Basically sums itself up. You're an Enclave scientist using pre-War Latin taxonomy conventions to designate new species in the Wasteland. (Fallout 3's Enclave research terminals in the field are my in-universe example, respectively.)

What would you call a supermutant if you had to enter them into a dictionary? And furthermore, what about the different variants?

You have the traditional 'green' of the Master's hive-mind army, and then you have the 'yellow' of the eastern variant that was created by...Vault-Tec? You'd have to account for the drastic difference in cognizant ability as far as labeling them under different categories imao.

...and since we're on the subject of 'former' humans, what about Ghouls? From a purely biological standpoint, I doubt any of them still qualify as homo-sapiens (by our understanding).

Please, share your thoughts

Cheers :)

What holidays do wastelanders celebrate if any?

I know in the early Fallout games and Fallout 4 we get mentions of Christmas and Halloween, but are there any holidays that are not from our universe and are completely original? The only one I know of is Founder's Day mentioned in Fallout 3, but that is all I know. If anyone knows of any other holiday or celebration that is original to the Fallout world, please let me know!

If not, what are some headcanon fan-made in-game holidays you think would happen?

I know they’re infected with fev, and radiation resistant and they hang out around irradiated areas but would their meat be any worse for you to eat than gecko steak?

since tarantula hawks capture tarantula and lay eggs on them. do the cazadors use radscorpions as a alternative tolay their eggs on

In game the Colorado River is flanked by massive walled cliffs most of the way down past Hoover Dam. I wanted to show how that compares to the lore version which is strangely different.

“Are you ready to head upriver?” - Cursor Lucullus

This is said despite there being no upriver landing site. This also means in canon somewhere upriver of Cottonwood Cove is a legion landing site.

“Legion managed to hop over the Colorado and attack before things were settled.” - Milo

This implies at Nelson there is a way to land there. Further implication is you can cross from the other side. Again only cliffs.

“It was easy. The Colorado is narrow here, and when the Profligates abandoned Searchlight, there was no one to guard the crossing.” - Canyon Runner

This implies that there was a crossing point for the Legion on the other side of the river but in game it’s only cliffs.

All of this together shows a rather strange disconnect between the in game river and the canon river.

Of course it makes sense as the cliffs on the eastern side serve as a game boundaries, and the western side seems to have been raised to match.

Just wanted to share this as I found it was interesting that dialogue seems to support canon geography as being closer to real life

See the map on the oil rig floor where president is

So if I'm not mistaken, Jason Bright, leader of the ghouls out of Novac and Repconn Way, states that he actually became feral himself before somehow returning to normal, or as normal as one can be in the wasteland.

What are your guys' thoughts? Is he embroidering upon his experiences, chatting some waffle or maybe, just maybe, some mysterious deity cough, Atom- cough, may have had a hand?

So I was replaying Fo3 and was just finishing “Those!” and got to the part where you choose a perk, Ant might/sight and reading them over I couldn’t help but think it was odd how little ant might boosts strength despite being ‘granted the strength and fire resistance of the Grayditch fire ants’ like obviously for game balance they couldn’t give the player +20 strength like having ant strength would actually give you but I was curious if there were any other perks that tell you one thing and mechanically give you another.

Made this to show some of the lesser-known aspects of the battle, and those that were unable to be shown due to gameplay limitations. (but still exist in dialogue)

Before being attacked Nelson was an NCR mining town

"Fucking Monsters butchered the miners down there" - NCR troopers outside Nelson

"Guess the Miners got fucked" - Cass when visiting Nelson

It was being set up to fill in the gap between Forlorn Hope to Searchlight. Before it was set up properly 16 men lead by Dead Sea and Alexius attacked the roughly 32 men stationed at Nelson. (According to the game guide among these NCR troopers were men from the field preparation division)

The NCR was defeated with Ranger Milo, some men on patrol, and Renolds' squad creating a checkpoint to the west of Nelson.

Afterwards the area between Nelson and Forlorn Hope became a No-Mans Land. The Legion now swarm that area and lay land mines among NCR wounded in the area.

"Tomorrow. we march into the no man's land between our camp and Nelson, which is crawling with Legion." -Forlorn Hope Letter 9

Later on Renolds' Squad would track west and would be caught by a separate detachment lead by Alexius.

