It didnt seem urgent I mean my robot got me pure water every week, then all the water is iradiated, no problem radaway is everywhere. Maybe if there were only a few radaway in the game and water gave more rads would I feel I would need project purity to be upp and running ASAP , people from rivit city have had irradiatedwater all their lives and they are still alaive, the only things people were worried about were ghouls, raiders and mutants.

Unless China and the US decided to detonate nukes over the oceans I'm pretty sure that the radiated water would be so diffused as to be negligible. Also, even if PP did work, it wouldn't purify the rivers, so only those living near the basin would benefit.

Only the surface of the ground. If you dig deep enough you will get earth that is totally untouched from the radiation. I think already anything lower then one meter is already safe and can be used safely.

Nuclear war would not, in reality, turn the world into a howling desert wasteland for hundreds of years filled with mutanted (acceleratedly evolved) creatures.

That's purely a scifi trope that began in the 1950s.

It's never properly explained what Project Purity actually does and how, the only information we really have is that project hit a problem somewhere along the way and the GECK can solve that particular problem and get the whole thing working. It therefore stands to reason that it's the GECK that's doing the purifying by interacting with the water directly and Project Purity is merely supplying the pumps and filters required to run the water through the GECK.

And being that the game is based on how people in the 1950s perceived nuclear war, where exactly is the problem?

Depends on the scale. The energy released by a global nuclear war as in Fallout is comparable to a large meteorite crashing on Earth (like the one that made the dinosaurs extinct).

But this doesn't matter, as it's just a game.

It was even theorized at the time that large multiple atomic detonations would cause the Earth's axis to change or shift the continental crust violently hence DC could occupy the same latitude as the Sahara desert.

Radaway?
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=10490
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/48393.php
http://www.cbiolabs.com/Applications_all.php#e

RadX? (close)
http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/4825fnl.htm

That's another 50s scifi trope.

The detonation of the world's entire nuclear stockpile would release less energy than a single major volcanic eruption. And as we know those don't knock the earth off it's axis (or whatever).

The death toll from nuclear warfare comes from the radiation, blast wave, firestorms, and then the fallout and particulate matter released into the atmosphere and hence the ensuing nuclear winter.

I think the reason why Project purity is required isnt because of the radiation per se - Dr Li will tell you that dealing with small amounts of radiation is no problem, and Megaton had a filtering system.

The problem is the scale of the problem - providing a free, both as in "Beer" and "Dom" source of water that will satisfy a large population.

Well, there isn't a large population in DC (maybe 200 strong? Including raiders and talons and whatnot).
I think that the Project - get all the river's water clean for 200 ppl is like building a six-lane highway... that leads to a small village in the countryside.
And for the love of!
Come on, the GECK?! Waste THAT for such a task? Take a look at Vault city - popped the GECK open and look what came out of that. They have strained their resources to the breaking point due to population growth... But not the food supply. Or the water. Electricity is their only population-related problem... in the middle of the (almost) desert.

The Project is just a plot device. And a bad one at that.
As pointed out, the soil which is essential for agriculture is radiated... A better use for the GECK and a decent plot device would be a soil purification plant.

Because of game mechanics, everything had to be scaled down and adapted for playability. Of course the entire population of the CW wasn't just what you see in-game, the same way that the CW isn't so small that you can walk from DC to Germantown in a couple hours. You have to be able to see through those things or else nothing will make the smallest sense. How many squirrels have you seem? Yet there's apparently no shortage of stews made from them. The vaults in game obviously can't house hundreds of people, Rivet City has more guards than civilians and is maintained by just one guy and his wife. There would be no end to it.

Wow, a 2-4-1 sale.

First off, there are more than 200 people. As someone has already pointed out its scaled down... If we take what is presented in the game as gospel, then everyone in the vault dies of starvation - Did you see any hydroponics bays, or long term food storage?

Secondly, This document here mostly deals with what happens when the bomb goes off, not 200 years after it, but this particular paragraph suggests that its all not lost:

http://www.cybertrn.demon.co.uk/atomic/farming/main.htm


If you can walk the ground safely, you can at least have Fission Chips.

The desertification is in the world of Fallout caused in large scale by the exposure to FEV which was released cause of a nuclear hit.

This is also the reason for the mutated species. Check out http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/FEV as well as reading the Fallout Bible at the Wikia site if you're truly interested in why things are as they are in the Falloutverse. It's not all radiation, but a combination of Radiation and low-level FEV exposure. I'm sure that Limit 115 also has something to do with it. There's much more than Radiation at work in the ground/air/DNA of the Falloutverse...

B)

I didn't mean my post to be taken as criticism of fallout.

I was suggesting it's a bit pointless to use real world science to criticise project purity when the effects of nuclear war are completely different in the fallout world.

No.

The FEV vats of West-Tek suffered a direct hit and the FEV in those vats evaporated, mutated and became airborne but caused nothing sides screwing up how FEV worked.

Only a few mutant creatures were caused by expose to FEV and of the unaltered FEV type.

I have absolutely no idea were you got the idea the desertification was caused by FEV, the world is a desert because ... well it how people in the 50's perceived the world after a nuclear war, a lot due to images of the Nevada desert nuclear tests.

The problem with project purity is the same problem that the whole scenario of the game has, that is the persistance of radiation and fallout that continueally contaminates even after 200 years. You really have to reach here for some explanations but off the top of my head a few reasons might be: Dirty Bombs, I dont mean the conventional type that everyone thinks terrorist might use I mean fully powered nuclear bombs that use a variety of highly radioactive isotopes in the bombs tamper instead of using steel. Both sides had designs for such weapons but fortunenately no one ever built them. There are a few other ways of making Bombs dirty but I wont get into that now. Also Nuclear weapons detonated in the bays and even in the rivers would contaminate the river beds and the aquifier. consider nuclear mining of port cities including DC. also enemy nuclear subs sunk in the harbor or even possibly in the river would provide continual contamination if the cores were exposed. Thje targeting of land based nuclear reactors with the intention of creating burning nuclear fires like the chernobyl reactors. Then of course thers the matter of how persistent and dangerous is FEV? how about other agents in the water? heavey metals, heavey water, other bio agents. it might nessasary.

It's not a problem. It's the setting; The basic premise of the fallout world.

Am I the only one who noticed that the toilets in Vault 101 was completely drinkable?

Nope its just irrelelevent The vaults have clean water because they have some computer controlled distillation process. Thats what your quest in FO1 is about. The water purification chip fails and you have to go find a new one. The process is very ineffecient and complex and is really only suitable for supporting small numbers of people.

*cough* it's a game with a lousy poorly researched story *cough*

*cough* its not real world science damnit *cough*