So I just completed "Those!" for the first time and I was trying to figure out...is the Dr. evil? I mean I know he isn't trying to kill people but he also doesn't seem to care when they die and he wants to keep this dangerous ant queen alive...also his experiments are kind of concerning - i know at the root he wants to make the ants harmless, but even with that end in mind he causes a lot of harm doing it

The doctor is amoral in that he is going about his experiments without knowing what the consequences would be. I think the doctor was used to show how science, in it's attempt to make things better, sometimes makes things worse. The prescriptions given out for thalidomide is the first example I can think of. I sure there are many more.

Evil is a concept that can't be contributed to people, only actions. He is not an evil person, he simply believes that the ends justifies the means.

I have a better question.. Where did he get that FEV he was using?

From Vault 87, DUH!...oh wait.

I would say he got it from Vault-Tec, since their headquarters was in Washington, DC and they obtained a strain while building Vault 87.

Vault-Tec should't even have had any FEV. It was a top secret thing the United States military was working and all FEV research was sent to Mariposa from West-Tek. So for people at Vault-Tec to have samples of FEV kicking around their office, would be a huge security breach.

Not to mention the Military didn't even discover what FEV could do until a month or so before the Great War. So how the hell did they have a Vault in DC custom built of a different type of FEV, for the creation of super humans.. When they didn't even come up with that idea until a couple months before 2077? Where did they get the time to build such a Vault. Vaults take decades to build.

Also why the hell would they go though that trouble with a Vault, when they had Mariposa for such testing?

So a Vault custom built for a special strain of FEV for the creation of super humans build a decade or more before FEV was even created and the idea of supermen being created from it was even thought of. How does that make sense. That and Vault-Tec people playing with samples of it in their office.

Sorry for the rant, but this topic frustrates the hell out of me.

Vault 87 was set-up as a separate research center to work in conjuction with Mariposa. Vault-Tec constructed the vaults under guidelines provided by the government and the FEV was used there prior to the Great War, it is possible that some of the FEV was removed prior to the war. It is not that unbelievable that some of the FEV could have gotten out, since the same thing has happened with Anthrax and plutonium.

Again the huge problem you seemed to have missed. What FEV could do was not discovered until just before the war. The Military didn't even take intrest in FEV till a couple years before the War and when they did they sent all research on FEV to Mariposa.

So Why would they build a Vault for FEV testing? And how could they have built that Vault in under a year when all other vaults take decades to build. They wouldn't have used a Vault, they would have used the equivalent of Mariposa on the East Coast if they had bothered to have two places working on it instead of one.

Also FEV was like untra top secret stuff. So the less people that know about it the better. So if Vault Tec was in on it, that means.. West Tek, Vault Tec, the American military and god only knows who elseo would have known about it. How is that top secret?

I can't picture some Vault Tec guys playing around with samples of FEV in their office for the Doctor to find later. It would be like if people that worked on the manhattan project got to take home Uranium and blue prints of the place, or people working at the CDC taking home small pox and ebola.

From the Fallout Wiki, extracted from the Vault 87 terminal entries:

A separate research effort was set up by http://www.falloutwiki.com/Vault-Tec in http://www.falloutwiki.com/Washington,_DC. http://www.falloutwiki.com/Vault_87 was established as an independent research center for Dr http://www.falloutwiki.com/Wayne_Merrick, cooperating with the team at Mariposa. Despite his efforts, he was unable to improve batch 11-111 enough to reach satisfactory effects. Humans subject to his strains produced in the Vault 87 labs exhibited superior physical developments, such as increased size, strength and endurance to environmental factors, but were also characterized by significant mental retardation and extreme aggression to non-mutants.^{http://www.falloutwiki.com/Forced_Evolutionary_Virus#cite_note-V87Merrick-6}
Regardless how it happened, there was a Vault set-up for FEV experiments in the DC area and Vault-Tec built it to government specifications.

Yeah and its a complete contradiction of everything we learned about in Fallout 2. It doesn't make sense. The only way for it to make sense is by saying "Completely ignore everything you already know."

So this means that Vaults didn't take decades, they could be built in just two months and FEV wasn't topsecret.

It doesn't make sense. And as for your idea that the Doc got it from Vault Tec HQ.. That would mean FEV was handed out like candy or something.

Human testing at Mariposa didn't happen until a couple weeks before the Great War. They didn't know what FEV could do on people till just before the Great War. Now we are told that they were doing human testing in a Vault in DC long before FEV was even discovered. Its stupid IMO.

I think it would have been interesting if he was an ex-Enclave that managed to escape Raven Rock with a small amount of FEV. The reason why he was trying to make the ants smaller was his way of making up for the bad things he had done while apart of the Enclave.

The Enclave guy from Navarro that was helping him could have not known the Doc was also Enclave. Or they both had been trying to do some good in the world. It would explain why the doc doesn't really care how many people are killed because of his work.

