Or until another nuclear war?

It'll probably never get completely back to normal.

I think the problem is that there's all these factions who are doing a decent job of rebuilding certain aspects of civilisation (NCR for government, the Shi and the Brotherhood of Steel for technology, The Pitt for industry), but they happen to svck at rebuilding civilisation as a whole. NCR is a sunny, happy dictatorship who goes to war at the drop of a hat, the Brotherhood refuses to share their knowledge with outsiders, and then there's all these groups who don't seem all that fond of civilised folk.
On the east coast you've got raiders, slavers, feral ghouls, swampfolk, trogs, super mutants who'd happily tear you a new [censored] and wear it as a hat, while on the west coast there's a semblance of civilisation, but it's buried deep under layers of organized crime, oppression and just plain ol' anarchy.

It'd take one hell of a leader to unite the United States and pacify the 99% of the population who just wants to kill and eat the other 1%.

Define "normal".

Life in some NCR cities in the time of FO3 could be considered fairly normal. People are born, live and die in a city with police, elections, electricity.

If you mean a heavily industrialised and urbanised society with a peaceful countryside, its going to take some time... Decades to centuries I'd imagine.

It would take thousands of years for the world to go back to normal.

*sigh* Does anyone pay attention in school or read any more? The world has gone through apocolypses with what we would consiter frighteneing regularity. We're spoiled because we haven't experienced one in known history. Only about ten thousand years ago the northern hemisphere was scraqed clean and frozen solid yet, as the ice melted, life came back as lush and diverse as ever. Yeah, okay, we lost most of the cast from Ice Age but that's been blamed mostly on the native american population. If I remember correctly, we get devastating volcanic events every seventy five thousand years that clean the world too. Then there are the rocks from above. Many thing go away permanently while many things adapt, evolve and be fruitful.

The Fallout game doen't allow for the insignificant, in game terms, to stand out so out of sight out of mind. First, I don't see the radioactivity from the bombs as infinite. Even in Fallout terms the background radiation is nil except in concentrated areas especially water. What is it with water that it retains radioactivety more than any other substance? Are the oceans totally irradiated too? With Project Purity this will become inceasingly reduced in the Washington area and may lead to replication in other high impact regions. If the Wanderer releases the seeds of Oasis, Washington and the rest of the east coast can expect all sorts of vegetation in decades rather than centuries which is expected anyhow. That's a big jump that our world didn't see a hundred centuries ago, 'Insignificant' animals we don't see in the game will fill the forests and fields just like after the ice age.

I hope Lyons is the future of the Brotherhood at least on the east coast as well as groups like the Rangers. The Wanderer pretty much single handedly cleans out the super mutants and several other threats so reclaiming the Wasteland should be so much easier. The Washington Brotherhood can become the foundation for technical applications for the people allowing people to rebuild society. Once again, check history. Mankind, with the right people and incentives go from scraping unforgiving dirt, dying regularly while still young, and barely thinking beyond the next meal to in centuries. This is without the benefit of working tech artifacts. By 'normal' we probably mean a society that understands and recreates the technology at the beginning of the war plus living standards for health, education and such nearly equal.

Just like the human body many wounds will heal while there may be some scars. More importantly will be the mental traumas of the war and its aftermath that will never let the world go back to whatever they had in the past. If a person from the pre-war days visited the rebuilt future it would be alien to them.

Nuclear fallout works by way of particles. While nuclear rays can hurt humans as well, the rays work much like light; they will continue to travel until something stop/blocks them. Fallout however (the actual thing, not the game franchise) is what essentially "stops" those rays by absorbing the particles. Water acts as a much better substance for dispersing radiation because unlike solids, water is a liquid and is always moving. The particles bounce back and forth bringing a little of the radiation to other particles until the radiation is dispersed so much it's about the equivalent that you'd get from basking in the sun. Are the oceans irradiated as badly as the Capital Wasteland? Probably not, but I'm sure they are still radiated in the Fallout universe. In reality the radiation would disperse to the level I said, but the Fallout universe is not built with the same science as we are. This is what allows for them to have virtually immortal ghouls and super mutants where in reality if radiation did something that bad to you, you'd be dead in a matter of minutes.

The Fallout World would not be normal again at least not normal as in before the war. Most animal and plant life is extinct. Human society is irreversibly changed. New cultures and nations have formed. Things will never be "Normal."

In are world, things would never be normal after a global nuclear war. Most if not all life would become exctinct. That pretty much means things will not be going back to "normal" ever again.

"Normal" as in "like the pre-war world before the wars"? A few millennia. "Normal" as in "civilised on a big scale with safety and liberty for many"? A few centuries.

This is already happening on the West Coast. For the whole planet I would have to say several centuries, seeing as how it's been 200 years after the nukes in FO3 and they are still messed up.

That's just what I meant. And why F3 was so... lacking.

I don't understand why people are saying milenia... I'm sure things were much worse in the days after the fall of rome (sure, there's no fallout, but there's not the same level of tech either).

Actually most life would survive. Even at Chernobyl there isn't just plant life running amuck, there's even animal life within the irradiated areas. The tour guides of the Chernobyl site will tell you to stay on the paths to avoid not only the radiation, but the irradiated tusks of wild boars that live around and in the site.

It's pretty much impossible to destroy life on Earth because even towards extinction most animal species are able to get their populations back up; that includes humans. There was a point in time where there were estimated to be less than 5,000 human beings on the face of the Earth, and yet we managed to survive (of course this was long before homo sapien). Things probably would never be "normal" as in how our society has shaped the world, but things would be "normal" for the planet.

