sites where nukes exploded decades ago (e.g. Hiroshima, various nuclear test sites), and they are pretty much safe nowadays. In Fallout 3 and 4 those nukes exploded centuries ago and are still so radioactive you die literally in seconds, what is that about?

[@the11382]

@@exantiuse497 Hiroshima got cleaned up. The radioactive materials got removed. As for testing sites, it depends. In fallout, nobody was around to clean up. However, with F3 and F4 blame Bethesda's writing.

[@ryelor123]

@@exantiuse497 I think they were playing off of the nuclear fears of people. My own mom didn't know until several years ago that Nagasaki and Hiroshima aren't radioactive wastelands. In reality most of the radiation would've gone into the sea or decayed enough to not matter. I think another issue is that they needed something to hold back rebuilding or else the series wouldn't be so bleak. With just the FEV being the problem, people would just massacre all the dangerous animals and mutants and society would rebuild. Just the amount of physical devastation in Fallout shows that the war would've had far more and much much bigger bombs than in real life.

[@Aurelius-bf3yx]

It makes a lot of sense to me 3 and 4 have the most irradiated places given they're on the East Coast, cause in reality if a Nuclear war happened the East coast would probably be hit the hardest as that's where most of the centers of government, military, and business are.

[@TheNuclearGeek]

Actually, we still use Rem, and actually typically track millirem (R/hr, mR/hr, etc.) to track our dose with our dosimetry in nuclear plants. But Rems and Sieverts are direct conversions, it's just that we don't want to deal with micro/millisievert measurements when it's not really necessary to THAT exactly. It's much easier to know you're dealing with a 10 mrem field, or that you collected 1 mrem of dose instead of 0.1 mSv field or 0.01 mSv field.

[@LiterallyAna]

Name checks out

[@TheNuclearGeek]

@@LiterallyAnaMy personal highest field was 23 R/hr 😁

[@DarkWarchieff]

Something I wondered for a long time, what would a absurdly high amount of rads do to you? Hundreds or thousands of grays for example. Would you just fall apart into a gory human goo?

[@peger]

preaty much. Look at Hisashi Ouchi or Robert Peabody. They are considered the most radioactive people in history

[@kaymish6178]

To take that much you'd have to stand in front of a graser a gamma ray laser. Basically instant vaporisation.

[@Chronomaton]

Yeah to my knowledge radiation damages your DNA such that your cells commit suicide and die so as to not cause cancer. So if you were exposed to enough radiation to saturate you to your core you would more or less just melt into a pile of blood.

[@spoopybat7880]

@@peger Reading about what happened to Hisashi Ouchi is bone-chilling. I understand that it was at the family's (and his) request to be kept alive and studied but the fact that he survived 83 days while his organs liquified sounds like torture. By comparison the fact that Robert Peabody only lived 49 hours after exposure is a small mercy.

[@dreadfulman5191]

I doubt it. It would take more than just radiation to turn a body into goop. Like say heat. Radiation itself kills you by destroying your dna, proteins, lipids, etc. The dmg is at the molecular or even atomic scale so it won't be readily observed. The reason why people who have been irradiated start falling apart is because the body is still living in a sense. Cellular processes are still occuring as usual but the molecules involved are highly damaged or destroyed. A damaged cog in a machine is more destructive than no cog at all. A chain reaction of cell rupturing occurs thanks to the abnormal molecules compounded by the immune reaction against such cells and molecules. Tissues fall apart and organs fail. Basically the body starts killing itself. The radiation was just the trigger. But who knows. There could be a threshold limit of radiation so intense it could turn a adult human into instant goop. But such things are better left as mysteries.

[@dafoxxo]

FINALLY Someone else who's as pedantic about "radiated" vs "irradiated." Trader Jen from 7 Days to Die also says radiated and it drives me NUTS

[@monhi64]

A bit like all the people who think inflammable thinks that it means it’s not flammable. Which Jesus I know people have died because of that or caused huge amounts of damage. Doesn’t drive me nuts but cmon it’s not that complicated even if slightly unintuitive. Nonflammable is the word they’re looking for

[@foxsimpson8140]

29:50 "9999 Rads? Not great, not terrible"

[@RangerOfTheOrder]

According to the Fallout wiki, drinking the reactor water deals 100,000 rad damage.