Because your sense of timing isn't actually based in Lore the vaults didn't take decades to build. Vault 13 which held a population of 1,000 and was designed to be sealed for two centuries before opening took five years to build. It was constructed from 2263 to 2269. Vault 87 was built for a population of a couple hundred and not designed to remain sealed for such an extended period, so its reasonable it could have been constructed in the two years from 2275 to 2277. Thas assuming it wasn't already finished years before hand and they simply remodeled it for new experimentation after the discovery of FEV's abnormal growth effects in 2075.

Human testing on FEV didn't begin untill 2077 however the Military had still taken an interest by 2075. So they constructed Mariposa and remodeled Vault 87 to continue the experimentations but on human subjects. Vault 87 designed to act as a contingency in the event a nuclear bomb dropped on Mariposa.


Thats actually the most plausable explantion for Lesko. His atttude would really fit an Enclave scientist. He might not even have escaped Raven's Rock he could have come all the way from Navarro. Perhaps stopping in Nevada for a trial run of his experiments on ants but as forced to leave before he could see the results.

Well I am not going to fight it anymore. I am just going to go along with it.

Still don't like the idea of Vault Tec keeping FEV at their HQ to explain how he got the FEV for the ant experiments. I am going with the idea he was an ex-enclave.

Vault 87 was probably already in the works or finished, but in the last few months the military wanted another place to do testing. So they took control and renovated the vault. It wouldn't take that long to do so.

Is it just me or does it seem like the doc made progress at that shale place? When I went in there were smaller ants being attacked by the bigger fireants & I helped em out & it gave an option 2 inject a stimpack to their nest is that a result of helping him out. It's da 1st time I went in there & 1st time I left him alive(dr lesko)

Regarding Vault 87: Transferring the research to a vault seems like an eminently sensible precaution. Having that vault far away from your other research facilities also seems like a good idea: don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Imagine the situation: war looks increasingly likely. The military think they might be on to a winning weapon, but they are concerned that the research facilities might be destroyed in an attack. They need a secure location so that the research can continue even after war has begun. Remember, they are probably planning for some continuance of "civilization" after the war, they are not simply assuming that everything will go to hell. They don't have time to build a lab specifically for the purpose, so where can they go? They turn to an obvious quarter: Vault Tec, leader in the construction of shelters designed for precisely this kind of purpose. Vault Tec tells them, sure, we've got a vault in the D.C. area that we can repurpose for your research team. If you read the technician entries for Vault 87, you see that there are problems with ventilation and power supply which suggest that the vault was not designed for the purpose to which it was actually put.

Merrick and his team go in there just before the war starts. The war begins, but "safe" in the vault they continue to experiment upon human subjects, the unfortunate people who imagined that they were going to safety in a civilian vault. Merrick's experiments are basically a failure, since most of the mutants he creates have impaired brain function.

As for Lesko, we have no background for him. For all we know, he may come from out West; in fact, given that Fire Ants exist in New Vegas it seems entirely possible that he was experimenting with FEV out there, unless by some amazing coincidence someone else was performing the exact same experiments and making the exact same mistakes. For whatever reason (people being rather upset at suddenly finding themselves under attack by flamethrower-wielding insects, perhaps?), he was forced to leave and eventually pitched up in D.C. determined to right his wrongs. If this were the story, then it would appear that his sloppy lab procedures have come to haunt him since he has made the same mistake in Greyditch as in the Mojave. Stop jumping to conclusions, Lesko, you're not quite as clever as you think you are!

I don't think so, the ants at Shalebridge are just your standard Giant Ants, not Fire Ants. Fire Ants only exist in Greyditch (in Fallout 3) and near Novac (in Fallout New Vegas).

The ants at Shalebridge are probably another colony of giant ants like the ones at Greyditch. During your conversation with Lesko, you will discover the origins of the fire ants and where the queen ant is located.

He's not exactly evil. He just puts science above everything else. And the ends justify the means in his mind.

He's just so focused on his work, he doesn't much care about anything else, because he view advancement of science as being so positive that it overshadows other things.

A place to test stuff like that after the war. A vault full of inhabitants that survived and still reasearch it. Its ideal kinda smart, although IDK if the military approved if thats what happened, might be Vault Tech got their own FEV or something, kinda big gap between that if you ask me.

He's amoral. He does'nt care about who gets hurt, so long as he reaches his goal. Personally I think it is messing with the things the gods made, and giant ants are awesome. But he'll probabely not succeed anyway.

He could have got F.E.V anywere. He smart and ruthless, he would'nt need vast ammounts or anything. Could be literally anything. A sample taken in industriel espionage before the war, that came to him. Something from a curio shop. Stuff can go all over the place, however well you control it. It' does'nt matter how.