Shouldn't radiation threats be high? (at least in FO3)

Define "acute effects".

 

Vomiting, burns, hair loss...Stuff like that.

 

From what I've read, dying of rad poisoning would not a fun gaming experience. Or real experience!

 

Eh, none of the games do a great job with radiation. Number three because it has virtually no effect and can be easily removed, and one and two because, with one notable exception, there were no sources of radiation.

 

Radiation isn't my field, but from what I've read of sensations of heat and exposure, it was associated with lethal acute doses of gamma radiation. The guy exposed was working on a core (for the manhattan project?) and accidentally triggered a criticality accident. In that case the sensation of heat may have been a result of the panic he must have experienced when he realized what had just happened. He also died a few days later so I doubt you would learn to recognize signs of severe exposure. But there are other accounts when people have reported feeling a flash of heat, all I've read about though involves very high doses, and only at wikipedia so one could question the validity of my sources, but I'm not about to plow through peer-reviwed journals to find better data.
See Heat Effects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident

As far as I know, none of our senses can detect non-lethal levels of ionizing radiation.

 

There are a lot of things I criticize about Fallout 3, both as a game and as an addition to the series, but one thing I think they hit the nail on the head with is radiation.
With Fallout 3, it really FEELS like radiation is a factor in everything, something I got the impression that Interplay wanted, but left out. This is evidenced by the weapons dealer in Old Town (forgot his name) talking about how pretty much everyone has some degree of rads in their system. Not to mention we had an entire stat devoted to rad resistance, and for what? The Glow, and that's it.
But in Fallout 3, the food is irradiated, the water is irradiated, there are numerous hot spots throughout the map (though I would have preferred the water to be easily purified like in the originals). Bethesda screwed up the canon and in some cases basic logic, but I think they did a good job with radiation. At least, better than Interplay did.

 

If it wasn't for the built in geiger-or-whatever-counter, I'd almost agree with that. It just takes all the fear away. I don't really care about the food... A mistake I think both developers are guilty of is making green glowing goo radioactive. I can't remember a single time where some overturned truck is really nasty, without telling it to the world by being a big neon sign.

 

Well, honestly there was green glowing goo in F1 and F2 that was radiation... so, really, it isn't anything new in the Fallout world.

 

Think 1950's and you are all set.

 

Yeah, Fallout 1 and 2 radiation wasn't an issue at all either. The only place I've had problems with it in Fallout 2 was the nuclear power plant in Gecko. Comparitively speaking though, Fallout 3 only added radiation to food really. In Fallout 1 and 2, anywhere with green goo or was hit by nukes (See: The Glow) seemed to have radiation, which Fallout 3 carried over. As far as food goes, no idea why it wasn't radioactive then. I mean, looking at the fruit that's one damaged product of mutation.

One thing that always bothered me is people saying the water wasn't radioactive in Fallout 1 or 2... How can you tell, honestly? You never go swimming in it and it's never really a big deal brought up in-game. It had to have been radioactive during Fallout 1 at least... why else would you need the water chip then, which has the chief job of purifying and recycling water?

 

Did you guys look at the first page of the thread. It has this quote by Tim Cain:

 

200 years isn't long enough for radiation to go away, let alone around 80.

 

What makes you say that? I read 30-40 years, which was somewhat disappointing.

 

...and radioactive infected goo is bright glowing neon green - at that point, it's not about realism, but either 1) it looks cool AND/OR 2) works decent in a game mechanic

 

Wikipedia says

Mutation from radiation is probably pure sci-fi also. Thank god for FEV!

 

Aye. Considering it is a sci-fi universe based off 1950s thinking though, the Nukes are subject to that as well. Nothing says they arent't something new that's yet to be designed in our own history.

 

In the real world, radiation increases mutation rate, for sure. However, mutations != "grows big and nasty". I think the difference between "long half lifes" of radioactive waste (ie., power plant or enrichment waste - which range in the the millions of years or more) and the "3 to 5 weeks" quoted above is the "bomb radiation" which is a/b/g (greek letters) particles and rays which don't really produce the same kind concentration of radioactive material. I mean, Hiroshima was repopulated after only a couple years at the most. There's a little statue at ground zero. Chernobly created a huge amount of Cesium 137 which is pretty nasty, lasts a while and easily incoportated into plant and animal life... but it's not like all of Eastern Europe was depopulated.

However, this is not considering something like a dirty bomb which might have Chernobyl like effects if "properly" designed.

 

Just an addition to this discussion, there was a random encounter within F1 where your character hits a bit of wasteland that is irradiated. It seems like this random encounter had a higher chance of happening on the part of the map nearest The Glow.

The radiation in Fallout 1&2 is more dangerous in my opinion than it is in Fallout 3. Which is fair because in Fallout 3 it is everywhere.
Although the radiation hit taken in Fallout can really mess up your character quickly because the character stats are so critical to how the game is played. However Fallout 3 is more forgiving when the rads start to hurt because you can play the game with a stats damaged character fairly easily. Quite frankly, F3 can be played if you built a character by not really knowing what the hell you were doing.

 

In Fallout, you just need to accept the setting for what it is. It is a wasteland, infrastructure is virtually nonexistent, there is still lingering radioactivity, and there was significant mutation. That's the canvas of Fallout and those aspects should probably always be present.

 

After reading this thread, I was wondering if there would be interest in a "Radiation Sources and Effects Primer for game design" article. There is a bunch of half-truths and rumors and outright falsehoods above (and I didn't really research my comments either...)

This is not meant as a critique of FO or any other game, but I think game designers should KNOW when they've gone into "deep mystical sci-fi" instead of "realistic radiation effects".