Is the Church of Children of the Atom actually dumb?

S

Sublime

Still Mildly Glowing
Browsing these forums the common consensus on Fallout 3's religion seems to be that it's really goddam stupid. Replaying Fallout 3 after a lot of time myself, I was unimpressed by confessor Cromwell's ideas. However, thinking about it later made me realize that I was scrutinizing him (and his religion) through my own, real world biases. The post-apocalyptic reality of the Fallout world is much different than ours and requires the right lenses. And I reached the conclusion that period of time that gets the closest is the world post world war 2. The second Great War left behind a shattered Europe, both morally and materially, a cultural earthquake that shook the foundantions of Western civililization, marking the end of an age with deep ripercussions on the political landscape of the future.

And that's where we get to the third Great War. psychologically the nuclear apocalypse must have been devasting to all survivors, left with the broken (and irradiated) pieces of civilization, last after a worldwide genocide the likes of which had never been seen before.

Now, the Church of the Atom is certainly an unsual religion by our standards, but it fits its time perfectly: the Great War wasn't an holocaust on a planetary scale, rather the greatest act of creation in the history of humankind; the radiations that pollute the Wasteland aren't an invisible poison, but proof of the glory of the Atom. Therefore, not only it offers a viewpoint that rationalizes past events, but also psychological comfort to cope with the harsh reality of the Wasteland.
 
Dayglow Drifter said:
It's more or less a direct pull from one of the Planet of The Apes movies, I believe.
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Yeah but the nuclear missile worshippers Beneath the Planet of the Apes are highly intelligent telekinetic mutants (from what I can remember), which is quite different from Cromwell’s stereotypical cult preacher characterization.

That being said, I don’t really have a problem with the mythos of their religion, it’s more that they’re underdeveloped and basically just there to make a vague reference to something more original.

Another problem I have with them is that most people in the capital wasteland aren’t dumb enough to believe their shit, which makes their religious rationalizations and justifications seem pointless. It would be one thing if other wastelanders heard of their ideas and thought “hmm, kinda weird but I guess that makes sense, could be true but I don’t care enough to join or worship”, but everyone in megaton seems to think they are morons, and no one else outside of megaton has even heard of them apparently.
 
Children of Atom are übermensch because they can stay in highly irradiated areas with seemingly no consequences and Far Harbor confirmed some sort of supernatural radiation entity.
 
The concept itself is good, fits perfectly fine in Fallout, and it makes a decent amount of sense. My main problem is a lack of any kind of elaboration. In fallout 3 they're played entirely for laughs, despite making up a significant proportion of the town's population and literally being partly responsible for its foundation. They should be somewhat important figures locally that you can do stuff for, but instead their just whacky loonies who have one silly unsubstantial quest added for them in a DLC.

In 4's base game they're terrible because it's contrived that they jsut happened to arrive in this wasteland, and then to make matters worse they're just more generic bullet sponges. The onlyones not hostile are the ones in the Crater in the Glowing Sea, but like the rest of the Glowing Sea they're absolutely devoid of content, they can just tell you the bare minimum about their cult (I guess for people who haven't played 3) and tell you where Virgil is.

Their implmenetation was decent in Far Harbor, though I feel that they were the weakest of the three factions, and again it felt contrived that they ended up there.

Aurelius Of Phoenix said:
Children of Atom are übermensch because they can stay in highly irradiated areas with seemingly no consequences and Far Harbor confirmed some sort of supernatural radiation entity.
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Oh yeah, making them all be radiation immune was a pretty bad innovation from 4 - though I don't think that we need to let Far Harbor's main quest make us seriously consider the real existence of Atom, any more than we need to read deeply into the broader implications of the ghost in the Den. That's far too literalist of an interpretation.
 
Iprovidelittlepianos said:
Yeah but the nuclear missile worshippers Beneath the Planet of the Apes are highly intelligent telekinetic mutants (from what I can remember), which is quite different from Cromwell’s stereotypical cult preacher characterization.

That being said, I don’t really have a problem with the mythos of their religion, it’s more that they’re underdeveloped and basically just there to make a vague reference to something more original.

