What is the food chain of the Fallout world?

ElloinmorninJ

Where'd That 6th Toe Come From?
A lot of the land seems dead, and the water is poisoned: So, what do the animals eat?

In Fallout’s world there seems to be a lack of herbivores and plants and an overabundance of apex predators. Just a nitpick of mine.
 
Fallout 3 only, right?

I mean, there is The Divide and Glowing Sea too (Arroyo before the Geck too......more or less), but the rest of the places seem perfectly ok to live.
 
For Plant life in New Vegas there is Banana Yucca, Barrel Cactus fruit, Buffalo Gourd, Broc Flower, Honey Mesquite plants, Jalapeno bushes, Maize plants, Nevada agave fruits,Prickly pears plants, Pinto beans, Bell peppers, spore plants, pinyon nuts. Also fresh fruit so there may be apple or pear trees somewhere.

Herbivores: Brahmin, Bighorners possibly mole rats as well but mole rats also may be omnivores, I'm not really sure
Omnivores: Radroaches, Ants/ Fire ants, Boatfly's, Coyotes, Lakelurks (they are mutated snapping turtles and snapping turtles are omnivores) , rats, fish, ghouls, ravens, I would also guess that Centaurs are omnivores too but im not sure
Carnivores: Radscorpions, Gecko's, Giant Mantis, Nightstalkers
Apex Carnivores: Deathclaws, Cazadores

I'd imagine the food chain would look something like this Banana Yucca>Mole rat>Gecko>Giant Radscorpion> Deathclaw.
I think there are enough herbivores but If you do feel that the number of herbivores are lacking I think the amount of plant-eating omnivores more than makes up for this. Also, New Vegas has a lot of clean water lying around in Lake Mead, Colorado River as well as places like Goodsprings source which also have clean water. Mr House also was a lot more prepared so he shot down a good amount of the nuclear warheads lobbed at Vegas so the Mojave Wasteland isn't as irradiated as other places.

Fallout 4 added a lot of radstags around the Commonwealth to function as a new herbivore species.
As for Fallout 3, I have no idea how the food chain works in that game
 
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For one you've likely got to assume that most mutants surviving as of the west coast games eras have probably rapidly evolved/been selected through their very fast mutation to survive on a fraction of the food of their genetic ancestors via pulp sci-fi magic rules. Similarly I imagine they've got the lead belly to stomach unfiltered water. If they didn't they would have gone extinct. For all the crap 76 gets the designer for the mutants describing the variety of wildlife as dozens of evolutionary dead-ends shortly after the war was always interesting to me.

As for the herbivore problem, I'm not sure I agree with you. As someone else has pointed out, the majority of critters appear to be omnivores. Bighorners and Brahmin are the only pure herbivores I can think of and they are pretty exclusively domesticated critters. Everything else survives by eating flesh and shrubs here and there. Mole Rats, Iguanas, etc
 
Horned Kangaroos!

I think that it's possible that there can be several herbivore species in the lore of classic Fallout games. But since those wouldn't attack or be hostile, the Vault Dweller/Chosen One wouldn't stop and have an "encounter" during the map travel. They would be just ignored by the characters and wouldn't be shown in game.

Someone mentioned a donkey in classic Fallout games, if I remember correctly.

Fallout 4 also added rad chickens, in the Far Harbor DLC.
 
I mean I was talking more F1, and 2, since back then the entire Wasteland was pretty much devoid of plant life.
 
In fallout 1 I always imagined that most every creature you encounter is at least somewhat omnivorous (are there mad Brahmin in fallout 1? They probably got that way by cannibalism). Perhaps deathclaws are carnivores, and radscorpions must be carnivores, but everything else survives off a combination of hunted/scavenged meat and what little shrubbery and mushrooms still grow. Obviously Brahmin eat more shrub than anything, but I figure even they are fed meat once in a while. Even cows today will sometimes feed on carcasses even if there is plenty of grass around, and they have been known to eat birds.
 
I think the main thing is that the herbivores are highly specalized to a locality or type of terrain, while being further limited to an area by where the nukes and radiation did or did not allow for survival.

