Couldn't have said it better, and I was wondering how to respond to this thread, because it's something we've often wondered. But, well put!
Could You Handle Fallout Conditions?
- Thread starter rowanherb10
- Start date
Couldn't have said it better, and I was wondering how to respond to this thread, because it's something we've often wondered. But, well put!
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
If there is a society that is just a pack of wolves waiting for the chance to rip each other to shreds that's gotta be Colombia. I imagine we would go all Mad Max relatively fast.
I don't think I could survive fallout conditions, I am rather averse to drinking my own urine and I don't have much attachment to the idea of surviving for surviving sake.
I don't think I could survive fallout conditions, I am rather averse to drinking my own urine and I don't have much attachment to the idea of surviving for surviving sake.
gordog_frohman
namhofr_godrog
Good point, unlike Fallout where the game ends after you've completed the story, you'll probably have to survive for decades (if you don't get killed) in a real post-nuclear world, and I imagine that it's gonna get really old really fast. Surviving for survival's sake isn't much of a purpose in life.
Walpknut
This ghoul has seen it all
It's one of the reasons why I can't even give a shit about the Walking Dead, because every single community that is introduced either is evil or gets overrun by zombies it just seems people are trying to survive for no reason it kind of makes it look like the ones dying are the lucky ones and there is no real drama to anything that is happening there.
valcik
So Old I'm Losing Radiation Signs
Interesting ideas, The Dopamine Cleric! I don't agree with you completely, though.
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You're assuming that those police officers and soldiers are selfless idealists. I think that most of the cops and troopers are nothing else than mercenaries working and risking their lives for social benefits as high salaries, or vision of early and well paid retirement perhaps. I think that huge nuclear conflict between any of major nuclear powerhouses will be followed by global economy collapse. Look at USA today - there are huge incomes generated by American companies on global market, yet your economy can't maintain itself without billions of dollars lent from China. Cut the global market off and your developed economy is effectively crippled, which means no more money for government, no more money for cops and army, teachers, physicians..
I don't think so. All you need to do is to take down ten or twenty major power plants in any modern country and whole electrical grid start falling apart. It's carefully balanced network, designed for certain outputs. Take few of the key powerplants down and you're facing global blackout; which means no more refrigerators for your food, for instance. Turn off the refrigerators in any modern big city for 24 hours and your food supplies are fucked up - deep frozen meat depreciated, bacterial contamination of dairy products, you name it. There's no way how to supply any modern big city with food in case of global blackout and people will turn to wolves pretty fast without food.
Agreed. According to people from BBC working on Threads movie back in 1984, big nuclear conflict will throw any directly affected countries back to the middle ages (cca 1400 AD) in terms of social structures, industry, agriculture, or medical care. Which means no more machinery for food production, only our bare hands and will to survive.
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This is what The Dopamine Cleric mentioned - social relationships will become much more important in post-apo world and I think he's right, they'll become one of the main reasons for moving forward. Helping own family members or friends to survive can be really strong reason for living.
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fred2
Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
Yeah i'm just wondering how you would handle a nuclear war e.g mentally, physically. Of course we don't know how we'll handle the horrific conditions of a post-apocalyptic environment, but we can speculate. Discuss to your comfort.
*don't give me nightmares*
probably like the rest of the world:
Vault11
Banned
I don't think any man raised in the modern Western Liberal tradition has any real chance at surviving any global catastrophe, let alone a nuclear armageddon. I am not an exception to this... despite all of my survival and weapons training, I know I would not be able to hack it if things went post-nuclear. That's why Fallout is so much fun, I can do it vicariously.
Vault11
Banned
I just want to pick on your post because a lot of stuff rubbed me the wrong way.
People are nothing but clever animals, once artificial structural checks on their will are removed we will be reverted back to the natural state of might makes right. Meritocratic hierarchy around the strongest member of an in group is the human reset button, if you will.
Are you some critical theorist or what?
