Who says they don't, though? Their sprites may not show it, but I already pointed out in my previous post that the sprites from Fallout and Fallout 2 are not good references to go on.

Right. Research just in, fresh from the wastelands of FO2.

I decided I'd do a bit of mythbusting on FO2 in regards to ghouls and armour.

Weapon of choice..What else but the Red Ryder LE BB Gun! This gun was probably vital to the task as it's the only weapon I can think of that doesn't have a damage variation. It does the same amount of damage everytime, if it does 25 damage based on your Small Guns skill, that's the amount it always does. The only thing that would affect it is damage absorbtion from armour, and even that damage would be consistant between shots made on that same target..See where I'm going with this?

So with my current skill in Small Guns (115%) I'm capable of dealing a base damage of 25 with the Red Ryder LE BB Gun, no more, no less. Criticals would obviously provide a damage boost, but the game makes it perfectly clear when a critical is scored, so no inconsistencies there. Armour absorbtion is consistant also, armour will always absorb a set amount of damage, then a set % of what is left after the first deduction. For example, Leather Armour will always absorb 7 points of damage from the 25 damage of the Red Ryder LE BB Gun, making the damage always register 18. It is with this system that I can tell not only whether an NPC is wearing armour or not, but also what type.

So we start in Broken Hills, at the old ghouls home, I know, the LEAST likely place to start, but I wanted to get a feel for what to expect. As expected, all ghouls sustained 25 damage per shot. Other ghouls around Broken Hills also sustained the same 25 damage. I tried on a few humans, 25 damage again. Tried on a few other humans who were textured as wearing leather jackets, damage registered at 20. But unarmoured humans sustain 25 damage, as do unarmoured ghouls.

Broken Hills wouldn't be the best example, tensions are high, but things aren't that out of hand. So I head to Gecko.

Gecko's ghouls are more of the same, all sustaining 25 damage. Harold also sustains 25 damage incase anyone's interested. The ghouls armed and dangerous in the reactor, also 25 damage. Even the armed and dangerous renewal ghouls underground sustain 25.

Note that, I tried and tested ALL ghouls from Broken Hills and Gecko, to get the most consistent result possible. No evidence of any damage absorbtion. But you could argue that even though Gecko is under pressure from Vault City, the ghouls still may not have such a pressing need to wear armour, so..I went back to Broken Hills.

Or rather, around the vicinity of Broken Hills. I was looking for a Unity Patrol. Unity Patrols consist of rough tough Humans, Mutants and Ghouls alike. These guys patrol the wasteland around Broken Hills, and expect to see action in the field. The humans wear Metal Armour, and carry big guns, Miniguns and Missile Launchers. The Mutants (Nightkin) wear Leather Armour, or something of similar protective capability, and are also packing Miniguns and Missile launchers. Interestingly the Mutants in Broken Hills seem to be wearing Combat Armour. But back to the Unity Patrol, there are two ghouls in the patrol, that when examined are described as "Tough Ghouls" and the only kind I know of in FO2 described this way. Attacks on these ghouls are also consistent with the 25 damage rule, they wear no armour. Incase you're wondering, they wield lower tier weapons, Combat Shotguns and Assault rifles.

My conclusion from these results are that ghouls don't wear armour. No matter the danger or the risk, they're happy enough braving the wastes in their flesh. They also never carry very powerful or heavy weapons, and wouldn't have the strength to wield them effectively.

Anyone else is free to try this themselves.

Let it be known that I blag no truths and bluff no theories

See, this is very well put together research that concludes it. Well done FalloutChris, you did a great job. Not even the toughest of Ghouls wore armor, Yes, Set was a tough dog and he did have a helmet like thing or whatever in dialouge face. But that only implies, and he most likely doesn't have armor either, I would say because Lenny is a companion he can wear armor and Black Isle just kinda over-looked that.

I think ghouls dont wear ermor just because they dont care, most ghouls are really unenthusiastic about surviving. That rotting may only be skin deep, maybe the rads fortified their bones

I thought about this also. But then I came to the realisation that if they truly didn't want to survive, they would have given up and died already. Set and the ghouls in Necropolis, they're fighting to drive the Mutant army from their Watershed, they're trying to survive, the glowing ones underground try to stop you from taking their Water Chip because then they wont have any water to drink, they too want to survive. The ghouls in gecko have their own community, and are worried about being exterminated by Vault City, so they arm themselves and protect their reactor with their lives, they too want to survive. Even the ghouls in D.C that congregate in Underworld. They all want to survive, if they didn't they would have died a long time ago.

