- Talius and Harold are not ghouls, but unique beings (especially Harold\Bob). There was an issue between Cain and Taylor about if you could become ghoul with Fev or not. It was settled by Avellone in the Fallout Bibles.
Fallout Bible p.207 said:
3. Radiation according to Tim Cain, FEV + radiation according to Chris Taylor. Based on points brought up by several fans (including Mr. Carrot and Red_Nmmo), I'm now in the ghouls = radiation camp. And no one knows why they live such a long time - they just do. Well, as long as they stay hydrated.
This is not really “settling it”. Besides the argument was only if it requires FEV. The other question if a dipped person can turn into a “mutant” like Harold or Talius is not an argument, but a fact. The only discrepancy in that regard is that Chris Taylor called it “into a ghoul” while “into a mutant like Harold” may have been more accurate.
Fallout Bible p.88 said:
According to Chris, ghouls are irradiated humans exposed to FEV.
According to Tim, ghouls are due solely to radiation.
Again this argument is about the Vault 12 ghouls. Dipping a human into the vats can result in a mutant like Talius. And according to Chris Taylor, the level of radiation decides this.
Fallout Bible p.77 said:
It also depends if people have enough radiation damage to be turned into ghouls or super mutants.
It just needs to be noted that he probably means “a mutant that looks like a ghoul” when saying “ghoul”. However, I'm not sure how much difference there actually is, as mutants (like Harold) have almost all characteristics of ghouls: immune to radiation and a long life-expectancy.
The problem is actually that Tim Cain said
Fallout Bible p.88 said:
...most people don't know when they get irradiated, so he [Harold] just may not know what happened to him. I do know that radiation and FEV do not mix. Mutants are immune to radiation effects, but an irradiate human is killed by exposure to FEV. So one thing is sure: Harold is not a mix of radiation and FEV. He's got to be one or the other, and I think he's a ghoul.
and Zax said
Fallout Bible p.200 said:
When inoculated into an individual with significant genetic damage, such as through radiation, it [FEV] will cause the body's systems to suffer massive overhauling, leading to organ failure and death. In a genetically viable individual, it re-writes portions of DNA, causing accelerated mutation, usually leading to recursive growth due to the FEV's own patterns. This recursive growth leads to an increase in muscle and brain mass, but is often accompanied by disfigurement and damage to existing neural patterns, causing loss of memory.
Both say that exposing an irradiated human being to FEV results in death. While in-game, the master believes that exposing an irradiated human being to FEV results in stupidity. And of course, Chris Taylor said it results into a ghoul. And this contradiction has not been clarified. However, the most logical thing would be to go with Chris Taylor.
Fallout Bible p.77 said:
Chris Taylor: Actually, a dip in FEV has a chance of modifying Intelligence, but it doesn't always increase it. Some people do gain increased intelligence, a larger majority lose intelligence and most people remain the same. It also depends if people have enough radiation damage to be turned into ghouls or super mutants.
This is the only explanation that answers all questions (the importance of pure-strain, Talius/Harold and the variance in intelligence). That means the effect of FEV on intelligence is random. And being exposed to FEV while irradiated results into a Harold/Talius mutant. So the master was correct in regard to radiation, but not in regard to its effect on intelligence. This is the one explanation that addresses all cases. Otherwise the fact that super-mutants are dumb (radiated) but not dead, wouldn't add up. Chris Taylor's approach is the one that explains it all. Without it especially Talius/Harold would be an unexplained oddity.
- Nightkin was a term I misused for lack of a better word for “improved super-mutant”. However, I didn't research it, as I probably should have. It was a dumb choice of word. Or it needs to be adjusted to: If the player lucks out and becomes a “smart super-mutant” he'll gain the rank of nightkin.
- The key to be dipped and remain smart is the level of radiation. The less exposed you are, the more likely you are to not become dumb. The vault dweller is assured to not become a dumb dumb (unless he already is dumb in the first place). Also, it becomes a major plot point in the end of the first game, as both Lou and Grey want the location of your vault, so they could gather pure subjects.