Quite the reverse. Ideology is just justification for brute force and acquiring wealth... dressing Darwinism up in fancy clothes. Ideology serves to make swallowing horrible things more bearable, it isn't a reason in and of itself.
Communist detected
The Roman Empire did not end until 1453. I would think with your signature you would be cognizant of that... Just because the world is west-europe centric now doesn't mean that they are the benchmark for what civilized was... they were tribal raiders and bandits in their own way, things were not dark or ruined in the Byzantine east.
People have known the earth was round for thousands of years, middle ages included.
There is zero evidence for that, and if I know anything about religion and ideology the most popular view would to be regard the past as a mistake of selfish hedonism and arrogance, much how early Christianity regarded the Roman pagans, and the presiding goal would be to transcend that awful past. Someone called it "the enourmous condescension of posterity" (paraphrasing) - your characterization of the first millenia of this age as dark and backward is a neat little demonstration of this.
How so?
In total agreement here. Always nice to find something there
Spot on the money.
People are nothing but clever animals, once artificial structural checks on their will are removed we will be reverted back to the natural state of might makes right. Meritocratic hierarchy around the strongest member of an in group is the human reset button, if you will.
Are you some critical theorist or what?
Quite the reverse. Ideology is just justification for brute force and acquiring wealth... dressing Darwinism up in fancy clothes. Ideology serves to make swallowing horrible things more bearable, it isn't a reason in and of itself.
Communist detected
The Roman Empire did not end until 1453. I would think with your signature you would be cognizant of that... Just because the world is west-europe centric now doesn't mean that they are the benchmark for what civilized was... they were tribal raiders and bandits in their own way, things were not dark or ruined in the Byzantine east.
People have known the earth was round for thousands of years, middle ages included.
There is zero evidence for that, and if I know anything about religion and ideology the most popular view would to be regard the past as a mistake of selfish hedonism and arrogance, much how early Christianity regarded the Roman pagans, and the presiding goal would be to transcend that awful past. Someone called it "the enourmous condescension of posterity" (paraphrasing) - your characterization of the first millenia of this age as dark and backward is a neat little demonstration of this.
How so?
In total agreement here. Always nice to find something there
rowanherb10 said:
Spot on the money.
Attachments
Kilgore Trout
Gyro Captain
Let's get specific. There's an app for this:
Nukemap
This app lets you select a target area (with major metropolitan areas around the globe available as presets) and a precise yield in kilotons (with actual bombs available as presets). Make sure to select "casualties" and "radioactive fallout" as options.
In terms of society, when normal structures of centralized authority break down I think we simultaneously witness humanity at both its best and its worst. For people who assume that violent anarchy is the only possible outcome in the wake of disaster, I suggest checking out Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell", which documents numerous instances of altruism and spontaneous organization following disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. That's not to say that these more positive responses are the only ones we are likely to see, either, but the fact is that they can and do happen at least as often as looting, murder, etc.
Nukemap
This app lets you select a target area (with major metropolitan areas around the globe available as presets) and a precise yield in kilotons (with actual bombs available as presets). Make sure to select "casualties" and "radioactive fallout" as options.
In terms of society, when normal structures of centralized authority break down I think we simultaneously witness humanity at both its best and its worst. For people who assume that violent anarchy is the only possible outcome in the wake of disaster, I suggest checking out Rebecca Solnit's "A Paradise Built in Hell", which documents numerous instances of altruism and spontaneous organization following disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco. That's not to say that these more positive responses are the only ones we are likely to see, either, but the fact is that they can and do happen at least as often as looting, murder, etc.
But that's the problem though, disasters like earthquakes and Katrina are known events and we can say what might happen eventually after a large Hurricane hits the coast and what effects it has if a big City is left in ruins with most of the infrastructure colapsed. Because it already happened. But as far as a global nuclear war goes, there are no real references that we could use here. And thus all is just pure speculation. I mean you could not even use WW2 as reference because not all of the world was destroyed. Some parts have been hit very hard, like Europe while other places remained relatively untouched. Like most of the US cities. I mean there have been no bombing raids and all that.
