The water's going to be irradiated, my friend. Just because LA/NV wasn't bombed itself, doesn't mean it wasn't affected.

The raditation was blasted into the sky and carried across the world by the wind. LA is part of the world and thus, irradiated.

Wrong side of the Continental Divide. The Colorado River drains the Western side of the Continental Divide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River

The other Colorado River that is in Texas, and not part of this game, does not even go through Colorado. The word Colorado refers to the color of the water from the minerals it picks up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_(Texas)

The river that does drain the Colorado Springs area is the Arkansas River, but that goes East to the Mississippi River.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_River

Now, the Colorado River does drain a large part of the SW United States. There are some uranium mines but little else of major strategic value in the drainage. Even mines would not be targets as the process to get uranium ore to something that can be used in a bomb is long and complicated. The issue of being able to make more bombs is moot after the first nuclear exchange. I doubt if the area would have been hit with many bombs. So, it is hard to say how radiated the water would be.

I could have sworn I read a preview once were the previewer mentioned un-radiated water. Does nobody else remember it? I can't find now, maybe I imagined it. :shrug:

Wouldn't the Cold Winter have caused radiation to be everywhere across the globe even though no bombs where hit at certain places?

Hi guys I'm new, first post in fact.

Actually to all saying 200 years is enough to filter out radiation some radioactive materials have a half life of 2000 or so years.

Half Life = Time it takes for the material to be half as radioactive as it was before.

However this doesn't mean that two half lives it is gone it means that after its two half lives it is 75% less radioactive than when it began. Therefore 2000 = 50% 4000 years = 25% and 6000 years = 12.5%

So yeah water will still be irradiated. Even with a filter which would only draw out radiation in the particles of soil in the water not the ionising substance in the water itself.

Science lesson over

Yes there will be radiation. Likely not as much as in fo3 as the water is alot less contaminated. We know however there are places with alot of radiation so there likely are some streams or ponds that are alot more radiated.

That water shouldn't be radiated anyway, even if it had fallout in it before.

It's called the water cycle,. and 200 years.

Well, DC was hit by loads and loads of bombs, and the water you can find there is....well, let's say it could get worse. And Mojave area, which wasn't hit by any bombs at all, should have very little radioactive attributes, lest any at all.

I'm no weather experts, but I know that the clouds carry water that has vaporized, and when it rains the clouds will have moved. Water travels far distances because of clouds. That's why the Mojave wasteland doesn't have it's "own" water that would stay pure.

But I don't know if the water stays irradiated after it has vaporized and then rained down from a cloud. And the cleaner water that existed in the mojave wasteland will surely have vaporized if we're talking about 200+ years.

I'm kinda glad that the nukes didn't hit on a fallout game, it gives the player a bit of a view of what a post-apochalyptic wasteland would be like without nukes, but still the same dangers. How society would differ.

How is this thread still going? Answer: Fallout. Take your 5 rad sip and be thankful there's any water at all in the Mojave Wastes.

It would be radiated, as the whole world would.

in my opinion even the air should be slightly radioactive... 1per 40sec maybe.

Odd...the map from that page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coloradorivermapnew.jpg sure shows what looks like a massive waterway running past Grand Junction, Moab, Page, then through the Grand canyon right into Lake Mead backed up behind the Hoover Dam, then onward to dump into the sea between Baja California and Sonora. :shrug:

And while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Coloradorivermapnew.jpg one is a bit fuzzy, there apears to be plenty of leeway for Fallout-era non-GPS "accurate to within 3 feet" bombs to cover plenty of area needed to "light up" tributaries flowing both east and west.

Regardless, I reckon if Obsidian decides the water in the area's supposed to be radioactive it will be no matter where it runs from or to.

Hmm. An on-topic question that may be stupid, but... If all or next to all water in the Fallout world is irradiated, then where's the purified, unirradiated water (the bottles we find) coming from? Underground springs/lakes untouched by the radiation above the surface? Water sold by other Vaults who makes a lucrative business on selling part of their vault's water? Or some other source altogether (after all, even if Aqua Pura's going to start making apperarences in the games, explaining future appearences of purified water, there was purified water around even before The Purifier became fuctional in FO3)?

You are correct that the path of the Colorado River flows past those areas. I live in one of the towns you mentioned. However, the Cheyenne Mountain complex is on the East side of the Contintental Divide. It is also about 200 miles south of headwaters of the Colorado River, and you have to go through at least two Mountain Ranges to get from Rocky Mountain National Park and Colorado Springs. Prevailing weather patterns being what they are, any fallout from blasts East of the divide, will stay on the East side of the Divide, for the most part.

I don't suspect that the water in Vegas will be too-terribly irradiated more than 200 years after the event. Then again water has a very strange and other-wordly nature in the Fallout universe, as someone came up with the brilliant idea that there would be no Rain in the world after nuclear war. :rofl: Ummm, well, that would only be possible if the polar ice caps melt and the Oceans evaporate, but _only_ under those circumstances. There will be rain in DC a week or so after the war, and no matter what we do to the world, water will still evaporate from the oceans and rain onto land.

So given that water and rain are already hopelessly un-realistic in the Fallout universe, the game makers can do whatever they like in the name of Fun and leave it at that. Vegas already gets very little rain, so this isn't a big issue for FNV, but I still don't think there would be much radiation in the local water supplies - especially since Vegas wasn't badly hit.