Fallout Bible p.200 said:
Other possible factors that might be causing the super mutants' stupidness:
- Most mutants have some degree of radiation poisoning, which may cause problems and brain damage, as mentioned above.
- The process is unsafe - the mortality rate on "dippees" is pretty high. This is likely due to radiation poisoning.
- Memory functions are "sometimes" impaired by the dipping, and intelligence loss may occur as well. Harold's memory wasn't in the best of shape after exposure.
From the Pre-War experiment tapes, it looks like some mammals did display consistent increased
intelligence (raccoons), while others didn't (the dogs) or even suffered brain damage (the chimps and the seizures). However, in an old Scott Campbell doc, there was a note that later subjects injected with the FEV (especially the chimps) hid their enhanced intelligence from their captors (or in the case of the raccoons, made a break for it).
Furthermore, the FEV tests at West-Tek were done through injection, not dipping, so it's possible the dipping process itself that causes the brain damage. Possibly with the increased brain mass in the skull, the brain is "squeezed," and all that tasty juice runs out the ears.
Still, on the other hand, a lot of the animals Grey talks about in his experiment tapes that were running around the Military Base were getting smarter from the FEV, and he himself became supra-intelligent.
The radiation explanation is a theory of the Master. But there are alternatives, like the dipping process or Chris Taylor's take (randomness). It is also interesting that the bible never says it clearly (i.e. they never say: no radiation means you'll be fine, but only that radiation causes complications and/or death). Instead the Fallout bible repeatedly states that the process will cause damage (from memory loss to decreased intelligence). This may be as they never considered the case of FEV on pure-strain, or because the designers' intention was that FEV will always be a flawed process.
Fallout Bible p.77 said:
Basically, the FEV in the vats only has a small chance of raising a being's intelligence (or even keeping it intact). The Master was one of the lucky ones. More often than not, it causes brain damage. It's also possible that the crude dipping procedure in Mariposa also caused imperfect mutations as well, reducing the chance of heightened intelligence.
But to answer your question: the FEV at West Tek before the war caused increased intelligence in its subjects, but the FEV at Mariposa after the war rarely enhanced the intelligence of humans who were dipped. The reason for this is unknown.
It shouldn't overlook that the bible says “reason unknown”, it does not say “radiation” as it easily could have if that was the intention. So there is room for interpretation. Contamination (like radiation) will cause complications, but oversimplifying that radiation angle presented by the master's diary isn't accurate.
- Marcus and Lou both consider themselves smarter after they became super-mutants. Same for the first pure human that the master converted (who might be or might not be Lou)
Fallout Bible p.77 said:
The current Fallout-era FEV does enhance intelligence - in some people. Just not many. The Lieutenant was one of the lucky ones who didn't become a knuckle-dragging, butt-scratching moron after being dipped (and it may not have raised his intelligence, he may have been that smart before his dipping, but no records of his past exist to verify this).
The FEV that was released out in the wasteland was mutated by radiation, so its effects changed. As for the FEV at Mariposa, the Lieutenant says the super mutants are smarter than humans ("We are highly intelligent and immune to disease"), which is only half-right, and he also says that the virus can also interfere with a person's memory, causing them to forget things. Obviously, the Lieutenant keeps forgetting that most of his super mutant forces can barely form complete sentences.
I think this (memory loss) shows that statements by in-game characters may be in-character and confused or delusional. Even the Master may have been wrong, after all he never opened a vault and tested FEV on a pure-strain human. And Lou is contradicting the master with his wild FEV theory, which means we have two in-game explanations of which one must be wrong. Or both. Or neither. Anyway, not everything said in-game can be taken as an absolute truth.
Regarding the player: after wandering around outside for several hundred days and visiting the Glow (see Talius, who had something going wrong during his dip, according to himself (may be mistaken, though)), I'm not sure the dweller will necessarily make the dip unscathed. Talius is the only known example of a dipped vault-dweller, and he became a mutant.
