Fallout Fun Facts!

[Seattleite]

If there's one thing I'm consistently amazed by, it's the extent to which the makers of Fallout titles actually *do* do their research. So here's a thread for fun facts about the Fallout games and their less-tenuous-than-expected relationship with reality. These are not in any particular order.

 

1. Rad-X is real-ish.

Rad-X is based off the real world chemical potassium iodide. It is much more effective than potassium iodide is, but this is also a game where morphine (see #2) protects you from physical injury. Potassium iodide is taken to prevent the bonding of radioactive isotopes of potassium into your body, mostly protecting your thyroid gland. These tablets are taken as a supplementary measure to hazmat suits by those entering areas where fallout resulting from the fission of uranium (the sites of atomic bombings and reactor melt-downs), as well as areas where nuclear waste is handled or produced, and lastly in reactor rooms themselves. That said, in real life alcoholic beverages are more effective than potassium iodide, so S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is closer to reality there.

 

2. Med-X is real.

It should come as a surprise to nobody that med-x is actually morphine. It's labelled as such in the game files, and the name was only changed because Australia is a nanny state that ruins things for everybody. (Calm down, I'm insulting your government, not you.) Morphine is pretty potent, certainly, though it wouldn't actually prevent physical damage, it'd just let you go on after receiving more of it. So really, it should be boosting your health or endurance stats, not reducing damage, but whatever.

 

3. Jet is real. Buffout is real. Even friggin' PSYCHO is real, kinda.

It's pretty well spelled out in Fallout 2 that jet is methamphetamine, but many fans never played the first two, so they wouldn't know that. Its effects in the first game also match the effects of strong stimulants decently enough. Buffout is based off of real-world anabolic steroids, and its clandestine use by pre-war athletes as a performance enhancing drug is based off the real world scandals involving baseball players and steroids in the mid 20th century. Psycho is based off a real-world military program conducted throughout the cold war with the intent of using psychoactive compounds to enhance the combat effectiveness of US soldiers. The program was unsuccessful, but the program in-game that created psycho is directly based off of it. (In fact, quite a few of the successful experimental programs in-universe are based off of real-life failures.)

 

4. CIT is MIT.

Name says it all.

 

5. The Cambridge Polymer Labs are real, and so is everything about it. Almost.

The Cambridge Polymer Labs are a real place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. DERPI is based off DARPA, a real US agency, and the piezoelectric project run there is actually based off an actual piezoelectric project run in these labs, if only fairly loosely. The real piezoelectric project was meant to find a way to make piezoelectric boots for US soldiers so that they could generate power by walking and recharge electronic equipment such as torches and radios. However, the power output only ever got to 1-2 watts and the added discomfort the soldiers experienced with the new soles was too much to be worth that little bit of output. Like the psycho example above, the program in-game is successful even though it's based off of something in real life that very much wasn't. Though how radiation is going to make piezoelectric generators more effective, I have no idea.

 

6. The Fallout 3 subway tunnels are absolutely spot on, down to the line. And so is everything else.

Fallout 3 matches the geography of DC so well that even people looking as hard as they can for mistakes can't find any. Even all the subway tunnels are correctly placed and follow their real-life routes. It is uncanny. Obsidian followed suit with matching the geography of the Mojave almost, if not quite, as well. Fallout 4 once again does the same. This is a massive departure from the first two games, which kinda sucked at geography.

 

7. Hail to Caesar!

The Legion was, in-game, modelled after ancient Rome. And Caesar did his research. Not only do they all speak proper latin and pronounce words (like "ave" and "Caesar") properly, but even the way he originally formed the legion matches the formation of Rome, and his attack on the NCR after conquering Arizona does mirror Julius Caesar's attack on Rome after conquering Celtica, the mainland section of Gaul. Their command structure also follows the roman design, from the centurion to the decanus, their currency is the same as ancient Rome's (the aureus and denarii are real, and the aureus was indeed worth 25 denarii).

 

8. All those songs about nuclear war and fallout? Those were NOT made for the game.

Most of you know this already, but all of the songs to appear in Fallout are either real songs or parodies of real songs, and all the ones on the radio are in the former camp. That includes Uranium Fever, Uranium Rock, Crawl Out Through the Fallout and Atom Bomb Baby.

 

More to come later. In the mean time, anybody have some of their own?

Edited March 7, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[BidetoftheDead]

Er isn't Jet suppose to be made from the fumes of Brahmin dung?

[Seattleite]

Er isn't Jet suppose to be made from the fumes of Brahmin dung?

 

When Myron first encountered the Mordinos, they were farming peyote cacti and selling it to tourists as the "Reno Experience." Unfortunately, as Myron explains, peyote trips last too long, and profit is generated by fast turnaround and a high addiction rate. Furthermore, the climate was far too ravaged and irradiated to grow anything but the hardiest of plants. So, Myron began delving into growing mushrooms. Hallucinogens have low overhead and thrive in plentiful brahmin dung. From there, Myron began experimenting with derivatives of lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin and THC. However, the Mordinos still desired something a little harder and more addictive that could aid them in gaining control of Redding. The solution to the problem came from the brahmin fertilizer itself.

 

In the pre-War days, big meat companies had experimented with a cheap protein extract for growing food. However, the product had to be abandoned because any bacterial contamination (even from common skin bacteria) resulted in a complex reaction, ruining any meat and causing it to act like methamphetamine. To cut their losses, farmers fed the extract to their cattle.