[@seanromine3932]

I always kind of figured that those signs were put up post war. People expected vaultec to eventually give word that things were safe, that monitoring of things were being conducted inside and outside the vaults and honestly, I think they were, even if it didn't last. Or again, maybe they still are, lots of unknowns out there. That dead scientist outside of Vault 87 could have been sent by someone. They might have set up the signs as a clear warning for all those thinking about entering into certain areas. But would they necessarily continue to monitor activity in a vault that was more or less dead? Not a lot of vaults we encounter that are still alive and active. So maybe they don't have nearly as much to keep an eye on as it stands. But if indeed the maps in our pipboys reflect the new world topography, maybe someone has been updating this, just like with Riley's Rangers mapping the D.C. area. I mean. It vaultec had the resources and didn't feel like social experimenting themselves, could have set up a rather elaborate shelter, maybe more inland where they could monitor the mainland American continent more easily from under a location considered to be of no strategic value to foreign aggressors. Could still easily be alive and hidden away then. In a place as of yet to be explored by a fallout game.

[@ryelor123]

Since most of the nukes were ground-hitting instead of airburst, I doubt there would've been much of an EMP knocking out robots. So my guess is that right after the bombs dropped, there was a brief moment in time when robots ruled the wasteland and some of them were probably programmed to do the things you bring up. However, they ended up getting taken out eventually by various mutants and internal breakdowns. Most of the robots you probably see in game would've been re-built ones made generations later.

[@ryanbusch2885]

27:26 love the Cherenkov blue in the reactor room

[@pickelhaube8767]

I went into the files out of curiousity because of this video and the Mass Fusion reactor water actually gives 100000 radiation damage when drinking it.

[@NephilimHunter1959]

For comparison the workers at Chernobyl during clean up racked up between 0.8 and 16 grays

[@thedreadengine]

Finally, a list of the best places of worship for Atom

[@jeremyscungio16]

My guess with the vault 87 sign is that someone put the sign there post war but most likely scavenged it from somewhere else

[@jonathanpilcher337]

Throughout the map there are signs and checkpoints assumingly left by post war military remnants trying to aid survivors fleeing the area

[@ryelor123]

Civil defense robots.

[@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus]

Really shows how more grounded and realistic Fallout 1 and 2 are in comparison to 3 and 4

[@Gojira_Wins]

I used that Radiation Overhaul mod with another radiation mod. It made Rads be about 50 to 900 a second near radioactive barrels and 10 in water. It's a ton and makes you really play carefully. However, the room in Mass Fusion with the Agitator is SO radioactive that you only have 30 second to a minute in a full suit of X01 power armor (modded to have 1000 rad resistance) with rad-x. When pulling the agitator out, I believe it goes into the thousands. I love mods that make games stressful. Knowing I can't dick around in there because I have maybe a minute to accomplish my mission is thrilling.

[@xavier1964]

The irony js that in real life, the radiation you would be exposed to would actually be much LESS than in stock fallout 4. 200 years is long enough for the vast majority of high-level nuclear waste to decay, meaning you should be receiving much lower doses than you see ingame.

[@exantiuse497]

@xavier1964 Precisely this. Radiation is unrealistically high in all modern Fallout games. The amount of radiation you receive from 200 year old nuke sites should not be as high as Chernobyl reactor during the accident, lmao

[@Lukas-tn6go]

„The Most radioactive places in fallout“ First place he mentions has less radiation than a nuka cola

[@mikoto7693]

Hah, I was so confident that the entrance to Vault 87 would be the most irradiated spot in the series! In a way it still is, since it’s gamma radiation that’s killing you but in Mass Fusion you actively have to search it out by drinking it. That being said, since I side with the Minutemen the game never sent me to Mass Fusion. I did eventually go there whilst exploring and farming combat armour and high quality guns from the Gunners for my Settlers. I grabbed the Beryllium Agitator entirely by accident and had no idea what it was at the time. Later I googled it, knew instinctively that it would be important to humankind one day, and stored it in my General’s personal HQ and most likely the most fortified place in the Commonwealth-especially since in my headcanon, the mechanist lair has power and the security systems rebuilt since I snuck in through the elevator entrance. Mind you, in my post game headcanon the mechanist HQ becomes home to the MM engineering division where each robot is built individually using a modified version of ADA’s personality to run it, instead of coordinating via robobrains.

