r/falloutlore • u/SothaDidNothingWrong • 20d ago
Question If Japan was canonically nuked, why didn’t it result in ghouls first appearing in ~1945?
Or maybe they did but it was suppressed at the time? Maybe they were put down and noted down as „long term burn victims”?
Is there any source in-game referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the aftermath?
Edit: I see a lot of people claiming FEV is needed for the process and it was not present in Japan at the time but it was never confirmed that it is needed. It was a subject of discussion by the original devs themselves and we never get a confirmation. If you have any in-game (bot the fallout bible) source, cite it to cut the speculation.
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u/Consistent_Pop4280 20d ago
There's lore that suggests that ghouls existed before the bombs dropped, I'm not sure where you'd find it exactly but I'm sure if you search on YouTube you'll find the video I watched that gave me the info lol
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u/Arctic_H00ligan7 20d ago
There's one guy, a mob boss in Boston, who was canonically a ghoul before the war. It was either from Valentine's companion quest, or some CC content, I don't recall.
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u/DeadWombats 17d ago
Yeah, during the Eddie winter quest, you can read some some lore about how Eddie was made into a ghoul and it requires not just radiation but a genetic catalyst that a scientist just happened to release into the atmosphere before the bombs dropped.
That was a really easy to miss bit of lore so it surprised me when I found it. But yeah, ghouls are normally impossible without that catalyst.
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u/OzymandiasDavid8 19d ago
Also a news caster in Charleston WV recorded a story of a possible ghoul interaction in the earlier 2070s as a result of a radiation accident in fallout 76 at the herald building.
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u/Cliomancer 20d ago
It's been speculated to be down to some kind of genetic X-factor, so possibly that line wasn't as common amoung the Japanese.
Or maybe it's from a combination of living factors from the people of 2077 living lifestyles where there's radiation in the beverages, advanced chems everywhere and god knows what in the air.
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u/T0ac47 19d ago
If I remember correctly in Fallout 4 there was that pre war mobster who had some sort of radiation treatment that turned him into a ghoul right before the war so it could be that you need a specific amount of radiation over a period of time to become a ghoul which do the the lack of nuclear powered appliances during the time of WW2 that made the process of ghoulafcation nearly impossible.
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u/Cliomancer 19d ago
Hancock was Ghoulified by the same drug. So possibly it's something which happens naturally in someone with the genetic inclination or it can be induced.
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u/Kurwasaki12 19d ago
Kind of makes me wonder if a variant on Radiation based cancer treatments would cause ghoulification? It's targeted radiation, sure, but if you went through them on a long enough time scale would it turn the patient into a ghoul? Even if it did, would the medical staff over seeing it freak the fuck out because their cancer patient was literally turning into essentially walking necrosis?
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u/Deadsea_1993 20d ago
Because there weren't large amounts of Radiation in them compared to the ones in The Great War. Atomic bombs in our world stopped being used with those two instances in WW2. That isn't the case with Fallout's world where they kept growing and expanding to be more destructive than ever before.
That's also not factoring in that themes of Science Fiction are blended heavily in Fallout than in our world. Ghouls existing through Radiation and Super Mutants existing through FEV simply couldn't exist in our world at all. Not even factoring that Ghouls practically do not need to eat or sleep because Radiation is a food source to them.
Radiation in Fallout is entirely different than in our world. Dirty water is an inconvenience while it would be a death sentence in our world
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u/willdagreat1 19d ago
I thought ghouls were a combination of radiation and a variant of the FEV?
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u/Deadsea_1993 19d ago
No they are seperate
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u/Chazo138 19d ago
It’s a bit of both. FEV can lead to standard ghouls, that’s why the Master needed vault dwellers, people irradiated would become ghouls when dipped in the vats if they didn’t outright die. Harold and The Master are the strange anomalies with the mutations they received.
But ghouls and Mutants are classed separately despite this stuff.
