Anyone here watch Life After People? Even though it doesn't talk about the consequences of nuclear war it's still a must watch for any fans of post-apocalyptic fiction and the destruction of humanity.

Anyway, in the last episode I saw they talked about what would happen to Washington DC if all the people were gone... turns out, DC was built on a swamp and without people around to drain the water it likely will become one again. Basically, the Capital Wasteland should be under water... but it isn't. It's gotten drier and the river seems to be receding. I thought about why this could be and could only think of one explanation: Ice Age. You see in an Ice Age the world doesn't just get colder, it actually gets drier as well as more and more of the Earth's water becomes locked up in glaciers. Eventually, the mediteranean sea might become just a huge salt plain.

Or am I just thinking too much about this and should just accept that its only a game?

Where is the episode?

And, If the waters got iced. I doubt the land will be affected.

Most of Fallout seems to work on that thought :shrug:

You're partly right though. Not so much another ice age, but nuclear winter. An exchange big enough to wipe out everything like that should have caused one of some size, but, oh well.

Well, any lack of realism in Fallout needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Remember, we're talking SCIENCE!, not science.

The Capitol Wasteland wouldn't become swampy, mainly because when the bombs went off, lots of water would of evaporated with the intense heat. And in Fallout, the wasteland is practically a desert, and is very hot, evaporating water; thus keeping the Capitol Wasteland dry

Fallout world = Not our world.

The scientific laws aren't the same. If you're going to argue swamps you may aswell question why everyone didn't die of lukemia and cancer. Or why there was never a Nuclear Winter. Etc etc.

As stated, the laws of science in the divergent world of Fallout are not the same as our own.

In our world, heavy doses of radiation leads to cancer and death. In the Fallout world, it leads to ghouls.

However, evaporated water would fall again in the form of rain. The arid, desert landscapes in all the Fallout games support the hypothesis of an Earth that's getting colder; growing ice caps mean falling sea levels and everything south of the ice caps drying up as all the moisture is svcked into them. It may explain why Moriarity and Tenpenny crossed the Atlantic in steamboats or whatever; The British Isles are on the same latitude as the Hudson Bay in Canada only kept warm by air coming in from the gulf stream. It could be in the Fallout world the British Isles are covered in ice and so people are fleeing elsewhere.



Yes. Thank you for your inisght. However, it doesn't follow that some laws don't remain the same, or at the very least the laws they have should be logically consistent. If some stuff can be explained without using 'magic', then why not speculate about it? Incidentally in the Fallout Bible there was a nulcear winter.

No need to be patronising. Why do the laws need to be logically consistent. That's the whole reason the same laws don't apply, so they can be somewhat illogical, though consistent within their own laws. If the devs spent all their time trying to negotiate and rationalise for every single shred of significant scientific law, then a game would have never been made, and alot of people would have lost their jobs. I think the fact that Fallout is, and always has been, a game, just goes to show that the person(s) who took their time to at least bring some science, albeit fiction, into the world, deserve some appreciation. There is nothing wrong with speculation, I love speculation. My whole point was which was summarised by my four word equation, is that there's no point looking to real science to question the science (or lack thereof) of the Fallout world. But maybe that's where some people disagree.

Sorry about that... I guess I thought you were trying to be patronising. That's a problem with internet discussion, without being able to see you and read your body language its harder for me to guage what your meaning is.



Well, we agree. I'm not questioning the science or lack of... radiation causing mutation rather than just death is an establised law of Fallout. I'm just meaning to ask whether its possibly the world in Fallout is cooling and what the repercussions might be if it is etc

It's alright. I'm only really patronising to someone if I think they deserve it But my rises have got me into a bit of trouble recently, so I'm on my best behaviour, as it were

As much as I love to speculate, I'm finding it hard to realise a cooling Fallout world, I don't know how Fallout would manage that, but in pure game fashion, it would have to be something quite significant. There has been no indication so far that Fallout is cooling, or getting colder, but then weather has been the one thing that Fallout has consistently ignored. I'm thinking a spin off could address a niche such as an ice age-type world. One thing's for sure, agriculture would be very stunted.

