Can someone please clear this up for me: What was the deal with Jet?

[ElloinmorninJ]

Ok, so I've never understood this part of Myron's dialogue, and I wanted to know if you guys could clear this up; or, if you agree that this is a plothole/writing mistake.
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Ok, so Myron says before the war, scientist or something were making a protein extract, but that is was a failure because it was too easily contaminated. That makes sense. But then he says these people tried to cut their losses by feeding it to their brahmin herds. Brahmin herds. How were there Brahmin before the war? Was this not a pre-war invention? And from here on it gets more confusing.

Then, for some reason, Myron claims the Brahmin fertilizer they used, 161 years after the war, still had the effects given to them from the protein extract. Why? If it was pre-war, why are brahmin still being affected by it? Did they find a post war source of it or something?

Please explain this.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

When he says Brahmin, I assume he’s referring to pre-war Brahmin, which would just be regular cows (specifically brahman cattle). He just doesn’t know the word for cattle.

As for the second point, it’s a little unclear, but I believe that the protein extract fed to the cows caused some kind of mutation that was then passed down through the generations after the war. This mutation caused their farts to get you high or something, I don’t know.

 

[Risewild]

Well, Brahmin definition in english includes the answer for the first point:

Noun: Brahmin braa-min :
Any of several breeds of Indian cattle; especially a large American heat and tick resistant greyish humped breed evolved in the Gulf States by interbreeding Indian cattle and now used chiefly for crossbreeding

And the second point, I have to agree with Iprovidelittlepianos. Certain proteins can mutate or alter DNA proteins or something.
I'm no expert but I'm sure I heard of stuff like that in the past. So I would have to assume that protein was mass fed to cattle in pre-war times and that somehow mutated the cows DNA so that it became permanent.

It could even be assumed that is why Brahmin in Fallout universe always have the same color and two heads. Maybe the artificial mutation made them resistant to whatever killed the other cattle breeds or something. Although, this is just me making stuff up and I doubt the devs even thought about this.

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

I think the devs actually did put some thought into this. It’s no coincidence that they named their post-apocalyptic two-headed breed of cattle after one of the most hardy breeds of cattle out there. Although technically, brahmin is a religious caste in Hinduism, while the modern day cattle is spelled “brahman”. So maybe the devs were implying that Shady Sands gave two-headed cows their common name.

Edit: Never mind, I misread the comment above. I doubt the devs were thinking that this protein extract is the reason for having two heads, but it’s not a bad piece of head canon. Definitely makes sense.