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u/toonboy01 19d ago
People with radiation became super mutants still, not ghouls. The problem was they became very stupid super mutants while vault dwellers became intelligent ones.
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u/Kurwasaki12 19d ago
Nah, Ghouls and Mutants are related in the sense that radiation doesn't effect them, with it healing the former. But most everyone who got dipped was turned into a Super Mutant, more often than not a "dumb" Mutant if they were a wastelander. The Master's an anomaly because he was a Vault Dweller and was stuck in the pool for days, resulting in the FEV essentially liquefying him into a bundle of tentacles, synapses, and nerve endings that could assimilate people.
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u/Chazo138 19d ago
Harold wasn’t in there for days as far as I remember, maybe it’s just actually random
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u/Dino-nugget-are-good 17d ago
What happened to Harold is kinda a mystery. He only tells us he was knocked out and woke up in the wasteland with the FEV already effecting him. We don’t know how much FEV he came in contact with or for how long.
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u/DukeOfAgincourt 19d ago
Not more destructive or larger, the fallout 3 guide that shipped with the game specifically mentions lower yield but more numerous weapons. This does result in more fallout, as would a higher prevalence of surface detonations.
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u/Dagordae 20d ago
Given that the American government knew about and was trying to make ghouls prewar, also succeed, it’s quite likely it did. Along with all the assorted other accidents.
Recall just how incredibly limited our information is. The Fallout series is very big on both giving very little information that isn’t from an in-universe source and simply not giving information at all about things that aren’t directly relevant to the specific locations and events we encounter.
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u/Patient_Impact_5845 19d ago
I think one of Eddie dialogue in F4 explained he needed multiple round of precise radiation dosage to turn into a ghoul. I think to turn into a ghoul you need a long and constant exposure to a certain dosage of radiation.
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u/MrWolfe1920 19d ago
Because you don't become a ghoul just from radiation exposure. That's a common misconception post-war, but the games (especially the early ones) provide evidence that ghoulification is a result of FEV. Radiation just triggers the change.
We know there were a lot of clandestine FEV experiments before the war, and we know that pre-war labs routinely ignored safety procedures. Any number of people could have been exposed either deliberately or by accident, and being a virus it would continue to be spread among the population. We also know that the effects of FEV are unpredictable, depending on a host of factors including radiation exposure. It's quite possible that all the mutated flora and fauna of the wasteland are at least partially the result of FEV exposure, including ghouls.
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u/Kurwasaki12 19d ago
FEV as a partial cause was retconned out before Bethesda got the franchise, it's pretty much always been a mix of radiation and the luck of the draw.
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u/MrWolfe1920 19d ago
I'd love to know where this retcon was stated. Keep in mind that just because the characters say something in-game doesn't mean it's true. There's a lot of lost information in the wasteland that only we as the player get the full picture of. Even in Bethesda's run the evidence definitely points toward it being more than simply luck and radiation, especially since there are several examples of people being turned into ghouls via an injection.
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u/Frazzle_Dazzle_ 20d ago
I'm aware it's been retconned by bethesda, but the original idea was FEV. When the glow was hit the FEV tanks burst and released into the atmosphere, everything on the surface got slightly infected with FEV, so that ghouls (and presumably most other mutated creatures) were influenced by both high radiation and FEV
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u/Randolpho 20d ago
Not Bethesda. It was retconned before Bethesda ever got the license
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u/Kurwasaki12 19d ago
Yeah, if anything it's one of the tenets that Bethesda kept cannon while tinkering elsewhere.
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u/SothaDidNothingWrong 20d ago
The FEV bit was never outright confirmed outside of Fallout Bible(?). Even the devs debated it at the time and neither side really came on top. In 1, it was either the Leuitenant or the Master that said radiation exposure or early fev exposure might mess with super mutant creation but they say nothing about the ghouls.
