Ive noticed that there is almost no plant life in FO3 as it was all killed in the nuke blast. As there are no trees to make photosynthesis, how is air(oxygen) made then? How do the people survive without oxygen? How do the plants survive without water, as there is no rain. Ive been bugged with this question all the time when I play, does someone have a idea?

Not all of the world is a desert wasteland. The Capital Wasteland suffered direct hits in the war and with some artistic liberties, it's basically a desert.
Then look at Point Lookout. It's a lush swampland with plenty of vegetation.

In real world, the Wasteland would probably be very green after two hundred years. Just look at the city of Pripyat, just 23 years after Chernobyl.

Possibly, but in Hiroshima and Pripyat, there were plants nearby to spread seeds. In the wasteland, there were no plants to spread seeds. Maybe in another few hundred years the Oasis will spread.

Oasis has an abundance and the surrounding areas as well.

Now this is an issue that has been debated over so thoroughly I don't think it's necessary to do it again.

And yes, there are places in the Capital Wasteland with plant life, as stated. I would imagine the air in the Capital Wasteland is of much poorer quality than the air we have, but not so poor that it couldn't support life. And supposedly outside the D.C. area there are more areas with vegetation as well.

I think food is a bigger question. What the heck do Brahmin, molerats, and mirelurks eat? They can't exactly graze....

IIRC the sea plays a huge role between moving carbon dioxide out of the air, and replacing it with oxygen.

In any case, there are still plants around.

1. The loss of all trees on earth would not immediately translate to all of the Oxygen going away - the Earth is a far larger crucible than you may think. Also, with Most of the humans on earth no longer alive, the consumption of Oxygen and production of CO2 would both drop significantly (at least the climate change folks win out). And from the perspective of a scientist, there is no way the war would have stopped photosynthesis. Fallout3 is a game, and doesn't stray too-far into realism of science in this regard. I think the mod that has the world at least covered in grass and basic greens gets alot closer to what the wasteland would look-like 200 years later. I rather think that 200 years after war, Nature will have reclaimed alot more of the world than you might think.

2. There would be rain. The nuclear war would not have any effect on the Earth's hydrologic cycle and would not stop Earth's own air-conditioning system in which warm ocean currents flow northwards and directly impact the climate. The Day After Tomorrow, while wildly innaccurate about the speed of such transitions, did at least base the movie on the actual system of Ocean currents and correctly predict a climate shift if those currents ever stopped. The problem with this is that if the ocean currents stop, most of the Earth will freeze solid. The USA, Europe and most of Russia would be under ice. So that can't be the case in the Fallout world, and as such there Would be rain from ocean evaporation.

3. If the nuclear war was so vast and all of the US, Russian and Chinese arsenal's were used - i.e. a war bad enough to actually change earth's climate, would be far more devistating to life on earth and would likely render the Entire planet un-inhabitable On Land. However, it would not do Anything to deep-ocean organisms even if all of the surface-ocean life was killed-off by radiation and climate change. In fact many scientists now believe that it was the deep-ocean life that preserved life through the Clicxulub Impact Event that killed-off the dinosaurs. So basically it is Exceptionally hard to kill-off All life on Earth, and any event large enough to do so would render the entire planet un-inhabitable to Any organism (even super mutants).

I would not try to do too-deep of comparisons between the Fallout universe and the real world, as while there are some good and reasonable effects described, the big things are way, way off.

M

WOW took the words out my mouth just kidding now thats an answer

Yeah, it's best to remember it's fiction and leave it at that. Once you start thinking about things of this nature the whole thing comes apart really...

That said, Point Lookout and Oasis show there are many areas left with dense vegitation, as others have said.

This. Fallout as a whole has never set out to represent a realistic version of life after a nuclear devestation. It's never put itself out there in that way. Realism was never a concern when they were making this game. (I think that becomes pretty obvious when you start to run into Supermutants, Deathclaws, and Ghouls; personally...)

Of course the setting is going to fall apart under scientific scrutiny - that was never it's aim to begin with though. It's like discussing how the laws of relativity break down in the Star Wars movies - of course it doesn't hold up.

Oasis

And people (especially fans) tend to explain even the unexplainable and search for reasons that aren't existing ...

I could say that brahmin now fart oxygen and breath carbon dioxide because of mutation and that most other animals turned into predators. Or any other silly explanation I've seen.

And maybe someone remembers that Fallout never was about survival simulation (engine didn't require drinking or eating, zero radiation in wasteland, etc.) and did never really focus problems of survival after a nuclear war. It was more about mutation, vault life, raiders, ghouls, etc.