Okay then, now just come up with an explanation. You shouldn't have to, but that's the best way to deal with lore inconsistencies in Fallout 3 at this point.

There could be a few reasons they don't wear it that I can think of. It comes down to which one you're more likely to believe, or which makes the most sense. Whether it be one explanation or a combination of a few.

You could deduce that they don't wear armour because it doesn't fit comfortably enough over their melted frame to provide effective protection. Armour should fit over the wearer, not hang off it.

You could also deduce they don't wear armour because the increased effort in mobility from the encumbrance is too much for them to handle. Their agility is hindered enough without it.

I remember someone above saying they wouldn't wear it because of the smell. This could be true, but if it would benefit their survival they'd gladly put up with the extra perspiration. And its likely they have adjusted to the stench that has been following them around for decades.

You could deduce it might be too painful for them, they have alot of burned flesh and exposed tissue. Any unnecessary contact could prove too much of a sensation for them to bear.

You can also deduce that they simply don't have the strength to carry the weight of armour on their shoulders, but they could then wear lighter protective clothing like leather and combat jackets, though the reason they don't do that either could be deduced from some explanations above.

Honestly, I don't have a definitive answer. If I did we wouldn't need threads like this so people like me can spout a load of theories If I was to pick a few from above though, I'd say it was a combination of them all, of course some would provide far more of a problem than others. Just remember that ghouls have the rawest deal of them all, they're broken, falling apart and rotting away. There's alot they are no longer humanly capable of doing. All I can say is the ghouls in FO3 make no sense. The only feel you get of their raw deal is how they talk about it. But the way they move, the way they live, what they wear, it's all too human. Ghouls in FO3 seem nothing more than people with burned skin, which wouldn't make them ghouls at all, just very unattractive humans

you mean like how khajit and argonians in oblivion are just people with different shaped heads and a tail, with a different texture for skins?

does this really surprise you though?

it has to do with what is feasible within a certain time constraint and making a completely new model for what is essentially just a human with burned skin, and with every variable possible would have been alot more work, which they chose against doing.
it really didn't surprise me, although i think most ghouls would be perfectly capable of wearing armor, since they are basically humanoid, they might not be to comfortable in it, but if it increases survivability then so be it.
also such things should not be taken to literally from the previous games they suffered from the same problems FO3 suffers from. (needing a crapload more work for what amounts to just a visual upgrade.)

i do agree about the running though, which could have been easily fixed really, just cripple all the ghouls legs, would make them move alot more ghouly.
and everyone would have been happy. (i hope)

[rant]

i do have to say though that this whole new "fast" zombie fetish people seem to have pisses me off, zombies aren't fast, never have been, never will.
so it stands to reason that when it runs it ain't a zombie, just some infected nutjob cannibal, and not the classic horror monster.

[/rant]

Well, at the very least, I hope they get their own model and animation in the next game. I really don't think they're just humans with burnt skin. If you look at Harold, Set, their slow ass movement speed in the previous games, and (if you're willing to consider it canon) their SPECIAL stats in Fallout Tactics, Fallout Warfare, and the Fallout PnP -- they suggest that they don't have the same body structure and capabilities as a regular human anymore. I don't think the differences are just skin deep (pun very much intended). I'm willing to bet that their bone structure, muscle mass, and god knows what else are pretty messed up as well.

Anyway, never really bothered me until you all brought it up.

Here's another nitpick I'd like to through up in the air. Super Mutants using Small Guns. Care to discuss?

The bone structure thing is addressed somewhat jokingly in FO2. When you finally get a hold of the car and enter Broken Hills, you will esentially have run over and parked on top of Lumpy the ghoul He mentions something about compound fractures, when you suggest he shouldn't move he'll tell you not to worry, and that everything will "pop back into place eventually". I imagine ghouls are quite hardy as a side effect of their mutation, just not very versatile on the whole

And the Small Gun wielding Mutant thing was one of my first wtf's in FO3, a green, rampaging, warcrying, bloodthirsty monstrosity charging towards you..whilst taking pot shots with a hunting rifle. And Masters from my experience use chinese assault rifles almost exclusively. And not ONE flamer to be seen among them NOT BLOODY ONE! If they're so renowned for successfully taking on BoS on occasion, then where are the gatling lasers?? It should be miniguns, missile launchers and flamers as a good conventioanl standard, then one or two plasma rifles and even a fat man on occasion, mutants would be begging to let rip with one of those. How they even fit their sausage fingers around the trigger of an assault rifle is beyond me.