If we were to have a full map of the lower 48 I imagiane we would find many localized critters across the foodchain, some are specalized to a terrain type and wouldnt expand past it, so no mudcrabs on the west coast, but we see them in F3/F4.
Deathclaws were evolved from a type of lizard, but the enclave also spread them around so you see them pop up elsewhere, plus they're apex as fuck so readily establish populations, aided further by the fact that they are rather smart, given that a little tinkering can grant them sentience.

I would imagiane that if the south were to be featured in a game, from texas eastward, you would see feral RadHogs as a persistent threat and source of food, with subtypes existing in the more irridated areas that are less food and more radioactive.
Indeed, RadHogs are something that could be argued as something that could reasonably start showing up out west post new vegas.

Farm animals like chickens would be easy enough prey and succumb to radiation easily enough so that they would likely have mostly survived in places that maintained a captive breeding stock, with any released into the wild post war needing specefic terrain to have a chance to survive.

Actually I think a great deal of the critters that were domesticated or farm stock pre war would repopulate in clusters based around areas that maintained a stock of the creature in safety, but that would make them localized to that area.

The key thing to remember is that the later you get in the timeline, the more chance things have had to recover, plants are growing back, smaller critters largely lacked the body mass to survive the radiation so even roaches and flies mutated larger over time, and as human populations exited shelters they would bring their domesticated food animals with them to the surface, and those creatures would start being reintroduced, but the less mutated creatures would not likely survive as readily.

Id say that scorpions lizards and vermin would be the source of some of the most common creatures.
Radscorpions spread coast to coast, which would imply they were naturally some of the more hardy in the conditions early on.
Rats of various types, molerats etc, also did quite well, and could be domesticated for food.
Geckos would also be common as a threat and as food source, and their appearing on the east coast should only be a matter of time, same for the giant mantis.

You also have to consider the sheer scale of the continental united states, there would be lots of places like zion valley, largely unaffecred directly and quick to recover, where the major costal cities would have been heavily nuked, and we know from Tychos dialouge that there was civilization anew in parts of the midwest prior to Fallout.

Bassically, the world is recovering, albiet greatly changed.

Looked at from a meta prespective of the local wildlife:

Fallout: we see a chunk of the west coast.

Fallout 2: We see a bigger chung of the west coast, with overlap giving us a picture of how the northern area of Fallout has changed.

New Vegas: We see a desert region of the west that mostly avoided nukes, and has recovered fairly well given the sparser wildlife to be expected in such terrain and in DLC we also see Zion cannon, an isolated area that bounced back quite well too.

Fallout 3: We see the east coast and probably one of the more heavily nuked areas in the US recovering much slower.

Fallout 4: We see another area of the east coast that wasnt nuked as heavily, far more recovered, we also get to see a coastal island thats recovering nicely.


So, based on this pattern Id say that we should start seeing areas with plantlife and tree coverage, plants bouncing back mean smaller herbivores and omnivores have more food sources and more places to hide.
 
I mean I was talking more F1, and 2, since back then the entire Wasteland was pretty much devoid of plant life.


Not fully, a great deal of that was limitations in making new sprites given the rushed releases forcrd upon the devs.

In Fallout there are farmers, if you can farm the land there will be natural plant life.
In Fallout 2 the region was in the midst of a massive drought.
 
Pit Vipers were a cut Fallout creature and would have featured into the lore of the Vipers gang.

I actually had posted really shitty early concept sprites for them ages ago for a mod project.

How did you enjoy New Vegas?
 
How did you enjoy New Vegas?
I needed the M72 and PPK12 to be stock, otherwise I fucking loved it.

I actually just finished another playthru earlier today.

I woulda done a few things different, like have the FarGo traders appear with a couple of small branch offices, and have the generic traveling merchants sometimes be larger caravans, plus caravan guard quests could have been added (theres an awesome F3 mod that adds them, great way to gear up and travel with backup).

But yeah, great game, project nevada is a musthave tho.
 
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