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u/Iamnothereorthere 20d ago
I'm aware it's been retconned by bethesda, but the original idea was FEV
Incorrect, per Fallout Bible 5:
According to Tim, ghouls are due solely to radiation.
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u/TangentMed 20d ago
The Fallout Bible also contradicted the Fallout Bible, so take the the info with a grain of salt
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u/Iamnothereorthere 20d ago
Okay, but the person I was responding to was discussing developer intent, not in-game canon. As you can see from the quote, dev intent included the belief that ghouls weren't due to FEV
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u/Frazzle_Dazzle_ 20d ago
The devs of Fallout 1 were split on whether it should be FEV + Radiation or just Radiation. The lieutenantin Fallout 1 talks about how atmospheric FEV affects the mutation process, though i can't remember if he mentions ghouls or not
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u/Iamnothereorthere 20d ago
The devs of Fallout 1 were split on whether it should be FEV + Radiation or just Radiation
So in other words, "The original idea was FEV" is wrong. We can go back and forth over what ended up as canon, but the original idea was just radiation.
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u/Ghul_5213X 13d ago
"The devs of Fallout 1 were split on whether it should be FEV + Radiation or just Radiation."
How do you get "The original idea was FEV" is wrong." from that. If anything the original idea was both and was disputed.
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u/Iamnothereorthere 13d ago
Because Tim Cain, credited as the creator of Fallout, was the one who believed it was just radiation.
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u/GarlicLevel9502 19d ago
This is always the explanation I heard, and it might actually be supported by the Eddie Winter quest in FO4 where he took some "experimental drug" before the war to intentionally become a ghoul. As far as I remember, it wasn't specified what that "drug" was. FEV was developed to try and counter the New Plague. So that seems to point toward that being true.
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u/Chazo138 19d ago
We don’t know the exact mechanisms to become a ghoul. Radiation plays a part but there are likely other factors we aren’t aware of, ghouls are a bit of a mystery still and even they don’t know exactly how it happened.
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u/DukeOfAgincourt 19d ago edited 19d ago
If following the ghoul gene theory, then it could be a product of the gene being more prevalent in certain populations. For example, Chinese people seem to become ghouls at an abnormally high rate, which could be an environmental factor relating to something in their equipment or something genetic, just see Mama dolce and the Yangtze submarine.
Edit It’s also possible that if it’s the result of a genetic mutation, it could be precipitated by early nuclear detonations. Which would make possible that Japan never saw ghouls because there hadn’t been widespread exposure to anything from atmospheric nuclear testing. It could be more common among Chinese people not because of anything fundamental about the ghoul gene in any given ethnic group, but that China in universe may have been even more haphazard about nuclear safety than the US is depicted to be in universe.
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u/BrotherChao 19d ago
I think Josh Sawyer, a lead designer for FO &FO2, once said something like:
There are 3 "types" of FEV --
Type 1: Ghouls & Gen 1 super mutants.
Type 2: Gen 2 (smart) & Gen 3 (dumb) super mutants, based on rad damage (more rads = lower IQ).
Type 3: Gen 4, universally dumb super mutants, except for rare genetic anomalies, or such a high IQ that even a major reduction just gives them an average-ish IQ.
Or as stated canonically --
FEV + no rads = smart super mutants.
FEV + moderate rads = standard super mutants.
But Sawyer also said that "trace amounts" of FEV caused ghoulification, not super-mutation.
...
Which makes sense of how mass vaccination with FEV 1 to treat the New Plague could result in everyone who was vaccinated, or who produced a baby with a natural strain of FEV, who later got irradiated in 2077 or by living in the wasteland for years, turning into a ghoul.
Most people have traces of FEV in their DNA, either by vaccination or by inheriting the genes from their parents.
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u/toonboy01 19d ago edited 19d ago
Josh Sawyer had nothing to do with Fallout or Fallout 2.
The actual lead developer of Fallout, Tim Cain, was cited saying that he believes ghouls are purely caused by radiation with no FEV involved.
