The Glow

O

Oni

First time out of the vault
I was just wondering...
I helped a friend get through The Glow just yesterday. And I felt very interested in all the Holodisks I found there. Now I know what this 'West-Tek' facility was used for, and I know it has some ties to the Military Base, but the one main thing I never actually figured out; what happened? I mean, obviously there was a nuclear explosion at some point. And all life in the area was extinguished. Does this mean that China's Nuke hit this facility? If so, how come it only cratered 2 levels? I mean, even if the facility was heavily fortified, a nuke should do just a tad more damage. Shouldn't it?
 
True enough Ozrat. I think if you do a bit of a search of the Bible or even back in the archives you'll find the answer. But to be honest, I think this is fair for discussion.

Why only two layers deep- heavily fortified installation with EMP shielding. If you were the Chinese, you might want to zap it.

This encounter always reminds me of the cold war flick Colossus, the Forbin Project, about a computer that takes over the world- a smart verions of Cyberdyne's little monster in the Terminator flicks.
 
Actually nukes don't have much "digging power", Infact there was a underground safe in a bank in hiroshima, just yards away from the central impact point that was almost untouched by Fat boy, infact, the bank was rebuilt on top of that safe...
 
the glow is actually a pretty accurate interpritation of what hapens when a hardend facility is hit with one of our "bunker-buster" nukes.
 
Nukes of that time were thought to have deep impact blasts near the point of detonation. Craters, in fact. Therefore what happened to The Glow isn't too off from imagination of that time for a large nuke hitting a hardened facility, or it might have been a conventional bomb that punched and a nuke went off as well, which makes less sense.

One thing you have to remember, Fallout is not based off of today's science. :)
 
I'm leaning more toward artistic license here. If a groud-penetrating nuke did hit West-Tek and went off, there would be nothing left unless that place was very, very, very heavily built from the beginning which it didn't look like. Say it pentrated at least to the first level and went off, the compression and shock from that going off would shove everything above the buke up and out and everything below it would collapse. You'd be left with a big, gutted hole. Most likely there owuld be a smaller opening at the top and then a space inside where the floors used to be and the debris sitting at the bottom.

Of course, the penetrator could have only went into the ground and then went off and what we see is just the amount of damage the nuke was able to do after removing tons of dirt.

One question no one seems to ask is how the hell did they get into the original facility? :P


Like Roshambo says though, this isn't our world and isn't our science necessarily. A copy of Popular Science I have from 1961 proves that. :wink: - Colt
 
I don't remember where it says it, but it was supposed to have been an advanced military research facility (duh), that was hit by very many nuclear/atomic bombs. It was built so sturdily that the combined blasts only totaly destroyed the first floor, and the second floor was covered in rubble from the first.

I think it was on one of the holodisks, or the mainframe or something.
 
Nuke damage is percussive, not concussive, the warhead does not detonate on the surface, but in the air...I think it's kind of innacurate that there even is a crater unless a munitions dump cooked off or conventional weapons were used
 
A modern airburst warhead detonates above ground, true. The Glow, however, was caused by repetative surface bombing, to break through the heavily reinforced surface plate. It's on one of the holodisks, I'm sure of it.
 
BOS13 said:
Nuke damage is percussive, not concussive, the warhead does not detonate on the surface, but in the air...I think it's kind of innacurate that there even is a crater unless a munitions dump cooked off or conventional weapons were used
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These were bombs, not misiles....
 
Nocturne said:
These were bombs, not misiles....
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Actually, that's another great mystery of Fallout. Certainly bombs are more fifty-ish, as there was no ICBM technology at that time and rocketry required to carry atomic payload by missiles was only being developed. However, The Narrator speaks of "Spears of nuclear fire" in the F2 intro, and you have to agree this brings missiles to mind rather than bombs.

Also, I think in Maxson's diary in F1 you can find something along the lines of "they've let the nukes fly". This also sounds like missiles rather than bombs.

However, in numerous other places you hear about bombs.
 
I'm leaning toward ICBM's, because this is supposed to be 50's future, and they did have rockets and such in Sci-fi movies from that era.
 
ICBM's are the only thing I'd imagine it would be. But why would there be a crater? Even if there were high explosives or whatnot on the first floor of the West-Tek Research Facility the Nuke would have vaporized it, not cooked it off. Bombers don't make sense though. What could have caused the crater?
 
Nocturne said:
A dirty bomb maybe......
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A dirty bomb just releases radiation. The glow is irradiated, true, but there's also a big fuggin hole! Maybe a bunker buster nuke, but they're still in the research phase right now.
 
Nocturne said:
woulden't a Bunker Buster : Atomic edition vaporize the entire inside....?
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That seems probable a nuclear weapon generates over 10,000,000 degrees F of heat from the initial blast, and also the compression and shock would help vaporize/destroy everything. At close range from a nuclear blast metal does vaporize so I'd imagine that the facility shouldn't exist. I'm not sure if this is accurate but I have heard of modern nukes that generate about the same heat as the core of our sun (over 25,000,000 degrees F).
 
Just because a certain bomb generates an "x" amount of temperature means nothing. What exactly does that tell you? I mean how much area is heated to that temperature, and for how long? It means diddly. Any thunder bolt that you have ever seen or heard has heated the air in its center to that of the plasma at the surface of the sun, and what? All it means is that you get a really loud bang and third degree burns if you stand really close.
Whoopady DOOO!!!!!!!

What exactly would you consider "close range" to a nuclear blast for metal to evaporate? How much metal?

Anyways... I think that if it was a hardened facility and it was hit by a nuke then it is likely that when the nuke penetrated the first two floors and detonated, it shot everything out like a gun. Energy travels the path of least resistance, which means it would explode outwards not inwards. Besides, where is the mountain that was undoubtedly on top? Just maybe it was the hundreds of thousands of tons of rock on top that got heated to a zillion degrees and "vaporized".
Ultimately I would say that artistic licence definitely come into play here and whatever logical explanation you can come up with is fine.

As for the existence of ICBMs, I vote against it. I think it is much more in line with the 1950's style for it to be bombs. At that time the Russians and Chinese had just developed the nuclear bomb and we were worried about their bombers not missiles. Besides there is also the matter of the in-game screen-saver on the pip-boy which pictures bombs and not missiles.
 
Ok fine, you make a decent point. To answer your question though I'm pretty sure that close range is basically between 10 and 20 miles from the initial air burst. At that range pretty much any amount of metal will vaporize, because a nuclear blast isn't A LIGHTNING BOLT!!!! An air burst is initial but the overall shock wave and heat blast/wave lasts for quite a bit of time. And the heat will last for a while.
 
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