[@lonelystarslibrary9326]

I love it when people make their own cool headcanons like that!

[@MysteryCookie006]

That's called Roleplay

[@TobeWilsonNetwork]

New Vegas barely touched, House knew what he was doing

[@etinarcadiaego7424]

Blood loss, biological infection, and radiation are the only three things on earth that throw me into a panic attack. Sometimes even thinking about those things makes me feel a bit ill.

[@june9914]

Why would you come here?

[@redrobsanthem9206]

I’m sending a letter with anthrax and caesium-137 remnants

[@markjackson1989]

Just wanted to say, in my engineering class last year that went over radiation safety, we used rads and rems. I have never heard of a "grey" before. Although we also went over becquerels and curies.

[@AndrooUK]

Well, it depends on your nation, and what you actually need to know for your class, and in what detail. If you don't need to understand actual biological effects, or physics principles, and just 'keep radiation low, yo', then it might be enough to keep to rads and rems. 'Engineering class' is far too vague to give context on what is necessary, considering all the different types of engineering there are.

[@erinhaury5773]

We have two large scale x-ray machines at work as a microbial kill-step and they measure the dosage in GY.

[@anthonytheless]

Love the video! I like that you considered the differences between alpha, beta, and gamma. You mentioned that Grays and Sieverts were more common nowadays, but the nuclear plant I work at still uses Rem and mRem when measuring dose. My guess is that Rem is more common for lower dose measurements or that it carried over with the age of the plant and the dosimeters in use.

[@Hibashira_Akai]

I think you've got some misunderstandings about radiation and health physics. Don't sweat it, though. I got you. A Rad is only equivalent to a Rem if the absorbing material is equal to that of human tissue. Different densities of stuff absorb the energy differently. The more energetic a gamma photon or beta particle, the more penetrating it is. The more dense an absorber is, the more effective it is at absorbing radiation. When doing these calculations, we factor them into the accuracy of dose rate measuring equipment to get Rads and Rem. We also factor that into the effectiveness of radiation shielding. Speaking of Rads and Rem, the US still uses them! Conveniently, they were conceived in a more modern time, so they have a direct equivalent to SI units. One Gray is 100 Rads. One Sievert is 100 Rem. To remember it easily. A Rem is a centiSievert! They also left out the Roentgen, Bequerel, and the Curie. The Roentgen is a measure of the Gray as it pertains to ionizations of atoms in the air. They sometimes call it the "Gray in air." We use that in the US still, but the National Institute of Standards and Testing discourages it. The Bequerel is an SI unit for actual radioactive material. It translates to one decay or disintegration (a radioactive emission) per second. The Curie is an older unit (like the Roentgen). A Curie is based on the Radium 226 isotope that Curie herself is known for. One nanoCurie is equal to 37 disintegrations per second. That's just units. You can look up the US Department of Energy's chart of radioactive dose as it pertains to the human body. It's a really kick-ass infographic.

[@WhiteTree97]

who asked

[@shedninjareal]

@@WhiteTree97 i did

[@knellycornnan5132]

Radiation in the glowing sea originally worked different. Originally it was supposed to progressively irradiate the player even more as they got close to the center of it. And the radiation was originally quite high out there.

[@quicksilvertongue3248]

So the Glowing Sea doesn't even make the list

[@Welsh7133]

They needed to make it an explorable area, if it were as radioactive as it looks it would definitely be on the list

[@action4newsinligme803]

Becquerels are also used on some occasions. They are more intuitive physically. You'll still see Röntgen and REM around, at least in the US. If working with sources it is important to be able to work with all of the units to have an idea of relative risk of exposures. Also you can breathe alpha particles. Ingestion or inhalation are both major threats

[@louissteyn6871]

Radiation in the original games not killing you as quickly as in the bethesda games also makes sense from a purely gameplay perspective, the games has no indication that you are actively taking on radiation and you can only tell if a location is radioactive is from context clues or checking your rems after the fact, so the player character just seemingly randomly dropping dead while exploring wouldn't be fun

[@CrystalTikal]

For #2,could the sign have been put up by survivors who attempted to reach the Vault?

