Shouldn't the ghouls also fear radiation?

[0wing]

And stay away? Ghouls are a production prolonged radiation exposure, at least in newer titles. And ferals are ghouls gone mad due to brain necrosis or something like that which also due to even more radiation exposure. So that's raise a question, shouldn't ghouls be still affected and also stay away from radioactive shitholes like Gecko to avoid getting brain fever or lose a dick or get critical forms of radiation sickness? Or some just got unlucky and mutation is random rather than constant long process of the whole body reformation?

 

[R.Graves]

Naw they like the warmth. Also newer titles conflict too much to be canon.

 

[0wing]

Naw they like the warmth. Also newer titles conflict too much to be canon.

Which way, actually? Fallout 1 ghouls were affected by radiation, in Fallout 2 MCA tried to mix FEV in but later retconned back to solely radiation.

 

[Hassknecht]

I think even the original canon maintained that ghouls, as they're products of prolonged radiation exposure, are not hurt by radiation anymore. The worst that can happen to them are to become glowing ones, which doesn't necessarily make them mad. Other than that the radiation just feels like pleasant warmth to them.

 

[Taxi]

As far as i know, the lore is slim on this as i understand even the developers had missunderstandings amongst themselfs.
I dont think they should be immune.
So my headcanon on the subject is: Ghouls and Muties are just more resistant to the sideffects, given that they are already decayed by radiation exposure.

 

[0wing]

I think even the original canon maintained that ghouls, as they're products of prolonged radiation exposure, are not hurt by radiation anymore. The worst that can happen to them are to become glowing ones, which doesn't necessarily make them mad. Other than that the radiation just feels like pleasant warmth to them.

Wait, how? Body just develops radiation resistance? But that doesn't mean pleasant warmth all of a sudden. How they are going mad? Brain appears to be not so resistant and just falls apart? Worst case scenario? It appears to me that Feral or Crazy ghouls more and more lore breaking just because of this fact. In Fallout those poor bastards in Necropolis looked like sad and depressed folks rather than zombies. At least some says "go away" before attacking.

to become glowing ones

Looks like worst of all worst case scenarios of radiation sickness

 

[Hassknecht]

Wait, how? Body just develops radiation resistance? But that doesn't mean pleasant warmth all of a sudden. How they are going mad? Brain appears to be not so resistant and just falls apart? Worst case scenario?

I wouldn't call it "radiation resistance", it's just that their body is already so wrecked from the radiation that it doesn't do further damage. They basically got used to the radiation. Dunno, it's SCIENCE! at its worst.
Ghouls didn't really turn mad in the original canon. All the hostile ghouls were just being dicks in the sane sense.
Glowing Ones are ghouls who absorbed so much radiation that they're highly radioactive themselves. They're not mad, though (at least not in Fallout 1 and 2).

 

[0wing]

it's just that their body is already so wrecked from the radiation that it doesn't do further damage. They basically got used to the radiation. Dunno, it's SCIENCE! at its worst.

What about internal organs then?

 

[Hassknecht]

What about internal organs then?

Mutated? Dunno, SCIENCE! was all about radiation not necessarily just killing things but also mutating them to various degrees.

 

[Borov]

You cant compare realitys version of radiation and the fictional radiation in fallout, they are simply different (SKIP TO THE LAST SENTANCE IF YOU KNOW THE EFFECTS OF RADIATION).


In fallout, slight exposure to radiation over time will result in heavy mutation which will make you a ghoul.

In real life however, slight exposure to radiation will overtime develop cancerous cells that will result in, well, CANCER.

Also its impossible to have organic matter completely immune to radiation or be resistant to it cause its effects go all the way to the atomic level and theres just nothing you can do about it without changing the very structure of organic matter




All in all, just accept fallouts explanation of it, you will aviod a headache from trying to make any sort of sense from it.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

The only planned 'mad ghouls' were the endless walkers (if I recall the name correctly) from Van Buren, and these were ghouls exiled from the Reservation who had been walking in the New Mexico sun for days to the point that their brains were cooked.
Basically mad from thirst and heat, and they still could not run up to the speed of a human.

 

[Neane93]

^
There were crazies in fallout 2. You would find them near Gecko.
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/ECCRAZY.MSG

 

[The-Artist-64]

Possibly one of the only things Bethesda did right was removing that 'F.E.V. and radiation' crap that some of Black Isle's directors debated about. I've always believed that ghouls were simply the product of heavy doses of radiation activating a hidden gene within a small amount of people. It's a hit or miss process with very low success rates, and the environment has to be just right for the 'switching on' to occur.