 

Myron discovered that the fumes generated from brahmin who had been fed the contaminated protein extract could be used to create a powerful drug. By placing the augmented brahmin dung in large vats, Myron and the Mordinos were finally able to begin producing the potent drug they had been after. About a hundred slaves were killed in initial testing—mostly results of heart attacks, cerebral hemorrhages, and psychotic episodes—but jet was ultimately produced.

 

The production of methamphetamine from fertilizer is, indeed, a real thing. It's nicknamed the "Nazi method" of methamphetamine production as it also involves the same birch reduction as the original Nazi production method did, and is the main way methamphetamine is produced in rural areas in the United States. You can't watch a TV cop show go to a rural area without them finding a meth lab that uses this method. Adding extra chemicals to the brahmin's feed could easily be increasing the levels of the desired chemicals in their dung, and that could make the synthesis less complicated and more productive, but it is in actuality an entirely unnecessary step.

Edited March 7, 2016 by Guest (see edit history)

[BidetoftheDead]

Huh, I never knew that, that's kinda interesting.

[Seattleite]

My grandparents watch too many "Cops" style shows. I must have heard about six different ways to make meth by now, just from watching those shows with them.

 

Next fun fact: Deathclaws are genetically engineered from jackson chameleons. It's a good thing they don't retain that colour-changing ability, ain't it? Wait... Some do? Oh... Oh no... Why did I have to find that out? Why?

[Selfsurprise]

You've certainly done your research Seattleite! Good job on this thread. I wish I could contribute more to it. Going off subject slightly, I recently watched a playthrough of an excellent quest mod revamp of the DLC Honest Hearts entitled Honest Hearts Reborn, which in my opinion rather improves the original narrative. I enjoyed the extrapolation on the origins of the Legion and the surprisingly sympathetic light cast on the New Caananites. If you are interested in a more detailed account of mormon beliefs, this is a worthwhile mod to check out.

[UndeadNecro]

Well, I do know that the Blue Moon song on the Radio in New Vegas is a cover of Frank Sinatra's cover and isn't the original. I could probably play through FO 1 & 2 and look for the countless references but I can't be bothered. There's also A LOT, like for example the pussy cat magazine (the sneak one? Whatever one it is, it's a reference to a real adult magazine).

[Fric]

Why Aussies don't like morphine?

[Seattleite]

Well, I do know that the Blue Moon song on the Radio in New Vegas is a cover of Frank Sinatra's cover and isn't the original.

 

Actually, that's just the 1961 recording of Blue Moon, not a cover.

 

Why Aussies don't like morphine?

 

Because it's an addictive real-world drug that was rampantly abused and shares its addiction with its prodrug heroin, causing many morphine addicts to turn to heroin when morphine is no longer available? That was quite a problem for most of a century, you know. That's how the illicit heroin trade got started. (Also, yes, heroin was invented as a pharmaceutical.)

[UndeadNecro]

Well, I do know that the Blue Moon song on the Radio in New Vegas is a cover of Frank Sinatra's cover and isn't the original.

 

Actually, that's just the 1961 recording of Blue Moon, not a cover.

 

Why Aussies don't like morphine?

 

Because it's an addictive real-world drug that was rampantly abused and shares its addiction with its prodrug heroin, causing many morphine addicts to turn to heroin when morphine is no longer available? That was quite a problem for most of a century, you know. That's how the illicit heroin trade got started. (Also, yes, heroin was invented as a pharmaceutical.)

 

Yeah, my mistake. There's some custom cover that was made for a trailer or something like that but one of the versions of the song(you can google it if you want, it should come up as one of the first results) is a non-vocal cover of Frank Sinatra's version.

[Seattleite]

Yeah, my mistake. There's some custom cover that was made for a trailer or something like that but one of the versions of the song(you can google it if you want, it should come up as one of the first results) is a non-vocal cover of Frank Sinatra's version.

 

You mean this trailer?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZQPmDye5xA

 

Yeah, that's the same version used in the game.

[UndeadNecro]

Yeah, my mistake. There's some custom cover that was made for a trailer or something like that but one of the versions of the song(you can google it if you want, it should come up as one of the first results) is a non-vocal cover of Frank Sinatra's version.

 

You mean this trailer?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZQPmDye5xA

 

Yeah, that's the same version used in the game.

 

Perhaps the version I heard was a custom one used in a video, then. Anyways, I always thought their naming of characters was interesting, like for example how they used the name "Ulysses" in New Vegas on purpose. Pretty sure it's a reference to Odysseus(Ulysses being the Latin name for Odysseus, quick google search to clarify that). Although, apparently there's a novel called Ulysses(which I have no knowledge of), so that could be the reference too.

[Seattleite]

You seem unaware of Ulysses S. Grant.

[Fric]

Well, I do know that the Blue Moon song on the Radio in New Vegas is a cover of Frank Sinatra's cover and isn't the original.

 

Actually, that's just the 1961 recording of Blue Moon, not a cover.

 

Why Aussies don't like morphine?

 

Because it's an addictive real-world drug that was rampantly abused and shares its addiction with its prodrug heroin, causing many morphine addicts to turn to heroin when morphine is no longer available? That was quite a problem for most of a century, you know. That's how the illicit heroin trade got started. (Also, yes, heroin was invented as a pharmaceutical.)

That's the only reason??? I was aware of this, that patients became morphine addicts, that's nothing new to me. I just thought there was something more to it. Damn Ausies (their government)...

[Alyxx Thorne]

I always knew that the drugs in the Fallout series were based on real drugs. Personally I only stick to rad-x, radaway and stimpaks and don't really do anything else although I did do a lot of jet in Fallout 2 since it gave a lot more action points (research it, kids, that's what we had before Fallout became a FPS series).