The last one is easy. The Fallout world takes whatever was envisioned in Science! in the 50s - and the concept of nuclear winter was not part of that, that concept only being introduced in the 80s. ^_^
Anyway, as I always say: The 'Fallout series terrain' look is quite similar to Mad Max, and thus, we've only seen environments where deserts are a common terrain type, which should expand without mankinds interaction, and the woodlands burned in uranium induced fire.
Choosing Washington as a location for F3 should have made a difference, but Beth tried to also mix the terrain look into their Fallout cocktail game, together with BoS, Enclave, FEV,.... ^_^

I'd love to see a ice-fallout world, but the problem is FO:Tactics featured Chicago, would should have been at least very cold, if not an ice berg, because of a nuclear winter big enough to dry up rivers like it might have.

That aside, you could put it in Alaska, and agriculture could be in the form of massive greenhouses and vaults. Perhaps saying that a majority of the vaults did not have catstrophic experiments, and when they left the vaults, they knew they couldn't grow food outside, so they built cities on top of their vaults, and then used the vaults to produce food and water.

I think we have to be careful to not read too much into certain things.

An Iceage doesn't necessarily mean it's cold all around the world. Also, a hotter climate due to greenhouse effect or anything else doesn't necessarily mean that there's an Ice age coming.

Just look to the Jurassic or Cretaceous period, the average temp in that age was a lot hotter than we have now, also the climate is affected by a lot of other influences. It is very possible that the US has turned into a dry climate, and the Sahara desert had gotten a larger humidity and rainfall (from the evaporated water for example) and could well be a lush and alive Jungle or something.

Again, think of the knwoledge and accepted views around the 50's. Almost all life would have died according to theories in those times, including plantlife. The lack of plantlife and the elements (such as water, wind etc.) have a devestating effect, erosion.

Besides that, statistically, the Sahara is one of the places in the world that has the most rainfall in a year. It's still a desert. So the amount of rain amongst things isn't the only thing that creates a wasteland. It's the soil, plantlife, climate etc. etc. It's a combination of so many factors that we'd better just accept the "it's a game" as an explanation to save time.

It does seem I erred... in the Fallout Bible, there was apparently a 'Great Winter' in 2130, long after the bombs fell, but not a nuclear winter.



I'd nearly forgotten about Chicago... but who knows, maybe ventured just a little further north into Canada we'd find ourselves suddenly neck deep in snow



As I said, in an Ice Age you get growing ice caps but the rest of world gets drier, so you get two extremes of weather. In the Jurassic it was on average hotter than today, but also wetter. And with little plantlife you would also still expect to see rivers get bigger rather than receding, obviously because the waters aren't being drunk up by the wildlife.

Yeah, it's just a game. But I kinda like the idea of cities buried in snow, as well as sand, and maybe some huge mutated mammoth type creature

There actually was some snow in Fallout Tactics, btw.

Yes, quite a bit of it around Cheyenne Mountain..

IT could be possible that a ice age happend after the nuclear fallout due to the clouds cuased by explosins blocked the sun but after that all the Carbon dixodie released into the atmosphere would have casued a green house effect. It could also be that D.C isnt under water because of the INCREDBLY HOT NUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!!! These explosions would have caused all the water under ground and around to evaporate and most likley not come back due to it being mostly mosture in the atmosphere (because of the green house effect i mentioned befor).

If I am not mistaken, the Fallout universe is largely based on beliefs and what was "known" during the 50's to the first game. Look at ALL the post-apocoliptic movies, its always a wasteland that is so dry you can dehydrate an egg before cooking it. Although now we know most of the beliefs are/were false, they did not. So it makes perfect sense to keep with the lore of how things were already set down, besides, it would not be the same in Fallout 3 if you put THAT much realizim in the game. No one would recognize the city and people would not get attached too it. Maybe there is something unique to their universe that has created the factors with resulted in a dry, arid universe?

As for our laws applying to another universe, IF Star Trek teaches you anything, laws are ment to be broken! lol

In "Threads" it was stated temperatures would drop for a good while because of the blockout of the sun. An ice age? Probably not, but who knows.