I know there are mods that address this, but it shouldn't have to come to that >_<

i imagine that they remove the guards around the trigger, so they won't have to squeeze their fingers in there.
also the super mutants get their weapons from whatever they can kill in the DC area, they aren't a orginised army like that of the master.

and i do believe ghouls are inherently tougher than smoothskins, maybe not to the point of their skin stopping bullets but they seem to heal things like broken bones etc. alot quicker then a normal, also they can loose body parts without it effecting their health so to speak, and those parts can be grafted back on again succesfully as well.

Yes I imagine they'd do that too, I still question it though. I'm sure a Super Mutant would have alot more pleasure using his fists or a good quality plank of wood with that ever deadly protruding nail, rather than use what they would call a 'puny assault rifle'. Of course I cannot speak for the Super Mutant community on this subject

It could be safe to assume that a ghoul's endurance is naturally higher than your average human's, whilst pretty much all other stats would suffer. And ghouls (ferals) in FO3 seem the draw vitality from radiation. Though I wonder if it would be the radiation itself that heals them, or the side effects of their mutations. It could easily be both.

I think again, we're looking at game mechanics and calling it lore. Lore should be based on what characters say, and what the flavour text says, not what the game mechanics is limiting the game to.

Exactly. The fact that the ghoul sprites don't wear armour can't be taken literally as lore. The game can only go so far visually which is why everything important is found in the text. Personally I think that ghouls can wear armour, but would it really do any good? All the evidence in conversations and different official lore souces points toward ghouls having a much higher endurance than humans due to their mutation. Though the mutaion also probably means that they aren't very agile or strong, there is know where that actually says this is the case, it is just assumed based on their condition and the way they look in game. From what I've seen, the ghouls condition seems to get worse the older they get and quite literally fall apart at the seems, which means that those ghouls that are recently turned have only had a few decades of their flesh deteriorating so are still strong enough and comfortable to wear heavy armour. Maybe this is why ghouls aren't really portrayed as being too strong seeing as most are pretty old. Much of this is speculation as using logic to fill in the gaps, but the game designers are only human and can't get everything right so I think it's really up to us to sort out the inconsistancies.

However, the fact that the ferrals are so [censored] fast in FO3 is just a way to sell the game on Bethesda's part and isn't the same sort of problem as the whole ghouls wearing armour thing. It's quite a blatent contradiction which does make the game more interesting but takes away from the lore, which, for me, is the main reason why I love this series so much.

First post done. Cool XD.

You're right, the ghouls sprites can be misleading. Which is why I took it upon myself to do some shooting, and some number crunching, and I got myself a fresh trilogy bundle today, so I now have the FO1 I've been missing for a few years, so I can forward my research to Necropolis. But as it stands, ghouls never wore armour, regardless of sprite accuracy, based on my research of FO2.

A 'recently turned ghoul' seems to have the same hindrance as any other ghoul. Not all the ghouls were so old during FO1 but they were still hindered. It's also hard to define 'recently turned' the process itself isn't immediate. but certainly leaves the same result regardless of age. One of the ghouls in Underworld in FO3 was a survivor from when the bombs dropped, but she was no different from any other ghoul in FO3. So there is no distinction between young and old, regardless of which game you standardise.

The Ferals could have been replaced with anything less contradictive. Some form of super mutant hybrid, small, agile, and mindless. That wouldn't have been so much a contradiction, as an emphasis on the different strain of F.E.V present in FO3. It didn't have to come down to inconsistencies because Bethesda wanted to have speedy biped creatures lurking underground. But ghouls are backwards, so why would Ferals be any different. It's just another lazy inconsistency.

I was just speculating about the whole ghoul age thing as that is the impression I got from the games and lore and is how I see the mutation working IRL in my mind. The fact that their are ghouls of all different ages in all three games and how they all look the same is hard to commentate on as it is still just a problem with the game mechanics. Bethesada was pressed for time during FO3's deelopement and making variations in the models for different ages etc would have been something you add when you have time to spare, so, as I said, all we can really do is speculate and fill in the gaps (there would obviously be a differenve between the young and old otherwise they wouldn't die of old age). I don't think we can put any bases for the lore on game mechanics be it sprite or stats from any of the games.

