Fallout will happen if people still likes to wage war against each other for the different identity they have on each other.

To me, the west is a very nice place - with the freedom and all. But on the other side of the iron curtain (if there are still people thinks it exist), the east as in China (Russia is history) they do not possess much threat and they can be good allies if we do not rub on their bad side.



And, if atom bombs drop everywhere on Earth... there is a very low chance of bizarre mutations like super mutties and ghouls to appear, but more deformed mutations occur in generations within mankind and other animals linage. That is if, mankind survived from the sudden blast.

and russia has ten times the U.S's nukes+ there "Perimeter" semi-automated nuclear defense network ( if a sensor picks up radiation traces and seismic activity on the ground, it sends a signal to a computer, which sends a automated message to the Russian government asking permission to launch the Perimeter nukes, hidden silos around the border. if the computer doesn't get a reply, it assumes that the leadership has been wiped out by a nuclear strike, and hands control to a operator miles underground, who uses satellites to see who launched the nuke, and launches nukes back at them. Built in the early 90's, has been confirmed to exist by the Russian government earlier this decade.)

It could happen, which is why i believe nuclear weapons are monstrosities. Billions of people will die, whole species will go extinct, if a global nuclear confrontation happens.

With that in mind, could it be that the bastard who nuked us in Fallout Universe is the Rusian commies?

That's not true. If you take every single nuke ever produced, it could barely destroy Europe one time, let alone the whole world.


Actually, fusion bombs actually produce around 8 times less fallout than fisson bombs due to the more efficient process. Plus, the vast majority of the of world's arsenal are made of gravity fission bombs in the kiloton range. So even if an atomic war did break out, a good deal of the nukes probably wouldn't be able to reach their targets in the first place.

Also, the damage of a nuke depends on the blast altitude. An air burst creates the most powerful destructive wave, but produces very little fallout, meaning people that are properly sheltered or out of the blast radius will have to deal with comparatively little residual effects. Ground bursts, on the other hand, create a huge ammount of irradiated fallout dust, but due to the fact that most of the energy will be absorbed by the ground, the effects (both immediate by the shockwave and residual by the fallout) are restricted to a much smaller area.

So basically an atomic war would certainly decimate people living in hugely populated industrial and economic centers, capitals, and around military targets such as bases. But that's a far cry from the world destrution in the scale seen in Fallout or most NPA fiction.

Nicely said. I think Starvation and Disease will kill 10 times the number of people that die from atomic blasts or radiation.

And it would definitely Not stop the rains from falling.

thats not to say the detonations themselves are the only contributing factors..
change in atmostpheric conditions, food supplies and the food chain for that matter, radiation, fires, anarchy from panic, heads governments being obliterated, major utilities and services being out. . these things play in hugely.....

Modern nuclear weaponry would most likely destroy...everything. Anyways I could hardly imagine today's youth surviving a nuclear apocalypse.

If Fallout were to happen, then I'd probably be dead. But if I lived, I'd be a ghoul. Which would be way cool. LOL (my rhymes are cool. )

Well, since we are on the topic: The book (a book, yes a book) Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka gives a nice representation of the nuclear war itself and the aftermath of this war.

Short summary: Russians nuke NY, DC, the Westcoast and strategic military targets in the USA. The writers survive and start their journey across a devestated USA. The writers excel in describing the economical, ecological and more important, social changes after this war. I enjoyed reading it.

Good, now that I have done enough book promotion for today, we move on.

Considering what we know now a wasteland as in Fallout is not possible (ignoring the fact that it already is due to the retro fifties SCIENCE! based theme).

Considering that we have been wrong before, it can't be ruled out completely.

I hope I never have to live trough it. Playing fallout is fun, living fallout would svck. There are no reloads in living Fallout.

Its very likely we will nuke ourselves to hell... Already expecting it.

Cod4 quotes are fun.

Like the rest have said...though nuclear war is plausible and could happen, the fact that it could happen is highly unlikely. Someone mentioned that because we are all scared of it happening, we make sure it doesn't happen. One thing is for sure...if nuclear war happens, I hope it doesn't happen in my life time.

I would say nuclear war is inevitable humanity thought we wouldn't go to war again after WW1, but then 20 years later once again we were fighting. Now a days with the world running out of oil, resource wars seem more and more likely and if 2 nuclear powers are fighting over the last few supplies the loser will probably fire nukes to deny their enemy the resource, and then through MAD, the war would escalate into global war.