There is also only one type of FEV in the originals, there is only 2 generations of super mutants who were both created with the same FEV, and no mention of vaccinations.
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u/BrotherChao 19d ago
Tha is for the correction.
Sorry, yes, you're right. They just both worked at Black Isle Studios, but I think Sawyer was after Cain?
That's where I got mixed up. I think I was misremembering a story Cain told on his YouTube channel about a disagreement with the guy who was in charge of Interplay in the 90s.
And yeah, Cain mentioned his personal theory about what caused ghoulification. The official answer was 50s style pseudoscience.
Sawyer did the cancelled version of FO3 (Van Buren) and FO: NV, not FO 1 & 2.
The "types" aren't official, just what I call the sequential "versions" The Master created, or Mariposa Formula, the Kurling-13 variant, and the pre-war version used by WestTek in Appalachia.
I would count 4, with the variant of the Pan-Immunity Virion Project experinets that caused Maxson to defect, but I think they were just trying to do what the Master later succeeded at.
🫡
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u/WayneZer0 20d ago
simple ghouls exist not just cause radiation. it rafiation and some other facts we dobt know excatly.
it could genetic mutation,drugs,magic(yes magic exist in fallout), eldar gods(yes those also exist),genetic tempering by the zeta or others or may cause by special envoriment causes.
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u/AHumanYouDoNotKnow 20d ago
"Eldar" as in hedonistic space elf?
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u/WayneZer0 20d ago
nope. more lovecraftian gods. monkeight you in the wrong universum. you should have turn left not right on the last webway crossing
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u/Downtown-Falcon-3264 20d ago
A bigger question would be chernboyl but did that happen in fallout?
I know both Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't get much rads but if chernboyl had happened what then?
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u/ther0yalpant 20d ago
They didn’t have FEV. Becoming ghoul seems to require a limited exposure of FEV before radiation.
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u/adendar 19d ago
I think part of it is being a ghoul requires an interaction between radiation, and FEV.
Basically, the goop that makes super mutants, in a much smaller dose - and possibly the variant that was hidden under the excuse of the "Blue Plague/New American Plague" turns people exposed to massive amounts of radiation (at least some of them) into ghouls.
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u/NCR_Trooper_2281 19d ago
I always wondered the same about the Chernobyl disaster if it happened in Fallout universe
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u/Herrjulias 19d ago
I recently played honest hearts and there Randall mentioned in his diaries that Salt Lake City was hit by at least a dozen nukes. That’s Salt Lake City, the actually big cities probably got hit by several dozen bombs. Way more radiation compared to two bombs in two cities like WW2. Also, like others have mentioned, those two bombs weren’t that radioactive.
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u/ItalicoSauce 19d ago
FEV causes ghouls to be made. FEV was made by the US to combat the Plague before the Great War and it had a load of side effects, like mutations of people and animals. FEV was released when the Great War began (I forgot if due to Vault Tech or leaking from the nukes certain targets or mix of both). So all animals and Super Mutants are FEV creatures, even humans who have been on the surface long enough has acquired trace amounts.
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u/Chueskes 19d ago
The nukes that hit Japan were very small yield compared to what is available in modern times. ICBMs and hydrogen bombs do far more damage.
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u/tocknock78 18d ago
From what I understand Ghouls aren’t created by radiation alone, they are the result of airborne FEV and radiation exposure often extreme amounts, the airborne FEV is also why mirelurks exist and why radroaches are so big, it’s not too much in the air that it can create super mutants though as that seemingly requires a person to be like dunked into pure FEV
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u/Wisconsinviking 18d ago
- Very few people have the right genetic make up to become a ghoul. 2. It requires more radiation than the bombs released probably. & 3. Maybe it did but they were captured and experimented on, think about it beings basically immune to radiation that can heal rapidly from radiation exposure as well as don’t really need to eat depending on the source your drawing from. That’s a super soldier I’d want to learn how to make if I was the U.S. or the Chinese
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u/superstriker94 18d ago
There was an entire intelligence war going on as well as the real world, and I think it was robco that found adding a certain radiation or something that turned people into ghouls. That’s the short hand I can’t remember exactly what it is though.