I agree with you though that just throwing feral ghouls in was just pure laziness.

Apologies if I missed this in skimming through this thread, but on the subject of Ghouls being able to run in Fallout 3:

The animations for the Ghouls in Fallout 1 and 2 always showed them shambling, but I also remember them being able to cover quite a lot of distance. I don't how many APs they had in that game, but at times it felt like they got a couple extra movement APs per round. There is mention when talking with Harold in Fallout 2 about seeing your predessor running through the crowds of feral Ghouls because they couldn't run - but that's really about the only reference I remember coming across as it relates to their movement.

As far as it goes in Fallout 3 I get the feeling it's less a mistake than a deliberate feature. The Ghouls in the subway wouldn't be all that scary if you could blow them apart before they closed range because all they could manage was a zombie-like shamble. For me, that's one of the scariest parts of the game, when you hear that tell-tale scrambling coming for you out of the darkness, and turn around to see a Feral trying to claw your face off.

Maybe if there were tons more of them they could present a relative challenge while slowing them down (a la the zmobie horde in games like Dead Rising where they can get at you just through sheer numbers) but I also don't know how well the game would be able to handle the extra drain on system resources if you significantly added a greater number of opponents at one time. At some point you often have to sacrifice things in the name of difficulty balancing and fun, after all.

Well, no matter what you call it or excuse you give it, FalloutChris is right, it wa nother more than a lazy mistake, or just not caring and wanting to "sell" the game. Also, I would like to agree with all that has been said towards Ghouls not being able to handle armor.

When it comes to actual explanations as to why they can't,
*you get more than one creative self imposed answer
*reference of game dialouge
*reference of multiple game mechanics that all point to the same thing
*even 1st hand experience and research (thx FalloutChris)
:foodndrink: dang...

In comparison as to why they can,
*Blaming the spites, :shifty: come on, they made multiple human sprites they would've made more than two Ghoul sprites
*Listing the only two exceptions of NPC's there are...
*A two or three creative self imposed answers
:deal: Read the facts b****es :woot:

Okay now, moving along. I remember the first time I saw a Super Mutant in Fo1 it was a big honken monster with a big honken gun :flamethrower: . And now matter what level you were, if you played stupid they WOULD kill you. Now my first experience with a Super Mutant in Fo3 went like this, I was wondering south east because it looked more urban that way, I happen to stumble across a few super mutants. At first I wondered why they were yellow, I always remembered them as green, but it didn't matter and I tried sniping one in the head, I missed and was like, well I'm done for. But to my suprise they returned normal gunshot fire, I thought to myself they're pretty much big ugly raiders, not even scary :sadvaultboy: . I was kinda disapointed how only a handful used big freakin' weapons, but as was said, there are mods. I just think it's lame, I mean it's not lore or anything, and taking the trigger gaurd off is a good explanation but I still think they should have big weapons only you know? There is a much smaller fear facter. A giant wouldn't fight with a dagger would he? No! He'd use a f***in' tree!

And as for the Dead Rising hypothosis, they could probably just make smaller subway areas so they can run like forty or so real ferrel Ghouls in there. I think it would bring a zombie feel to the game that could still sell the game in it's own action way and staying true to lore. To just have multiple subway sections flooded with Ghouls, would explain the D.C. populace hiding from the troubles of the world and getting radiated.

armour in reality (of the game) should weigh nothing , and therfore the ghouls could wear it, as jyour about to get the training for power armour your trainer states " just re-lax and let the suit do the work" he is theraby implying that hte suites are motarized some how and would be able to support their own weight and actually enhance your own abilitys

A more simple explanation could simply be that they wanted their Ghouls to be able to run in Fallout 3, regardless of how they worked in the original games. (And in the original ones, it's sort of a case of them saying one thing and doing another - they'd play a shambling walk animation, but then they could also outrun most of my characters...) This is Bethesda's game now, they're allowed to make those sorts of minor changes. George Romera had slow zombies in Night of the Living Dead, and then in Day of the Dead, he made them able to run - I don't think there were really that many people questioning his decision to make that change.