[@jonathanpilcher337]

There are multiple signs and checkpoints left by post war military remnants trying to aid survivors fleeing the area

[@LucyWest370]

I would assume if it was just some random people grafitti would be a lot easier than finding a sign

[@ryelor123]

There were robots all over the place and obviously many many more right before the warheads landed. I'm sure civil-defense robots were plentiful for a time right after the attack.

[@nostalgicmusicbox]

Yup, sounds like a Bethesda game: "In true Fallout fashion. The construction efforts were, shoddy, cutting corners, and using inferior materials (Creation Engine?)."

[@2hundidforbigsucci]

I really want to see how Utah is in fallout. We learn in FNV Honest Hearts that I think 7 bombs hit Salt Lake City. That would probably create a lot of radiation. Other areas probably have stronger amounts of radiation though

[@orbitalpython]

13 bombs the whole place is basically just a couple bent steel frames and nothing else the chinese had something against Salt Lake City and SLC specifically

[@ryelor123]

The Great Salt Lake is a sort of non-draining basin so pretty much every bit of radioactive fallout on the entire state would all collect in the lake. It would be a nightmarish body of water.

[@hckr47]

The time to death in game is more believable to me at least if you take into account that game time passes much faster. Fallout 4 I think is 20 to 1, or 20 seconds game time is 1 second real. I may be off on the ratio, Google says FO3 is 30x so the 2 seconds at vault 87 is about a minute. Thanks for helping lunch pass faster.

[@jetrifle4209]

God play the real fallouts because you sound like you don't know anything

[@someedgyusername]

@@jetrifle4209 It's literally just a video game, calm down

[@DerInterloper]

A wonderful bit of research, I shall sample each of these.

[@coffee5981]

That comment "Fall down completely dead, like my hopes of ever buying a house" heavily irradiated me.

[@outsidersmotorclub]

I love this video. I teach radiation safety for industrial radiography, so if anyone has questions I can try and answer them for you. Your information about the radiation itself (dose units, quality factor etc.) Is really good. For industrial radiography we still use the Rem as our base unit. Edit: I got to the GECK part of the video. I will try and do a dose calculation for what the the dose rate is closer to the control panel. Since the explosion knocks you back, the 161Rad dose rate is from X distance causing a drop in the rate due to the inverse square law.

[@starbasednews5830]

How long does radation last like if a city is nuked and it detonates on the ground?

[@outsidersmotorclub]

@starbasednews5830 that is totally based off the half life of the isotope used. Many industrial radio isotopes have half life's in months or years, but others (uranium 235 for example, found in nuclear weapons) is in the hundreds of millions of years. With that being said radiation never truly goes away. With the term half life it is like taking 1 divided by 1/2 over and over. First it goes to 1/2 then 1/4, 1/8 1/16 so on, and never truly reaches 0. It will lose enough activity eventually to be within allowable levels, but never truly goes away. Dose rate is also effected by how many curies of an isotope there is. For example, an industrial source of iridium 192 at 100 curies has a dose rate of 590Rem/hour at 1 foot. I hope that answers your question.

[@exantiuse497]

The rad values in later Fallout games are just crazy. For real life reference, in Chernobyl accident a piece of the reactor melted into a solid piece of metal that was named "elephant's foot". This object was one of the most radioactive things in history. In 1986, 8 months after the accident, its radioactivity was measured at 100 Grays or 10 000 rads per hour, or less than 3 rads per second. Still enough to cause lethal radiation poisoning in under 10 minutes In Fallout universe water, actual regular seawater, gives 5 rads/s. WATER is more radioactive after 200 years of nuclear war in Fallout, than a piece of nuclear reactor 8 months after Chernobyl accident in real world. That makes no sense

[@westonrivafd5719]

Very unknown fact on fallout new Vegas if you do not interact with Benny on the strip and thus not starting the main quest, you can launch both ICBMS at both the NCR and Legion. Kill Benny step out of the tops and receive amnesty from both main factions and explore both areas I’d recommend clearing both areas before killing Benny as you’ll lose standing while killing both in the long 15 and dry wells

[@o.k.productions5202]

It sort of makes sense that the capital got hit with the most powerful bombs that the Chinese had, notice that of the top 3 most radioactive places only one of them was an impact sight while the other 2 were from nuclear waste. Pretty sure it’s stated somewhere Vault 87 was hit directly or something.