Hard to say what a world after the nuclear hollocaust might look like as far as a future society goes. Particularly if you consider that something like radiation would be a real problem. Large parts of the world would be eventually polluted and uninhabitable. For decades. At least the areas where most of the cities are because this is where the weapons would most probably hit. People could not really return to those areas. Those that managed to escape in time or survive somehow. Whole generations would have to suffer from the effects. And we are not even talking about the trauma. I mean in usual wars at least most of the time people could return home with a chance to rebuild everything. But with nuclear weapons? Most areas would see several hits. Take a city like London, it would have been hit not by just one but several very powerfull nuklear wareheads.
This is of course just speculation, but I do think however that people would eventually form groups of survivors. When ever possible. We are social beeings and in times of need we tend to more or less stick together, the Mad Max like scenario with super crazy lunatics ruling over everyone with iron fists and all that seems rather unrealistic in my opinion, but it is entertaining on the big screen so much for sure. People would be forced to work together. There is not really much room for tyrants. Particularly those that have skills which are very beneficial, Like engineers, mechanics, doctors and those that know how to survive in general would try to work together and anyone who's acting like a lunatic would be relatively fast put in his/her place. Acting like a punks where you supress everyone is not very efficient in such a situation. There would not be many survivors and people would have to rely on each other.
Hard to say what a world after the nuclear hollocaust might look like as far as a future society goes. Particularly if you consider that something like radiation would be a real problem. Large parts of the world would be eventually polluted and uninhabitable. For decades. At least the areas where most of the cities are because this is where the weapons would most probably hit. People could not really return to those areas. Those that managed to escape in time or survive somehow. Whole generations would have to suffer from the effects. And we are not even talking about the trauma. I mean in usual wars at least most of the time people could return home with a chance to rebuild everything. But with nuclear weapons? Most areas would see several hits. Take a city like London, it would have been hit not by just one but several very powerfull nuklear wareheads.
This is of course just speculation, but I do think however that people would eventually form groups of survivors. When ever possible. We are social beeings and in times of need we tend to more or less stick together, the Mad Max like scenario with super crazy lunatics ruling over everyone with iron fists and all that seems rather unrealistic in my opinion, but it is entertaining on the big screen so much for sure. People would be forced to work together. There is not really much room for tyrants. Particularly those that have skills which are very beneficial, Like engineers, mechanics, doctors and those that know how to survive in general would try to work together and anyone who's acting like a lunatic would be relatively fast put in his/her place. Acting like a punks where you supress everyone is not very efficient in such a situation. There would not be many survivors and people would have to rely on each other.
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Mohamed2001
HATE NEWSPAPERS
I would get bored fast.
Surviving, finding food etc gets boring fast. Also I wouldn't have company so.. well, boring life. Exciting for a while, yes. Extremely risky, yes. Tiring, yes.
But my training will probably help.
Also I'll try to get a tank fast, to convert to a mobile command post. Until I run out of fuel, in which it's a static command post.
Surviving, finding food etc gets boring fast. Also I wouldn't have company so.. well, boring life. Exciting for a while, yes. Extremely risky, yes. Tiring, yes.
But my training will probably help.
Also I'll try to get a tank fast, to convert to a mobile command post. Until I run out of fuel, in which it's a static command post.
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rowanherb10
The Eye Destroyer
If you secure a generator, then you don't need to be worried about being bored.
Personally people wouldn't even acknowledge a war is about to take place, i'm not sure if the government would talk about to avoid mass riots & murder; if there's any reason to keep it from people anyway, we'll probably die in the blast. From experience, a people without a leader becomes lawless and primal; even if there was civilization
a uneasy truce is worse than war. Imagine being on edge of violence 24/7 365 day's a year. No fucking way it will be easy! Cheers Vault 11.