I admit it would be a terrible thing but humanity has shown it constantly reverts to war.

Yeap, war never changes.

But, we should try our best to stop war from ever occur.

I'm wondering whether a country not directly involved in a nuclear war would be affected by a nuclear war between two or so countries. Sure they might get a bit of fallout to drift their way but really would a nation fire all their nukes at many countries if it was only fighting one?
Sorry, it sounds like a short rant but what I'm trying to say is, wouldn't a nuclear war be short and local if it was between two countries? and not necessarily cripple the whole planet.

so u mean, somewhere way away from both super powers should be able to survive the war without much nuke trauma?

Hmm... maybe, if i gonna nuke China my nukes shouldn't affect Australia or England - and if China is gonna nuke US it shouldn't reach to Africa too...

More like an Albert Einstein Quote, that CoD4 just used in their game promotion. But the quote is a little off from the actual quote he stated.

"World War 1, was fought with guns. World War 2 was fought with tanks. I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."- Albert Einstein.

Actually a full scale nuclear conflict is NOT out of the realms of probability. Look, right now our relations with the Sov..er Russians are rather strained, to say the least. Moscow (and by that I mean the KGB Strongman that is in charge) is going out of his way to do help third world dictators that would like nothing better than to tweak the US's nose. Iran, N. Korea and Pakistan are developing long range delivery systems for their existing nukes (While the US would be out of range of most of these, our allies would not.) And lets not forget about China. The Chinese play the long game better than anyone else and right now, they see that their "star" (pun intended) is on the rise, and that the US is weaker now than at any time since perhaps the great depression.

Now, let me translate that into a real world situations that could lead to a total nuclear exchange.


Our Happy Little Iranian Friends

The Russians, if I recall correctly have (or will soon sign) a mutual defence treaty with Tehran. Meaning, much like we are obligated to help defend Israel the Ruskies are now obligated to help defend Iran if attacked. Lets be politically correct here, we could either have the madman of Tehran emboldened by this treaty and lob a nuke at Tel Aviv or we can say the IDF decides to take out the Iranian nuclear factories via airstike and Iran retaliates. Either way, we have cities in the middle east turned to glass. Now, at this point the US would be forced to step in and try to defend Israel, and it has been our policy since Reagan that an attack with a WMD is to be answered in kind (MAD sadly doesn't work with madmen. Say what you want about the Soviets, they understood how the game was played) If we DIDN'T, well... bad things happen when treaties are ignored... your allies can't trust you and you end up standing alone. The Russians know this too, so for every buildup in forces we make they would be forced to match. There would be a mistake. There ALWAYS is a mistake. We accidental hit one of their bases, they shoot down one of our planes. There is an escalation of hostilities... and then some fool releases a tactical weapon. Once that happens.... commanders panic, and our civilian leaders don't know what to do. More tactical weapons are used in theater, then they start to hit other targets, Staging bases in the gulf, maybe we hit one or two bases in the former Soviet republics.

Now the military is scared, we go to a condition called Launch On Alert, which means we fire off our weapons if we THINK there is an attack inbound.

At this point the middle east is a radioactive wasteland, but now the beast is feeding on itself. And that is when someone does something very very very stupid. It can be the Russians hitting a strategic communications center in the continental US, or the US taking out a supply depot in the motherland. It doesn't matter. At that point, the homeland has been attacked, and the missiles fly. In Moscow and Washington "important" people bug out as fast as they can, highways get jammed with people fleeing the cities as the EAS plays its dirge over every radio and TV station. Then, the first RVs detonates. These are about 5 miles above both countries so the EMP takes out civilian comms and power grids. Around Moscow, they light up they nuclear tipped ABMs to try to take down as many warheads as they can.

And this is the point where we all have a very bad day.

No doubt, the US and Russia will take the worst of it, but Europe is going to get hurt bad. Same with Asia and Australia (Lot of US facilities in Australia).

Its always a very comforting thought that the sanity of Ahmadinejad is a key to global annihilation.

