Tsar Bomba would like to have a word with you.

Yeah that's something that makes me laugh out loud whenever I play fallout 3. The way everyone acts makes you think it happened directly after the war, not 200 years after.

Actually, there *is* something halting plant growth, radiation. Now, radiation in F3 sure isn't realistic in any way, but that's in-line with the game's concept.

Read up on Chernoble - radiation does Not stop plant growth - even tons of radiation.

In fact you find some surprising results - life is alot more robust than you might think.

The game's concept would have supported it either way IMHO, I've played and play with some of the greening-world mods and it looks tons better and more realistic.

I don't mean to be offensive here -- I really don't! -- but what you're saying is outright baloney. The amount released in Chernobyl was significantly less than what's released in a kiloton nuclear explosion, meaning it can't possibly be taken as a parameter for what would happen in a war using nukes the megaton range. The Nevada N-test range or the Bikini atoll are much better references for the effects of radiation on the ecosystem. In the case of the Bikini atoll, it took around 6 years after the cessation of the tests for plant life to regrow. In other words, as long as the background radiation is high enough, plants can't grow.

But at any rate, that's ultimately immaterial. Radiation -- and science itself, for that matter -- in the FO world is fundamentally different from reality, it's based on the popular imaginary and pulp sci-fi of the 50's. IOW, it was Science!, not science. Back then people believed radiation would stick forever, just like they thought it would make things grow super-size, etc, and so it does in the FO world. That's the game concept I was referring to.

Now, answering the thread's topic, no, F3 could never, even remotely, happen. But to say it (the game) *should* feature a green landscape, is simply wrong.

I didn't take offense to your comments at all I do also think your comments are full of "baloney", but I can understand where the popular conception would be to think this way. The Nevada Test range? It was a desert to begin with, so your anology is really quite poor there - how can you make an anology of how life would re-grow after nuclear war using a pre-nuke desert as the sample? You can't credibly. Bikini Atol was also an Extremely small island that did not have alot on it to begin with, and no "new" sources of greenery to encroach on the nuked area - again a very poor choice of anology. The Chernoble area in-fact provides a much more Realistic environment to what I think would exist after the war - even a big war.

I'll give you this much - in the immediate dozen or so years following the event, plant-life would indeed be very restricted from re-growing. This would be as much from the lack of normal sunlight, changes in temperatures and fires as much as from radiation. But in 10 or 15 years, these effects would be long-gone and the world would start to re-green again at an alarming rate. We can argue about the science behind this all day long, but I've studied this topic at some depth and am confident that the world would Not remain lifeless as you seem to think it would - and I'm not even talking about 200+ years out. By the Fallout time, 200+ years into the future, it would actually be a wonderfully-green world again. Different for sure, but green none the less.

I do think the idea behind Fallout3 seems plausable to me IF it were set a dozen or even 20 years after the war - then it would seem alot more realistic (not that it needs to be in the game).

Miax

Well, how long did it take for plant life to regrow after the bomb drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Japan, while an Island, is certianly not as small as Bikini Atoll...

Well, if you want to see pictures of greenery on a place with a lot of nuclear contamination, this is a pretty interesting site

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

where do you find those stats? Are there even nuclear weapons measured kilotons?

I call BS.

Regardless of what size the explosion, Popsci did a piece after F3 came out about how with the nukes we have today how quickly plant life would come back and how far off the game was from reality... it wouldnt take much time at all in reality.... if i can find it i will post it

I'm actually currently studying Nuclear Physics at college, and I can tell you I do have studied the Chernobyl incident and radiation -- I'm not running on popular conceptions here You could make a case about coconuts and grass seeds taking more time to reach the blast sites from the other islands of the atoll (just barely though), but plant life includes algae, and there were plenty around the nearby isles which could (and did) reach the affected zone. They just all died. And that's actually an even more compelling evidence, considering sea currents were continually removing irradiated water and bringing in new one.

And as for Chernobyl, as I said, the radiation there wasn't so strong. The pike of radiation (around the reactor) was actually far less than what would be produced by an actual nuclear blast. Also, most of the contamination happens when fallout (irradiated dust and soot) is created, and none was created there. It was mostly wave radiation. So it is really no wonder plant life wasn't affected. As a matter of fact, the surprise would be if it were otherwise.

I also never claimed the world would remain lifeless after a nuclear war. As a matter of fact from a strictly natural (ie non-societal) standpoint, after less than a year there would be nearly no noticeable consequence. My point was that, unlike you claimed, high levels of radiation does prevent plant growth.