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Mohamed2001
HATE NEWSPAPERS
welsh
Junkmaster
I think one of the problems in much of this discussion about apocalyptic settings and conditions under emphasizes the systemic variables at play. As I posted earlier, even a small nuclear war between two countries in a distant part of the world could have serious systemic consequences.
I suspect the problem lies in a mix of anthropogenic thinking and a bit of narcissistic reasoning. If there was a large-scale atomic world resulting in significant global warming, or covering much of the world in lethal radiation- than its mostly adios muchachos.
This is, I suspect, a failure in the way we deal with environmental challenges. We tend to either adopt a model based on more classical economic reasoning that, in the face of global warming, the economic incentives will drive the means of adaptation necessary to overcome the crisis- because of the remarkable power of the invisible hand. We tend to put the human agent at the center of the structural conditions and challenges of environmental challenges, so that even in most sustainable development arguments, environmental issues, social issues and economic issues balance.
But that's silly. To have a decent economic system, you need social foundations and structures (government, social values of property but that hinges on environmental conditions that can sustain the society and structures, and then a viable economic ideology.
Regardless of ideology or numbers, the environment may experience a "tipping point" when there is little we can do to reverse our extinction. In the same way you can put nitrogen into a pond drop by drop and see no consequences until, one more drop and the tipping point is reached, the water blooms and everything inside the pond dies. We don't think about this because we also believe in an economic ideology that says that there is no end to growth, capital accumulation in a world in which every other species must learn to live within its bounded limits. Nuclear war could quickly get us to an environmental tipping point.
Just because your ideology doesn't articulate a vision where you get fucked, doesn't mean reality isn't going to fuck you. Ideology is simply a human construct- reality is more complex.
This is why the thinking that its ideology (or religion) that matters is flawed. The argument about Africa suggests an ideology of exploitation and domination, but that actually hints at a cultural argument which, with some variations, has existed at different times and at different degrees in every other populated region of the world (including Europe only a few hundred years ago). It is not an ideology or a culture but an empirical reality of domination and exploitation, that is a consequence of the competition for material wealth and political power - politics of selfish survival at its most raw made worse because of material scarcity.
Human beings are social creatures- we organize collectively and, in small numbers, can easily overcome collective action problems. But the bigger the collective action problem, the greater the politics- as well as the need for selective incentives and punishments- or so says Mancur Olson. Hobbes Leviathan resolves that problem. Locke suggests civil society plays a role- but civility may be a dicey problem under severe resource scarcity and high numbers. But civility is not a problem if global temperature drops due to a cloud of radioactive dust to -100 C.
I suspect the problem lies in a mix of anthropogenic thinking and a bit of narcissistic reasoning. If there was a large-scale atomic world resulting in significant global warming, or covering much of the world in lethal radiation- than its mostly adios muchachos.
This is, I suspect, a failure in the way we deal with environmental challenges. We tend to either adopt a model based on more classical economic reasoning that, in the face of global warming, the economic incentives will drive the means of adaptation necessary to overcome the crisis- because of the remarkable power of the invisible hand. We tend to put the human agent at the center of the structural conditions and challenges of environmental challenges, so that even in most sustainable development arguments, environmental issues, social issues and economic issues balance.
But that's silly. To have a decent economic system, you need social foundations and structures (government, social values of property but that hinges on environmental conditions that can sustain the society and structures, and then a viable economic ideology.
Regardless of ideology or numbers, the environment may experience a "tipping point" when there is little we can do to reverse our extinction. In the same way you can put nitrogen into a pond drop by drop and see no consequences until, one more drop and the tipping point is reached, the water blooms and everything inside the pond dies. We don't think about this because we also believe in an economic ideology that says that there is no end to growth, capital accumulation in a world in which every other species must learn to live within its bounded limits. Nuclear war could quickly get us to an environmental tipping point.