No. Even with a "limited" nuclear exchange, all higher lifeforms would die of cancer or radiation poisoning. In a fullout exchange, all life short of viruses and bacteria would be wiped out. We'd be lucky to even have radroaches afterward. I think the FO canon had some great plot armor in the form of the FEV virus being scattered around the world by the nuclear war from West-Tek and ghoulification being an alternative to cancer and radiation poisoning. The FEV virus probably created some lanthanide-eating bacteria that probably terraformed the world back to livable standards in under 100 years. Ghoulification kept the initial non-vault/BOS/Enclave survivors from dying from cancer and radiation poisoning. FO might happen if we switch from fission-fusion WMD's to enhanced radiation weapons/neutron bombs or some sort of megaton-yield fuel-air explosives. Then again, maybe I'm overthinking this and should just keep playing?

No. China owns too much of our debt and their economy would go down with ours if we don't come to some sort of mutual frenemy trade and military agreements like Hu Jintao and The Lone President are trying to crank out. I see some sort of Sino-U.S. uneasy peace pact being the only superpower buffer to a world of rogue states, piracy, and a bat-sh*t paranoid Russia palling up with said rogue states. What is more likely than full-out nuclear war by 2077 would be a very violent, protracted Resource War/s lit up by religious fanaticism, tac-nukes, bio-terrorism, chemical weapons, 2012 paranoia, hunger, illiteracy, dramatic climate change, and perhaps (GOD FORBID) the liquidation of a certain promissing young U.S. president by right-wing/bible-thumping zealots... The latter is looking very realistic lately, just watch the MSM news cycles for those stupid PSALMS 109:8 T-shirts and you'll know what I'm talking about. Nuclear weapons are their own deterrents, just about everyone listened to "The Day After", "Dr. Strangelove", Carl Sagan, and Einstein except for a certain Iranian nutjob about the fact that everyone is allergic to fallout, and the only response is M.A.D. Even movie premises like "The Terminator" give false hopes to surviving nuclear exchanges. Yet people don't realise that the "Mad Max" and "The Day After" aftermaths would pretty much kill any survivors off if the rads and cancer don't do it first. What few people are left will raid those trying to survive or rebuild and most likely turn to cannibalism or tribal religion and shed all the wisdom and compassion that helped build most of human civilization. Plus nuclear survivors will likely raid every Raven Rock-style C.O.G. shelter knowing their idiotic government that pushed the button had survived and is telling them, "Take one for The Gipper, start farming lanthanide-salted Earth so we can start the vicious circle over again with us manning the monkey farm." This is really why I hope the CERN supercollider helps push this backward rock toward fusion power, so we can at least start leaving Earth before we kill it with our own hatred and stupidity. That or the Ender's Game scenario happens, or zombies, that would be sweet...

Actually... radiation is quite manageable. Don't belive me, look at the Chernobyl area. It's an unofficial Russian state park, and life flourishes there. Granted, there's a high chance of cancer and all, but that's about it.

Besides, Life on earth has faced worse disasters than a simple nuclear exchange; the death of the Dinosaurs 65 Million years ago was a combination of unusual volcanic activity, changing climates, and a comet. The Precambian Extinction, where most of all creatures on eart died, is beleived to be caused by another, even larger metor. We as humans (barely) survived at least one supervolcano eruption early in our evolution. There was a Snowball Earth event, where all of Earth looked like Hoth... munus the wampas and that yeti-ish thing.

A limited nuclear exchange (50 nukes each on both sides) has been shown (via models) to cause a global cooling that would affect most of our grain-growing regions, causing a worldwide famine. Life on earth is much tougher than we give it credit for; most of the talk about life on earth ending refers to human life. Not animal life.

In all its Mad Max-y glory, no. Radiation does not work as they do here in Fallout. Also, we have science, not Science!, so..

But desolate, irradiated wasteland where the US of A used to be? Heck yes, it's possible.

The bottom quote explains better.



Agreed. The animals there have "evovled" so to speak to withstand the radiation, and thats just in 30-40 years (I am most likely wrong on the time frame as I dont feel like looking up when the Chernobyl incident occured). Humans would do the same, but then, obviously, shortages of supplies would devestate the human population.

Let's not forget that the radiation has created soil compounds that actually offer a resistance to radiation, which is absorbed by plants and moves its way up the food chain, presumably.

Neat, eh?

where did you get this information? i am not trying to be skeptical or say you are making this up, I am just wondering because it sounds very interesting and i want to view the source of the info.