Not too long ago there was a thread discussing "Refrigerator Billy" and his time locked up. A lot of theories were advanced regarding his physical makeup that allowed him to survive 200 years in a refrigerator and emerge relatively sane and physically functional.

I happened to find myself in a sewer dungeon that was filled with waist-deep water the ohter day, and when ghouls attacked me I decided to try a little experiment. I've never had ghouls swim to follow me and I realized I'd never actually seen ghouls swim.

The ghouls in this place were laying on the floor, and would stand up to attack me, which kind of raised the question in my mind whether ghouls could breathe underwater, or if they just don't breathe when dormant.

I took advantage of the situation to investigate a bit, and to check it out further, I shot the left leg off of a ghoul.The result was the ghoul laying on his belly completely submersed in the water as he tried to claw his way along the bottom.

Since all of the other ghouls were dead there wasn't much danger present, so I left my character standing there watching the ghoul while I spent a half-hour doing this and that around the house. After 30 minutes of RT, I went back and discovered the ghoul was still alive, and still clawing at the floor in the same place.

My conclusion is that either feral ghouls don't have to breathe, or they can breathe underwater. Which leaves me to wonder if this effect is an intended game mechanic for ghouls, or if ghouls not dying of suffocation is simply the result of a lack of a script created by the devs to kill off ghouls after prolonged lack of air.

If it is intentional, that leaves to further speculation as to just how dead feral ghouls really are. We know they like to hang out in graveyards, and lay perfectly still mimicking death until the SS comes near enough to rouse them up for an attack. Which leaves me wondering if they are in fact actually dead in a certain sense, and thus zombies in a more traditional sense.

What do you make of it?

I think feral ghouls are pretty much zombies. While other ghouls are basically human with melted skin and distorted genetics.

We know that radiation can regenerate ferals. And we know that Glowing Ones can use radiation to revive ghouls that you have already killed.

So my thinking is that they don't die so much as enter a dormant state where they stay until the background radiation restores them sufficiently. Once the radiation has them viable once again, they remain in a state akin to suspended animation, but capable of reviving given certain stimuli, like hearing an intruder.

It's tempting to speculate that the process of becoming feral is down to oxygen deprivation during the near-death state, but I seem to recall other cases of non-ferals turning feral without being "killed" so that's probably not going run.

What happens if you drop a human into the water?

normally humans use proteins to keep the organism functional they are acquired thru digestion ... since ghouls don't eat to keep themselves alive i think that the radiation is replacing the process of digestion

this is the best i can do to explain considering they don't really ... exist