Another problem I have with them is that most people in the capital wasteland aren’t dumb enough to believe their shit, which makes their religious rationalizations and justifications seem pointless. It would be one thing if other wastelanders heard of their ideas and thought “hmm, kinda weird but I guess that makes sense, could be true but I don’t care enough to join or worship”, but everyone in megaton seems to think they are morons, and no one else outside of megaton has even heard of them apparently.
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I don't know, Children of the Arom are actually supposed to be part of the founding group of Megaton and Cromwell does have a following of unnamed NPCs. Besides, by the time time of Fallout 4 they've spread so far as the Commonwealth, so I assume they must have expanded a lot in the hiatus between the two games.

Hardboiled Android said:
The concept itself is good, fits perfectly fine in Fallout, and it makes a decent amount of sense. My main problem is a lack of any kind of elaboration. In fallout 3 they're played entirely for laughs, despite making up a significant proportion of the town's population and literally being partly responsible for its foundation. They should be somewhat important figures locally that you can do stuff for, but instead their just whacky loonies who have one silly unsubstantial quest added for them in a DLC.

In 4's base game they're terrible because it's contrived that they jsut happened to arrive in this wasteland, and then to make matters worse they're just more generic bullet sponges. The onlyones not hostile are the ones in the Crater in the Glowing Sea, but like the rest of the Glowing Sea they're absolutely devoid of content, they can just tell you the bare minimum about their cult (I guess for people who haven't played 3) and tell you where Virgil is.

Their implmenetation was decent in Far Harbor, though I feel that they were the weakest of the three factions, and again it felt contrived that they ended up there.


Oh yeah, making them all be radiation immune was a pretty bad innovation from 4 - though I don't think that we need to let Far Harbor's main quest make us seriously consider the real existence of Atom, any more than we need to read deeply into the broader implications of the ghost in the Den. That's far too literalist of an interpretation.
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Well that's unfortunately Bethesda way of doing things. Even when an idea has potential it doesn't get developed as it should.

Aurelius Of Phoenix said:
My deep lore is that the mental energy of all the atom cultists manifested atom into existence.
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American Gods type of sci-fi then? Creative interpretation, but it doesn't fit too well in Fallout, I believe.

Atomic Postman said:
If they'd been Ghouls it would have been fine, good even as an idea. "Atom" gave them immortality, after all.
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That would severely limit its appeal as a religion. Besides religion is a matter of faith, whereas the positive effects of radiation in ghouls is a matter of science (in the Fallout universe, at least).
 
Sublime said:
That would severely limit its appeal as a religion. Besides religion is a matter of faith, whereas the positive effects of radiation in ghouls is a matter of science (in the Fallout universe, at least).
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The fact that they worship radiation and place themselves near it constantly severely limits its appeal as a religion because they'd shit their guts out and die horribly. Or, alternatively, it serves to undermine the severity/lethality of radiation which something like Fallout shouldn't aspire to.

Cults and religions typically have some kind of psychological thread that they pull on that gets people entwined. Scientology started as faux-therapy and the early stages of recruitment still is, that big cult in Australia ran by that Tennis Coach guy teaches sexual therapy as a big promise of its benefits. What is the appeal of the Church of Atom to human followers? What is the thread that it pulls? Because convincing people to go lick the elephant's foot based on a completely fantastical theology with zero connection to existing religion (meaning the believability gets stretched even further as to why people would buy in) is a no-go unless you're writing a cartoon.

Ghouls are a twisted miracle granted immortality by strange, unknown scientific forces. They're also horribly disfigured outcasts that both look and are made to feel like they are no longer human. I imagine the psychological weight of becoming a Ghoul, the regrets and the self-loathing, is something that at the very least has lingered in the heads of most, and probably absolutely destroys a few. A Ghoul cult that is basically a sanctuary for Ghouls, where they embrace their condition not as a burden but instead reconfiguring their mindset into viewing it as a gift opens the door of creating such a batshit theology a lot, lot easier. It also gives them a nice shade of depth in that at their core they're a refuge for the cursed outcasts of the Wasteland rather than "Lol they're retards who don't know radiation bad lmao lol". Ghoulification as a product of radiation is a scientific reality of the Fallout universe, but so are the benefits of psychological therapy in our own and Scientology still uses that as a gateway into insane beliefs later down the line.
 
Through the mental energy of the cultists their collective belief in this entity brought it into reality. Not a 'god' but a supernatural entity that exists through radiation and whatever, maybe its fev that altered brain chemistry to allow this being to be created, like psykers in Fallout.
 
Atomic Postman said:
The fact that they worship radiation and place themselves near it constantly severely limits its appeal as a religion because they'd shit their guts out and die horribly. Or, alternatively, it serves to undermine the severity/lethality of radiation which something like Fallout shouldn't aspire to.

