Any hope left for The Master's dream?

S

squeehunter

First time out of the vault
The Master wanted to turn all of the humans into Super Mutants. SM's are sterile, so even if it was possible, they would eventually die out.

I was thinking, what if the remnants of the Master's army (the smart ones at least) who traveled east (That's canon right? It was in the ending of FO1?) didn't all give up and move to Broken Hills. Is there any hope for The Unity?

If they could find the technology, would it be possible for them to reproduce some other way? I thought it would be neat to have male Super Mutants growing adult (but small) Super Mutants on their backs like a back-womb. Or having them bud, or kind of split into two down the middle like in mitosis.

Of course it's all very fanciful but someone who understands biology a little more could help.
 
While yes the Super Mutants are sterile, the FEV makes them regenerate cell at a rapid rate, making them live an extremely long life, perhaps immortal.

So, they can't reproduce, they need to get people to be dipped in the vats. A possiblity for the Master's dream to come true would be that humans and Super Mutants live harmoniously. That Super Mutants "adopt" humans and when the human reaches a certain age, say puberty, the human will be dipped and become Super Mutant.

And if I really wanted to go all analytical on the subject, the whole Super Mutant thing can be seen as quite satirical on our society. How we humans go to change ourselves to better ourselves (cosmetic surgery, steroid body building, etc.). You see, a Super Mutant can be the equivalent of one who goes through body altercation to "improve" themselves, while ultimately it makes them look quite grotesque. While the human is the adolescent who questions conformity, but ultimately succumbs to such activities. Like that Twilight Zone episode, where the mother takes the daughter to go pick out what model of person they want to become, but the daughter doesn't like how everyone goes along with becoming exactly the same as everyone else, but in the end (spoilers! :P) she gets transformed into the exact model of human as her mother. Or the human is just a child/adolescent, while the Super Mutant is an adult. A sort of, "coming of age," if you will.
 
While I don't think the society thing was intentional, and the harmonious thing would work, it's not following The Master's dream as far as I interpret it. It might work, but your idea sounds too "nice" :P I wish I could draw because I'd love to see one of those back-pregnant super mutants.
 
That would be interesting. One would assume that it would just fall off, or would it have to be surgically removed?
 
Did they go into detail at all in how they were going to reproduce? I'm having a hard time getting past the first level. I have a higher tolerance for FOT and FO3 here so I have my two different canon's, the second of which (the less "true" one) includes Tactics and FO3. Therefore, I'd like to know more about this Super Mutant reproduction. That's really the only way they could survive indefinetly.

As far as I can tell, Super Mutants produce sperm and eggs, but their DNA recombines themselves because they're incomplete and makes them complete. I think all it takes is to suck the DNA out of an egg cell, and replace it with DNA from someone else to clone one. Then why don't the SM eggs develop naturally then?
 
The AI Zax says: "Additionally, as the gametes of the reproductive system consist of 'half-cells' using split DNA, they could be perceived as 'damage' by FEV, which would 'repair' them, rendering the subject sterile."
It might be possible to replicate the meiosis and fertilization process by hand. Take two cells (any kind will work, don't have to use gametes) from the 'parents', remove the chromosomes, take one of each pair from each parent, insert into another cell. You'd also need to make that cell revert to a pluripotent stem cell. A tricky procedure, but theoretically possible.

I don't know what the results of this would be. The only research was on fully-grown organisms. Accelerated development is likely. The reduced intelligence of super mutants is caused by the disruption of existing neural connections. Not having that problem, the children are likely to be significantly more intelligent than normal humans. They might also be FEV-free, though that may not make any significant difference, since their DNA is already altered.
 
Do you think it's possible for anyone in the Wasteland to have these capabilities? I'm sure something like this was possible pre-War due to advances in genetics that we don't have. Maybe in one of the bigger cities someone could do this.
 
We're almost able to do that now. Scientists have been able to turn somatic (e.g., skin) cells into stem cells, but they aren't quite adaptable enough yet.

Vault City might have the necessary equipment. The Shi were doing some kind of genetics work, so they might also be able to.
 
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