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[mainiac]

Sterility probably isn't a problem in the wastes.  Medical science obviously advanced a lot before the war in various areas including radiation treatment.  It seems evident that treatment for radiation is better in the fallout world then the world today.  They appear to have medicine to remove radioactive isotopes from the body without harming tissue, thus curing what would be terminal radiation sickness for us.

Nuclear war wouldn't actually cause all that much cancer, surprisingly enough.  Radiation sickness is caused by intense radiation that interferes with cell growth.  This is either through immediate exposure to energy radiation which causes very rapid organ failure or through the accumulation of radioactive isotopes which eventually cause organ failure.  Cancer on the other hand is only caused through random mutation of a specific part of the cellular reproduction cycle and will only happen in a cell and organ that are otherwise still viable.  Just bombarding a cell with radiation and killing it wont cause cancer, you need to have enough exposed cells that through chance some cells emerge that have the inhibition sequence break down without hurting anything else. 

The heightened levels of background radiation just wont be that big a deal by the time of the fallout games except for a few areas with very high radioactivity.  Thyroid cancer would be a problem generally but given that they have RadAway and that Thyroid cancer can be managed with much simpler technology they must be able to deal with it.  Hanging around high radiation areas would give you cancer eventually but would probably kill you of radiation sickness first.  Given that people are dying of natural and unnatural causes all over the place cancer is probably less of a problem for the fallout world then for the US today.  Cancer and heart disease are only diseases that kill you if you are lucky enough to survive longer then humans were evolved to survive.

[NullForceOmega]

That technology is not available to the majority of wasteland communities, only in the NCR and BoS (and the Enclave) are those treatments prevalent.  I'm not talking about cancer, I'm talking about long term exposure to radioactive materials damaging things like ovaries, which is very much a possible side effect of radiation.  and while the 'slightly' increased level of background radiation is not problematic, exposure to irradiated groundwater is very much a potential vehicle for radiation poisoning (in game verification, Vic the Traders ex wife dies of radiation poisoning from drinking out of the Vault City public well, source: Fallout 2).

[mainiac]

Tribals pretty clearly have various treatments.  They dont have what the BoS or Followers of the Apocolypse have but they aren't completely unequiped.  The thing is that treatment is probably pretty uneven.  People die of basic infections in the US today when we have all sorts or treatments to help them.  People die to contaminated drinking water in India all the time, last time I checked they're population wasn't diminishing.

[Neonivek]

Here is kind of the thing...

Everyone who lives out in the wastes already is suffering from radiation poisoning... all of them. Unless you are immune to radiation, you have radiation poisoning.

While the game doesn't add up the background radiation in say... towns... It can be assumed that they are also radioactive... just at a much smaller scale.

It was one of the more depressing aspects about the setting.

[Virtz]

The whole justification for the Legion was that an expanding dictatorship is more militarily capable than the bureaucratically weighed-down democracy that is NCR, and that that is something more valuable in the post-nuclear wasteland than modern moral values. And as far as lore goes (according to a merchant from their territories, if I'm remembering right), it turns out they're right in the sense that they manage to maintain order in their territories way better than the NCR does, cause they're better organized for immediate response.

No idea where they got the sexist slavery angle from, tho. 50s revisionist history? Or maybe that was just the way the first tribe Caesar took over was like?

So it couldn't do rushes of 10+ legionaires like in Fallout 3 (and people wonder why I think Fallout 3 is the better game)

I think you have a typo there and meant to say Fallout 1.

Seriously though, are you joking? It's the same engine. And of the two, I recall NV having more people in settlements at least.

[mainiac]

Everyone who lives out in the wastes already is suffering from radiation poisoning... all of them. Unless you are immune to radiation, you have radiation poisoning.

I see no reason to think that.

[NullForceOmega]

Then you aren't looking closely enough at the source material.  Fallout 2 intimates as much in several places, though it never really comes out and says it directly.  The President of the Enclave outright tries to convince you that the people living in the wastes aren't human because they have begun to mutate and become more radiation resistant.

[mainiac]

Like I said, mutation and radiation poisoning dont necessarily go together.

For example the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had very high levels of radiation poisoning and a level of cancer that was barely elevated.  Nuclear accidents can cause high levels of cancer without many cases of radiation poisoning.

[Rolan7]

Everyone who lives out in the wastes already is suffering from radiation poisoning... all of them. Unless you are immune to radiation, you have radiation poisoning.

I see no reason to think that.

It was a big deal for the plots of Fallout 2 and 3, and I'm pretty sure 1.  The Enclave found Wastelanders to be unacceptably tainted by radiation, and I think the super mutant army in FO1 desired vault dwellers for conversion because radiation-tainted wastelanders come out wrong or worse when exposed.  Which is ironic, since the FEV was originally just a permanent rad-X treatment.

In New Vegas, I dunno.  Most of the nukes were deflected, and more time has passed since the previous games.  It's actually kinda weird and lazy that the city has the same bombed-out appearance indoors.  I suspect the Mojave "Wasteland" doesn't have much more radiation than it does in reality.  It's just a desert.

[mainiac]

The wastelands has a high level of mutation.  That is caused by prolonged exposure to low levels of radiation, the same thing that causes cancer.  Cancer however requires you to live long enough for the mutation to build up while mutation must happen before you reproduce, so exposure at youngish ages.

RADIATION POISONING IS DIFFERENT.  It is caused by exposure to lethal levels of radiation or injestion of radioactive isotopes.  radiation poisoning does not cause mutation or cancer.

While radiation poisoning is probably a problem that crops up in wastes there is no reason to think that everyone has radiation poisoning.

[hops]

Are we seriously talking science in a game where radiation turn you into ghouls?

[jhxmt]

And now reading this thread again has made me reinstall the game ready for starting over again.  Thank you all.  There goes my free time for the next few weeks. 

[nenjin]

Are we seriously talking science in a game where radiation turn you into ghouls?

But don't you DARE start philosophizing, that would just be navel gazing.

[mainiac]

Are we seriously talking science in a game where radiation turn you into ghouls?

That just scientific fact man.

[TempAcc]

:v since we're on the subject of fallout, has anyone played the online fallout mmo created on the fallout 2 engine? IE fallout online ashes of phoenix or something? I've been thinking of trying since I still have my old fallout 2 copy, but I have no idea if its worth my limited free time.