Cults and religions typically have some kind of psychological thread that they pull on that gets people entwined. Scientology started as faux-therapy and the early stages of recruitment still is, that big cult in Australia ran by that Tennis Coach guy teaches sexual therapy as a big promise of its benefits. What is the appeal of the Church of Atom to human followers? What is the thread that it pulls? Because convincing people to go lick the elephant's foot based on a completely fantastical theology with zero connection to existing religion (meaning the believability gets stretched even further as to why people would buy in) is a no-go unless you're writing a cartoon.

Ghouls are a twisted miracle granted immortality by strange, unknown scientific forces. They're also horribly disfigured outcasts that both look and are made to feel like they are no longer human. I imagine the psychological weight of becoming a Ghoul, the regrets and the self-loathing, is something that at the very least has lingered in the heads of most, and probably absolutely destroys a few. A Ghoul cult that is basically a sanctuary for Ghouls, where they embrace their condition not as a burden but instead reconfiguring their mindset into viewing it as a gift opens the door of creating such a batshit theology a lot, lot easier. It also gives them a nice shade of depth in that at their core they're a refuge for the cursed outcasts of the Wasteland rather than "Lol they're retards who don't know radiation bad lmao lol". Ghoulification as a product of radiation is a scientific reality of the Fallout universe, but so are the benefits of psychological therapy in our own and Scientology still uses that as a gateway into insane beliefs later down the line.
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It is worth noting that, historically, most religions are formed out of fear, and more specifically fear of natural forces beyond our reckoning or control. The very earliest identifiable religion, predating even fertility cults and going all the way back to Neanderthal Man, was the worship of bears, who would have been the most terrifying force possible to early cave-dwelling humans as they moved out of Africa and into glaciated Eurasia. And then of course as we move on in time, almost all early polytheistic religions are personifications of a variety of natural forces. Those cults you mention all emerge in a "psychologically mature" context where the most pressing issues have been reduced to internal struggles rather than external conflicts with a demon-haunted world.

In Fallout where humanity is restarting from the ground up and people are entering into a new and mysterious world, its only natural that those early trends of religion would be recapitulated. And just as the cave bear was the greatest natural threat conceivable to the hunter-gatherer, what represents a greater threat than radiation to the wastelander? The invisible fire that shapes every single component of their lives, implacable and as scientific understanding decline inexplicable. Its only natural that any number of superstitions would arise around it, followed by rituals, and finally personification.

Now that said, every single adherent exposing themselves to radiation is obviously pretty silly and a good way to wipe yourselves out, Shaker style. There are any number of solutions to this though. One is that you have it so only certain members of the priesthood or monks expose themselves regularly to radiation, being extremely pious, resigning themselves to sterility and short lives. Alternatively, you could have it so the top priesthood is ghouls, or if you wanna go more conspiratorial its all secretly being run by a cabal of ghouls maybe in the hope of creating more Reservation-style, although this might be too similar to the Unity.

I could even see the concept of certain members of the cult possessing a mutation that makes them appear outwardly normal but possessing a ghoulish radiation resistance, though this would have to be handled delicately to prevent it from being totally OP and lore-breaking, and you'd need a better explanation than "lol atom did it."

Or maybe this cult somehow possesses knowledge of how to produce anti-rad chems in bulk that most factions lack - Rad-X is their communion wafer, RadAway their wine. This has the added benefit that going by isometric standards where anti-rad chems are addictive, and even Fallout 4's survival mode where anti-rad chems are absolutely devestating in other ways, it would turn many of the Children into strung-out fucked up junkies dependent on the Priesthood.

You could even tie it in to the real-life concept of creating an Atomic Priesthood (it's really insane to me that more hasn't been done with this and all of the project's other proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Force) to build a religion centered around preventing people from messing with nuclear waste disposal sites in the far future and preserving in mythological form the dangers of radaition, but as so often happens the religion's meaning becomes twisted and distorted.

I fundamentally like the concept behind the Children of Atom, they just needed a little more development and better writers to boot.
 
Hardboiled Android said:
It is worth noting that, historically, most religions are formed out of fear, and more specifically fear of natural forces beyond our reckoning or control. The very earliest identifiable religion, predating even fertility cults and going all the way back to Neanderthal Man, was the worship of bears, who would have been the most terrifying force possible to early cave-dwelling humans as they moved out of Africa and into glaciated Eurasia. And then of course as we move on in time, almost all early polytheistic religions are personifications of a variety of natural forces. Those cults you mention all emerge in a "psychologically mature" context where the most pressing issues have been reduced to internal struggles rather than external conflicts with a demon-haunted world.

