How long does it take to become a ghoul and how long does it take to become feral?

The Children of Atom, as of Far Harbor, are mutants immune to radiation damage.

 

Urgh the Children of Atom. They shouldn't exist as they do. One person being immune to radiation is daft but I can accept a one-off, but a whole bunch of people? Bollocks I say.

Anyways, it varies. Private Edwards at Camp Searchlight became a ghoul fairly quickly after to the Legion's attack using radioactive materials, however his comrades became feral. Yet most others become ghouls after months. I'd say most people trying to intentionally become ghouls die of radiation poisoning like Trash did, whilst those who do become ghouls do so after a number of months or maybe a year. As for feral, I couldn't really say since some ghouls become feral after too much radiation yet others aren't affected.

 

Honestly, if you come up with a good motivation as to why they like radiation go for it.
If not, maybe reconsider the idea.

Ooh mr lolpop, uh I have an idea: maybe a faction that goes to the ancient alien city under the magic mojave- that would be mucho fresh

 

Ghoulification has been treated pretty inconsistently throughout the franchise. so a lot of the blanks are left for you to fill in as you please. The process has been depicted as anywhere from near-instantaneous (Moira Brown, the ghoul private at Camp Searchlight in New Vegas) to taking weeks or months. Not everyone even has the potential to become a ghoul, with there necessarily being some sort of selective (possibly genetic) factor that determines whether you die of radiation poisoning or get to live forever as a particularly lively scarecrow, though the mass ghoulification of the Vault 12 residents at Necropolis seems to complicate this question. In the end, the only real consistency with canon would probably be to make sure that you keep things inconsistent, with each individual that actually ghoulifies doing so under circumstances particular to their genetics and their level and duration of radiation exposure.

As to going feral, that's also a big question mark, though it seems to be a result of neurological damage or degradation: lone ghouls or isolated groups undergoing a sort of senility as they lose more and more of what makes them human, intensely traumatized individuals manifesting something similar to an extreme schizoaffective or psychotic aggressive condition, or-- seemingly common among those transformed quickly by intensely high background counts or close proximity to flashpoint events-- the heavy neurological damage cased by ionizing radiation before/during the change (while their unchanged human tissues are still susceptible to radiation damage), and in many cases two or even all three of these factors will apply in varying degrees. As with the transformation itself, it can be a bit of a crap shoot. In all cases, though, the subject is so irreparably damaged that they're reduced almost entirely to their basal instincts, and even those are inconsistent.

It would seem, as borne out in the games without being contradicted or explicitly confirmed, that the process of going feral only occurs when the mind or physical brain of a ghoul degenerates enough that they "lose themselves" and regress to reliance on their instinctual function. These conditions are most likely to be met in ghouls transformed by an extremely damaging amount of radiation over a very short period of time, as opposed to by gradual accumulation in their system.

The only likely ways it would happen to "normal" ghouls whose minds survived the initial transformation would be through long-term "disuse" of their minds, as seen in personality degradation resulting from senility, dementia, or severe dissociative/psychosis-inducing mental states; traumatic brain injury; or through starvation/deprivation. Ghouls need nutrition just as well as intact humans, and long-term malnutrition can have severely damaging effects on the brain. Neurons don't seem to enjoy the same hardiness and rad-regeneration as a ghoul's other tissues (or at least, not nearly at the same level of effectiveness), and over a lot of lean and unsuccessful years (or one or more shorter spans of extreme deprivation), a functionally immortal creature is eventually liable to rack up a lot of brain damage that way.

(Incidentally, I'd bet dollars to donuts that a lot of the ferals you see in the games went this route-- slowly, slipping away in the weeks and months after the bomb, when the world was a nuclear hell incapable of supporting them. Instead of starving to death, they starved to death-of-self, as it were, and got to watch any surviving friends and loved ones do the same. It's a hell of a sorry way to go, and it adds a lot of poignancy to these otherwise throwaway shamblers.)

(Sorry for the lack of brevity here-- it's been a long time since I've done a lore post and this one was done off-the-cuff and coming out from under some pretty heavy anesthesia. I obviously can't source a lot of this, since it comes from extrapolation, but what flesh I've hung from the skeleton set up by canon is born of real-world science and long careful observation of the Fallout world.)

 

Hold on a sec, I thought ghouls were only possible in a environment where FEV interacts with radiation. In the old Fallout games it was explained that FEV in high radiation environments failed to complete a full conversion (like a super mutant) and instead transformed the victims into ghouls. (Harold)

However there is a great deal of plot holes and hand switching through out the story of the ghoulification process.

It was my understanding that when the bombs initially fell they managed to strike a location housing quantities of FEV and when the virus was expelled into the atmosphere ghoulificaiton was a potential result.

But there is the other side of the coin, as FEV was originally developed to be the "cure" for a plague that was wreaking havoc in the United States. Could it be that the plague itself could be the catalyst for ghoulificaiton?

Either way the original games did not actually have any ghouls that could be classified as "feral" yes they had ghoul encounters where they were default aggressive, but that could also be because of their situation and perception of others. (Chances are your not going to walk up to a zombie and say hi.)

In Fallout 1 they were slow, shambling individuals who really just wanted to be left alone. But they have now become something far more nefarious which makes me think that the FEV is a large factor in the process. Also FEV was also used to explain away all the monster mutations encountered in the wasteland, so its kind of the mary sue crutch in this case.

 

Bethesda definitely retconned the ghoulification and mutation process. I think their take is almost exclusively based around radiation. Bethesda probably focuses on radiation because it goes with the generic Red Scare idea. It seems like Bethesda thinks radiation=mutation and FEV=super mutant.

 

This reminds me of some stuff from the cancelled Van Buren.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Reservation
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Born_ghoul

 

Ghouls are changed by radiation only, mutants are changed by the FEV.

 

@Risewild
That is why Harold is Harold and not technically a ghoul. I wish Bethesda hadn't turn him into a tree.

 

I'm glad they decided it was just radiation, FEV is a little overused.

Risewild's already explained, but I just want to add that Harold was never exposed to high radiation, only the FEV. Also, as the Lieutenant says:

Wasteland people dipped into the FEV will generally turn into Super Mutants but since they are somewhat immune to it the virus doesn't take full effect, usually leaving them strong but dumb, as was in Harry's case.

 

This could be a good excuse for why the super mutants in 3 are so dumb. You could surmise that the mutants were out of vault dwellers to vat, so they were forced to make lesser ones from wastelanders. This begs the question as to why the super mutants targeted the downtown D.C. ruins instead of vault 101, which is significantly closer. Perhaps they didn't know all of the vault locations and were looking for a map like the one the BoS has.

 

Ghouls dont go feral, you silly goose.

 

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Endless_walker

Also, I remember that Set's son said something about ghouls' brain rotting and he wasn't affected by being ghoulified in a young age which is supported by the idea that Born-Ghouls don't turn feral.
I would imagine that if ghoulification was a mechanic (which I heard it was going to be a mechanic in Van Buren) it would be dependent on an Endurance and Luck check.

 

Thats an endless walker tho