He's right, though. The explosion shown in game is several kilometers away, the gamma ray intensity isn't strong enough to kill there anymore. They would absorb a dose, though, but it is probably too low for radiation sickness or any serious damage. Right now I'm too tired and hungover to approximate the received dose, I might do that later.
The question is, how? We know literaly nothing of the nuclear weapons in Fallout, except that 200kt was like the uper limit or something -
citadation needed!
For all we know, the radiation could be more or evel less compared to real world nukes. Hard to guess something when you have no clue how it works. At least I would not know where to start. As far as I know radiation is calculated with an inverse-square law, inversely proportional to the source of the distance. But how to calculate the correct strength if you have no clue how strong the source actually is?
Anyway, the point is they got a dose or not, and I am pretty confident that they did, even if very small. Probably not enough to do any real damage, but could it be enough to be detected by the Institute since they are looking for "pure" DNA untouched by radiation?
If we really want to talk about realism, I think we all pretty much know, that they would have seen a lot more effects, not just a bit of dust kicked up.