In Fallout where humanity is restarting from the ground up and people are entering into a new and mysterious world, its only natural that those early trends of religion would be recapitulated. And just as the cave bear was the greatest natural threat conceivable to the hunter-gatherer, what represents a greater threat than radiation to the wastelander? The invisible fire that shapes every single component of their lives, implacable and as scientific understanding decline inexplicable. Its only natural that any number of superstitions would arise around it, followed by rituals, and finally personification.

Now that said, every single adherent exposing themselves to radiation is obviously pretty silly and a good way to wipe yourselves out, Shaker style. There are any number of solutions to this though. One is that you have it so only certain members of the priesthood or monks expose themselves regularly to radiation, being extremely pious, resigning themselves to sterility and short lives. Alternatively, you could have it so the top priesthood is ghouls, or if you wanna go more conspiratorial its all secretly being run by a cabal of ghouls maybe in the hope of creating more Reservation-style, although this might be too similar to the Unity.

I could even see the concept of certain members of the cult possessing a mutation that makes them appear outwardly normal but possessing a ghoulish radiation resistance, though this would have to be handled delicately to prevent it from being totally OP and lore-breaking, and you'd need a better explanation than "lol atom did it."

Or maybe this cult somehow possesses knowledge of how to produce anti-rad chems in bulk that most factions lack - Rad-X is their communion wafer, RadAway their wine. This has the added benefit that going by isometric standards where anti-rad chems are addictive, and even Fallout 4's survival mode where anti-rad chems are absolutely devestating in other ways, it would turn many of the Children into strung-out fucked up junkies dependent on the Priesthood.

You could even tie it in to the real-life concept of creating an Atomic Priesthood (it's really insane to me that more hasn't been done with this and all of the project's other proposals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Interference_Task_Force) to build a religion centered around preventing people from messing with nuclear waste disposal sites in the far future and preserving in mythological form the dangers of radaition, but as so often happens the religion's meaning becomes twisted and distorted.

I fundamentally like the concept behind the Children of Atom, they just needed a little more development and better writers to boot.
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You've made a good argument but you've stripped the Children of Atom to their most basic fragment of an idea, because unfortunately the majority of their implementation and role is normal people irradiating themselves and constantly surrounding themselves with radiation. I can agree that a post-war religion with radiation as a major factor could work and could be very cool, but the "Worship radiation and surround themselves with it" is kind of their whole gig as is, which is where my particular criticism/suggested fix comes from.
 
Atomic Postman said:
You've made a good argument but you've stripped the Children of Atom to their most basic fragment of an idea, because unfortunately the majority of their implementation and role is normal people irradiating themselves and constantly surrounding themselves with radiation. I can agree that a post-war religion with radiation as a major factor could work and could be very cool, but the "Worship radiation and surround themselves with it" is kind of their whole gig as is, which is where my particular criticism/suggested fix comes from.
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It kind of works if they retain the ability to produce anti-rad chems since then adherents would be pretty safe exposing themselves to radaition in a manner that may seem mysterious to the uninitiated. It also still works if you only have certain members of the priesthood or monks exposing themselves to radiation, essentially offering themselves as a ritual sacrifice over the course of a decade on behalf of the other followers. After all, in Fallout 3 the only member of the Cult we see actively exposing themselves to radiation is Confessor Cromwell. It also works if you have that priesthood or certain members of it having a mutation (or perhaps a genetically engineered ability) to resist radiation.
 
Yeah yeah I get it, by having the church preach about the healing glow or whatever the fuck while ingesting anti-rad medicine to counter the effects would be the kind of religious hypocrisy that a middle schooler would write. I have a better hypothesis. Fallout 3 and 4 are shit and none of this makes sense.
 
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Atomic Postman said:
You've made a good argument but you've stripped the Children of Atom to their most basic fragment of an idea, because unfortunately the majority of their implementation and role is normal people irradiating themselves and constantly surrounding themselves with radiation. I can agree that a post-war religion with radiation as a major factor could work and could be very cool, but the "Worship radiation and surround themselves with it" is kind of their whole gig as is, which is where my particular criticism/suggested fix comes from.
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People become ghouls precisely because they weren't resistant to radiation. As a product of their transformation, their metabolism has evolved to thrive off of radiation, minimizing their need for food and water.