[@Justachamp772]

Finally Rad King talks about Rad, his own kind!

[@elboyo8343]

One thing that came to mind in moments where you point out the player dies faster than real life, but also that in real life a person would fall into a coma at those levels, we can probably just safely assume we are falling into a coma.

[@Grimpy970]

Those radiation warning signs found around the DC ruins are only technically pre-war. They were manufactured and stockpiled before the war, but they were only deployed after the bombs fell. There's a few on highway routes next to old military checkpoints. These simply wouldn't have been there pre-war. The signs are a remnant of army or national guard surveying teams. Whatever caused the entrance to vault 87 to be so contaminated, it happened after the occupants were inside and road-capable vehicles were able to reach that place.

[@KomradeDoge]

It actually makes sense in the lore that there's not any major areas of radiation in the New Vegas base game. The entire region was spared from the bombs by Mr.House's defense systems.

[@th0rnthire354]

You made a mistake at around the 4:00 mark, you got it backwards with alpha being the easiest to deal with being the lowest energy particles with gamma being the highest energy with extreme penetrative power causes deep cellular denaturing effects as it passes through every layer of the body while alpha is stopped mostly skin deep due to its low energy state.

[@OfficialBulldozerStudios]

It's funny that you mentioned the screen going black when you approach the middle of the crater in Dry Wells where the nuke exploded. See, you're not really supposed to go there in normal gameplay, and if you attempt too without turning on God Mode, the screen cutting to black is the last thing you see before you die instantly. Yep, the game knows the radiation there is so intense it can kill you in mere seconds, so it doesn't matter how much rad resist you have, it just straight up insta-kills you before you can even reach the middle of the crater.

[@kamikazemelon787]

The funny thing is that FO3 onwards has RIDICULOUS amounts of radiation in random spots by real standards. We have to remember the amount of time that has passed since the Great War, so I’m not surprised FO1 and 2 have such “low” radiation areas. Also I appreciate the alpha rad calculations but alpha radiation can literally be stopped by clothing and even skin etc. Alpha radiation can really only be dangerous if you swallow a source. Gamma radiation is what most media is referring to when they use “radioactivity” as a general term

[@sylvananas7923]

About the vault 87 sign, my headcanon is that people moved the sign after the bombs, as others tried to reach the vault for safety only to die to radiations and so what remnants of the national guard, law enforcements or just civilians took the sign there to warn future people in the area

[@melanietorrence4595]

Man I needed your video, my brother just passed n need something to focus on so bad ❤

[@shedninjareal]

i am so happy that rad is able to help you in this hard time ~shed

[@Rad_King]

I am really sorry you're going through this. Stay strong, friend.

[@mustafaabdelwahab1478]

I have tried and got very close to where the front door should've been at vault 87, then realized there was no door and wasted so many radaways

[@KellySteam]

The rad king checking out the rad-est part of the wasteland! haha, tubular duuude!

[@kalkuttadrop6371]

The Glow is so radioactive that it bugs out the games calculations if you wait in the pipboy. Waiting the maximum 6 hours causes the per minute calculations to be lower, while shorter waits give higher per minute. Your best bet for a fully accurate count is to MASH the Geiger counter button. If you wanna avoid wasting time to check the Pipboy, set a TNT timer for 3 minutes that will finish for you. The numbers at The Glow are a staggering 30 Rads per click, which at around 2 and a half clicks per second is 75 Rads/second. You will use up the battery of your geiger counter in less time than the TNT takes to run and you will be well into the thousands. Nowhere else in the game does that or really has much radiation at all(There's a small random chance of being irradiated everywhere in the map, especially at Necropolis and LA, but it's low and random so seemingly in universe you might just occasionally walk on-top of a hot spot or random hot particle on occasion). I am curious if this method results in higher numbers at the two radioactive locations in 2, The Power Plant and The Toxic Waste Dump.

[@ginomctony6773]

This gives me a warm/glowy feeling in my skin :) Don't use console commands to go-to vault 87's door and then save and quit, you softlock your save cause you die before the console can even be opened.

[@sckragley13]

I like how I don't expect to learn much from these videos and then he always puts in a lot of research for real context.👍

[@thargs9184]

22:58 I always assumed some wastelander used a pre-placed sign, moved it and added the 5second as its not the same as other panel, that was added after it seems.

