Feral ghouls: plausible or not?

T

the lone deathclaw

First time out of the vault
I'd say Feral ghouls and especially in the number they are in is extremely improbable. Would you truely loose your humanity once you already had it to the point that you would loose the capability to speak. I think yes you could become a vile bastard who just kills people but to become mindless does not seem probable. Freaks would try to find other freaks they would not just become mindless zombies. I'm not stating a definitive fact, just my thoughts on the matter.
 
the lone deathclaw said:
the number they are in is extremely improbable.
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Pretty much that. I think they're probable, but not in the numbers FO3 has them. IIRC, there was going to be something similar in Van Buren - ghouls that were exiled from the Reservation and forced to wander the wastes until their brains got baked. Though, those weren't going to be even nearly as plentiful as the feral ghouls in FO3.
 
Maybe they kina congregated as they migrated across the US?

Or maybe people in DC had a greater inclination to become feral ghouls?
 
IIRC, there was going to be something similar in Van Buren - ghouls that were exiled from the Reservation and forced to wander the wastes until their brains got baked.
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Even FO1 had mindless ghouls in random encounters.
 
It makes no sense how shambling ghouls rotted further and for whatever reason actually became faster.
 
Eyenixon said:
It makes no sense how shambling ghouls rotted further and for whatever reason actually became faster.
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That's one reason I set them apart from your run-of-the-mill ghouls, even the mindless ones in FO1/2. There could be explanations for their speed, such as the fact that their insanity has made them ignore the pain/limits of their body. Still, the numbers that they show up in is just ridiculous.
 
Mikael Grizzly said:
bhlaab said:
Ghouls aren't entirely plausible to begin with
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Versi-fucking-militude.
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Shut up furry. You have no right saying fuck. That is a man's word. Not some damn made up furry language stuff. A man's word. In the dictionary, the book of man's language. GTFO.

But yeah, verismilitude. Ghouls fit in with the Fallout universe, therefore they are plausible in that universe only.
 
My point being that it's like arguing about unicorns:

Are they just horses with horns or can they shoot magical beams from those horns? They're fictional, you can make it up.

In this case, there are some ghouls that are just horses with horns, and there are some ghouls that can shoot magical beams.
 
bhlaab said:
My point being that it's like arguing about unicorns:

Are they just horses with horns or can they shoot magical beams from those horns? They're fictional, you can make it up.

In this case, there are some ghouls that are just horses with horns, and there are some ghouls that can shoot magical beams.
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Actually you can't just make it up as you want. Theres a pre set mythology surronding unicorns. A history and all of that behind them. Same thing with ghouls. Theres already a story and reason for them. You can't just change it up as you wish. It's horror movie remakes or goffy sequels. Jason X for example. (Sure it was their character, but it just didn't make any sense.)

(correct me if I'm wrong here.)
 
Even if they could be explained plausible in anyway, they still would be and always will be absolutly pointless. they are no danger at all and just a waste of time and ammo.
 
hmm oh yeah i forgot about the mindless ghouls in fallout 1 and in 2 i thought oh yeah around gecko you could find some but if i a ghoul can use a rifle i think they are not mindless.
 
Well, I can accept the mindless ghouls, but I doubt that they could be enchanced to be stronger and faster than humans. I thought ghouls were supposed to be people who survived large doses of radiation to only overgo serious mutation. Every single ghoul I remember from FO1/2 was weak and sickly.

Now, unless feral ghouls would be explained as failed FEV experiments, their agility and strength does not make much sense. They don't have an explanation like that in FOO afaik.
 
From the time and bullets I've put into Feral Ghouls, they're not stronger or faster than any human I've shot in game. In fact they're weaker than humans on average. I can usually put a Feral Ghoul down with a bullet or two from the silenced 10mm detected, where it would take 2-4 for a human dectected. This is taking into account no crits. Their only strength is the spook factor of their growl. But once you get used to it, they're more bark than bite. As for their speed, you could argue that they've lost a lot of weight, so their muscles (while fairly hampered on their own) don't have as much work to put out propelling their bodies. Kinda in the same sense why little dogs and cats can run so fast with their little legs.

As for why so many? Remember the DC area was/is a highly populated area as opposed to the large expanse the prior Fallout games. If you spent enough time looking for random encounters, you could grind out enough Mindless Ghouls to match the population in DC. The density difference is probbably that DC offers more shelter for these critters, where as in open expanses the local wildlife would thin out the numbers. Haven't seen Feral Ghouls out in the plains in the open, they're either underground or close to access to underground.

Fallout Universe plausible? Yes.

Fallout Universe feeling? Debatable, but leaning towards yes. Kinda 4/5.

In fact, you could probbably apply a lot of Fallout 3's Fallout points to a 4/5 score, mainly because they're either new creations, exaggerated aspects of exsisting creations, or a different prespective of exsisting creations, but they can usually be explained by either the creator's explinations or Fallout "Science!".
 
Gooscar said:
As for their speed, you could argue that they've lost a lot of weight, so their muscles (while fairly hampered on their own) don't have as much work to put out propelling their bodies. Kinda in the same sense why little dogs and cats can run so fast with their little legs.
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You missed a lot of biology classes, didn't you?
 
Roflcore said:
Gooscar said:
As for their speed, you could argue that they've lost a lot of weight, so their muscles (while fairly hampered on their own) don't have as much work to put out propelling their bodies. Kinda in the same sense why little dogs and cats can run so fast with their little legs.
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You missed a lot of biology classes, didn't you?
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I'm trying to use "Science!" to explain it, not so much actual factual real life anatomy to justify it, as Fallout isn't restricted to the laws of reality.
 
Hmm, there are some types of ghouls that are tougher than usual. Some do go down with 1-2 bullets, but others need as many as a human would.

Also, they do run really fast, you've got to admit that. Ridiculously fast compared to real ghouls, actually.
 
First of all: What has Fallout to do with real sciences like biology? Ghouls are not realistic, but that's not really a problem, because Fallout never wanted to be a realistic prediction of a possible post-nuclear world (instead it's a Pulp version of a post-nuclear world). So I really don't see, why there should be any problem with the idea that more radiation (or Nuka Cola, for example) destroys the Ghouls' brains, but also alters their physiology, making them stupid but faster. As Gooscar has already mentioned: It's "Science!", not "science".

But yes, you can argue, that there are to many of them. Personally, I didn't "feel" that there were to many of them, but you know: YMMV. There are other details in Fallout 3, where the proportions are really bad, imho (to many cars with working reactors, to many computer, to short distances, etc.etc.).
 
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