Children of Atom are baseline humans who have evolved to have a much higher resistance to radiation, or more precisely, their DNA is not damaged by radiation. Where and how that evolution occurred, is anyone's guess.
 
MayonaiseCream said:
People become ghouls precisely because they weren't resistant to radiation. As a product of their transformation, their metabolism has evolved to thrive off of radiation, minimizing their need for food and water.

Children of Atom are baseline humans who have evolved to have a much higher resistance to radiation, or more precisely, their DNA is not damaged by radiation. Where and how that evolution occurred, is anyone's guess.
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Being able to survive deadly doses of radiation without suffering any kind of ill effects (such as grotesque mutation) sounds too fantastical even for Fallout.
 
I like the children of atom, just wish how all that shit worked was better explained tbh.
 
Yes, the Children of Atom are stupid.

As a concept it is barely developed, and in execution it is completely lacking.

The idea that the nuclear war would have a deep impact on human psyche and mentality is understandable, people being in both shock and awe for nuclear power and radiation, and developing a religious reverence to it is understandable.
Evidence of its destructive power is all around the descendants of survivors, and radiation while invisible has physical effects on people when exposed for a long time to it.

In that regard it is understandable that a cult or some form of religion would develop around it, and that some people would be drawn to join it, mostly those who indeed think nuclear power and radiation are something supernatural.

But the thing is is that the Children of the Atom has no widespread appeal.
I assume the cult does do more than just pray to atom and perhaps nuclear powered devices and weapons, such as cultivating land for crops, and water reclamation to feed themselves.
But these people also deliberately expose themselves to radiation in order to become one with their "god", or create some mini big bang in themselves or whatever they think radiation will do for them.

But the only result is that they become, and eventually most will die.
And if they have children these will likely suffer from all kinds of genetic ailments.

The Children of Atom are not immune to the effects of radiation. Them developing some kind of immunity for it does not even work in the Fallout universe where it is made clear that only human mutants such as Ghouls and Super Mutants don't suffer ill effects of it for a long time.

Other than seeking to fill some kind of religious or spiritual hole in themselves, and be part of a community, there is not much the cult would offer that would make an outsider consider joining them, especially when it is known that these people deliberately look up "hot spots".

Worse, as Far Harbor showed, the Children of Atom also seek to spread radiation to uncontaminated land.
That definitely will make them unpopular with outsiders and settlements, especially those who know how dangerous radiation is.
They would want to make sure that the Children of Atom don't spread their literally poisonous religion around.

It may maintain itself as a fringe cult, but it would never become a major religion that draws in hundreds of people.


And I also think that it would make more sense that it were Ghouls who would start such a cult, they themselves wearing the physical signs of what radiation does, and them having experienced first hand what the destructive power of nuclear energy is.
They might try to spread the religion to "smooth skins" but those would probably be even less likely to join such a movement when they see what radiation does to people.


In the end it is just a milked out reference to Beneath the Planet of the Apes that was already done in the original Wasteland.


Atomic Postman said:
Ghouls are a twisted miracle granted immortality by strange, unknown scientific forces. They're also horribly disfigured outcasts that both look and are made to feel like they are no longer human. I imagine the psychological weight of becoming a Ghoul, the regrets and the self-loathing, is something that at the very least has lingered in the heads of most, and probably absolutely destroys a few. A Ghoul cult that is basically a sanctuary for Ghouls, where they embrace their condition not as a burden but instead reconfiguring their mindset into viewing it as a gift opens the door of creating such a batshit theology a lot, lot easier. It also gives them a nice shade of depth in that at their core they're a refuge for the cursed outcasts of the Wasteland rather than "Lol they're retards who don't know radiation bad lmao lol". Ghoulification as a product of radiation is a scientific reality of the Fallout universe, but so are the benefits of psychological therapy in our own and Scientology still uses that as a gateway into insane beliefs later down the line.
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That is what basically the Children of the Wasteland saw themselves about, they believed themselves to be an evolution of mankind that was better suited to deal with radiation.
They also sought to create a homeland for Ghouls that were persecuted by baseline humanity for their appearance and belief that they carried diseases.
And they wanted to stick to regular humans, building up an army and weapons to defend themselves, and eventually driving humans out of their settlements and areas rich in resources by shooting "dirty bombs" and even some real nuclear shells at these.
 
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