You'd have to have really small subway sections to make up for the extra processing requirements of 40 zombies on screen all at once. Dead Rising and other games are able to get away with it because they're running on an engine with algorithms specifically made to be able to do that - Gamebryo is not one of those. The size of the environment you find yourself in is simply not as resource-intensize as keeping track of the models within it, their animations, AI, and other status considerations to take into account (like health levels, what limbs are crippled, what they're equipped with, etc.) There's a reason you only ever get attacked by so many enemies at once in this game.

ie, the problem isn't the size of the map you find yourself in, but how many things there inside of it that the game needs to keep track of.

Power Armor is the only armor with machinery to assist you in compensating for it's weight. Everything else is just that - armor.

As far as Ghouls being able to wear armor - I don't see why that'd be a problem. Only the ferals are concievably too dumb to be able to figure out how to strap some metal to themselves for protection. A regular Ghoul (and those are the only ones I've ever encountered wearing any sort of actual armor) is just as capable of figuring out how to fit into any type of armor they come across as anyone else. I can't see any viable reason why they wouldn't.

That was just what I was thinking too, sure, ghouls in Fallout 1 and 2 didn't wear armor, but that doesn't mean that they can't, they still have human like forms, and armor made for normal humans wouldn't fit on super mutants due to their physique, but that isn't much of a problem for ghouls. It's probably simply that no sprites were made for ghouls with armor in previous gamers.

As to ghouls running, that is a bit of an inconsistency, I suppose, but it's not the kind of thing that ruins any sense of continuity, and it's one I'm quite willing to overlook, if anything, I'd say I prefer it when ghouls can run, makes the seem more threatening, I've always found the shambling zombie walk just makes it feel like I can just leisurely take my time with them, real zombie games and movies address this by making their numbers so great that it's difficult for the characters to kill them all before they get close enough to become a threat. But considering that battles are usually relatively small even in what's supposed to be an "epic" moment in Fallout 3, a trend that was also present in Oblivion, I expect that the engine isn't well suited to handling large amount of actors on the screen.



The feral ghoul roamers seem to have what looks like the remnants of combat armor on to me, but that's probably just what's left of what they were wearing before they went feral, just like the clothing on weaker feral ghouls.



They seem to have different head models and hair models as well, but for the most part, "normal" ghouls are just humans with a different texture. I think the poblem here is most likely a matter of the engine, though, Bethesda wanted them to be people rather than "creatures", so they probably needed to use the same body models and animations as normal humans, just with different textures, feral ghouls might better represent what ghouls would have looked like in Fallout 3 if Bethesda could have done it. Alternately, I could imagine that Bethesda might have decided that normal ghouls should look more "human", being as they are meant to be characters you will speak to and interact with in non-violent ways, as opposed to just monsters to kill, whereas feral ghouls would be given less human-like appearances, to reflect that they have lost their humanity. If this is the reason, Bethesda did accomplish it, though I actually feel that making normal ghouls look more human also makes them appear more disturbing.



ALL the Elder Scrolls games have inconsistencies with lore, people just focus on the ones from Oblivion because it's new, and maybe also because people LIKED the inconsistencies with past games introduced in Morrowind (and since Arena was just a generic fantasy world with little lore of its own to begin with, there isn't much the changes in Daggerfall could do that would be bad.)



President Eden was in the Capital Wasteland all along, though that doesn't answer where the rest of the Enclave comes from, I'd guess that the common soldiers might be local recruits (Maybe that's why they seem less threatening than in Fallout 2, due to lacking the same training.) but considering that they still maintain some of the technology from the West Coast, and may even have enhanced it, as suggested by the introduction of Tesla Power Armor, adopting Advanced Power Armor MK-II as their main armor type, and the new plasma weapons (at least the plasma rifle is more compact, and probably easier to use than the one in past games, it's hard to say if it's actually superior or not, due to stat inconsistencies.)



Ultimately, though, it just tells us that these ghouls don't wear armor, you can argue logic all you want, but it accomplishes nothing, you don't have a real glaring inconsistency unless you can find a quote somewhere saying that "Ghouls can't wear armor." All that this research really tells us is that it's a little odd that ghouls didn't wear armor in Fallout 1 and 2, even in very dangerous conditions, whereas they can in Fallout 3 (and even then, most don't seem to go higher than leather, of course, Charon can even wear power armor, but that's just a choice the player can make, being as he is a companion, and given that other NPCs can wear power armor just fine, and only the player character needs a perk to wear it, I would take that with a grain of salt.) If we want to find lore inconsistencies, I think there are bigger ones than ghouls wearing armor, I'd say that if the one subject we've spent so much time discussion were the biggest inconsistency anyone could think of, then Fallout 3 would be quite impressive as far as consistency with past games goes, considering how long it was made after the last Fallout game and the fact that it was made by a completely different developer.

