ok...so I have been playing fallout since FO1 and all the way through to FNV. I know most of the arguments and lore definitions of the forced evolutionary virus. what I want to know is this given say...from when the first vaults opened to humans finding FEV and the enclave oil rig being destroyed, is there anyone in the wasteland smart enough to turn FEV useful.

like say making a version that enriches soil without mutating the plants or contaminating the water table.

let me start by getting the following out of the way; I know it is a virus, I know it is only supposed to exist in one place in the east, I also know that most of it was destroyed with the masters army.

this thread is started in the hope that it might yield fruit about what it would mean to re-engineer the stuff for another capacity. not as it relates in game with super mutants and feasibility in other places.

Maybe House but he was still dormant in his casino at that point in time. Besides that as you said it wasn't exactly floating in the ether during the time span you specified. You can follow the west coast chain of custody pretty easily via the wiki.

I don't really know what you mean by

" this thread is started in the hope that it might yield fruit about what it would mean to re-engineer the stuff for another capacity. not as it relates in game with super mutants and feasibility in other places."

What it would mean is any infinite number of things depending on how it was engineered, but there wasn't really anyone in the right place at the right time and with the right knowledge to do so. The Enclave, the Brotherhood, and The Master were the most qualified people to mess around with it, but we already know how all that turned out. The Followers of the Apocalypse seem like the next most likely group to be capable of doing anything with it...but again they didn't.

Given it's original purpose, Pan-Immunity Virion Project, and what it turned into it would need a fundamental re-engineering to do anything other than what it did or maybe what it was originally intended to do, and even in the time of F3 or NV it still seems unlikely they'd be capable of doing that.