Just because your ideology doesn't articulate a vision where you get fucked, doesn't mean reality isn't going to fuck you. Ideology is simply a human construct- reality is more complex.
This is why the thinking that its ideology (or religion) that matters is flawed. The argument about Africa suggests an ideology of exploitation and domination, but that actually hints at a cultural argument which, with some variations, has existed at different times and at different degrees in every other populated region of the world (including Europe only a few hundred years ago). It is not an ideology or a culture but an empirical reality of domination and exploitation, that is a consequence of the competition for material wealth and political power - politics of selfish survival at its most raw made worse because of material scarcity.
Human beings are social creatures- we organize collectively and, in small numbers, can easily overcome collective action problems. But the bigger the collective action problem, the greater the politics- as well as the need for selective incentives and punishments- or so says Mancur Olson. Hobbes Leviathan resolves that problem. Locke suggests civil society plays a role- but civility may be a dicey problem under severe resource scarcity and high numbers. But civility is not a problem if global temperature drops due to a cloud of radioactive dust to -100 C.
Let's face it, none of us would survive because we're all huge nerds. /thread
Matt the Czar
First time out of the vault
Well presuming you could build a fallout shelter, whether it be a trench covered with a yard of packed earth, or a reinforced center of your basement, it also depends on where the bomb falls, how high it detonates, and how the winds are. In my native Chicago, the bomb would detonate high up so it hits more people, which would create less fallout, and some fallout would be pushed out to the lake by the wind. After that it is all a matter of seeing if you can keep your stomach full, your mind fresh, and your body unharmed. Sounds easier said than done.
Caeo
First time out of the vault
I live in Huntsville, Alabama which is home to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center (probably owned by Rob Co. in the Fallout Universe). I assume the S&R Center would be preserved, considering the Fallout Universe is designed by a pantheon of developer gods who try to make the world as interesting and camp as possible. Huntsville is also home to the Redstone Arsenal, so I'm sure that'd probably get nuked. According to nukemap, if the arsenal was hit by a Fat Man (20 kt) atomic bomb, both the actual explosion and the radioactive fallout out miss me by a couple miles. Even if the arsenal was hit by 1 Mt, my neighbourhood be relatively untouched. Anything larger than that and I'd be royally fucked.
I live within walking distance of a Walmart, a Target, a hospital, and a church that doubles as a storm shelter. The Target and Walmart are very close to the hospital, whereas the church is closer to the blast site (but not by much). Since I live in the American Bible belt, and in the FO Universe, everyone's fairly Christian, so I think I'd have a good chance of getting to that church. If not, my own church isn't about a mile away, so I could walk there as well. I don't own any firearms, but this is Alabama, so I imagine finding one wouldn't be too difficult. We also have several universities around here and Research Park, which is full of engineers. I could see something like the Institute existing there.
So long as no bandits or ghouls or raiders or anything of that nature shows up, I think I'd be alright. Hopefully Vault-Tec set up a vault around here. My sister also knows some crazy doomsday prepper who might take me in. After all, this is Alabama.
I live within walking distance of a Walmart, a Target, a hospital, and a church that doubles as a storm shelter. The Target and Walmart are very close to the hospital, whereas the church is closer to the blast site (but not by much). Since I live in the American Bible belt, and in the FO Universe, everyone's fairly Christian, so I think I'd have a good chance of getting to that church. If not, my own church isn't about a mile away, so I could walk there as well. I don't own any firearms, but this is Alabama, so I imagine finding one wouldn't be too difficult. We also have several universities around here and Research Park, which is full of engineers. I could see something like the Institute existing there.
So long as no bandits or ghouls or raiders or anything of that nature shows up, I think I'd be alright. Hopefully Vault-Tec set up a vault around here. My sister also knows some crazy doomsday prepper who might take me in. After all, this is Alabama.
Hey, I own several leather jackets and motorcycle boots, and I can probably find some Football or Hockey padding somewhere...
The Doctor
Veteran of The Divide
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