I have a few questions about the early gameplay in FO4 that I would appreciate assistance with.

1. Rad Storms.

In the very early game I was unfortunate enough to be caught in the settlement with my former house when the weather turned awful and the rad/lightning storm hit. I instinctively went indoors but the ruined buildings offered no protection. I briefly considered retreating to the vault until it passed but logged out to search online for information. When I logged back in, the weather was fortunately different.

How are we expected to mitigate the effects or shelter from a rad storm? I know the vault suit has a little rad protection (compared to, say, civilian clothes) but it is insufficient. If the storms return in an area you are using as a player-made settlement, how can you shelter from the effects?

How long do these storms go on for? If they are very brief and, say, give a certain rad dose then we can stockpile the appropriate medication or foods.

2. Companion Health

By default on the medium game difficulty levels, are our Companions flagged as Essential or can they be killed by enemy fire? Since I can't see a Companion health bar, do I just have to deduce from their appearance (clean vs bloody) or limping that they are hurt? How quickly out of combat do they heal to full again?

3. Hard-coded Keybindings.

As a leftie, I have already remapped WASD and moved E to the mouse but I notice that certain interactions such as Open Container and most annoyingly, lockpicking are hard coded to the original keys. Apart from the AutoHotkey tool, is this likely to be something that will get patched or are we stuck with it? Is there an .ini setting to adjust?