How would the wasteland look, better or worse? Would be cool if there was a game set this year.

Everything would be back to normal after a thousand years probably.

How long does it take for radiation to go away?

Well, that all depends on the Element that is giving off Radiation. Certain Elements only have a Half-Life of fractions of a second, others...hundreds-thousands of years. Chernobyl's Radiation is estimated to last 40,000+ years, but some areas could be habitable after 600 years. I don't think there is any information in Fallout-Lore on the type of blast...I could be wrong tho.

It has already gone away. Go and play Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and Fallout New Vegas

Fallout from a nuclear blast doesn't last for hundreds of years.

Chernobyl is very different since it wasn't from a nuclear bomb. The radiation is coming from large chunks of radioactive materials still in the environment. A nuclear bomb produces radioactive particals called "Fallout" which gets washed away and goes underground.

Also Radiation doesn't effect plant life at all. So there should be plants in Fallout 3. This has been explaned about a hundred times on this forum.

Fallout canon tells us it was nuclear ICBMs that were used during the Great War.

I never said it was, I was just giving a rough idea of radiation. There is no way to gauge how long it will last in the game, as the world was showered with Nukes, which is something our would has never seen, imagine every nuclear power plant being blown up with Nukes, I'm pretty sure it would last a good while.

The Nukes in game could very possibly be made from made-up elements or whatever, which would explain no plant life.....

I suggest you play Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout Tactics and New Vegas. You can buy Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics from GoG.com for about $6 each. They come ready to play. In those games they show that radiation has gone away.

Fallout 3 is the only Fallout that has radiation everywhere in the world.

Fallout New Vegas also gives us a timeline on when the radiation became safe to go outside:

Randall Clark Notes:

Oct 31, 2077: "Black rain falling outside. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Geiger_counter jumping. Should let it kill me but bottling water from back of cave all the same."

Nov 2, 2077: "Sounds dead outside, but can't look. Geiger goes crazy 15 feet from cave mouth. Do the math. Radiation goes down before water runs out or I never leave this cave."

Jan 1, 2078: "Two months in cave. Still lethal outside. Don't get it. In army they said 2-4 weeks cleared fallout.

Jan 10, 2078: "Sounded like windstorm out there for 2 days. Radiation down 500. What happened?"

Jan 15, 2078: "Took a peek. Snow. It glows green."

Jan 28, 2078: "Radiation low enough I could risk short exposure outside. More important, cave stream now drinkable if I use Rad drugs."

Jan 30, 2078: "There is nothing alive out there."

So lets do the math. October 23, 2077 was the nuclear war. Jan 28, 2078 is when it was finally safe enough, so that's 97 days. Far short of 200 years.

Fallout from the bombs isn't the only form of Radiation, and your comparing the West Coast to East Coast, East Coast got the Blunt of the Strike.

The East Coast didn't get the blunt of it. DC is still standing and so is Pittsburgh, the only two cities we have seen on the East Coast. Yet L.A, San Fracisco, Bakersfield, and many more in California have been completely wiped off the map. Only looted heavily damaged burned out building still stand in some areas.

This idea that the "East got it worse" is a totally fan maded explanation supported by nothing. Bethesda admitted they didn't want DC to be realistic, as in look the way it should after a nuclear war. They designed it the way they did because they thought it would be fun and cool.

Radiation does come from other sources I will give you that. Like The Glow in Fallout, Gecko in Fallout 2 and Vault 87 in Fallout 3 and Vault 34 in New Vegas. But radiation doesn't stop plant life from growing. There should be plant life in Fallout 3 and yet there isn't while in all the other games there is. And I am not counting Oasis and later point lookout. Vault 87 wasn't explained as to why everything is irradiated in Fallout 3.

Beth. didn't want DC to be realistic cause they wanted the player to have fun yes, so the theory that East got it the worst isn't Fan-made...Beth just did what they wanted to...kinda svcks they squat on that Lore-Aspect, but I see where they were going. Also, as I said before, the Fallout world is very different than our own, so we really don't know what were in those bombs to cause such a long lasting Radiation & ill-effect on plant life, which all-in-all is because of Beth. screwing with the game to make the new-age player "have fun." ..They need to explain this or let Obsidian handle the Lore from here on out.
Beth. was only thinking one-sided with F3...to have fun, although it was a fun and addicting game, I give them that, but to followers of the series it feels like we were left in the dark....along with most of the lore of prior titles.

"We don't know what is in those Bombs" is also a fan made explanation. The buildings still stand yet people say "it got the worst of it." Doesn't really make sense at all. It doesn't make sense because Bethesda didn't design the game world to make sense.

On topic, the West and the Midwest have plant life, civilization rebuilding and has little to no radiation at all. Places outside of DC such as Point Lookout also has plant life. So in a 1000 years time factions such as the NCR, Legion and possibly the Midwestern Brotherhood would have grown to take over most of North America, including DC. Or they would battle it out and new factions will take over.

Point is since there are places were life is doing well and civilization is coming back in force. So one small anomaly (radioactive lifeless hell hole) that is DC will not stop whatever super powers from the West or Midwest from moving East.

When I see topics like this I am reminded of a great book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

All in all.....Beth. needs to release a Bible for the newer installments, I would be happy...although I would prefer if they gave Chris Avellone permission to write it.

...And just because the Buildings still stand in DC, in F3, doesn't mean it's canon...Beth just wanted a fun game, in my eyes DC is gone, as it should be. Although, I guess anything is possible with them writing the story.

So if in your eyes DC is gone and they just made DC for fun the way it is, then the events of Fallout 3 never happened in your eyes. Thanks, glad you could clear that up for us.

The only explanation I can come up with is that DC and the surrounding areas were hit with a combination of high explosive conventional weapons and radiological bombs. That would explain the structural damage suffered by some of the buildings and the latent radiation that, by all other logic, should have dissapated by 2277. Maybe the Chinese wanted to kill everyone, but leave most of DC standing in the hopes that they might get something usefull out of it when the war ended.