[@SvengelskaBlondie]

"Like my hopes of ever buying a house" A few days ago, I looked on the biggest Swedish adsite, I found a school in the northernmost parts of Sweden that was being sold for a mere 25,000$ (around 250,000 Swedish Kroners). While it would be cool to own a former school and you get an insane amount of space for your money (almost 10,000 square feet), I don't think id want to live that far up north (it's within the arctic circle, roughly as north as central mainland Alaska). I think would also be a bit pricey keeping it warm, especially in a region of Sweden that frequently gets as cold as roughly -40C/F

[@crabbuckets7506]

It's so lovely to listen to this and play Fallout 4 at the same time 😊 no radaway for me sir I got the X-01. May Atoms blessing be with you.

[@ryelor123]

Seems like every character in Bethesda's Fallout games has BPD. Guess that hints at some stuff going on that they couldn't talk about.

[@PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth]

Fallout 3 and onward's instant death due to radiation has never been particularly realistic. The largest dosage of radiation ever experienced by any single person was the "demon core" incident, which basically involved a scientist taking a nuclear bomb's worth of radiation directly to the face. Even then, it still took a day or so for him to die of radiation sickness.

[@jetrifle4209]

You're wrong but nice try at some failed Google searches

[@denistardif6650]

Roentgen is the unit measurement used on Giger counters in nuclear power plants IRL

[@seanmcelroy6222]

I'm surprised that The Whitehouse didn't make the list.

[@red_crayon9771]

19:07 A child of Atom using Radaway? Heresy

[@JGreen-le8xx]

The only thing more RAD than a count of +9999 is the content you put up.

[@user-gs9qy8yn7n]

5:46 the correct answer is; “so i broke into a nuclear reactor in real life and camped there for 3 days”

[@cjthebeesknees]

Your comment about the corner cutting and coverups being *so fallout* is actually commentary on real life corruption and reality.

[@samsizer2919]

I think Interplay/Obsidian understood that radiation levels are going to be *dramatically* lower after 100-200 years than how Bethesda portrayed it... or at least, Bethesda chose to sensationalize it more. It always bothered me after learning more about how radiation works how high the rads still are in so many places in FO3/FO4. Yeah, it would still suck a bit in places and there would be hotspots, but, still. I wonder if a mod exists to kinda correct that. It makes sense that, in New Vegas, the most irradiated areas are areas that have been irradiated post-War, as in, relatively recently. Searchlight and, of course, mere hours after you dropped a nuke on Dry Wells, lol. As for Fallout 76, the players are dropping nukes and the Great War was only 25-28 years prior, so, that makes sense as to why the rads might be so damn high in that setting, at least.

[@ServantOfOdin]

To be perfectly honest, I completely forgot about Vault 87.... I assumed the Mass Fusion reactor at 2 and the Glowing Sea at 1.... I'll be darned....

[@neokai5511]

That was really really good, refreshing. I’m happy you surprised me actually, I never considered the water in Mass Fusion, I guess there’s always something new to learn about the Fallout series

[@alanschlieper]

Just for fun, I pulled up that water type in the CK and it does an even 100,000 / sec.

[@kalkuttadrop6371]

It’s worth noting that you CAN rest at the other levels of The Glow,, once you’ve cleared out the enemies(specifically the security robots which are dormant until you turn the power back on. Also the game does measure time to some degree, minutes tick by slowly on the pip boy if you stand around or constantly waste combat turns. Maybe try using that with the counter. I remember you could spam click the counter on the surface to get a rough clicks per second estimate

[@rodan9773]

Well The Drive throw Movie Theater in Fallout 4 has a Radiation spot that gives off 15 Rads that's more then i got wondering throw The Green Sea area with no Rad Suit. Respect and keep up the epic work.

[@lanefurno]

My thoughts on the water at 29:35 Nappa: "Vegeta, what does the geiger counter say about the water's rads???" Vegeta: "IT'S OVER 9,000!!!!!!!!!"

[@WillianBusch]

Honorable Mention: the modding community.

[@KinaIchi]

One thing people don’t know, is that technically, we can survive any amount of Radiation IIFFF are body can survive through the affects to rebuild the nervousystem.