And I never said the idea behind F3 was plausible. As a matter of fact, I specifically said it was deliberately meant *not* to be

Look, you should really do some research before trowing accusations, specially when you obviously know nothing about it. For your information, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki's bombs were of 13 and 22 kilotons respectively, and each warhead of a MIRV is usually 100 kilotons. And the megaton range was only reached with fusion bombs -- the most powerful fission bomb created had a kilotonnage of 720.

Agreed, would love the article! Despite all the attempts to the contrary, the world would indeed be quite green.



Then we are in agreement (where it matters).

I love the atmosphere the game produced with the totally dead world, and also with it greened - either way.

Miax

Um, maybe you should do some research on bombs. Ever heard of "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"? Those were both kiloton nuclear bombs.

... and it goes even further too, the US has done _tons_ of nuclear research on the power of bombs. We've tested alot of them in the past, on-land, under water, in the atmosphere and even Huge megaton thermonuclear bombs on islands. Not something I'm enormously proud of as an American, but something I'm glad we know how to do.

Kiloton bombs, Megaton bombs, its all in the literature for the hungry mind.

ok. I don't know anything about bombs. I asked a question. you answered, be it with some venom.

but besides the point.

I notice you have completely dodged me. :yes:

I shall ask again. Where do you get this info



I'm still calling BS.

Sigh, from a book called "Chernobyl Record", by R.F. Mould. Want the ISBN too? -_-

fair enough. still I'm not convinced

but by all acounts I found online, the possible radiation that managed to leak from chernobyl, was at the very least, several percent of what was actually in the reactor.... They had a crap load of urainium....200tonnes. and apparently thats so much more than any nuclear bomb, your statement seems backwards.

But you're forgetting...

Reactor Uranium needs to be only like 10% pure to get power from it. Nuclear Bomb Uranium needs to be AT LEAST 90% pure to be effective.

While several percent of Chernobyl's reactor scattered about the immediate area, it's just a drop in the bucket compared with what a Nuke outputs.

So, while Chernobyl had 200 tonnes of Uranium, it's radiation output can be compared with the equivalant of about 20 tonnes of Nuke Uranium... And we need to further lower the effects to the environment since (by an extrapolation of your own admission) most of Chernobyl's reactor was either contained within or near the powerplant itself, not atomized/turned to dust and spread about the vicinity.

I am not forgeting the larger dispersion into the atmosphere a nuke would make, thats fairly obvious.

I poked at it a bit anyway.

the most conservative estimate on chernobyl is:
670x 10^15Bq
Maybe(likely) it is lot more. maybe 10-20 ish, as that is the old russian goverments estimation. which apparently is wrong.

hiroshima may have been around.
8?10^24 Bq
I also mostly see lower estimates.

so there are quite a few zeros extra there.

Controversly.

the dose radition from some parts of the chernobyl facility, is several times that at hiroshi ground zero.

excess of 100,000 rads per minute, compared to a max of 30k rads per? at a nuke site?

:shrug:

Edit:
even more controversly I found this data

Chernobyl 7.3 MCi
Hiroshima 1.4 MCi
Hanford (I-131 only) 0.74 MCi
Three Mile Island 0.000015 MCi

So by that account chernobyl released about 5 times the radiation as hiroshima.
:shrug:

double edit:
http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5087075
according to that little snippet....

according to that,
considering there have been 500+ atmospheric tests, depending on the isotope in question, chernobyl tops nukes.

Heh, allright.

I'm backing the guy with the proof! Apparently, purity concentrations don't have much of an effect on radiation released from nuclear materials...

There may have been another factor at work... perhaps a Neutron Bomb test on Bikini Atoll? Those just kill life, not much collateral damage, so it would take some time for the island to become repopulated, regardless of the radiation levels.

besides the uranium, you do have to take into account a lot of the really harmfull waste materials already found in the facility, plus maybe tonnes of highly radiated cooling water that was vaporised and spouted into the air when the reactor popped. ?

anyway.
I wouldn't back me. :hehe:

*I* have no proof myself of anything.

all the statisticals I found tend to all differ depending on the source. often contradicting.

tbh, I don't think they're is an black or white answer to my question. from what I am gathering, in terms of radiation contamination to the area there, chernobyl seems to range from several times less than a nuke, to several times more than one.

either way, I doubt it is that significantly less than a kiloton nuclear explosion.

call it a draw?