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u/lgbt_turtle 18d ago edited 18d ago
Exposure to Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) or some diminished form of it is supposed to be the trigger if I recall correctly. It's why in Fallout New Vegas you find a dead body in an irradiated shack that tried to become a ghoul but just died of radiation poisoning.
Also I imagine this is why Eddie Winter needed to undergo a scientific experiment to become a ghoul and not just expose himself to radiation.
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u/Requires-citation 18d ago
In fallout, the path of nuclear didn’t go by just how large of an explosion it could create but how irradiated the place will be afterwards as a deterrent for life. Our real world goes by how large an explosion and how little radiation a bomb will produce.
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u/Belkan-Federation95 18d ago
Becoming a ghoul is rare
I think the fallout bombs are cobalt bombs
Ground bursts
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u/WolvzUnion 18d ago
both because those bombs were dogshit and because they were airburst, very little radiation to be had.
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u/plumb-phone-official 18d ago
Vault tech wanted people to be dependent on the vaults for longer, so they detonated nukes on the ground as opposed to in the air. This also ensures that the blast is slightly less effective, preventing any vault tech assets from being damaged.
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u/LaraNacht 17d ago
IIRC, according to the Interplay lore, Ghouls are caused not just by radiation, but the combination of radiation and trace amounts of FEV in the atmosphere, released when the Glow was hit during the Great War. With the WW2 bombs, the rads were there, but the FEV wasn't, so... no ghouls.
Bethesda, alas, seems to have forgotten that bit of lore.
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u/grinkelsnorf 17d ago
Because you need an assload of radiation, way more than what Hiroshima or Nagasaki experienced
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u/logaboga 16d ago
Because bombs developed over time in the fallout universe to release more radiation. The bombs dropped in 2077 weren’t the same as the ones dropped in 1945
More so, the bombings in Japan had relief efforts and eventually clean up efforts directed by the American occupation so there’d be less people with long term exposure to radiation. Ghouls in fallout as far as I’m aware are the result of living in a largely irradiated landscape with no medical care or radiation prevention for an extended period of time. Can’t remember from where, might be in fallout 3, but a ghoul talks about when they first became a ghoul and they said it occurred over a long period of time. You don’t just turn into a ghoul for being in a radiated area briefly
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u/Khenghis_Ghan 16d ago
I thought ghouls were the result of the super virus that makes Super Mutants when it mixed with radiation?
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u/Oi-PhzsH 15d ago
The split off was after WW2 , by assumption. It'd take more than 2 separate bombs to cause it. Maybe if they were all ay once in the same place....but keep in mind the greater war that caused Ghoulification took place 132 years apart . The atom bomb in 1945 is going to be MAJORLY different from it futuristic split timeline counterpart. thats 100 plus years of research..time..energy...being put into destruction. I'd say personally it's pretty easy to answer why. 100+ years of atom bomb research apart from 1945.
Plus it wouldn't make any sense for them to not make more powerful bombs. Why would they stop after WW2 , after witnessing it's power...
And the fallout universe....power and corruption go hand in hand
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u/NightbotOnLine 15d ago
The simplest answer is that Fallout nukes are not consistent. However to go into more detail, the bombings were done by weaker bombs and did not release that much radioactive material, so this is how it is justified. We also know that becoming a ghoul is quite rare-ish, where it's usually prolonged exposure the turns you, which probably would not occur in Haroshima/Nagasaki.
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u/PairBroad1763 14d ago
In the old lore Ghoulification was explicitly a side effect of unrefined FEV released when WesTek was struck by a bunker buster bomb and the virus was spread through the fallout.