Actually most life would survive. Even at Chernobyl there isn't just plant life running amuck, there's even animal life within the irradiated areas. The tour guides of the Chernobyl site will tell you to stay on the paths to avoid not only the radiation, but the irradiated tusks of wild boars that live around and in the site.

It's pretty much impossible to destroy life on Earth because even towards extinction most animal species are able to get their populations back up; that includes humans. There was a point in time where there were estimated to be less than 5,000 human beings on the face of the Earth, and yet we managed to survive (of course this was long before homo sapien). Things probably would never be "normal" as in how our society has shaped the world, but things would be "normal" for the planet.

You are confusing a nuclear accident with a nuclear armageddon. A total nuclear war would result in the extinction of most life on the planet. It's why it's so feared. There would be some life but not much. The radiation might not last for years but nuclear winter would. All the ash and dust from the fires caused by the nukes would stay in the atmosphere for decadeds.

Fallout Two intro: War, war never changes. The end of the world occurred pretty much as we predicted, to many humans not enough space or resources to go around. The details are pointless and trivial, the reasons as always purely human ones. The earth was nearly wiped clean of life, a great cleansing. An atomic spark struck by human hands quickly ragged out of control. Spears of nuclear fire rained from the skies, continents swallowed in flames and fell beneath the boiling oceans. Humanity was almost extinguished, their spirits becoming part of the background radiation that blanketed the earth. A quite darkness fell across the planet, lasting many years.

Aka: Whatever generic name Bethesda decides for your character in fallout 4.


Neat

I used Chernobyl as an example because it's the best recognized answer of how life can cope even in radiation. You're confusing global thermonuclear war with the extinction of man versus the extinction of life on the planet. Nuclear armageddon would destroy a lot, and would virtually eliminate humanity along with some other species from the face of the Earth, but plant life, microorganisms, and some animal species would survive just fine if they weren't hit by the blast wave of the nuclear weapons. Fallout's intro doesn't equate to actual life. It's next to impossible to make life on Earth close to extinction both from the planet, and especially from man. A nuclear weapon while powerful is nowhere close to the destruction that the Earth can cause, and even though dinosaurs went extinct, mammals survived. Although nuclear war may eliminate man (and mammals) it surely wouldn't wipe out even a fraction of the Earth's life.

True plant plant life, microorganisms, and some animal species would survive but if that's all that survives through a global thermonuclear war then things would not go back to normal anytime soon. It would be a mass extinction. Normal as is in one day things will be like it was before the great war would never happen again.

Theres also no deathclaws, Supermutants, lack of food, radiation hotspots, roaming military robots armed with miniguns and missile launchers, ect. I'd say the Fallout Universe has it alot worse than the days after the fall of Rome....



Nuclear Winter is a debated theory. In the book Nuclear War Survival Skills written (a Civil Defense book written by Cresson Kearny), it states that temperatures would only decrease around 20 degrees for just a few days as opposed to years....

Of course there is no real way of knowing without nuking the planet.

On topic: I doubt it would take centuries or millenia for America to go back to "normal" in the sense of a unified country with law, police force, and government. Why? The NCR seems to be strong enough to take control of the West Coast and more, especially if an alliance could be formed with the BoS. On the East Coast, the BoS learns of the source of the Supermutants (if you tell them of course) and would more than likely eliminate it, thus eliminating the only major threat to the BoS. After years of expansion, the Lyons BoS should have unified DC, and if they aquired the Pitt, then the rest of the East due to their ability to produce ammunition now (and possibly weapons/other equipment).

The difference though is "normal" in terms of human society, or "normal" in terms of ecology. In the event of nuclear war, human society would never return to normal, but in decades ecology would return to it's state of normal. What you're referring to isn't mass extinction, it's destruction of human civilization. What I'm referring to is the effect on the actual planet. Like I said, animals and plant life not directly hit by the blast would begin to make their way from the outside inward. Plant life would begin soaking up much of the radiation, but some animals would begin to live in the radiation as well, such as boars, deer, etc. Insects especially will begin overtaking the area because radiation is less dangerous on more simple creatures.

And of course, After the event, life would have an even easier re-taking the earth, thanks to the removal of dangerous predators such as humans.

The Capital Wasteland has it's own set of problems. The Brotherhood of Steel only recently arrived about 20 years before the game. Before that the Super Mutants were an even bigger problem. No Vaults that had GECKs survived to use them so no widespread access to purified food or water. Fallout 1 and 2 has entire fields of crops present, there are no such fields in Fallout 3. No one was ever able to make a larger government the way the NCR did, it seems much harder for various settlements to contact each other because raider activity is more concentrated along with the mutants. All-in-all it seems that the Capital Wasteland had a lower population too.

I'd say In about 2 centuries what used to be known as the USA will become the NCR

I don't think so, the MWBOS isn't likely to be petitioning for membership anytime soon.

Agreed about MW BOS and Ceaser's Legion is not going to just role over for NCR. Even if they get their butts kicked in New Vegas that's just the tip of their Western expansion force.

NCR may never take over what was once America.

I don't think it is possible for the pre-war world to be completely normal again. The Earth's ecosystem as been changed forever by the radiation and entire species are either gone forever or created over night. No matter how 'normal' things go, the Earth will never be the same.

But in terms of the human civilization, my guess is that it will at lease take a few centuries. Remember, even major factions such as the Brotherhood or the NCR still relies mostly on sauaging pre-war technology and only have small-scale manufacturing with primitive assembly lines and a simple currency system. They still lack any kind of factories or heavy industry needed for economic and social growth. Also, they will need to over come what started the Great War in the first place, a reliable source of energy. Without it the factions can only expand and develop at a slow speed.