Radiation to them is more like alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. It makes them feel nice at the time, but its long term effects are dangerous.

 

[eissa]

Possibly one of the only things Bethesda did right was removing that 'F.E.V. and radiation' crap that some of Black Isle's directors debated about. I've always believed that ghouls were simply the product of heavy doses of radiation activating a hidden gene within a small amount of people. It's a hit or miss process with very low success rates, and the environment has to be just right for the 'switching on' to occur.

Radiation to them is more like alcohol, drugs or cigarettes. It makes them feel nice at the time, but its long term effects are dangerous.

i rather stick to the FEV lore than simple irradiation magic. as we know radiation is very lethal and mutation ussually means cancer. you dont find a blood sucker in real life pripyat ten years ago, what you find is dying bony mutt with six leg...

 

[The-Artist-64]

i rather stick to the FEV lore than simple irradiation magic. as we know radiation is very lethal and mutation ussually means cancer. you dont find a blood sucker in real life pripyat ten years ago, what you find is dying bony mutt with six leg...

Then you accept Bethesda's notion that everyone has FEV, and that it somehow mixes with radiation everywhere.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I find this thing a whole mess, first it was radiation and wild FEV, then it became radiation, then it became instant transformation when exposed to radiation (but as some fan theory goes, only if you have a gene that makes Ghoulism possible. They even wrote a whole theory on how the Vault beneath Bakersfield was set up to test how many people would become Ghouls)

This is my theory, Ghoulism (in Fallout 1 and 2, I can not speak for FNV) is the result of radiation and certain other mutagens/factors that are rare. (they were present in the Bakersfield Vault, the Reservation/Los Alamos, and what used to be Iron Mountains/Cheyenne mountain that resulted in a population of glowing ones. We can assume that these elements only existed in these bunker complexes).
It also takes years before the transformation to becoming a Ghoul is completed and it is more likely that a person dies long before that happens.

Though it leaves a person practically immortal (though not really immortal, cell decay has just been really slowed down now), it also leaves them in a very weak and fragile state. (ghouls can take less punishment than a human, and they are definitely not berserker powerhouses).

Glowing Ones are Ghouls with radioactive material trapped in their bodies. It doesn't hurt them but they can irradiate anything near them, causing radiation sickness and other related disease. As a result they are even more shunned than regular Ghouls.
Unlike FO3, FNV (I will see that as the result of reusing FO3 assets) Glowing Ones do not have radiation based attacks in which they can actually channel energy and radiation towards a target.

Ghouls and Glowing Ones are no longer hurt by sources of radiation, in fact they might even benefit from being in its presence. (if it heals them or if they need it I leave open for debate)

Ghouls are not zombies or mindless in general, though of course severe radiation and other factors (physical or mental) can damage or 'eat away' at their brains' cognitive functions. (a ghoul can just as well go mad from severe trauma as a human does)

There is also no reason for Ghouls to hang out at places like graveyards and such. Sure there are loners but like regular humans most Ghouls are still social creatures longing for company and acceptance. (plus they do need to eat, drink, sleep, and undergo medical treatment to make sure their condition does not further deteriorate)

Last, Ghouls are rare. There are not millions of Ghouls running around, survivors from the Great War with most of them having become feral. Only a handful of places that produced Ghoul populations.

 

[Atlas]

Personally, I subscribe to the "FEV and Radiation" theory that Black Isle toyed with when they first thought up Ghouls. To me, the idea that the bombs caused some of the FEV Virus to go airborne and mix with the Radiation to form the Wastelands given to us in the series just makes more sense than believing radiation was the sole cause. I, along with many other NMA members, choose to ignore Bethesda's work on the franchise and instead focus on the originals and NV, and if I'm remembering correctly the reason why Ghouls went mad was simple; the pain.

Before Bethesda wrote in that they went feral, Black Isle had written ghouls as people who were always in intense agony; they were for all intents and purposes zombies that still felt everything happening in their bodies, and the 'feral' ghouls were simply those who weren't able to take it anymore and snapped. Again, it's been a while since I've looked this up, and I could have mixed up my information, but if you really want to know I believe I found it in the Fallout Bible--just ctrl-f Ghoul and you can probably find it with a few minutes of searching.

I can't, in good confidence, try and explain anything beyond that, but I think the best theory as to why they still work even in the state they're in is the FEV one, as mutations caused by the Virus could potentially explain away most of the issues that are left by the solitary radiation belief.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Ghouls can only happen due to FEV and radiation, with the FEV mutating the people to have a bodily resistance and adaptability to radiation. This would explain the presence of ghouls in the first two games, this is because they spread out from the area near Mariposa base.