It says on the Big Town page of the wiki that you get a notification that Red and Shorty dies if you don't start Big Trouble in Big Town within 4 game weeks. Is that true?

No. You can start it anytime, hell, I just started it the other day, and I'm level 20. There is one other time thing involved though:

If you talk to Sticky, and tell him you will help him get to Big Town, then blow him off for a while, he won't be at LL anymore. You can blow him off for the amount of time that you explore Little Lamplight. If you proceed past LL into Vault 87, he will even be there waiting for you after you get out of Raven Rock. But he disappears if I don't go visit him right after Raven Rock. He usually shows up at Big Town for me. Which is strange to me, because when I am escorting him and we run into trouble, he is usually the first to die.

Thanks, I guess the wiki is wrong. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Big_town

"When you have not started the quest, Big Trouble in Big Town, for more than four game weeks, you will get a notification that Red and Shorty have died. When you go to Big Town, you will fail Big Trouble in Big Town before you have even started it. It is advised to complete Big Trouble in Big Town as soon as you can defeat super mutants, brutes, and masters; overlords as well, if you have Broken Steel. Sometimes you are unable to teach the people in Big Town how to defend themselves and you never see the town being attacked by super mutants."

wiki being wrong your wrong a wiki cant be wrong

IIRC Shorty can die if you spend too much time getting to him after talking to Red, I'm pretty sure I had that happen on one play through.

Wiki can be wrong, wiki is made by people so it is not always correct. I know this for a fact so don't say wiki can't be wrong.

Yes, this can happen.

Man, whoever went and updated that wiki page did a terrible job. Not only is the 4 week timeout thing wrong, He/she also says the town turns into a "place to do trading" once the quest is complete. He/she must be basing this very poorly chosen description off the fact that there is a unique encounter (meaning you may have it once on a character like the Firelance) where you meet a Scavenger who is going to BigTown. I think in all of my countless playthroughs/BigTown quest completions I've met that Scavenger once. It's hardly something you would put into the wiki as a description of what BigTown becomes. It's more of a fancy fact. And there's more about what's been put up in that article that could be much, much better.

There's a few things that have to happen (and it helps if you understand how the FO3 game engine works).

- The scavenger will likely not show up in Big Town, until after you run across him at one of the random encounter locations. Meaning that you have to visit one of the random encounter cells, the RNG has to pick that particular encounter, and then you have to wait a few game days for him to finally show up in Big Town.

- Shorty's timer starts the moment that you enter the basemant, or maybe when you get closer so you can hear the conversation. When you get within trigger range, Shorty and the super mutant will start a scripted conversation. If you wait too long, the SM will decide that he's too hungry to wait and will proceed to attack Shorty. If you're quick and have good firepower, you can still kill the SM before he completely kills Shorty.

- As for Big Town, if you get close enough to spawn the cell, then it's possible that there's a timer that starts running. If you never go to the area near Big Town, that cell never spawns, the inhabitants never enter the game... and nothing can happen.

blasphemy! Wiki is all knowing.

Your first point about the scavenger is interesting.

Your info on Shorty is right on the money and another thing is if you open the cells from the other floor in the jail (terminal) a cockroach could kill Red and I've had that happen to me. For that reason, I don't free Red until I've cleared the first 2 floors and am ready to go get Shorty.

To your 3rd point, I will generally stop by BigTown and get the quest but may not come back to it for many levels and to date haven't had a problem with Red and Shorty dieing.

I like to put power armor on him, give him a Gatling laser and then we go on a tour of the Wasteland.....he doesn't do too bad, especially after we pick up Red and Shorty and I tool them up too. We went to the Mall and several other fun places before I dropped them off at Big Town.