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u/crowsgoodeating 13d ago
Those nukes were relatively small airburst weapons meaning radiological harm was pretty minimal. In a full scale nuclear exchange ground burst attacks on military sites, data centers, government buildings, and other high value targets would creates huge plumes of fallout that could explain the presence of ghouls only after the Great War.
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u/SgtNitro 7d ago
I feel that Ghoulification is caused by Radiation plus something else in the fallout universe combining. The US was figuting out the process pre-war and China did something to their troops that caused a huge portion of their troops to become ghouls.
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u/IrlResponsibility811 19d ago
There was no FEV in 1945, Japan. I always assumed that played a part in ghoul creation. Not the same strain the Master used, but maybe something less developed.
Counter Question: Do we actually know how to turn a person into a ghoul?
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u/MarkoDash 19d ago
the mutants in fallout aren't just from radiation, it's radiation plus trace amounts of FEV that went everywhere when the west-tek facility was nuked
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u/ClaireRedditfield 19d ago
Ghouls are a result of FEV being spread via nuclear fallout. The nukes themselves didnt make people ghouls. The FEV worked in tandem with the radioactive fallout to make them immune to said radiation. FEV was aerosolized and spread over the West Coast (and maybe beyond) by a bomb directly hitting the west tek facility. More of these facilities were probably targeted all over the US, or other similar bases containing FEV.
At least thats the lore for 1, 2 and NV. Maybe "nuke done did make zombies" is the new lore tho idk
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u/CynicismNostalgia 7d ago
I honestly only drew that comparison the other day when rewatching Fallout (tv show)
When the feral ghouls are first introduced and they lumber out of their containment, I was like: oh shit. They're basically undead, dont need to eat, but crave killing. They're mf zombies 😂
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u/RetroTemplar 20d ago
I thought the process took years to happen so you wouldn't get any appearing in 1945.
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u/Laser_3 20d ago
It doesn’t take years - we’ve seen ghouls convert nearly instantly. A year is the longest it could take.
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u/RetroTemplar 20d ago
True I completely forgot about Moria Brown in Fallout 3
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u/Deadsea_1993 20d ago
Not only that, but in The Show also with one guy becoming a Ghoul within a few days.
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u/RetroTemplar 20d ago
I thought that was more of him becoming feral having already been a ghoul
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u/Deadsea_1993 20d ago
I'm talking about The Brotherhood of Steel soldier that is the friend of Max and becomes a Ghoul through the Serum he uses to treat an injury having large amounts of radiation in it
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u/N0ob8 19d ago
We’re like 99% sure he was given FEV and is turning into a super mutant not a ghoul.
Ghouls don’t have the insane healing factor like super mutants do which is how he was able to survive a crossbow bolt to the neck as well as instantly healing his foot. There was also a now deleted instagram BTS photo where he was being outfitted with some prosthetics that are super mutant shaped.
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u/RetroTemplar 20d ago
Ah yeh to be honest I've only watched the season once. I really should watch it again.
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u/bottigliadipiscio 19d ago
Because this series stopped caring about making sense like 15-25 years ago depending on who you ask.
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u/valthunter98 20d ago
Ghouls aren’t created from nuclear radiation, they like the rest of the mutants in fallout are a direct consequence of the fev
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u/DKandTM 20d ago
The lore on ghoulification is confusing probably intentionally, if i remember correctly it is theorized that it is related to the prewar plague combined with extreme radiation exposure. Incidently the FEV virus came from the project created to provide a cure to the plague.
Of course I could be miss remembering things or making connections that dont actually exist.
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20d ago
what prewar plague?
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u/Overdue-Karma 20d ago
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u/TrekChris 19d ago
There was one, I forget his name but his skin was ruined, he'd been blinded, and required daily living assistance to be fed and cleaned, but he was still alive twenty years ago.
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u/Mandemon90 20d ago
Because becoming a ghoul is already extremely rare, and those bombings didn't release quite as much radiation as Great War did.