Django said:
Aren't things like deathclaws,radscorpions and pig rats pretty much impossible? How many giant fucked up animals are running around in Japan anyway?
This shows a basic misunderstanding of the Fallout setting.
Super-mutants and deathclaws alike were NOT, I repeat, NOT the result of radiation. They were results of genetic experimentation, and that's not only possible, we could probably do it right now, if we felt like it. But fortunately humanity isn't insane...yet.
Our current knowledge of DNA is incredible and, with that, our ability to manipulate races is getting scary. And don't forget that a war situation is the biggest stimulation to creativity there is (for instance, the Dutch Golden Age was during the 80-year war with spain, the atomic bomb was created during WW2, etc. etc.)
Pig rats and radscorpions are another case altogether and actually less likely than supermutants and deathclaws, however strange that may sound.
The chances of any creature becoming monstrously large because of atomic war is slim at best. In fact, the chance of most mammels surviving the fallout from high-air detonations in an atomic war are next to none, and the survivers will probably NOT mutate because of background radiation, but rather develop agressive forms of cancer and die horribly half a year or so after the war.
But heck, the survival and mutation of creatures into things like ghouls and pigrats is unlikely, but necessary for a post-apocalyptic setting. And you could explain it partially.
If the nuclear war, for instance, had a lower intensity than would be likely (i.e. not all nuclear weapons were used), it's likely that large portions of the population would survive (as Turdigson puts it in Dr Strangelove "We would triumph with minimum losses, 10 to 20 million at best).
Afterwards, about 90% of the survivors would die from background radiation, not only human life forms, but all life forms that are not immune to radiation (all mammals, basically, and most other animals and plants). The survivors might have the necessary genes to survive or, more likely, mutate and adapt.
Remember that the reason the Enclave hates humanity so much is because they're "mutants". That's not only likely, it must be so, because mutation, even the slightest that only change someone genotype and not fenotype, is necessary to survive the massive and constant bombardments of what would most likely be background gamma-radiation and some active uber-deadly alpha-radiation and beta-radiation.
Hmmm.