But especially Talius is weird. As he's not dumb (suggests that he's not radiated), but neither a success (suggests that he is radiated, or at the very least that there is another factor than just level of radiation). Harold is similar (smart, but not a super-mutant).
I'm not sure what to take away from this, but that the player may end up like Talius.
Here is another quote which puts it very well:
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Mariposa_super_mutant said:
However, creating super mutants was a very hit or miss process. The great majority of super mutants produced by the Master and later his Lieutenant in Mariposa's Vats were big, dumb brutes. Physically, they were vastly superior to humans, but they had the intelligence of children. What exactly causes some mutants to be brilliant and others to be stupid is unknown. The Master was certain it was related to radiation damage: humans who hadn't been exposed to too much radiation yielded smarter mutants (see his personal diary for his thoughts on this). His Lieutenant, however, had a different theory. When the bombs hit the research facility and turned it into the Glow, they cracked open a few tanks filled with FEV. The bombs' radiation then mutated this FEV into an airborne strain. But this new airborne FEV didn't have any real mutagenic effects on people. All it did was inoculate human subjects against the real FEV, acting as a sort of vaccine. The ideal dipping subject was someone who hadn't been exposed to the airborne FEV. Both of these conditions—no radiation exposure and no mutant FEV inoculation—were present in one population: Vault dwellers. Each Vault contained around 1,000 viable subjects to be dipped and turned into super mutants. Which factor exactly determines what you'll get from a dipping—radiation or inoculation—is still uncertain, though as a rule of thumb, the cleaner the subject, the better.
I only would add that Zax claims that FEV can not be transmitted via air and is immune to radiation (i.e. it won't mutate). Which means the Lieutenant may have been mistaken. Then again this effect of “wild-FEV” was a concept of the designers, especially Chris Taylor, as mentioned in the bible, to explain why creatures survived massive radiation damage (i.e. why the Vault 12 inhabitants didn't die in the fallout). However, this is what Avellone cleared up in the bible by saying it just happened (i.e. FEV is not required to become a ghoul, but it's the miracle of radiation that explains everything (as it did in the 50s), except when it doesn't, e.g. when the player visits the Glow he'll die of radiation poisoning rather than becoming a ghoul).
Last, as pointed out above, it really is unknown and nothing proven (i.e. there is no record of FEV mass-producing IN 10 super soldiers). The only possible case of super-beings are the master and his psykers. However, both suffer horrible side-effects from disfigurement to insanity, which again suggests the unstable nature of FEV (which “could” be understood as the designers intent at this point), and there always may be side-effects, with the “memory-loss” just being the beginning. The only exception to this appears to be animals, who never showed any side-effects and always had improved intelligence.
P.S. I did found a note (FEV Reserach Disk & Maxson's Log) saying the military experimented on human beings at Mariposa (for about 9 months), but nothing more. However, it would be interesting if there is any documentation (Anderson file), as it would be the only tests on pure-strain human-beings. But I don't think there is anything to find.
All that said I believe the truth is in what Chris Taylor said:
Fallout Bible p.77 said:
Actually, a dip in FEV has a chance of modifying Intelligence, but it doesn't always increase it. Some people do gain increased intelligence, a larger majority lose intelligence and most people remain the same.
Perhaps that's how FEV is supposed to work on a human-being (no matter the level of contamination). As the same quote adds that radiation decides if the outcome is a ghoul or super-mutant (explaining Harold & Talius). And the assumption that radiation influences the in- or decrease of intelligence may have been a false conclusion by the master, who failed to consider randomness as a factor. Which may be understandable as, apparently, there is none when he tested FEV on animals.
If interested this is a folder with all the sources I've used (includes the Fallout Bible.pdf, several screenshots and a word document with Wikipedia articles, size 24.7 MB, 12.5 MB zipped):
http://www.filedropper.com/fo1fevradiation
.