As stated before, the lack of Photosynthesis wouldn't be too much of an issue in the near future. It took life on earth a few million years of svcking in Carbon Dioxide and belching Oxygen before the atmosphere had the level of oxygen we have currently. I'm betting it would take a few million years to reverse the process- plenty of time for existing life to adapt to breathing Carbon Dioxide.

What I would like to see one day is a fallout game caring about survival and how the world would look like. An engine that forces the player to look for resources like food, drink, metals, energy, ... and to avoid dangers like radiation, toxics, animal packs, etc. Less combat and more survival issues.

But FO3 seems rather a step back comparing it to FO1/2. Probably there is more fun in shooting enemies than playing fallout survival.

I think Moira said something about "what passes for agriculture" or something to that effect. Mutfruit has to come from somewhere.

I would love that version of the Fallout3 (using the Fo3 Engine), and I personally think it is very doable as a mod/over-haul of the core game. Real work would be needed in the Perks and all of the health-restrictions and constraints, modifying the stores, etc - a fair amount of work to be sure, but doable.

M

If you're looking for a survival simulator, GOG.com has an old game series that was all about that... forget the name... it's supposed to be very good, for what it was supposed to be.

I get a real sense when travelling the wasteland that I am scavenging to survive, even if that isn't really the case... the gameplay FEELS like that a lot of the time. A more restrictive gameplay element based on that would get pretty tiring though, for me personally.

I think a simple mod wouldn't do it. It would need FOSE + mod. Have to think more about it.



Wouldn't have to be tiring. I don't know if survival games or mods focused on playability.




Lets see:

Need to drink. Best would be a drinking bar (like health bar but probably not even possible with FOSE) or a pip-drink-info to show the need to drink. Then different radiated and FEV-polluted drinking sources. Swimming counting as drinking very radiated? Should be playable without getting tired then.

Avoiding radiation. More rad sources everywhere and with more potential - but with sense, like getting higher near power plants and places you could really guess to be more radiated. After a while you react automatically to those places, avoiding making it tiring to watch for radiation.

Need to gather energy. Power armor gets abc-protection and robotics that allows better movement even crippled. But uses up mfc or other energy types. Increases energy consumption.

Changing animal behaviour to simulate pack hunting. Place a few dangerous packs to strive the wasteland. Very challenging.

...

The wasteland does have plant life, it's mainly in the form of scrubs which the Brahmin eat, not to mention plants in places like Point Lookout and Oasis. Generally, the prey species outnumber the predators, but in the case of places like the Gobi Desert of the Creataceous, the predators actually outnumbered the prey species, so the Capital Wastelnd ecosystem is not implausible.

I imagine walking through the sun, absolutely starved (having my last meal yesterday) and ready to kill anything or anyone to get a bit to eat (but not quite ready to eat my own kind)... I'm ready, I've got a baseball bat that hasn't broken in 200 hits, and it feels just so nice in my hands now. If i find someone now, they better have a gun or a meal, or its home-run city.

I find a raider base, abandonded and after a search, no food. Now I'm thirsty too, but the food hunger is so great that [I start loosing hit-points every turn]. My goal now isn't to find Vengence, it isn't to score T-51 power armor or to buy 200 rounds of 50 cal ammo at Rivet City (thats a days walk with no fast travel), no its to get a meal and maybe some nice loot of whomever delivers it to me. Its not flashy, it's not a minigun, but unless I find some simple food it's going to kill me. Slowly. Strength goes down a bit each hour, its getting bad.

Finally - voice [red lines in the distance], a camp with 3 raiders.. And they're having a BBQ! A Mole Rat! Mine!

I sneak up behind the first raider quietly, softly - not too fast or I'll get caught - slowly. Finally about 6 feet away, I give the bat a kiss for luck, and charge into the clearing...

...

Yep, I could really get into a game like that.

M

... the hallucination fades away ... your view gets blurred again for a few seconds ... if you had only something to eat ... damn those hallucinations ...

Those blurred visions start to increase with time now ... and those hallucinations too ...

And then your legs feel week ... you start to move like you were crippled ...

And then the raiders start screaming like Deathclaws...

They eat meat, and also dirt.
And wires, and concrete, and metal, and steel, and rock. :rofl:
and the Lone Wanderer (that's why mole rats and other animals attack you) :ahhh:

I think we've already established that the world would be greener, there would be grasses and trees and all sorts of vegitation for animals and humans to live on.

I rather enjoyed Clone Troopers response though.

M