I'd say a more worthy lore consistency is the fact that every car in Fallout 3 was nuclear, and go up in a small mushroom cloud when exploding, something that seems to be inconsistent with how prewar cars were portrayed in previous games, I doubt even the Highwayman would be able to do this, since microfusion cells or small energy cells have never been shown to explode in mushroom clouds when damaged, and even if they COULD explain like that, I can't imagine that something that size could possibly produce an explosion with what seems to be similar power to a mini nuke launched by the Fatman. I also see a logic problem there, as even ignoring any inconsistencies or the unrealism of nuclear power sources exploding like that, why would people drive such cars if they were so volatile? I don't think I'd be willing to use transportation that could go up in a small mushroom cloud from a simple crash.



I see no inconsistency there, I'd imagine they only favored big guns because they could carry them easily and they gave them additional firepower, if they can operate big guns, I can't imagine they would be unable to use a hunting rifle or assault rifle. It seems believable that super mutants could use small guns, the thing that might be inconsistent is that they bother to use them when their West Coast kin favored big guns, and the fact that using a hunting rifle doesn't really do much to maintain the feel that super mutants should have, but at least they don't use 10mm SMGs and pistols.

Though I must admit, due to lacking an organized army, super mutants probably DO scavenge whatever they can find, so a few small guns isn't unbelievable, but I'd have expected MORE of them to have big guns or powerful melee weapons like the super sledge, at least, that would make them much more threatening too, which they could have benefited from, I mean, if you decide to go straight to the D.C. Ruins as soon as you find out where James went from Moriarty, you could be fighting them at level 2, and probably be able to kill them too, you'd even be able to take down the behemoth due to the conveniently placed Fatman, raiders and Protectrons make good enough low level enemies, super mutants shouldn't have to fill that role too.

lol, I don't think I'd drive something that would go up in a mushroom cloud if it crashed either.

Anyways, I do agree with what you have to say about Super Mutants using small guns, and I also think it is quite lame that even mighty supermutants fall into the first few level monster catagory. It was nice to actually have the feeling of trying to survive like in the previous games, instead of pretty much kiling whatever.

However I still stand on my position of Ghouls wearing armor in the newest Fallout. It's silly. But I do agree with Fallout being a game with few inconsistancies, with some other things that are just illogical.

One thing about the exploding cars you all are missing is that the car reactors are badly corroded after 200 years out in the weather, and unstable as a result. When the cars were brand new, (if you accept the game "logic") they woudn't have gone critical just from a jarring crash..

As per exploding cars: I don't personally hold Fallout up to any higher standard of realism than I would an action movie. In movies, apparently cars will blow up if you look at them funny. It's not realistic (you can't usually blow up a car even by shooting the gas tank, for example - not to mention the physics involved, there are teams of highly-paid professionals who try and design your car so that likelihood of it suddenly bursting into flames is as minimal as possible.)

Cars blowing up in Fallout 3 isn't realistic, but I don't view it as any less realistic than being able to instantly mutate someone via FEV, radiation turning people into Ghouls, or cows magically mutating to grow two heads to such a degree that it becomes the norm for the species. I can come up with my own arbitary rationalizations for any of that stuff, but it's just a case of you either accept it or not.

ie, if we're going to target exploding cars, then we also have to wonder about how radiation alone can cause entirely new species (like Bloatflies, Geckos, and Brahmin) over such a short span of time; as opposed to animals displaying a wide range of various mutations instead of the homogenous quality they all have in these games.

My biggest issue with the exploding vehicles is that the only vehicles that don't give off radiation when they pop are motorcycles, vertibirds, and possibly those little three wheeled one-seaters (can't remember if that's true), which suggests pretty much all the cars on the road were powered by micro fusion cells. But according to the old games the highwayman was the first and pretty much the only vehicle of that type, everything else was internal combustion of some kind. The Highwayman sold well but was expensive and Chryslus couldn't keep up with demand. Shortly after that, everything ground to a halt and the bombs dropped, so they should be pretty rare. After the Great War, the only other non nuclear ground vehicle mentioned (never implemented in game) were the steam powered trucks that the super mutants used to invade the Necropolis. So, there really is no lore friendly explanation for all the mushroom clouding cars. It's just kinda sloppy.