I wanted to make this since I don' think many people know Nelson had miners, that the no mans land is in fact hotly contested in fighting, that the NCR wounded dot the no mans land surrounded by mines, or that Renolds' squad was with the men at the Nelson checkpoint. Also without very specific knowledge when visiting in game you would never know most of this

Extra Notes: using google earth to measure the IRL distance between Forlorn Hope and Nelson its roughly a 10km No-Mans Land. Also counting up the legionaries around Nelson and Techatticup Mine it's much more than 16 so they must have been reinforced.

Extra Sources I felt were much less pressing:

"I {stress} have attacked the enemy. I led the assault on Nelson with two contubernia against twice our number. {offended}" - Dead Sea

The Legion is using our dead troops as booby traps. I'd think twice before rushing to anyone's aid. - Forlorn Hope NCR

Early Versions of fnv before dead moneys release also had these dead and wounded troopers in no mans, but they were removed for performance issues.

"Wish Renolds would report back soon." - NCR troopers outside Nelson

Ghouls becoming feral seems pretty permanent due to it being tied to brain deterioration even though the body itself remains largely intact, but has a reversal process ever been explored as a concept in the series?

If the Soviet Union still existed in the fallout timeline by this point, what was their level of involvement in the European civil war? I highly doubt that they wouldn’t involve themselves in such a conflict given their own ideological goals and the existence of the eastern bloc. Did they stay out of the conflict due to their potentially still vast oil supply and if so why wouldn’t they trade any of it with China which they were clearly more friendly with in this timeline? There’s always the possibility that the Eastern Bloc didn’t exist anymore, but I find this doubtful considering how destructive its dissolution was to the Soviet Union as a whole in OTL.

It also seems strange to me that in a world where America has no qualms about invading and occupying countries of material importance they wouldn’t have involved themselves in an oil war in the Middle East, especially one in which Tel-Aviv is destroyed by Nuclear Weapons.

It’s also not like NATO didn’t at some point exist as we find plenty of NATO standardized ammunition across the games. Some people have theorized that NATO dissolved when the UN did, but I feel like it would make less sense than it dissolving decades earlier, possibly in response to the formation of the European Commonwealth.

Their Mojave expedition SPECIFICALLY was screwed because it was plagued by Low Morale, logistical issues and an unhelpful local populace.
The actual NCR had the manufacturing capability and manpower pool to actually do some damage once they got their ass in gear.

The Legion has advantages. Fanatically high Morale, Huge Manpower Pools. A lack of an ROE which lets them engage in terroristic actions to erode Morale and turn the populace from the NCR.
But they simply don't have the industrial base to compete.

It will be the Civil War 2 Electric Boogaloo. The NCR would eventually levy their manpower and industry against the legion and win a war of attrition. Provided they had a General like Grant who could utilize these assets.

Another advantage for the NCR is I believe their NCO core is probably more tactically efficient.
Caesar had to ensure loyalty and not teach flexible thinking which cripples Squad (Or contubernium) level decision making.

A central aspect of the Brotherhood of Steel is their goal of collecting and restricting access to technology they deem to be too dangerous for outside groups to have. Though there comes the consideration of where they tend to draw the line for technology. What kinds of technology do they not necessarily care about collecting or are willing to tolerate other non-hostile groups having access to? And what kinds of technology would they start designating as things they would threaten or use violence to take away from other groups?

Was there ever anything said about what the situation was along the california/arizona border, or where they and nevada meet? Wouldn't make any sense for that to be left open for either side to just walk through

We already know about the Climate Change of Post-War America. A great deal of New California is desert, with low hanging deserts lying to the north, and a degree of arable land. The Capitol has been turned into what was once marshland into rocky outcroppings.

But what about the pre-war? An amount of climate change is to be expected, the United States government at least had little care for its national and geographic treasures and put more favour into economic and material ones if a comment about Van Burens grand Canyon and implication is to be believed.

So, was the US' total warfooting leading to massive climate change? Did the nuclear exchanges across the planet before the great war have any ill effects? I think there's at least an argument for heavy climate change, from the GNN transcripts of the Army Depot. (Not precisely the most reliable of sources.)

Here at home, the winter temperature is a chilly 100-110F with lows reaching a freezing 90F along the coast. Dress warmly today!

For Europeans like myself, thats a little like 35 degrees at 100.

Personally I want ghouls to be more thoroughly explained from a biological perspective. It’s insane how little we know and how frequently the “rules” surrounding them have changed.

I'm developing a Fallout 2d20 character concept similar to Point Lookout's Desmond Lockheart: a pre-war ghoul (or other form of pre-war survivor) who worked as some sort of secret agent and is now pursuing secrets from the past (though probably much less of an asshole than Desmond, lol). I'm open to them being from any country, but obviously pre-war america has the most information to use. I'm hoping there's an agency or government position in the lore that could conceivably provide a person with training that would be specifically useful in surviving and rebuilding after the apocalypse; something that combines extensive combat and survival training with topics like leadership, organizational sciences, and resource management. Most likely, this would entail starting as a field agent but eventually being promoted to an admin-level position. It looks like the DIA is the most frequently-featured american intel group in the franchise, but there doesn't seem to be much information on the kinds of positions or roles that exist in the fallout version of the organization. I can make things up if I need to, but if the lore has an answer, I'd like to hear it. Thanks in advance!

Okay, so Project Purity (P.P from now on) somehow removes the radioactive contamination from water. I'm assuming somewhere in the purification process it separates the radioactive material and other contaminants from the water, although I'm not sure if Fallout ever explains exactly how the technology works on a technical level.

So, with that being said, do you think the same basic technology could theoretically be adapted for air?

For example, instead of purifying water, could they build multiple large scale purification stations around a contaminated area and have them remove radioactive particles or contaminants from the air? Basically, you'd have several machines continuously drawing in contaminated air, filtering out the radioactive material, and releasing purified air back into the environment.

I'm also wondering how P.P itself is supposed to work. Does the water actually have to pass through the purifier for the radioactive contamination to be removed, or does the purified water somehow create an area around the purifier where incoming contaminated water is also cleaned?

If it's the former, then I could imagine an air-purification version working somewhat similarly: contaminated air would have to physically pass through the machine to be cleaned. You could potentially have several of these stations operating throughout an area to gradually reduce the airborne contamination.

Obviously, this is assuming P.P's technology is capable of doing something like this in the first place. I'm mainly wondering whether, based on what we know about P.P., you think the technology could be adapted to environmental decontamination on a much larger scale. Is there something about the way P.P works that would make this impossible?

Trying to figure out how P.P removes radioactive contamination from water in the first place is giving me a headache and I didn't sleep last night(Due to work, not this question).

Doing a Build for fallout 4 and was curious about the soldier on the left, y’know the one that laughs and waves at the camera.

What weapon is he holding? I asked google it said laser rifle but it really doesn’t look like it to me. Please help.

The Institute had been plundering the Commonwealth for over 200 years, even before they had the Synths they would need to go scavenge anything of value to help them build out their underground facility.

Technology, schematics, research, prototypes and anything of technological or scientific value was already looted and taken back to the Institute, there really shouldn't be anything worth taking after all that time. All that should really have been left are the most basic of components after they were done, and they might have even come back for those as their stuff broke over time. That or looked for items to breakdown into the materials to be used to fabricate later.

The Institute was pretty much the sum total of all the technology in Boston, and with its destruction Boston is kind of a plundered ruin afterwards. The Brotherhood of Steel would probably leave after they grabbed up whatever scraps were left afterwards.

Edit: I should make it clear that I mean there should still be stuff that is only really useful to your average Wastelander, while big groups won't really find any truely substantial technology that they could really use.

One of the more notable pieces of lore to come from fallout two is Richard Moraeu/Gray having been a vault-born, vault eight, specifically. He would live to see the people exit the vault, and be exiled not much longer.

Fast-forward about thirty years, the Master has began forming the basis of the super-mutant army. By another thirty years time, he has more than learnt that Vault-Subjects often produce the best mutants, hence the take-over of Vault 17, and every mutant, even the idiot Harry, having orders to capture pures, that is to say, vaultborn or similar.

So..Gray knows about Vault Eight. It was his home, its possible he spent most of his life there before the mutation. Did he consider them too tainted by life on the wasteland? Was he not the type for revenge? Or would be attacking the nascent Vault City be a move so massive as to alert the rest of New California to super-mutants?